Sermon: Mutual Respect and Spiritual Intimacy

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Mutual Respect and Spiritual Intimacy

By Charles Rush

December 4, 2005

out Joseph almost nothing is known. We don't know his profession, whether he was happy in life, what he accomplished, whether he died contented or not. We have just one line about him… a one line description. Now… if you got only a one line obit… if people could only say one thing about you for posterity to remember you by, what would you want them to say?... What would you want them to say?

You could do a lot worse than the one line that is attributed to him, particularly since he was a young man at the time it was said. The scripture says, "being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame"… I hope that will be said about my sons and my grandsons. I hope that will be said about my daughters and granddaughters.

For years now, I've ridden my bike and walked my dog passed Franklin School. They've had a banner out front that says "Character counts". That little line has meant different things at different times of life.

When graduated from Seminary, I was standing with a couple classmates, one of them turned out to be one of the most gifted orators of our generation, the other a great scholar. We were fast friends just taking in the moment when we were approached by one member of the faculty, a beloved Emeritus professor, an elderly Southern gentlemen and long-time pastor. He hugged us, his best students, pulled us all close, as in right up nose to nose. He was going to give us some wisdom, a kind of final blessing. We were waiting. He looked us all dead in the eye and he said, "Boys, keep your pants zipped up and you'll be fine." We stood there in slack-jawed amazement until he was far enough away and we broke into uncontrollable mirth. We were expecting some wise word that Merlin used that released King Arthur's sword from the stone, something profound and esoteric after years of study. Instead, we got a lesson on our loins.

For several years after that if we were saying goodbye on the phone or parting to leave after a beer together at a conference, invariably one of us would say, "Charlie, just keep your pants zipped up and you'll be fine." We didn't get it.

But ten years out, after comparing enough stories about parishioners who have thrown solid families away, it looked a little different. Twenty years out, after more than a few of our friends were dismissed from their churches and academic positions, the quality of that wisdom deepened. A few years ago, we were together for the first time in many years, sharing a chuckle that this was perhaps one of the two or three best things we could have been told, turns out.

Character is one of those things that grow in importance as we get older. We lay character down one coat at a time over a long period of time. Aristotle once said "People become house builders through building houses, harp players through playing the harp. We grow to be just by doing things that are just." The Greeks very much believed that character is formed by the daily habits we develop day in and day out, and that is why Plato used to say that we can only be as moral than the community in which we live.

But just as true is the fact that some of the fundamental contours of our character are formed in the reaction to crisis. Joseph, in our story, is a very young man, faced with a very difficult situation. He is put to the test. Helen Keller once said, "Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved." Challenges give us the opportunity to flex our moral muscle and define ourselves. And each time we rise to a challenge successfully, we develop a little more self-respect and earn a little more respect from others. And each time we fail, we have to live with our weakness and the disappointment that we have caused people closest to us.

Who amongst us has not had a moment of moral failure and general spiritual bewilderment at some point in our lives where we did not find ourselves looking long and hard into the morning mirror saying, "I have become a stranger to myself". Or in the memorable phrase from St. Augustine at mid-life, reflecting on his own internal contradictions saying, "I have become a problem unto myself."

Dealing with your weakness is bad enough all by yourself but it is much more existentially embarrassing with those you love. There is nothing that has quite the haunting reverberation on our conscience is having a spouse, a trusted friend, a beloved relative look us straight in the eye and say with depth of feeling, "I'm so disappointed in you." Particularly since this line is usually only uttered when something of profound importance has just taken place, it is doubly devastating. We can find a complicated way to live with ourselves but- "I'm so disappointed in you" – it is one of those lines that keeps coming back in the shower, walking to work, at the gym. You just want to hit the rewind button again and again and again.

You are standing there literally watching your reputation shred, at least for the person disappointed in you, before your very eyes. You are watching your bank of trust credits disappear like sand down a hole. Whatever virtues you have laid down, one coat at a time, are just being eaten through. And you know that you can't get this back again. And you have this moment when you suddenly really feel it in the pit of your gut that, at the end of the day, the only thing substantial you really have is your character. You have to live with yourself and your reputation, living with others. When that gives way, double blast on the big horn, "Houston, we have a problem."

It is a regularly recurring dimension when marriages break up and when extended families aren't working. Most of the time, it is not spoken about directly but it is palpable. It is not just about adultery, although it is about adultery too. It is a little less tangible than that. More broadly, it is about what infidelity symbolizes in the relationship. You get to this point that you just can't trust this person anymore. You've given them all your precious emotional stuff and they've been careless with it, indifferent with it, maybe reckless with it.

Close partners, brothers and sisters, spouses- the closer that relationship is, the deeper that relationship is, the bigger the wound when it is broken. People are wired to just shut down. They withdraw emotionally, physically. They huddle, hide, protect, roll up in a ball, hunker down. And they will trust the guy at the grocery store, someone they have never met, but… not you. Not anymore. No way. Never again. Been there, done that. Next.

There is nothing like the depth of determination from someone that has been hurt, like two sisters that lived only a few blocks from one another when I was growing up that hadn't spoken for 30 years. We kids were incredulous and finally asked one of them why. "Because"…. She said… "I can't."

No, it is difficult. It is very difficult to put that back together. I mention this because in this great season of Christmas, we lift up the coming of the One that they will call the "Mighty Counselor, the Prince of Peace". We lift up the One who will bring forth a season where "the Lion shall lie down with the Wolf…", who points towards a time when "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation." What a profound, difficult vision that really is.

A friend of mine was talking to a woman that had decided to leave her husband. He had been having an affair, cut it off. And his wife couldn't get passed it. She is unpacking her bitterness and my friend says, "Before you definitely leave, I want to say one thing as someone who has been divorced for over ten years now…You may need to leave, that may well be the right decision… but your flawed husband… and he is flawed… Honey from here on out every other one you meet is going to be flawed too. So you can try to make it work with an old, flawed man that you used to love or you can try to make a go of it with a new flawed man you haven't yet met…. But those are the only two options."

I appreciate the interjection of a note of reason at moments like these, but reason alone is not enough is it? No, there is an emotional wound, a spiritual rending that is only accentuated when reason is applied because this is more transcendent than mere reason alone.

I was listening to the Dali Lama recently giving his simple, profound message on the spiritual path to wholeness. Three things: Respect for Self, Respect for Others, and Responsibility for our Actions. Direct, absolutely right.

Putting it back together once it has broken down? Like the inverse of the VISA commercial "Almost Impossible." Why do I mention this? To remind us that this season is not principally about getting stuff, it is about reconciling people that are estranged from others and from themselves. We are looking forward to the birth of a baby in a manger, a moment of reconciling peace, in the midst of the war and oppression.

The gifts that we give each other when things are working well are important and they are relatively easy. And the great Promise of this season points us towards the bigger gift, repairing relationships that are broken, healing dysfunction in the direction of healthy, functional interpersonal normalcy.

I remind you that those of us that try to follow after that Star that settled over Bethlehem are called to become "Ambassadors of Reconciliation" in the wonderful words of St. Paul. We need to remember that we want to be people skilled in brokering the peace, in doing things in our families that make for healthy boundaries and healthy interactions; we need to be the people that put an end to unhealthy dependencies and develop an honest sense of responsibilities with everyone in our extended families, in our circles of friends.

We need to be the people that are willing to make 'surprising, transforming initiatives' in the words of Glen Stassen, things that disarm those entwined in a hostile situation. We are not going to solve everything; we won't heal every situation, but our presence ought to make a difference. St. Paul once said that we should 'give thanks for every small victory." We give thanks for every small step towards functional normalcy.

I think of three sisters from an extended Southern family that were close growing up and gradually grew apart by mid-life, two were Republicans one was a Democrat and politics were not a wise subject at family gatherings; two were religious, one was thought not largely because she was Episcopalian, a tradition the other two like to mock for not being able to tell the difference between a Bishop and a Queen; religion was not a wise subject at family gatherings; two had advanced higher education and married educated men, one did not. They lived in different places and became different people.

And tragedy took its toll on them as well. There was the death of a spouse. And two of them lost children. One lost a grandchild. Sometimes these shared pains can bring people together in shared suffering. Sometimes each person can simply pull in on themselves, buckle up and go it alone with their thoughts and disappointments.

One of them drank more and more heavily. Other members wouldn't hear from her for quite a while and then suddenly something would move her, something she had read or seen on T.V. and she would pick up the phone, fortified by several snoots, and reach out and touch. Everyone in the extended family agreed that it was more like reach out and mush. Everyone had a story about being mushed on from whence came the family maxim, "Never drink and dial." But she was in pain and alone and the only time that she could really access that anymore was that short span between high and drunk. But it didn't heal, it couldn't heal; it was just annoying.

Late in mid-life, they inherited the last of their wider families heirlooms from the previous generation. The family was long in this country, so they had paintings, silver, furniture, jewelry, enough stuff to fill a small museum. But this process of dividing up the heirlooms gave them a chance to return to their collective past together and that too proved interestingly dividing.

One sister had very fond memories of childhood and was greatly interested in geneology. She seemed to remember all kinds of items the other two had forgotten. And her house became a kind of living shrine to this former elegant era. Every room featured a painting of a long, lost relative; every room had furniture with a story. All these antiques were on display.

The second sister was more selective. She kept most of her things in the formal rooms, the dining room and the den. Likewise, she had a more selective memory of the past, and harbored no sentimental patina when she talked of it.

The third sister had all of her things in trunks in the basement. As you might imagine, she didn't have such warm memories and was ready to leave back then, back then.

And this treatment of stuff really irritated the other two sisters. These precious antiques in the basement, collecting mold. It really irritated them; it was morally offensive, this mistreatment, this indifference. And in it contributed to their spiritual distance from each other because it became something they could conveniently and legitimately carp about. And carp they did. This was resented by the third sister, who just refused to come to any family gatherings, refused to call you back.

This went on for quite some years until… the wedding. One of the cousins was getting married. She was the same size as her deceased great grandmother. One of the sisters decided that she should wear her great-grandmother's wedding dress. But, it was in one of those trunks in the basement collecting mold.

Calls were made requesting the dress… At first she was evasive about it; Follow up calls were made and messages left on the answering machine. Nieces were enlisted with other calls. The existence of the dress was acknowledged but no commitment. Time is clicking by and a decision had to be made.

What no one in the family really knew was the extent to which the third sister was declining in health. She knew she was in bad shape. Maybe this was an important component. And maybe it was her fondness for her niece. And maybe it was the realization that there was no point in carrying this bitterness forward another generation. For whatever reason, she stood at the top of her stairs, opened the door to the basement, flicked on the light, stood for a long time at the top by herself, and started to descend… What would it take for you to descend down to your basement?

A couple days later, the bell rang at the door of one of the other sisters. It was the UPS guy with a large box, the gown inside, and a note that read cryptically, "The dress is yours… do as you wish with it. Signed, your Sister."

Seeing the dress again, overcome with emotion, she called the cousin to come over and try on the dress… It fit beautifully. They got a tailor to fix a few things but the wedding was on, everyone was thrilled.

Time and again, over the next day she read that note again. What did it mean? Did it mean, "I've changed my mind, I really want you to have this!" Or, did it mean, "Here is the dress…up yours." She wasn't sure. Finally, she picked up the phone and called her sister and left a long message of sincere thanks and she said, 'I hope you can come to the wedding. I want to see you.' She hung up.

Who knows whether it was because she didn't want to die estranged or whether she just wanted to see her niece on her happy day or whether she was tired of carrying around this bag of resentment, but she called back. The two sisters talked. And there began a series of conversations. It is very careful. They don't talk a lot about the past. They don't talk about religion or the Bush Administration. No, real reconciliation is not warm gushy butter all of a sudden. It is delicate, it takes considerate work, and it can unravel easily.

But… This is the real gift of the Babe in this Christmas season. And you know what? You have a role to play in it. It may only be small, baby steps towards healthy normalcy. Even those may be compromised with bitterness and moments of tantrum. But St. Paul was right; give thanks for every small victory. You are an ambassador of reconciliation. And yes, you, even you, can make things better. Amen.