The wisdom to know the difference

Mark 9: 38-50
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
September 26, 2021

Do you ever just question the whole thing? I mean all of it, what we assume to be true, how we spend our time, the system we serve, the trajectory of our lives and of the human race, what’s important to us, how we’re educated, what we deem worthy and what we condemn, how we got here and where it’s all headed. At least once a week I find myself in this reverie, as if I am a visitor to this world. There are days it feels hopeless, absurd, and heartbreakingly beautiful all at once. And I realize that it is privilege that allows me to question this reality because for the most part this reality is designed for people like me. I suppose that’s why I question it, because more people than not suffer from it. If we designed it this way, this way that is not working for everyone, that is actually destructive for all of us, can we not only imagine another way but make the changes necessary for everyone’s wholeness and for the earth?



Here’s where the questioning took me this week. Everywhere we turn it seems that everyone is on full alert, everything is a threat. We are stuck in our lizard brains, that little organ called the amygdala. I’m not a neuroscientist or an anthropologist but I know that the amygdala is part of our fight or flight response, that part of our biological evolution that helps us sort out what is a threat and what isn’t. Do we need to be armed to defend ourselves or can we lay down our weapons?

Right now, it seems everything is a threat, not only because we are living through a deadly pandemic, but also because our sorting system that relies on binaries, either/or, woman/man, gay/straight, has been debunked. Binaries are social constructs. We use social constructs to make sense of the world around us, and in the past it was “the simpler, the better”, because the more things evolve, the more complex they become. But it really wasn’t better, isn’t better, not for everyone. Now everything is up for grabs, everything is on the table, including mercy, compassion, and empathy. Everything feels uncertain, unstable, in flux, and we are grieving what served as gravity for us.



In Mark’s gospel, Jesus was trying to help people sort things out but in a way that urged personal responsibility rather than projecting blame onto someone else. “If your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better to enter the kin-dom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell.” Think of it this way: if someone is dressed in a way that causes us to have lustful or hurtful or negative thoughts, don’t blame it on the way they are dressed. We need to look to ourselves, to seek to understand rather than judge, and exercise self-control. Otherwise, we are putting barriers in the way of those who are vulnerable, those who are different from the dominant binary that is crumbling away.

There are times we feel justified in our salty feelings, especially when the actions or choices of others lead to their own doom or to other people suffering. Most of those who are currently contracting and dying from the coronavirus were not vaccinated and didn’t practice the simplest of safety measures, and social media is rife with unapologetic schadenfreude. Maybe we just have to wait for more of them to die for things to change.



Does that sound shocking? Heartless? And yet no one who’s oppressed mourns a bully. I can remember during the AIDS crisis, the Gulf War, and years following, when my generation, Gen X, thought that for the world to get better we just had to wait for enough of the old guard and their worldview to die off and us “young Turks” would take over. And yet it’s just the same old binary thinking that creates superiority and inferiority, us and them, human and inhuman, but it only ends up dehumanizing every single one of us.



Now I’m wondering what is it that my generation stands in the way of, like generations before us? What stumbling blocks are we putting in the way of those who will come after us? Most of us are loathe to take a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves because it involves looking in a mirror and actually, really, deeply loving rather than hating what we see there. It’s always easier to do someone else’s moral inventory—they got what they deserved, what did they expect, choices have consequences—yet who will pay the price, who will suffer for the sins of the privileged but those little ones Jesus speaks of.

Where do suffering and violence begin? Billy Joel sang that “we didn’t start the fire/it was always burning since the world’s been turning”, referencing events in his own lifetime. Though there will always be external reasons—for now that fire is still burning—suffering and violence do not have to take root in us. “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Some things are indeed unacceptable and desperately need changing—systems designed to burden and oppress, violence against those seeking asylum, policies and laws to control trans people and bodies that give birth—this is where we need courage. But we also need courage when confronted with not only bullies but with ourselves and others who impede the way of change by insisting on our own way.



When I pray the serenity prayer, I usually say it this way: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, which is other people; the courage to change the things I can, which is me, my attitude, my emotions, my behavior, my actions, my choices; and the wisdom to know the difference. Jesus knew there was an empire that needed ending, a people that needed liberating, a kindom that needed birthing, and there were colossal stumbling blocks in the way. And many of them are still there. But instead of waging war against the powers that be, he challenged individuals to examine their own lives and how they were life-affirming, life-giving or death-dealing.



Everything is on the table, and we get to decide what stays and what goes. Even if there is only one thing left on the table, let it be our humanity rather than our inhumanity; let it be our compassion rather than our need to be right; let it be our discontent rather than our contentment; let it be our anger at injustice rather than violence and our desire for revenge; let it be our sorrow rather than our indifference; let it be that we tried and gave it everything we could rather than our desire to play it safe. May God give us the wisdom to get us to that table of grace. Amen.




Benediction


Be salty yet don’t ruin the flavor of life
For yourself or for others.
Be a fire that burns like a light shining the way.
Be love, which is the easiest and the hardest thing of all.
The grace and mercy of Jesus be with us
All the days that are given to us.