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Give
‘Em a B “Finally,
couldn't we just relax and lighten up?
When we wake up in the morning, we can dedicate
our day to learning how to do this. We can
cultivate a sense of humor and practice giving
ourselves a break….As one student said, ‘Lower
your standards and relax as it is.’” Meditation “Take Time to Listen” by Robert T. Weston There
might have been other uses for this moment; There might have been rest, But
there is something beyond all this which I must And except I give it time and attention It may never come to flower. It
is a yearning for meaning for which the tongue It is a quest for holiness. It is a quest for self-forgiveness, For all the things wherein I have failed myself In failing others: The light I have ignored; The plea of the spirit, rejected; The meaning still to be found, Peace in a world of conflict, and still something more. It
is something only sensed in moments of quiet and Or in the shared meditations of others Who seek with me. Perhaps, perhaps it is myself, Now
so buried under the demand and pressures of That it may only be found as I take time To listen for it and to let it grow.
Reading An excerpt from Mary Oliver’s poem “West Wind”
You
are young. So you know everything.
You leap
Sermon This is not a sermon about forgiveness…though it could be.
This is not a sermon about how we need to joyfully accept all the things that other people do which drive us nuts…though it could be.
This sermon is not a guilt trip…another burden to be placed on our already weighed-down lives…lives with their share of mistakes, misdeeds, missed opportunities…though it could be.
This sermon is not a celebration of the possibilities of human love (whatever “love” means exactly) without a real acknowledgment that humans can be reckless, sometimes dangerous, and always imperfect…though it could be.
This sermon is not an encouragement to any of us to needlessly endure abuse, or to remain in a situation that jeopardizes our health, safety, or self-respect…though I suppose it could be that as well.
I do not intend this sermon to be any of these things…but it could be.
The fact is this sermon could be perceived differently than how I want or expect it to be perceived…despite my intentions, despite my earnest hopes and careful (or not so careful) use of the English language, despite my yearning to be as honest as I can be about my perceptions, despite my desire to say something to you that might be used to stimulate positive change in your life beyond this morning, beyond this hall.
The fact is, you may hear and/or interpret what I say this morning in ways that I wouldn’t want you to.
How do I know that? Well, it happens, I would guess, in varying degrees, every time I stand at this pulpit.
Just as it happens in nearly every interaction every day of my life…and, I would guess, every day of yours, too.
We all say and do things with consequences that we can never fully expect or comprehend. Sometimes these consequences seem to work in our favor…and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes, it seems we have brought about these consequences by our actions…and sometimes they seem to have nothing to do with us at all.
The truth is, we can have little control over how we are perceived, no matter how hard we try.
And I’m thinking that is what this sermon is about…at least in part.
But, before I get too far, let me begin with the beginning.
A while back my mother-in-law told me a story that led to this sermon.
Marcia spent 30 years of her life teaching English to junior high students. Her husband John was also an educator, and so they had many opportunities to discuss teaching philosophies and challenges. Marcia told me that whenever she would share her struggles with determining the appropriate final grade for one of her students, often times waffling between submitting a B or a C for their report card, John always had the same advice. “Marcia,” he would say, “just give ‘em a B.”
He would justify his recommendation by suggesting that a “B” would provide a confidence boost, something to be proud of, and, besides, 100 years from now, no one would know the difference anyway.
I instantly knew this was wisdom worth sharing.
Not necessarily the literal grading advice. Many of us might enjoy a hearty debate about that, arguing whether it is better to provide encouragement by inflating a grade or to provide challenge by grading according to a rigid, preset standard. I imagine, after airing our opinions, we would have to settle with the indecisive answer of “It all depends on the student and the situation.”
The wisdom I thought was especially worth pondering and offering to you this morning was the more metaphorical grading advice I think John offered in his simple counsel, the advice that I believe is less about report cards and more about life itself…about how we might more effectively navigate through this oftentimes unwieldy existence where our actions can have consequences far beyond our control and where our perceptions and those of others color nearly everything, oftentimes more than the facts ever could.
When Marcia told me John’s advice to “Just give ‘em a B”, my sermon-fodder hungry brain instantly translated it to the following: When we find ourselves grading, evaluating, judging, the actions of others (and even our own), especially when we are compelled to judge those actions according to a rigid, preset standard or expectation, we would be much better served to “Just give ‘em a B”…to “Just give ‘em a break.” Our judgments, our expectations, that others should behave or perform according to our standards, rarely do anything more than unnecessarily rile us up anyway.
I thanked Marcia right away for the great sermon idea, explaining to her my translation of John’s wisdom, and she said, “Oh, that’s wonderful. He would like that.” Then she paused before adding, “But you know, he didn’t always live like that himself.”
“Of course he didn’t,” I said. “Who does? But that’s why it should make for a good sermon topic.”
I appreciate how one of my mentors explained this theory of sermon topics to me early in my ministry. I was struggling with my preparation for one Sunday service and she said, “Mark, just remind everyone of what they already know. In the end, that’s really what you are there to do.”
So, as is my usual way, I will remind you of what you already know by sharing some examples from my own life. May my experiences serve you well.
Saturday, I awake to the sounds of my 3-year-old daughter screaming at the top of her lungs from the top of her bunk bed: “Daaaaaaaady….Daaaaaadddddyyyy!!!!” I drag myself out of bed and into her room across the hall. “What is it?” I ask with as much control as I can muster. “I can’t find Dor-fy!” she whines, in that particular high-pitched whine that she has been honing for the last few months, the whine that instantly can transform her parents into raging fools.
“Please don’t use that voice,” I say, pleasantly surprised at how unusually understated my request is. I figure I’m just not fully awake yet.
So, I help her find Dorothy the Dinosaur, and realize she will not be going back to sleep, and therefore, neither will I. In fact, she is not just awake, she is very awake, and ready for action. I, of course, am not. A voice inside taunts me, “Just give her a B, Mark. Just give her a B-eeee-eeee.”
“Stupid sermon,” I mutter under my breath.
Before we make our way downstairs for our breakfast rituals, Leah decides that she needs to get dressed…but that she wants to do it “by my self.” Another big theme in our house. I am happy to let her do it…at least until she starts with the high-pitched whine again. She wants to get dressed by herself, but can’t by herself, and won’t accept help, because, well, she wants to do it by herself.
Her whine is certainly understandable. If I were in her place, I would have a similar reaction, though my adult whine would probably emerge as an involuntary obscenity or perhaps my go-to non-verbal, the heavy sigh: [heavy sigh]
My heavy sigh can push my wife’s buttons as much as Leah’s whine can push mine…and what do I expect from Susan in response? I expect her to “Give me a B.” I expect her to think to herself, “Oh, Mark must be frustrated. I’ll give him a break. I’ll give him some space.”
Even though that’s what I expect for myself in a similar circumstance, I do not offer the same to Leah. Instead, I stomp into her room and proclaim, “Come on Leahhhh! [whined]”
Hmmm. Wonder where she gets the whining from?
We finally make our way downstairs for our breakfast ritual, which, is interrupted by Leah’s biting insistence that I move her stool into its rightful place for the cereal-pouring ceremony. “Leah,” I bite back, “You cannot yell at me like that.” [yelled]
Even at 3, she knows this exchange is absurd. But she gives me a “B” anyway. “OK, Daddy,” she says, in the controlled voice I wished I had used.
Knowing that I will be spending the bulk of the afternoon and maybe the evening writing, I spend the morning with Leah so Susan can get some things done. We are busy at the craft table, Leah giving me the directions for the latest marker drawing we are creating. “I want to make a rarred,” she says. “A word?” I ask. “No, a rarred’. “A world?” “No a rarred.” “A word???” I’m beginning to get frustrated. “No a rarred. Like outside. Let me show you.” “You are not going to get up from this table without putting the caps on those markers” I explain with just the right amount of inappropriate frustration. “Uhhhhh-hrmmmph!” she groans, punctuated with a high-pitched whine grunt, just to make sure I am paying attention to the fact that she is frustrated, too. “That fing you drive on, Dad!” she explains. “A road! A road!” “Yes”.
We quickly set to work on our “road” picture and the panic begins to set in. “Mark,” I wonder to myself, “what do you have to tell the congregation about ‘Give ‘em a B’ when you obviously can’t do it with your own daughter?” I let out the inevitable: [heavy sigh]
But, then I am reminded of the conversation I had with Marcia. This life advice of “give ‘em a B” is not easy, and we will often miss the mark. But it is worth trying. After all, what’s the alternative?
When I open my computer to type in these reflections, I check my e-mail and see I have a message from a member of the church, a member who had written me a few weeks ago to say that he was concerned about what he feels has been an over-abundance of politically-biased sermons from me recently. He wondered if there was a place for a more conservatively inclined member here.
Ouch! Of course there is…or at least I hope there is! This issue is very important to me, so I was understandably disappointed to learn that my sermons had left him questioning his participation in our community.
Rather than try to refute his perceptions as overly-sensitive or just plain wrong (what me…inappropriately biased???), I immediately responded with an e-mail that included the attachment of the last couple of sermons I had preached, with the request that he help me understand where exactly, in his estimation, I had crossed the line, because I honestly didn’t know. Truth be told, I was surprised to learn he felt this way.
So, you can imagine my interest when I see he has responded at last. I open his e-mail and discover that he has typed out specific points from one of my sermons (and other service elements) that he thought were particularly biased and offered to chat and/or debate with me some more, if I desired.
And, you know, a funny thing happens. Because I had decided to “give him a B” from the start, to take him at his word and to assume that he had some wisdom for me, I have enough space in my heart and mind to recognize that he does, in fact, have some wisdom for me. As I read his response, I acknowledge his points and, by doing my best to put myself in his place, I can see how the service I had carefully put together had been perceived as carelessly offensive (at least by him, and probably a few others). Of course, I am disappointed that the service came off the way it did, but rather than beat myself up about it, I give myself a B, and acknowledge the good fortune that I have to work in a community of thoughtful people who are not afraid to share their perceptions with me. What a gift it is!
I gave myself a B. I gave myself a break. After all, as my father-in-law John would say, “In 100 years, who will know the difference?”
That’s right, John. Thanks for the reminder. As much as I may feel compelled to believe otherwise, I don’t have to be perfect. And neither do the people from whom I expect perfection.
I just need to stay as open as I can to the perceptions of those around me and not judge them or myself harshly just because we happen to perceive things differently.
Even when the realization of our differences hurts. Even when our needed interaction feels like something I might rather avoid. Even, when, to face up to my own failings or to learn to accept the failings of others, each painful experience at a time, can feel like the most difficult thing in the world.
As the 20th century French writer Anais Nin famously said, “We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are.”
“We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are.”
So, even when, as Mary Oliver suggested in this morning’s reading, we can hear the “churn of the water as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the sharp rocks—“ when we can “sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls plunging and steaming—“ may we find the strength to “row, row for… [our] life toward it.”
Toward the possibilities of honest interaction without judgment, the closest thing to love that I can imagine.
After all, what’s the alternative?
Closing Words (“Benediction” by Sarah York) We receive fragments of holiness, glimpses of eternity, brief moments of insight. Let us gather them up for the precious gifts that they are, and, renewed by their grace, move boldly into the unknown.
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