Sermon: Inspiring Each Other

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Inspiring Each Other

By Charles Rush

September 12, 2004

ofessor Ron Robson at Beloit College recently sent a memorandum to the faculty of the college to orient them regarding the entering freshman class. He noted that they year these kids were born, Chernobyl melted down, the Space Craft Challenger exploded, and the good citizens of Carmel California elected Clint Eastwood as their mayor. He pointed out that as far as these students are concerned, Alan Greenspan has always been setting the country's financial direction; the United States has always been a Prozac nation; there have always been gay characters on television; there have always been night games at Wrigley field; and Bill and Ted have always been on a 'most excellent adventure."

As far as they are concerned, they have no experience of the Cold War, Computers have always had viruses. We have always been mapping the human genome. Politicians have always used rock music for theme songs on the campaign. And network television has always struggled to keep up with cable.

From their perspective no one has ever flown on time through O'Hare airport. Bethlehem has never been a place of peace at Christmas. Oliver North has always been a talk show host. Almost all of their research has been done on-line. Airports have always had security systems in place. Fidel Castro has always been an aging politician in a suit. And Cher hasn't aged a day.

We are looking at a new generation and we need to think about them in a new and different way. This being the start of a new semester and in many ways the start of a new year for our children and our families, it is a good time to think about doing things better and different for the next generation.

Our scripture this morning points us spiritually in the direction of taking our game to the next level. Paul says that the point of our life together is to cultivate a common life, to help each other develop our gifts together, to manifest the spiritual potential that each of us shares. What a beguiling thought that is.

I know it is difficult for us to get in that mode and stay in that mode, particularly in our families. This summer, we had a family reunion at the beach. My brother-in-law came driving up in the Van with his four children. As I went to greet them, the sliding door came flying open and two of my nephews leaped at me with their swords slashing and crashing. My other nephew lept past all of us and ran for the ocean. My niece was in the internal world of her Walkman music. A bit of peanut butter was smeared over the window, French fries mashed in the carpet. I hugged my sister-in-law and said 'How are you?' She gave me that 30 something blank retort after 10 hours of screaming in the car with barely rational children and said, "We're here".

My brother-in-law could only say one word… "Beer". And these people love their children and are great parents. Developing our giftedness, most of the time we'll take controlled chaos.

But there is another level, when we look at our spouses, when we look at our children, our families, a few close friends, some people in our church-- when we look at them and see them as they are; when we see them blooming as they could be. When we know that what we could do to encourage them to grow. You know about those times when you have really blossomed one another, how generative and creative that feels, how open and alive that really is. That is grace, that is the Spirit of God moving in our midst. That is blessing.

We can inspire other people. Wonderful word, a Greek word from the bible that means literally "to fill them with the Spirit." And when you do that you produce 'enthusiasm' in others. That is another wonderful word, a Greek word that literally means that you have 'the god within' (en theos), to be filled with God.

Think about when you were inspired, really inspired. I was listening to the Principal of St. Phillips Academy in Newark. St. Phillips is a prep school in Newark devoted to giving inner-urban African-American children a chance to become educated grades 1-8 so they can be accepted at the best prep schools in the country. It is only a few years old and all the kids come from the hood and it amazing what they achieve. The principal was explaining that they expose the children to places and people far beyond their wildest dreams. He told of taking his middle school kids to Washington. But not only did they see the museums on the Mall and the Government building, the Secretary of State Colin Powell met with the kids for an hour in the middle of a very busy day. And he choked up, collected himself, and went on. A grown man, almost overcome with emotion. People that inspire us will do that. No doubt, the Secretary of State, was involved that day in some very important matters with dramatic import for our country and our world. But the truth is probably this. There is probably nothing that he did that day that was more important than meeting with tomorrow's leaders.

I think of that wonderful photograph that President Clinton had of himself shaking hands with President Kennedy when he was just 16 years old. He kept that photo from then on. It set him in a positive direction and lifted his sights.

I have a dream that we can spend more time inspiring one another in our families, our friends, our churches, our work. I wonder what the world would look like if we focused our energy, if we made it our job to spiritually and emotionally assess our children, and figure out ways to help them develop into the person God wants them to become? I wonder what our relationships would look like if we devised family gatherings in such a way that some of our time together was given over to positively nurturing those gifts and talents and making them stronger?

The psychologist Heniz Kohut has shown that praise from the people that we genuinely look up to is a main emotional and spiritual way that we develop a strong self. [i]I wonder what our relationships would look like if our children genuinely looked to us in that respectful manner and we were able to inspire them so that they could become who they are uniquely meant to be?

The Jungian psychotherapist Robert Moore did depth research into the archetypes of the King and the Queen in Western legends and literature. [ii] He juxtaposes two different types of leadership, the Bad King and Queen and the Good King and Queen. The bad royalty, just as bad leaders today, seek adoration and need to be at the center of attention; they are self-serving and have a vision of greatness for themselves; they blame others when things go wrong and they can't let go of power.

The good Queen and King adore other and make them the center of attention. They serve the people and have a vision for the social order; They take responsibility and they step aside gracefully and invest the next generation with authority.

"One of Moore's important insights is that a core function of the King and Queen archetype is to give other praise and blessing." Bad leadership, like Louis the XIV's moribund court at Versailles, creates fawning sycophants and duplicity for the slightest honor of the crown. Great leadership makes people's fundamental sense of Self stronger. That is what we want, we want to be surrounded by strong people and we want to be the people that facilitate them becoming strong don't we? Especially our families, our friends, our core community.

We have a hard time getting in this positive spiritual framework and staying in it for a lot of reasons. Precious few of us grew up in homes that had anything like this focus. And most of us in our wider culture are 'heirs to a deficit mindset'… trained to see 'the glass half empty, to notice what is broken, lacking, needs fixing, and isn't good enough."[iii] As parents and spouses, it is easy for us to fall back into grouse mode with the carping whine to our voices because- no question- there is a lot that needs fixing. We start to see those closest to us as a problem to be solved rather than a person to be appreciated.

Left unchecked, we slide into a transactional relationship, so painfully exemplified by New Jersey's first couple, Tony and Carmella Soprano. Tony is stuck in early adolescent mode with women. They fall into two groups: The first are girls you fool around with, like the strippers at the Badda Bing. The second are family women that try to control you like his manipulative, guilt producing mother.

Every year he is married to Carmella, he moves her from girl I used to fool around with to mothering figure trying to control me a little bit more and more. He does this by keeping his distance and independent life from her which makes her mad because she is not being nourished spiritually or emotionally.

Tony ignores his wife as long as he can, let's their relationship slide, except when they are mutually called upon to enforce the law with their two teenagers. Together they are Bad cop and Badder cop.

But their relationship just slides into distance and independence. Carmella, at some point, has just decided that Tony is not capable of fulfilling her interpersonally, spiritually, emotionally. She has an air of middle-aged resignation about her.

Just when it looks like their relationship could be headed for divorce court, Tony pulls out a save. It is Carmella's birthday. In a very public way, so that her friends and family can see it, he pulls out a $50k bracelet and a $10k pair of earrings to boot. She is overwhelmed by ice, actually indulged materially for an undernourished spiritual relationship.

And it buys her off for a while, but each cycle, the buy off gets shorter and the price goes up. For Christmas it is a Mercedes coup, then her own second house, you know how this works.

His children are similarly indulged. There is a lot of strict posturing. But he is spiritually distant in their lives. There is no gravitas and he is guilty about that. They do not have significant interaction. For the most part, they only talk about getting through the schedules of their lives. He wants intimacy. He wants soul connection with his kids. Rather than get involved in their lives, every once in a while, he indulgently rewards them when they achieve a modest goal. He pulls out the Master Card and gets them a new car. Big hugs all around. Dad you are great. I love you. It is kind of like a soul connection only the authority is not an honest spiritual gravitas but the authority of a bank. It doesn't make them strong. It makes them dependent in an unhealthy way. They know that they aren't going to get much from him emotionally or spiritually and they know he is a soft touch, so they learn how to manipulate him when they need a big hit of mammon.

Of course, this is us writ large, without the bad grammar and cousins who are mobsters. We fall into this same pattern, especially with our teenagers because they incite us to a certain distance. We have to break through, allow God to break through. What if we could figure out a way to structure our family time so that we could lift up our children's spiritual giftedness and nurture that to grow? What if we could lift up our spouse and encourage them in the matters of the spirit and help them to be comfortable claiming their gifts and using them? What if we had the intentional vision of becoming more open and intimate, taking our relationships to the next spiritual depth?

One simple way to start this process, especially when your children are little, is prayer. Early in the morning before they wake up, when you are lying with them saying a night time prayer before bed, envision them. See their gifts in their wonderful spiritual humanity. Focus on who they are becoming. Pray for them that they will become the young people that God wants them to be.

Ask God to help you become creative so that you can set situations up in your family life so that they have an opportunity to manifest those gifts. Do the same thing with your spouse. You will start to see their gifts more frequently. Pray for deeper spiritual honesty, intimacy, humanity in yourself and with your loved ones. And watch.

Paul encouraged us not only to live like that at home, but he hoped that the Church would become a place where we would become surrogate spiritual brothers and sisters, parents and children to each other. He wanted us to cultivate a common life more broadly and multiply the blessing.

There is so much more that we could do than we do and most of us don't think in these terms until we have to. Most of us are like a fellow I heard interviewed on the BBC last week, Giorgio Angelozzi, who lives not too far from Rome.[iv]

Giorgio was a teacher for many years. A couple years after he retired, his wife died and he has been living alone for the past 8 years. Giorgio went through his daily routine but he found that he was getting lonelier and lonelier. He needed more interaction with other people. He didn't have any children, so he found that he spent more and more conversation with his cats to the point that he was worried that his neighbors might think he was losing his mind, talking to the cats like they were practically people.

One day spark jumped Gap. It was a divine break through of sorts. Giorgio takes out an add in the national paper, Il Figaro, I believe. He says, "former teacher is willing to be a grandfather for your family and offer my services for free" and he put his mailing address in the ad.

Couple days go by, goes to pick up his mail, and he has to carry it home in a box. He read a few of the letters he got. This one I liked. It was from Giovanni, aged 6, who wrote to him and said, "There are four kids in our family and our mother doesn't have time to read to us all the time, or take walks, or tell us fairy tales. My grandparents are all dead. We need someone to help us with our homework too. My mother says we can't ask you to live with us because we don't have an extra room in our house. But my brother and I are willing to let you stay in our room."

Giorgio has a couple solid options and is about to make a life change. It was a breakthrough moment for some family somewhere in need, and there is no shortage of need, and a breakthrough moment for Giorgio. God has more for him to do yet. Carlyle Marney used to say that when we are so moved, the Spirit of God is active in our midst and then church meets.

I hope that you will pray that God will manifest gifts in you. I hope that you will pray for ways to express them in your Church and I hope that you include the Christ Church community in your circle. I hope that we can all become more humane, more spiritual, more truly intimate in cultivating a common life. I hope that we pray through things great and small that need to be done around Christ Church that this will be our end and if you are ready for a fuller expression and don't exactly know what that means or what to do, I hope you talk to Julie or I about it and let's see if we can discern something creatively together.

It is a new generation and you are a new you. Let's take our life together to the next dimension of spiritual depth. Amen

[i] I am indebted to what follows in this next section to a very fine article "The Appreciate Self: Inspiring the Best in Others" by Gervase Bushe, Ph.d. who teaches at Simon Fraser University. Although his article is principally directed at corporate management, the underlying insights of psychology and spirituality are very helpful. The paper can be found at http://www.wb-consult.de/lit_e/appreciative_self.htm.

[ii] ibid. p. 12

[iii] ibid. p. 2.

[iv] I believe that the interview was on the radio on Thursday, September 9th. The Reuters news release can be read at http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=6103616