Proper 23B
In the name of God who loves us. Amen.
When my parents were living in Tennessee, they had a sweet little Miniature Schnauzer named Buddy. Buddy had definitely been the runt of his litter, but he was the biggest man in any room he walked into. He maybe weighed 12 or 15 pounds at his biggest, but he had the disposition of utter, unwavering confidence.
As a sort of iconic representation of the sort of space Buddy could take up, it’s helpful to compare him to my brother’s dog at the time. His name was Keno. He was a Catahoula cur and probably weighed 65 or 70 pounds. Buddy and Keno were great friends and loved playing together, but Buddy was definitely in charge. When it came time to eat, Keno would get this giant bowl, filled with pounds of food, and Buddy would, of course, get a much smaller bowl with maybe a cup of kibble. While I’m sure it would surprise none of you to hear that Buddy naturally gravitated to Keno’s larger bowl, the funny thing is, whenever they were together, Buddy didn’t even have to claim it. Because Keno would defer to him and automatically choose the smaller bowl first. The two knew their places.
One time when I was visiting my parents, I woke up one morning to learn that Buddy had had a run-in with a coyote the night before. I guess he was able to convince the coyote how big he was, too, because while he was badly injured, he had survived. We got him to the vet and he got cleaned up and stitched up and loaded up with antibiotics, and eventually he pulled through.
The episode, however, led to an ongoing difference of opinion between my father and me. Mom and Dad lived in a pretty rural area in those Tennessee mountains and Buddy was used to having the roam of the land. I would say to Dad, you’ve got to stop letting Buddy just roam free – he’s going to get hurt again. And Dad’s response would invariably be, “But he loves it!” And I would answer: I’m sure he’d love to eat chocolate, too, but we can’t let him – it would hurt him. His love for something isn’t reason enough to ignore what’s best for him. Sometimes, as the one who is entrusted with the care of another, we have to stifle short-term enjoyment in favor of a more lasting good.
In the story of Jesus, today, we hear this same sort of scenario playing out. A man, moved by his teaching, longed to delve deeper into the way of Jesus. So he goes up to Jesus and asks him what would be necessary to take the next step. Jesus tells him to learn and to follow the teachings of the ancestors – to be faithful to the ways of God that we already know. The man assures him that he does. Is there anything else?
Then, it’s one of my favorite moments. The Gospel writer describes Jesus’ response by saying, “Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’”
I love this moment, not so much because I delight in the path Jesus is teaching – it’s a difficult teaching, not something that can easily be delighted in, but I love it because I love how this difficult teaching is described as an act of loving. We too often have this soft, squishy view of love that implies love is just giving in to someone’s desires. But love is much more complex than simple happiness.
When I was in my hospital chaplaincy training, one of the meaningful conversations I had with my supervisor was around how things were going in the church where I was serving. While there were aspects of my work in the church that were going very well, my relationship with the Rector under whom I was serving was sometimes challenging. We communicated very differently from one another and sometimes we had a hard time connecting, so it could be pretty stressful. I told my supervisor that while the work was generally going well, I sometimes found it difficult to stay happy all the time. She asked me, “What makes you think you’re supposed to be happy all the time?” It led to a really fruitful conversation about the nature of leadership and particularly leadership in churches. She helped me to understand that while it is certainly true that the presence of joy is certainly one of the signs of the Holy Spirit in our communities, as leaders we’re called as our whole selves. And often, the honest reality of our whole selves isn’t as two-dimensional as we try to make it, or as the people we lead may wish it were.
The same is true for our relationships with Jesus. Jesus called our whole selves into this relationship with God. He knew that the kind of “Valentines Day” versions of love that we often think about today – with the candy and hearts and stuffed animals – it’s only one kind of love. To call our whole selves, we would need more wholistic understandings of love. And a wholistic approach to love is just more complex than that. Sometimes it means embracing harder truths. Sometimes it means learning harder lessons. Sometimes love looks less like something squishy, and more like some kind of sacrifice.
In her book, Dare to Lead, Brenee Brown talks about the value she places on clear and kind communication in her teams. She reminds us that when we obfuscate the truth of what we’re trying to communicate by sugar coating or by dancing around the actual subject, we may think we’re being kind, but in fact, we’re just avoiding confrontation. That can lead to problems not actually being solved, and at its worst, it can lead to resentment and deeper fractures in relationships.
She says that in her teams, she cultivates the mantra, “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.” When there are issues in how we relate to one another and how we work together, the kindest thing we can do is to be clear: clear about our needs, and clear about how they’re not being met. Clear communication, while not always easy when dealing with difficult subjects, is the only way to advance the conversation and learn where the real issues lie. Maybe expectations aren’t reasonable. Maybe skills need to be developed or time management addressed. Maybe there’s something personal going on, outside the work of the team, that’s getting in the way and that would be understood if only it were communicated. We’ll only ever learn these things if we learn to be clear and kind.
That doesn’t mean it’s always going to be easy to be clear. Sometimes you have to have hard conversations to get through to the goal.
The message of Jesus and the teaching of this faith is that love isn’t always easy, but it is always the goal. It’s not always comfortable, but it is always the right choice.
As whole people, who are wholly loved by God and called to give our whole selves in wholly loving God’s creation, there’s going to be some bumps. Because the bumps are a part of the whole.
We’re not just called to bring the parts of ourselves that we like to show off. We’re not just called to bring our social media presences – the pictures of the good times and the happy experiences and the things we’re most proud of. We are called to bring it all. Right here. To lay at this altar as a sacrifice of thanksgiving for the God who lovingly made all that is.
And there, in that sacrifice, God will bless it. The good and the bad. The loved and the harder to love. The joyful and the challenging. It all has a place. It all shares in the blessing.
And the same is true for us.
We all, with our whole, complex, and sometimes challenging and sometimes
harder to love selves – we all have a place in the family of God. We all share in the blessing. We all are a part of the sacrifice of
thanksgiving. We all are a part of the
sacrificed and resurrected Body of Christ.
Amen.
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