Don't Just Do Something. Sit!

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
July 22, 2007; 8th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 11, Year C
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Luke 10:38-42) -- As Jesus and his disciples went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."
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I have "Martha days." You know the kind of day I'm talking about. Too much to do and nobody to help. I can sometimes hear an interior voice saying, "Lowell, Lowell, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing." And usually that doesn't make me feel any better. "I know it," I say to that voice. "But I've got to do these this stuff or it won't get done; and it's important!" And so I slog on in my own version of Martha's kitchen, only now in addition to the anxiety of trying to do too much, I've got the added burden of knowing I'm not choosing the "one thing." I'm just working stupidly harder. So I'll say to myself, "When I get over this little hump, things will be different." And I throw myself into the flurry.

Just about that time Chuck will come in the office and smile, "Well, I just finished my sermon for Pentecost 15. I'm off to the golf course." At times like that I'm glad that my desk is to messy for me to find something to throw at him.

It's not that what I'm doing is not good work worth doing. Martha's cooking a meal for her family and their special guest is good work. It's when the spirit of the doing turns just a bit, and I become "worried" and "distracted." The Greek word that our translation renders "worried" means literally "drawn in different directions"; and the word for "distracted" means "confusion," or more literally, "to make noise, uproar, or disturbance" like a crowd would make. Anxious; troubled. Working, but drawn in different directions with too much noise in your head. Do you ever get that way? It feels like an unholy mess.

A meal is a holy thing. To prepare a meal can be a delightful exercise of creativity offered as a gift of love for family and friends. When it happens like that, you're "really cooking." That's what we say when someone has hit the zone of happy productivity. "They're cooking." But what began for Martha as a gift for a friend, turned into an opportunity for her to be miserable, and probably get mad at herself for being miserable, and then to look around for someone else to project her unhappiness on. "Jesus, don't you care that she's left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to help me."

Notice. Jesus doesn't criticize Martha's labor. Presbyterian minister Nancy Becker puts it this way, "It isn't work that Jesus objects to; it is a hard-hearted, judging attitude that often grows out of work when it is done for the wrong reason and in the wrong spirit. It isn't that Jesus doesn't want us to work hard. But he wants our work to be filled with that quiet sense of joy that comes from serving him in whatever tasks he calls us to." (Nancy D. Becker, The One Necessary Thing; sermon in Lectionary Homiletics)

"Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her," Jesus tells Martha. What is that "better part"? The picture we are given is of Mary sitting at Jesus' feet.

Now there are a couple of ways to think about that. One that speaks to me has to do with contemplative practice and a contemplative approach to life. I can tell the difference between those days when I spend twenty minutes in Centering Prayer in the morning and those days when I say, "I've gotta do this first." Unless I practice opening up to the spaciousness of sitting at God's feet, I lose the spaciousness. I've got a friend who will say almost aggressively, "Don't just do something. Sit!"

There are other ways to feed the soul. For some it is gardening or golf; for others it is getting out into nature; some paint or read or write or enjoy music. My grandparents sat on their front porch. Sometimes Grandma would bring peas to shell, and we'd sit on the porch shelling peas. That was fun. It was a leisurely, contemplative way to prepare a meal. Time stood still.

The classic text of Christian spirituality The Practice of the Presence of God tells of Brother Lawrence's experience of the presence of God as he spends eighty years in a kitchen cooking and, later, repairing sandals. "I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for love of [God], and that done, if there is nothing else to call me, I prostrate myself in worship before [God], who has given me grace to work; afterwards I rise happier than a king. It is enough for me to pick up but a straw from the ground for the love of God." He found a way to do what he called "our common business" wholly for the love of God. Brother Lawrence retreated to a place in his heart where the love of God made every detail of his life of surpassing value. Together, God and Brother Lawrence cooked meals, ran errands, scrubbed pots..." all for the love of God. (Quotes from Wickipedia)

Christian mystics and Buddhists call this an attitude of mindfulness. It is the opposite of "worried and distracted by many things." Mindfulness is counter cultural. We were raised in a culture that taught us that we had to work hard to earn our acceptance and approval. If we became competent in some things, we began to tell ourselves we are indispensable, no one else will do this right. We turn our labors toward good things, but we insist on doing those good things our way; we become control freaks. And too much of a good thing is still too much.

There is another way.

I found these lines from an unknown poet:

A man I know has made an altar of his factory bench,
And one has turned the corner of his store
Into a place of sacrifice and holy ministry.
Another still has changed his office desk
Into a pulpit desk from which to speak and write,
Transforming commonplace affairs
Into the business of the King.
A postman makes his daily round
A walk in the temple of God.
To all of these each daily happening
Has come to be a whisper from the lips of God,
And every common circumstance a wayside shrine.


A colleague of mine in Connecticut visited with a widow who was battling a lost sense of meaning since her husband's death. She didn't know what to do with herself. My friend asked her, "What do you do that comes fairly easily to you, and when you have finished, you have more energy than when you started?" She said, "Nothing that I can think of. But I'll see what I can come up with." Several days later she returned, saying, "Now you may think this is silly, but I know what I do well. I set a really nice table. I know how to coordinate foods and flowers, placemats and napkins, and make it all turn out beautiful and delicious." "Great," he said. "Now how can you turn that into a ministry?" "I don't know," she said, "but I'll get back to you." Several days later she returned, saying, "I've got an idea. I see all of those people working in those offices downtown, and I feel sorry for them. My husband worked close enough to home that he could come home for lunch every day. I would set a nice table, and we sat down together and had some of our best times eating lunch with each other. I'd like to do something like that for these men and women who work downtown near our church."

With that she started a weekly luncheon at the church that attracted a large business clientele. Many remarked that her meal was an island of peace and hospitality that brought gladness to their week. Her work brought meaning and new energy to her life. The lunch was so appreciated that it continued in her name for years after her death. (remembered from a conversation with Terry Fullam)

How we work is a spiritual issue. Will we be worried and distracted, or will we choose the better part? Some of it is influenced by what we do; more significant is how we do what we do. If we want to feed and serve others, we need to feed and serve our own souls first.

So, the next morning that I feel the urge to hurry up and get to work, I'm going to listen to the voice of my friend. "Don't just do something. Sit!"
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Samaritans Can Be Good

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
July 15, 2007; 7th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 10, Year C
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Luke 10:25-37) -- Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he said, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" He said to him, "What is written in the law? What do you read there?" He answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." And he said to him, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live."

But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, `Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.' Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" He said, "The one who showed him mercy." Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."
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Last week I preached about how good people can behave in evil ways. My illustration concerned an experiment in 1972 at Stanford University, when a group of normal, undergraduate college students turned violent and cruel when placed in the setting of a mock jail playing the parts of "guards" and "prisoners." In the toxicity of that environment, nice, bright college kids behaved in evil and depraved ways. I said that the Stanford experiment is a reminder that each one of us nice, normal people has within us a potential for evil. In toxic circumstances, we are all capable of terrible acts of violence and cruelty.

Today I would like to flip that coin on its other side. The story of the Good Samaritan is a reminder that bad people also have the potential to behave in very good ways. It is also a story about prejudice.

The hostility between Jew and Samaritan had centuries of history behind it by the time Jesus was born. They did not like each other and avoided any contact. Although the direct route between Galilee and Jerusalem was through Samaria, most Jewish travelers would take a long, circuitous detour in order to avoid passing through Samaritan territory. A couple of weeks ago we heard how Jesus and his company traveled through Samaria on their way to Jerusalem and were treated with such contempt that James and John asked Jesus with great seriousness, "Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" Jesus declined.

James and John (and Jesus) would have been raised from childhood being taught that Samaritans were bad people -- half-breeds, mongrels, dirty, filthy, immoral. A Samaritan was so unclean that if the shadow of a Samaritan happened to cross your own shadow, you were rendered unclean and would need a rite of ritual purification in order to be able to return to worship. From the scripture, we read in Ecclesiasticus: "Two nations my soul detests, and the third is not even a people. Those who live in Seir and the Philistines, and the foolish people that live in Shechem." (50:25-26) Simply put, Samaritans were dogs, and worse than dogs, according to the conventional view.

In fact, the Jewish listeners to Jesus' story may have been rather horrified at the prospect of someone, possibly a fellow Jew, even being helped by a Samaritan. The oil and the wine that the Samaritan poured on the injured man's wounds would have been regarded as unclean oil and unclean wine. Listeners to Jesus' story would have assumed that the injured man must have been unconscious, or he would have fought to protest and prevent such attentions from a Samaritan.

The behavior of the priest and the Levite were more reasonable, according to conventional standards. After all, the Scripture forbids the touching of a corpse. Someone who was religiously observant such as a priest or a Levite would not run the risk of lending personal aid to a person who was bleeding and possibly dead. These are unclean actions forbidden by the Torah. Lest we judge them too harshly, how many problems and sufferings do we ignore because they simply are not our business, not in our neighborhood? Don't interfere. You might get sued.

Nothing could be more scandalous to Jesus' audience than for him to offer a Samaritan as the moral example for a parable. Imagine if you will a story that begins, "A young woman was mugged and thrown into a ditch where she was helpless. Along came a registered sex offender who stopped to attend to her." Or, "A U.S. serviceman was injured and alone when an al-Qaeda operative came upon him." I hope you feel a bit of squeamishness at the prospect of hearing a story from a religious teacher where the hero and moral example for the story will be a convicted sex offender or a member of al-Qaeda. If you find yourself a bit uncomfortable or inwardly repulsed, you have experienced some of the emotional explosiveness of the original parable.

When you add the implied insult toward the respected offices of the priest and Levite, you recognize that this is a story charged with political and social dynamite. Jesus is turning the presumptions of the world upside down.

"Which of these three was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" If it can be conceived that a Samaritan can be my neighbor, then anyone and everyone is my neighbor, no exceptions. If it can be conceived that a Samaritan can be the agent of good, than anyone might have a potential for goodness and virtue, no exceptions.

Such an inclusive context makes the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves a radical notion. Jesus dissolves the comfortable and familiar boundaries between us and other, friend and enemy, righteous and unrighteous, clean and unclean, right and wrong.

Last week I said that every one of us good normal people has the potential for evil. This week I am saying that every one of them, those bad, evil people has the potential for good. My comfortable categories for judging the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, are false props that say more about my prejudice than they say about truth.

We are left with the vulnerable commandment to love. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind. Love your neighbor as yourself. And, anyone can be your neighbor -- bloody corpse, Samaritan, sex offender, al-Qaeda. Anyone is capable of being neighborly.

These are the kinds of stories that make people uncomfortable. Jesus was good at making people uncomfortable. Jesus made enough people uncomfortable that they decided he deserved to die. Jesus makes me uncomfortable. He tells me to look for the good in people that I don't want to see good in. But that's one of the major themes in all of the Scriptures. Over and over in the stories in the Bible, God upends our conventional views of the way we think things are. God surprises us.

God takes us to the place where we discover God's presence and grace in the unexpected person and unexpected place! Sarah the barren woman; Jacob the supplanter; a burning bush; Joseph, the youngest, the spoiled dreamer; Moses the murderer; manna in the wilderness; water from the rock; Rahab the harlot; Ehud the left-handed; Deborah the female judge; Gideon the fearful; Jephthah the Gileadite, the son of a prostitute; David the youngest; the widow of Zarephath; Ruth the Moabite; Jeremiah the boy prophet; Hosea the betrayed; Jonah the unwilling; Amos a dresser of sycamores; women like Esther and Judith; Cyrus the Persian; Jesus the Galilean; the Canaanite woman; a crucified criminal-blasphemer; uneducated fishermen; an Ethiopian eunuch; Cornelius the Roman Centurion; Saul the persecutor; the Samaritan woman at the well; the Good Samaritan.

Surprise! Surprise! God is a surprise. God consistently finds ways to bring up short our presuppositions and to create goodness, virtue and new life out of brokenness, otherness, and death.

We are left on our heels. Open to the possibility that God's goodness may break upon us from the most unexpected direction and unexpected person. So we are left vulnerable and unsure. We can never put someone on the shelf, comfortably sealed in our categories of judgment -- those are the bad guys; those are the good guys.

Everyone has the capacity to commit evil. Everyone has the capacity to do good. We can never know with certainty. We are left with the complementary commandments: "Judge not" and "Love." Love God; love neighbor; love self. On these commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Good People and Evil

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
July 8, 2007; 6th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 9, Year C
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Luke 10:1-11, 16-20) -- After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, 'Peace to this house!' And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, 'The kingdom of God has come near to you.' But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 'Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.'

"Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me."

The seventy returned with joy, saying, "Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!" He said to them, "I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."
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I want to go back a week before we look at today's readings. Last Sunday we read two paragraphs of Luke's Gospel that precede what you just heard. In a way, those words set the stage for today's story. Let me read you part of last week's Gospel.

When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but [the Samaritans] did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, 'Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?' But Jesus turned and rebuked them.

Today we hear how Jesus sent advance teams of disciples in pairs, "like lambs into the midst of wolves." He expects mixed results. Go in peace, he tells them. If those to whom you go share in peace, "your peace shall rest on that person." But if "they do not welcome you," wipe the dust of that place off your feet and do not let it cling to you as you leave. Let the dust be your witness. You need not react yourselves.

When the disciples come back, elated at their experiences, Jesus speaks words of moderation. Yes, you have authority "over all the power of the enemy," he says, "and nothing will hurt you." But focus on the certainty of final victory -- "your names are written in heaven" -- rather than on the interim experience, for good or for ill. Jesus tells them, "I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning."

These verses were in my mind this week when I read a review of a new book The Lucifer Effect, Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. The book's title comes from the cautionary myth of Lucifer, whose name means "bearer of light." According to the story, Lucifer fell from God's highest favor to a state of rebellion and evil. Like so many powerful myths, Lucifer's story also reveals something about the nature of our humanity.

The author of The Lucifer Effect is someone who may be familiar to you, if not by name, at least by reputation. Philip Zimbardo knows something about the human potential for falling. He was the director of the infamous Stanford Prison experiment.

In 1971, Zimbardo randomly assigned twenty experimental subjects to be either "prisoners" or "guards" in a makeshift jail in one of Stanford University's academic buildings. All of the participants were run-of-the-mill undergraduates who had passed multiple screenings, designed to weed out anyone at risk for mental instability. Zimbardo was primarily interested in how the prisoners would behave during their two weeks in "jail," but to his surprise and eventual horror, it was the guards' behavior that stole the show. Asked merely to maintain order while enforcing a handful of rules (i.e. "Prisoners must address each other by number only"; "Prisoners must participate in all prison activities"), the students playing guards quickly became overwhelmed by their role. Within the first twenty-four hours, arbitrary punishment and verbal abuse had become the norm. Physical abuse followed, and before the first week was out, some of the guards were gleefully forcing half-naked and thoroughly demoralized "prisoners" – students just like themselves who had committed no wrongdoing – to simulate sodomy. When the experiment was terminated on day six, one of the guards observed with dismay that some of his compatriots were disappointed – "somewhat because of the loss of money, but somewhat because they were enjoying themselves."

These were normal, middle-class students with top-notch educational backgrounds. Almost all of them had professed a preference to be assigned "prisoner" status before the experiment; they found the authoritarian role of guard distasteful. So Zimbardo felt certain that something other than personality was at work. Nothing in the initial psychiatric screenings predicted the disturbing behavior of the "guards," but the situation they'd been put in was toxic. In other words, this wasn't a case of a few bad apples, but rather of a rotten barrel. "Within certain powerful social situations," Zimbardo posits, "human nature can be transformed in ways as dramatic as the chemical transformation in Robert Louis Stevenson's captivating fable of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."

(Science & Spirit, May/June 2007, "Books," p. 51f)

Our world today is full of toxic situations. We are subject to tales of horror from real life in our nightly news. Acts of terror and inhumanity assault us almost daily. These stories and images affect us. Our souls are at risk. We are good people living in evil and toxic times. Times when it is so easy to become the evil we would cast out. Part of the lesson of the Stanford experiment is that each one of us has the capacity to do evil. Like James and John we can become desperate enough to cry, "Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them."

I hear regularly from people who are struggling to live as people of peace in the presence of such toxicity. Someone said to me the other day, "I dread the coming of another election. The rhetoric is so polarizing and inescapable. I don't think I can take it."

Zimbardo and others (like Stanley Milgram) who study how normal, good people find themselves doing evil, take note of some of the situational factors that help create a toxic environment. The first is dehumanization. Whenever we speak of another as less than fully human, we risk turning them into a thing rather than a person. In the Stanford experiment, the "prisoners" were numbers. In every war the enemy is given a dehumanizing identity. Labels of any kind can become demonic. Commanding fire on Samaritans was not too difficult for James and John, raised in a culture that disdained Samaritans. That's why Jesus' parable about the "Good Samaritan" was so shocking. No politician today will tell a story about the "Good Islamicist."

Steven Charleston's first lecture when he visited as part of our McMichael Speaker's Series in May was about the inner difficulty of living into our baptismal covenant to "respect the dignity of every human being." There are human beings who I believe are threatening humanity itself. Yet I am called to respect their dignity as fellow human beings. That is so hard to do.

There is something about the Stanford experiment that I find helpful. That experiment involving nice college kids in 1971 -- kids like me in 1971 -- reminds me that I too am capable of evil. Christian piety has always invited the faithful to meditate on our participation in the crucifixion of Christ. During Holy Week it is common for congregations to be assigned the role of speaking for the crowd at Good Friday; we shout "Crucify him; crucify him." A standard part of the Holy Week liturgy is the hymn "Ah, holy Jesus." We confess with these words:
Who was the guilty Who brought this upon thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee.
'Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee: I crucified thee. (Hymn 158)

It is not a distant gulf that separates us from the evil and inhumanity that horrifies us. We are reminded of that whenever we pray the Lord's Prayer consciously: "Deliver us from evil." Maybe better translated "Save us from the time of trial." In that prayer Jesus taught us to acknowledge that there are situations that can overwhelm us, normal good people.

That is why we must pray for those who are overwhelmed, those who may find themselves in situations that overwhelm their humanity. It is unlikely that they can pray effectively for themselves. Only if we have enough compassion and empathy for them, can we offer the intercession that will add some coherence and peace to their situation rather than more violence and despair.

Barbara Crafton spoke of this when she visited us. She urged us to pray for our enemies, but carefully. She says pray blessing for them, but don't linger too long. At least not long enough to suggest to God what kind of blessing would be most appropriate for them, lest our hostility poison our prayer.

Earlier we heard Paul at the end of his passionate and conflictive letter to the Galatians. He is furious. He is angry. But he connects it all to the crucifixion. "May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." Paul realizes that in every overwhelming situation of evil, Christ is present, absorbing the violence, hatred and death. Only the cross will soak up such things without adding to them. Dorothy Sayers said, "God did not abolish the fact of evil. He transformed it. He did not stop the crucifixion. He rose from the dead."

What God does with evil is resurrection. As Paul says, "A new creation is everything!" The only way we can live in the presence of today's banal version of evil is to live as citizens of the new creation. That's why Jesus tells his disciples there's no need to rejoice even when you "tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy." After all, living in the new creation, "nothing will hurt you."

What we embrace when we embrace the resurrected Jesus, is that Christ has already overcome the divisions: Samaritan and Jew, prisoners and student guards, Isalmicists and those who would call down fire from heaven upon them. Jesus has soaked up all evil into God's own life in the terror of the cross, and raised it into a new creation that no hell can prevail against. We are invited to live in that new reality, and to pray for those of us who are overwhelmed by that which is passing away.

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

(Prayer attributed to St. Francis; Book of Common Prayer, p. 833)