“Jesus stopped. And Jesus listened. And Jesus loved. And healing happened. But first … Jesus stopped. And if Jesus can stop, can we? We can. As Dr. King said standing over the bodies of those young girls in Birmingham, ‘God still has a way of wringing good out of evil.’ It can begin with the smallest of things.”
Sermon by Mike Kinman at All Saints Church, Pasadena, on Sunday, October 28, 2018.
“Jesus stopped.”
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Jesus stopped.
Of all the things Jesus invites us to do, of all the practices Jesus invites us to emulate, there is none so quietly revolutionary as this single act – so briefly mentioned in scripture that we scarcely notice it.
Jesus stopped.
And listened.
And loved.
And healing happened.
But first … Jesus stopped.
Jesus stopped even though he had an important place to go and important things to do.
Jesus stopped even though everyone around him told him not to.
Jesus stopped for only one reason … because he heard one person cry out.
Jesus stopped and said “Call him here.”
And the world changed.
The world changed in the way the world changes when we engage in small acts of deep compassion, one by one.
The world changed in the way the world changes when we see each other’s humanity, one by one.
We know that’s how the world changes because it’s how we have felt our world change.
Because we have moments in our life where we know what it is to have our cry heard.
We have moments in our life where we know what it is to be truly seen.
We know those moments are life-saving, life-sustaining, life-transforming.
We know it and like Bartimaeus, all of us from the very depths of our souls cry out for it.
See me. Hear me. Know me. Believe me. Love me.
We know the gift of having those cries heard and believed, and we know that gift does not happen without stopping.
And at the same time we crave it from one another, we too easily discount our ability to provide that gift for one another.
Too easily, we convince ourselves that we could not possibly be that kind of force for transformation. That we could not be the face of God that another seeks. We forget that stopping … and listening … and loving … could be our superpower.
Too easily, we fall to the temptation to see the person crying out on the side of the road as annoyance or even enemy. To hear the cry as a distraction from the real work, forgetting that attending to the cry is the real work, that the side road is the real journey.
And when we forget. When we do as the disciples did in our Gospel story. When we greet the voice crying out with scorn, when we tell the voices crying out to be silent, the world cries out all the more.
This week, we learned of the administration’s plan to erase those among us who are transgender into the Orwellian state of Unperson.
We heard our president demonize refugees fleeing for a better life and in some cases fleeing to preserve life itself in an attempt to stoke fear to swing an election. We heard him call himself a nationalist in his continuing efforts to spread a white supremacist agenda and continue a campaign of fear and hatred.
And then, a few days later, a man shot and killed two people in a supermarket parking lot moments after he had tried to enter a predominantly black church.
Yesterday, a man walked into a synagogue in Pittsburgh and opened fire, killing 11 worshippers after writing online that Jews were helping “invaders” in migrant caravans.
Clearly, we must condemn these acts as evil and attacks on us all. And certainly, we do so in the strongest of terms. We must look for new ways to stand together with and as those who are targets of this violence and hatred.
And … that is not nearly enough.
We must ask ourselves how this is possible. What type of soil have we cultivated in which this sort of insanity and evil continues to flourish.
As Dr. King said in eulogizing three of the girls murdered in the bombing of the 16th St. Baptist Church:
“We must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers.”
We can condemn and stand against the rhetoric of our president and those who for decades and even centuries have reaped huge profits off sowing seeds of fear and demonization. And we must, for there is certainly responsibility there.
And we must also recognize three things about those seeds and the soil in which they take root.
The first is what Anne Lamott said in this very room earlier this month. That this rhetoric of hate comes from the mouth of a president who shows no evidence of having ever been loved. And that means while the rhetoric must be condemned and resisted, hating the source will only feed the power of the evil that has taken up resident in the hearts of those who, however deeply misguided and dangerous, are still beloved children of God.
The second is that those seeds would not have taken root if we did not already have soil ready to receive them. The blood of those who died this week is crying out, but not alone. They join in chorus with the blood of millions before who died in the genocide of this land’s First Peoples, colonialism, the middle passage and slavery, Stonewall, and all who have died on our streets, in our schools, crossing our borders and in our prisons because of our love of production and property over people, and a culture that protects the right to bear arms over the right to live in safety, health, and peace.
And, finally, those seeds would not have taken root even in this soil of oppression if we were not still deeply estranged from one another. Those seeds would not have taken root if instead of telling the voices crying out from oppression to be quiet if we had stopped, and come together, and listened, and loved. If we had been listening to one another’s cries, standing face to face and looking eye to eye.
We are more diverse than ever, but it remains a deeply segregated diversity. And that segregation, that estrangement is the soil where seeds of hate and fear take root. We are not doing the hard and ultimately joyful work of stopping … and calling … and listening. Listening to one another’s stories and learning one another’s lives across the lines that divide us.
If we had already known each other, we would have seen the rhetoric of our president and others for the opportunistic evil that it is and instead of rallying in fear and hatred, we would have said with one voice as a nation – “You will not make us afraid. You will not make us hate. We will make America truly great by our love.”
Poet and author Margaret Wheatley reminds us:
“Remember, you don’t fear people whose story you know.
Real listening always brings people closer together.
Trust that meaningful conversations can change your world.”
And yet too often as a nation, we are susceptible to the language of fear because we do not know one another’s stories and see one another’s humanity. We remain like the disciples, dismissing and erasing – and at worst beating and shooting and killing — those who are crying out. Denying ourselves the opportunity for the kind of real relationship that robs of its power the demonization and scapegoating that is the accelerant of these movements of fascism and hate-filled violence.
Jesus stopped.
And Jesus listened.
And Jesus loved.
And healing happened.
But first … Jesus stopped.
And if Jesus can stop, can we?
We can. As Dr. King said standing over the bodies of those young girls in Birmingham, “God still has a way of wringing good out of evil.”
It can begin with the smallest of things.
Every time I meet with someone, I begin our time together with two minutes of silence. I began this practice when I realized the pace of our common life was so frantic that even the time we spent together had become in some ways dehumanizing. I was sitting in meetings that were all about task and product and not about the divine beauty and dignity of the images of God that were gathered together.
And so, I began to invite us to claim two minutes of silence before each meeting so we could center ourselves. So we could consider the beautiful human beings who were sitting before us. So we could remember that God was present in the room. So we could just stop. And breathe. And prepare ourselves to listen. Prepare ourselves to love.
Almost every time, the response to this silence is the same. The chime strikes and we open our eyes and look at each other, inhale, exhale … and smile.
“That was nice.”
I’m convinced that it’s more than just the physiological benefits of silence and deep breathing.
I’m convinced that it’s because when we stop and attend to one another’s presence, we remember that we are holy and that we are in the presence of holiness.
We remember and glimpse, even for a moment, that God truly does dwell in each of us. As Victor Hugo wrote, we “remember the truth that once was spoken that to love another person is to see the face of God.”
Jesus stopped.
And we can, too.
We are not transformed by statistics or rhetorical arguments. We are transformed by encountering the deep divine beauty in one another. And … there is no shortcut on that journey. It takes time and intentionality.
And time Is what we convince ourselves that we don’t have … but only because we have convinced ourselves that product and program matter more than people.
Only because we have convinced ourselves that there are those who are worthy of being heard and those who need to be silenced.
Can we let ourselves be changed and led by the pain of those who are being left out of the conversation?
Can we risk sharing ourselves with one another fully?
Can we risk not just asking the question “what would you have me do for you” but answering it?
Can we look beyond the snap judgment of “what’s wrong with you” to the invitation to deep storytelling of “what happened to you?”
We are moving into a time of profound disruption. We know it’s coming. It is already here. Poverty, stratified economics, climate change, violence, dehumanization .. all are on the rise. We are at once more connected and more estranged from one another than ever.
What does courageous leadership for this coming time look like? What can break the cycles of violence that continues to “add deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars?”
More and more I am convinced it looks like Jesus saying “Stop.”
Yes, it is important that we are marching to Jerusalem.
Yes, there are huge systems that need to be overthrown and we must do so with our voice, with our vote, with our will and with our wealth.
Yes, there is a larger cause of equity and justice that is so important we must be willing to give our lives … AND … if we do not ground those efforts, if we do not stop and attend with love to the person crying out as we pass by, all that means nothing and all will come to nothing.
Because the person crying out is where God resides. We are moving into a time of profound disruption. And the coin of the coming realm will be, as it always has been, relationship. If we focus on the relationship. If we see the divine beauty and dignity in each person. If we ask “what would you have me do for you”— that’s how the world heals. That is how we all heal.
There can be islands of calm amidst the storm. Islands of clarity among the chaos. And they happen when we are face to face, seeking to understand, seeking to serve, seeking to love.
Historian Howard Zinn writes, “We don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
As with all things, it starts small. As with all things, it starts with one person.
So this week, I invite each of us to find one person. One person who is crying out. One person who is asking for help. One person who is shrinking away. One person whom you are absolutely too busy to spend time with. Whom you are tempted to dismiss or demonize. Who is on the side of the road on which you are traveling. Who is absolutely a distraction from things that everyone including you believe is so much more important.
And stop.
Stop what you are doing and listen to their cry. Invite them to share themselves with you. Learn each other’s names. Ask “what would you have me do for you.” Give them a word of courage. A word of companionship. A word of love. And receive the word they have for you. And there will be healing. And there will be joy. And one meeting at a time, we will begin to travel together along the way. Because as American Buddhist author Pema Chodron says “If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.”
Jesus stopped.
And Jesus listened.
And Jesus loved.
And healing happened.
But first … Jesus stopped.
Jesus stopped because one person cried out.
And if Jesus can stop, so can we.
Amen.
