“So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other. – Galatians 5: 16 – 18, 23 -26
When I woke up that Wednesday morning, like many of you, a bunch of thoughts about the future came to my mind like a crisis. And one of those thoughts was my God, I have to preach in two weeks. And I’m going to have to figure out in that time what the right thing to say is. Because oh buddy, it would be so easy to say the wrong things right now. I have a microphone and a damaged soul and YUCK! It would be so easy to serve my ego and my anger and probably find a tribe that might even allow me to do that.
I’m trying very hard not to do that. I’m trying very hard to hold on hope, while also trying very hard not to give some shallowed out “it’s gonna be so okay everyone, your fears are going to be just fine.” Because truth be told, I’m not there yet. I remember showing up last Sunday and thinking ‘Uhhhhg we better not sing ‘It is well with my soul’ today knowing good and well that’s the whole point of that song. But I wasn’t ready for it. I am trying not to rush the grief, the despair, the anger, and if I’m being as honest as someone standing in a pulpit ought to be…the hatred I have in my heart.
My faith and my internal reasoning have felt really at odds. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say my flesh and the Spirit have been wrestling through the days.
What. is. the next. right. thing?
There’s a lesson I was taught many years ago, and I know that it’s true, but I haven’t learned it yet. Ten years ago I was privileged enough to have a small audience with one of the formative teachers of my life Rob Bell. I was deep in the heart of rearranging my faith after majoring in Religion and having a lot of my certitudes yanked out from under me. I was learning really fascinating, wonderful and insightful things, but when I brought these things to others, they did not share the same excitement and curiosity. These insights that had changed my faith, were not welcome. No matter how well I articulated it, or referenced scripture, or scholarly criticism, I repeatedly found myself frustrated and angry that other people couldn’t see what I was seeing. I was devoting so much time debating my friends and family, getting coffee to talk about our beliefs, recommending books, I was spending so much energy trying to help people see what I see and what I had learned. Ya know, If I could do it, surely so could they; Or so my ego screamed out.
So I asked Rob Bell, how can we convince the people we love that we are right, when they seem so resistant to considering what it is we are saying.
Which I think he rightfully interpreted as me asking “How can I convince the people I love that they are wrong?’
If you can imagine, his response was not a step by step methodology of how to win an argument. In fact he told me something I did not want to hear.
“You can’t take people where they don’t want to go.”
“You can’t take people where they don’t want to go.”
Okay but Rob, how do I make people want to go!!!
“You can’t take people where they don’t want to go.”
Instead he said, bake some bread they didn’t know they wanted. Let them smell the bread cooking. Let them see you give yourself completely to something and maybe they will want to come and taste and share in that sacred meal.’
The most succinct phrasing of this lesson I picked up from Fr. Richard Rohr, “the best criticism of the bad, is the practice of the better.”
Why is this so hard to learn?
Instead we fight, we shout our outrage, we post online, we destroy relationships, we put others down criticizing the bad things because we want to see things change and we’re angry and often threatened when they don’t. But like a dog returns to their vomit, we think this is the way knowing good and well it so rarely delivers us and that it so often sets us further back. It consumes our energies and wears us down leaving nothing for what we could organize or create. I have given so much energy hoping people I love would change their minds.
I’ve had this line from author Jedidiah Jenkins on my mind since that Wednesday. He’s a gay man, who took his evangelical mother on a road trip so that he might build up the courage to ask her the costly question, if he were to get married, would she walk him down the aisle?
Writing of his painful experience, he says “Now, with hope dead, I’m free.”
We can’t take people where they don’t want to go. And for many of us, this is a pain we can never capture in words, or posts, or sermons.
On that Wednesday morning, I felt free.
Free from all the taxing telling and convincing energy. Free from waiting on people to change. Free to give all of that energy to the next right thing. Free to give what I cannot control back to God.
Clarity can be a painful thing. It wounds us. It feels like death. But I believe it to be so formative, sobering, and redirecting.
What is the next right thing?
Whatever it is, I know it will need more of my energy and focus. Energy I have been giving elsewhere.
I’ve been drawn repeatedly this election cycle to these two categories of inner workings and meditating on what I want to give power to. One of which traditionally titled the seven deadly sins. This includes pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth. These are the things we have given so much power to. They seem to win and deceive over and over again. They are the demons of our world. I have spent much of my reflection wondering what it would look like to see a world built on the passage we read today. The fruits of the Spirit; love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
What would it look like, if that’s where we put the power? What would it look like if that’s where we gave our energy. If we built this community with this as our compass? If we showed up for each other fighting towards the fruits of the Spirit. If we empowered our leaders towards such things? If WE became leaders of such things. Look around the room.
Those people. They need this.
The best criticism of the bad, is the practice of the better.
I want you to sit for a moment, and think on what you are giving your time and emotional energy to right now. I want you to imagine the years ahead of us. What is going to try and pull you in. Listen, I follow plenty of you on social media and y’all follow me. How often are we chasing after the outrage machine? Falling for the bait. How often are we arguing with that family member that has never once been committed to understanding you? How often are we letting some person with disgusting character put words in the mouths of our loved ones before we ever talk to them?
Is this what any of us wants to give our energy towards?
It will not be easy.
I know good and well, that much of what is to come is going to provoke my outrage. And when it does I will go to you. And I will go to the Spirit.
I will not give my energy to wrath. I will give it to peace. I will not give my energy to pride. I will give it to gentleness. I will not give my energy to envy. I will give it to kindness. I will not give my energy to fear. I will give it to joy. I will not give my energy to hate. I will give it to love. I will not give my energy to despair. I will give it to hope.
I will not chase down every unknown person that says a hateful thing. Instead I will build my people up. I will not watch angrily, and doom scroll as the world falls apart. I will draw nearer to the afflicted. I will not linger where I am unwelcome, I will dust off my sandals and move on. I will not give up on my enemy, I will give them to God and be free.
I will give my energy to next right thing and let God do the rest.
My friends, did you know you are on holy ground? Look around at this hundred year old sanctuary. I want you to imagine the anger that has sat in these pews. The hopelessness. The grief. The desperate prayers. And you are here today. I wonder if they thought you would be? I wonder if they thought they would make it? Through world wars, depressions, assassinations, riots, terrorism, these walls hold the prayers of a broken people. Think of the energy people have given to keep this going. What grace. What grace. What grace.
We need your energy to keep these ministries going.
I too will coat these walls with my prayers. I too will give my energy towards what is good.
I too will put on love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
We have found each other. We can make it. We can be the next right thing.
Come and see that the bread is good.
Before we say amen, I was hoping you might join me in a song.
Each summer we take youth and adults to Appalachia. For me it is a great embodiment of the this call. And every year while far from home, in a land and a culture unlike our own, we sing this song together. If you know it, I’d love to hear you sing.
Lord prepare me
To be a Sanctuary
Pure and Holy
Tried and True
With Thanksgiving
I’ll be a living
Sanctuary, for you
When he comes in,
Shouts of glory
And our time on,
Earth is done
How I long to,
Hear him saying
Faithful servant
Well done
DevonBailey.com 