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Today is the last of a five-part series of sermons under the title, "Touching the Holy." We have learned that holiness is really about living an ordinary life. The second sermon took us to the desert where we can face ourselves as we really are. "What is my true face?" was the question we asked in the third message. Knowing who we really are is a vital part of relating to God and other people. Last Sunday we learned about the four kinds of friends we all need in our lives. Today’s sermon is about how to be a friend to others. A great definition of a friend is "someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you’ve forgotten how it goes." Every one of us has a song in our hearts. Do you know the song in your heart? Does anyone else know your song? Do you have a friend who can sing your song to you when you have forgotten it? In order for the song in our hearts to be known by ourselves and our friends we need to be real and open with each other. This is what it means to be ordinary, to be holy. It is about living in the presence of God. Openness is a quality you and I need if we are to be a simple, caring presence. There is a Jewish folk tale about an old Rabbi who once asked his pupils how they could tell when the night had ended and the day had begun. "Could it be," asked one of the students, "when you can see an animal in the distance and tell whether it’s a sheep or a dog?" "No," answered the Rabbi. Another asked, "Is it when you can look at a tree in the distance and tell whether it’s a fig tree or a peach tree." "No," answered the Rabbi. "Then when is it?" the pupils demanded. "It is when you can look on the face of any man or woman and see that it is your sister or brother. Because if you cannot see this, it is still night." The truth is that some of us are living in the darkness. We cannot see a friend in the face of the person who hurt us. We cannot see a brother in the face of someone who annoys us to no end. We cannot see a sister in the face of the one who made us angry. We cannot see the light because we allow the hurts of life to prevent us from being truly open and undefended. Humility is another quality needed if we are to be a good friend. Writing about humility, William Temple said, "Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself than of other people, nor does it mean having a low opinion of your own gifts. It means freedom from thinking about yourself one way or the other at all." I like that. Humility is the freedom from thinking about yourself one way or the other. It is about knowing yourself so well that you are free not to put yourself down or puff yourself up. In a cemetery somewhere in the U.S. there are two gravestones placed right next to each other. One is a large imposing marker for a deceased general. It lists all of the battles he was in as well as many of his other accomplishments. Next to this large stone is a small one erected for a young woman who died when she was only 21. The inscription her husband had engraved on it is only one line. It says simply: "Everywhere she went she brought flowers." This is what you and I are called to do in our own way: to discover and offer "flowers" to others. We need to know who we are and whose we are. We need to discover our God-given gifts and offer them to others. Even when our gifts are rejected by others the truly humble person will not be deterred from offering them again and again. Another mark of a simple, caring presence is knowing our limitations. Being a good friend means knowing where to draw lines and when to let go. Anthony de Mello tells this story about knowing our limitations. There was a spiritual master who was trying to teach his disciples. Now the disciples could not understand the seemingly arbitrary manner in which some people were accepted for discipleship and other were rejected. They got a clue one day when they heard the master say, "Don’t try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time, and irritates the heck out of the pig." Robert Wickes writes, "In the process of accepting others limits and letting go, we must be sensitive to our own sometimes narrow, insensitive belief that only we have the answer to others’ questions and life problems." A prayerful presence is another mark of a good friend, a simple, caring presence. There is a feeling that strong personal relationships are built on solid, verbal communication. While this is true let us not forget that they also need ordinary presence, the kind without words. A gruff, but loveable priest in Alaska learned this lesson when he was assigned to be a chaplain in a residential school for Eskimo children. One evening he was sitting in his room working at his desk when one of the children appeared at the door asking to come into his room. He said, "No, I’m busy." But the youth persisted, "Father, I won’t bother you." The priest finally relented and let him come in. The boy came in and sat down on the floor, leaned against the bed and stayed there for about an hour. Then he got up and said, "I am going to bed now, father, good night." He did this every night for about eight months. The priest occasionally offered him a magazine to read but the boy would always decline. Finally the priest recognized that the boy just wanted to be there with him. That was enough. It was the priest’s simple presence that was needed and enjoyed. If you and I are to maintain a prayerful presence we need to set aside time each day to read the Bible, to center ourselves, and to be quiet in God’s presence. Vulnerability is an important part of being a friend to others. If we are to have real relationships we need to realize that there are risks. A stream was working itself across the country, experiencing little difficulty. It ran around the rocks and the mountains. Then it arrived at a desert. Just as it had crossed every other barrier, the stream tried to cross this one, but it found that as fast as it ran into the sand, its waters disappeared. After many attempts it became discouraged. It appeared that there was no way it could continue the journey. Then a voice came in the wind, "If you stay the way you are you cannot cross the sands, you cannot become more than a quagmire. To go further you will have to lose yourself." "But if I lose myself," the stream cried, "I will never know what I’m supposed to be." "Oh, on the contrary," said the voice, "if you lose yourself you will become more than you ever dreamed you could be." So the stream surrendered to the drying sun. And the clouds into which it was formed were carried by the wind for miles. Once it crossed the desert, the stream poured down from the skies, fresh and clean, and full of the energy that comes from storms. To be a true friend to others means that there are times in our journey when we are called to be vulnerable, to take a risk. When we do risk for the sake of others we can experience the love of God. We can know the power of transformation. We can continue our journey in new and unexpected ways. So…do you have these qualities in your life? Openness. Humility. Knowing your limitations. Vulnerability. Prayerful presence. I can say that I want these qualities in my life. But I need help in ignoring the voices of the world which scream at me to be everything but these things. Can the gentle voice of love, the voice of God break through and touch our inner hearts? Fred Craddock, while lecturing at Yale University, told of going back home one summer to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, to take a short vacation with his wife. One night they found a quiet little restaurant where they looked forward to a private meal-just the two of them. While they were waiting for their meal they noticed a distinguished looking, white-haired man moving from table to table, visiting guests. Craddock whispered to his wife, "I hope he doesn't come over here." He didn't want the man to intrude on their privacy. But the man did come by his table. "Where you folks from?" he asked amicably. "Oklahoma." "Splendid state, I hear, although I've never been there. What do you do for a living? "I teach homiletics at the graduate seminary of Phillips University." "Oh, so you teach preachers, do you. Well, I've got a story I want to tell you." And with that he pulled up a chair and sat down at the table with Craddock and his wife. Dr. Craddock said he groaned inwardly: Oh no, here comes another preacher story. The man stuck out his hand. "I'm Ben Hooper. I was born not far from here across the mountains. My mother wasn't married when I was born so I had a hard time. When I started to school my classmates had a name for me, and it wasn't a very nice name. I used to go off by myself at recess and during lunch-time because the taunts of my playmates cut so deeply. "What was worse was going downtown on Saturday afternoon and feeling every eye burning a hole through you. They were all wondering just who my real father was. When I was about 12 years old a new preacher came to our church. I would always go in late and slip out early. But one day the preacher said the benediction so fast I got caught and had to walk out with the crowd. I could feel every eye in church on me. Just about the time I got to the door I felt a big hand on my shoulder. I looked up and the preacher was looking right at me. "Who are you, son? Whose boy are you?" I felt the old weight come on me. It was like a big black cloud. Even the preacher was putting me down. But as he looked down at me, studying my face, he began to smile a big smile of recognition. "Wait a minute," he said, "I know who you are. I see the family resemblance. You are a son of God." With that he slapped me across the rump and said, "Boy you've got a great inheritance. Go and claim it." The old man looked across the table at Fred Craddock and said, "That was the most important single sentence ever said to me." With that he smiled, shook the hands of Craddock and his wife, and moved on to another table to greet old friends. Suddenly, Fred Craddock remembered. On two occasions the people of Tennessee had elected an illegitimate son to be their governor. One of them was Ben Hooper. The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that God is love. Those who abide in love also abide in God. The world may try to tell you that you are not worthy of love. The world will try to convince you that you need to hide your true face. The world will try to persuade you not to be ordinary. But these voices are wrong! You are a precious child of God. You can show your true face. You can be holy and ordinary even if the world wants to label you as an illegitimate child. In the eyes of God there are no illegitimate children. We all belong to God. And we can live our lives with the simple, caring, ordinary presence of love. |
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10/08/00 - Touching the Holy: Simple Caring Presence
