In high school I started my school’s first Christian club. Super embarrassing. I know. What was more embarrassing is that it was called First Priority and besides my sister who I made come with me, there were only 2 members. I was looking through my yearbook a few weeks back and under the picture of the club members ( all 3 of us) there was the quote “Wherever 2 or 3 are gathered in my name, there I will be with them”. Oh how fitting. This isn’t even the worst part. The worst part was, that I, as the Christian who started this Christian club was too ashamed to be seen with the two members of the club. I would literally hide from them in the hallway and ignore them. They were nerdy and this was high school and I didn’t want to be associated with them. (clearly didn’t have that whole loving the outcast thing down yet). The funny part was, I was not cool enough in high school to not want to be seen with them. In the movie mean girls, you see how the main character Caddie doesn’t want to be seen with her 2 friends that aren’t in the popular crowd because she has a reputation to uphold. Yeah that wasn’t me. I didn’t have a reputation to uphold. I was as my sister says a nerd who wasn’t particularly smart…
Whatever my intentions were back then there was clearly a large part of First Priority that was more for show than it was about giving a safe place for high schoolers to feel love. I did the opposite of show love to these two guys. I keep telling my churches these stories of what poor character I used to have. I should probably stop doing that but it’s SO cathartic. I have learned that my sermons are super therapeutic for me because it’s like my own personal confession time. It’s also a guide of how not to act.
So I’m reading Brene Brown’s, Braving The Wilderness and man do I feel convicted. She talks about belonging and humanity and dignity- mix that with this passage from John and I came up with a sermon that might be hard for us to hear…and I say that because it was hard for me to write.
This sermon is going to be a little controversial but I figured it’s marathon Sunday and no one was going to be here so today is really the best Sunday for it… Did everyone hear about all the hoopla over the White House Correspondence Dinner? If you didn’t, this dinner is normally a dinner in which a comedian comes in and makes light of our political leaders, systems and the truly outrageous things that take place in our government. Part of the goal of this dinner which has been happening for over 100 years is to raise funds to further journalism and support the press given access to the white house. This year it got more press than normal because many believe the comedian who was chosen to speak- Michele Wolf, crossed a line.
I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on the purpose of this dinner or the role of comedy in this event. I’m not going to say whether I think Michele Wolf crossed a line in terms of the job she was given to do. And I’m not going to act like I didn’t laugh at those jokes she made, because I did. But I will say I was convicted. Some say that the comedic aspect is good to help us laugh at ourselves and help us to remember that both liberals and conservatives are less than perfect and we all have a long way to go. This might be true to some extent but I found myself convicted because I think as a Christian I am held to a higher standard of treating people than the standard that our current political sphere holds itself to.
I felt convicted because of Brene Brown- author, public speaker and researcher of vulnerability and shame. While reading her book, I came across two pages that after I was done reading them I had an “ oh crap” moment. She spoke truth in a way I could not deny and that truth was going to make my life so much harder. So yeah, crap. I’m just going to read it for you so you can see what I mean. BTW I had to edit the language a lot. So bear with me.
Excerpt from pgs. 74-75: 1. If you are offended or hurt when you hear Hillary Clinton or Maxine Waters called bitch, whore, or the c-word, you should be equally offended and hurt when you hear those same words used to describe Ivanka Trump, Kellyanne Conway or Theresa May.
2. If you felt belittled when Hilary Clinton called trump supporters ” a basket of deplorables” then you should have felt equally concerned when Eric Trump said “Democrats aren’t even human.”
3.When the President of the United States calls women dogs or talks about grabbing pussy, we should get chills down our spine and resistance flowing through our veins. When people call the president of the the United States a pig, we should reject that language regardless of our politics and demand discourse that doesn’t make people subhuman.
4. When we hear people referred to as animals or aliens, we should immediately wonder, ” Is this an attempt to reduce someone’s humanity so we can get away with hurting them or denying them basic human rights?”
5. If you’re offended by a meme of Trump Photoshopped to look like Hitler, then you shouldn’t have Obama Photoshopped to look like the Joker on your Facebook feed.
It’s like she foresaw this WHCD coming and put her book out right before it so these pages would be fresh on everyone’s mind as we laughed at these jokes ( and like I said, I was one of those people). But do you see why I am convicted?
For me, I think I felt most convicted about the jokes concerning women. Whether not not we feel these women have been a disappointment to our gender, I believe we as women need to stick together to build each other up. What kind of example are we setting for how we want to world to treat us when we can’t even treat each other well? Some might say these jokes brought about some much needed truth that needed to be heard and sure, Maybe these jokes brought about some truth- but I wonder if there is another way, a better way to bring about truth than by making someone feel bad about themselves?
I am not suggesting that we as Christian should not take a stand on what we believe is unjust- we absolutely should. But we cannot do it at the expense of someone else’s humanity and according to Brene Brown- dehumanization happens at the language level- It happens in the words we choose to talk about other people. We have to take a stand but there is a line and we cross it all the time. We cross it when we dehumanize people: Dehumanizing others is the process by which we become accepting of violations against human nature, the human spirit and for many of us violations against the essential tenets of our faith. It is Demonizing the enemy- making them seem less than human and thus not deserving of humane treatment.
So as Christians we are called to Speak truth to nonsense while also practicing civility. In many ways it’s a paradox. And Its hard to do both. But we are called to do both.
Carl Jung says Paradox is the most spiritual possession because “only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehend the fullness of life. We are complex beings who wake up everyday and fight against being labeled and diminished with stereotypes and characterizations that don’t reflect our fullness. Yet when we don’t risk standing on our own and speaking out, when the options laid before us force us into the very categories we resist, we perpetuate our own disconnection and loneliness. When we are willing to risk venturing into the wilderness, and even becoming our own wilderness, we feel the deepest connection to our true self and to what matters the most.”
Here at Hot Metal it seems we talk the most about 2 things: fighting injustice and love. Which makes sense because fighting injustice is love. But fighting injustice and loving other people at the same time is probably the most difficult thing to do. Its easier to “love” others when you agree with them but if you are fighting an injustice then by definition, what you think the “other” people are doing is unjust so you will disagree with them. Thus making it much harder to love them. How do we stand up for what we believe is right while at the same time guarding the “others” humanity? Jeff talked about the “other” a couple weeks ago when he talked about white privilege. In that sermon the “other” was the one who was different than us. When I speak about the other I want to specifically talk about the “one” who disagrees with us.
In the scripture today, Jesus has called us friends as a way to show how he loves us. Are we then not commission to do the same? What if we are called to treat everyone as a friend? You know we say, you don’t have to be friends with your enemies but what if in a way we do. If by being a friend we are talking about the way we treat people rather than how much we enjoy them then I think we might have to. That doesn’t mean you need to go get a beer with your enemy, although maybe that’s not such a bad idea. I’m a firm believer that beer can fix a lot of things. But by treating someone as a friend we are forced to remember that they are human and are less likely to dehumanize them in order to achieve our goal no matter how just that goal may be.
So why should we do this? What is our motivation? We could say because it is the right thing to do but lets be real, that doesn’t hold much weight. I think our motivation should be joy. I truly believe that Jesus commands us to live like this because it is this beauty of being in relationship with one another that brings us the complete joy that He speaks of.
It’s a paradox all right.
Showing someone love and grace and dignity when you feel their views or actions are an offense to who you are.
To openly engage someone when their agenda seems to be in direct opposition to what you believe.
I think these things will bring us joy as unlikely as that seems. I think there is power in being free enough, comfortable enough and to feel like you belong enough to show another love. Brene says that we are only able to engage with others in this incredibly difficult way when we belong to ourselves. As Christians this belonging comes from us knowing that we belong to God and in that belonging we are free to be our most true selves. We are free from fear, from failure, from what others think, from what the world may say is true.
This idea of belonging isn’t true of the world yet but I think what Brene is getting at and what the gospel is getting at is if we can attempt to live out this truth from our own lives, in our relationships with other people then it will slowly become the world’s truth as well. But that won’t happen unless we have the courage to do it.
So I want to leave us with a very simple phrase that we have all probably heard our parents say countless times, “think before you speak”. I say this mostly to myself, because I know my language fairly often does not convey the way I feel inside. I use language as a defense mechanism, as a way to make myself feel better and as a way to voice my anger and frustration. I wonder what it would look like if I used language just as skillfully to make someone feel loved or to make someone feel understood or simply just to raise a question rather than voice and insult. I wonder what it would look like if we all used language in this skillful way to make others feel loved and not subhuman.
Amen.
Floundering With A Purpose 