Sermons

Permeating every aspect of her life, Julian of Norwich, the 14^th century contemplative believed that “The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything.”[1]

Three centuries later in 1621, in a drastically different world, the Pilgrims of Plymouth celebrated the “First Thanksgiving,” grateful for their first harvest after surviving the harsh first winter in the New World. Being solid Calvinists there were ample prayers and a sermon over the three day observance, gratitude being their “fullness of Joy.” While the modern observance is nothing like the first, one aspect of their faith is worthy of our embrace: thankfulness must be a daily lifestyle if not a moment-by-moment awareness.

If I asked you to speak aloud what you are grateful for, the natural heartfelt outpouring would be a cornucopia of people and things we like or love. But what if I asked you to name the people and things you do not like, that make it hard for you to be thankful? On the flip side of gratitude are the people, things, systems, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that eclipse thankfulness.

We live in the tension between gratitude and what we dislike. So let’s step back for a moment and reconnect with God’s gracious invitations to grow into a way of life that reflects the moral and spiritual stature of Jesus. The prophet Micah set forth three practices, proclaiming, “What the Lord requires of us is this: always do what is just, love constantly and tenderly, and live humbly with God” (6:6-8).

To Micah’s summary, Matthew added the Beatitudes that portray the spiritual and moral values Jesus thought essential for the Christian life. Two of Jesus’s teachings inform our reflections today. The first instructs us to come to terms with whatever inside of us that causes us to direct our anger or discontent at another, and then initiate reconciliation (5:21-24). The second is equally demanding because it is contrary to the human tendency to hate what and whom we do not like. “You have heard,” Jesus said, “’love your friends and hate your enemies.’ But I tell you to love your enemies and pray for those who harm you” (5:44).

How do we turn anger into reconciliation hate into love and forge within our souls the capacity to actually love a person we do not like? Permit me to suggest a transformational spiritual exercise that should help:

- Consciously allow yourself to be curious about the person you do not like.
- Invite your natural curiosity to open your soul so you can look for a gift-of-God-Quality in that person.
- Begin thinking of that God Quality as a reflection of the Divine: “The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything.”
- When you take the quantum leap of faith to see God in that person you can begin turning negativity into gratitude, hate into love, and enemy into friend.
- What happens next is an interior atmospheric change between yourself and what once was anger, dislike, or hate.

Two illustrations of how this transformational spiritual exercise can work: there’s a conversation between two characters in a 1954 play by Richard Nash: Starbuck – the character not the coffee -- is a constant dreamer of unfulfilled dreams who griped to Lizzie about the unfairness of it all. “Nothing’s as pretty in your hands as it was in your head. There ain’t no world as good as the world I got up here [angrily tapping his forehead.] Why?”

Lizzie responds, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because you don’t take time to see. Always on the go – here, there, nowhere. Running away…keeping your own company. Maybe if you’d keep company with the world….”

Shaded by doubt, Starbuck answers, “I’d learn to love it?”

“You might – if you saw it real. Some nights I’m in the kitchen washing dishes. And Pop’s playing poker…Well, I’ll watch him real close. And at first I’ll see an ordinary middle-aged man -- not very interesting to look at. And then, minute by minute, I’ll see little things I never saw in him before. Good things and bad things – queer little habits, I never paid any mind to. And suddenly I know who he is – and I love him so much I could cry! And I want to thank God I took the time to see him real.”[2]

“The Fullness of Joy is to behold God in everything.”

What about that “atmospheric change?” Your own God Qualities fill the chasm left by dislike, hatred, anger. The recent Presidential Town Hall Debate began without the traditional polite acknowledgment and handshake. At the end, Co-moderator, Martha Raddatz of ABC News allowed a last minute question from attendee Karl Becker that caused the room to fall silent. Caught off-guard, the candidates paused. And then the audience exploded with applause. Becker asked, “Regardless of the current rhetoric, would each of you name one positive thing you can say you respect in the other?” Secretary Clinton answered first, “I respect his children; they are incredibly able and devoted…. And that says a lot about Donald.” Mr. Trump then answered, “She doesn’t quit or give up…she’s a fighter, Hilary fights hard and doesn’t give up; I respect that…that’s a very good trait.”[3]

The atmosphere in the auditorium that had been humiliatingly contentious was transformed. If for only a moment, a breathless nation could feel as Nash’s Lizzie, “I want to thank God I took the time to see [them] real.” I choose to believe that the Presbyterian businessman and the Methodist former Secretary of State fleetingly beheld God in the other. And for just an instant the electorate felt the “fullness of Joy.”

May your Thanksgiving Day and every day be filled with opportunities to seek and see God Qualities that so you can love what you don’t like in yourself [4] and others. May you experience the “Fullness of joy [seeing] God in [yourself and in others -- ] in everything.”  Allow yourself time to “see for real,” and seeing yourself and others for real, may you experience the great good gifts of deep gratitude, miraculous joy, and the healing that comes when you reconcile with yourself and with others.

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[1] From the translation by Mirabel Starr of Julian of Norwich’s, The Showings of Julian of Norwich.

[2] N. Richard Nash, The Rainmaker.

[3]October 9, 2016, The Presidential Town Hall Debate, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, from a recording of the entire debate, moderated by Martha Raddatz (ABC News anchor) and Anderson Cooper (CNN anchor).

[4] It is important that you include your Self in the transformational exercise and in these blessing because all too often we forget that we can give our intimate inner being the gifts of healing and reconciliation.