Passion with Compassion. A Sermon
78.
Nothing is softer
or more yielding
than water.
Yet, given time,
it can erode even the hardest stone.
That’s how the weak
can defeat the strong,
and the supple
can win out over the stiff.
Everybody knows it.
So why don’t we apply it to our own lives?
Lao Tzu used to say:
“Take on people’s problems,
and you can be their leader.
Deal with the world’s problems,
and you’ll be a Master.”
Sometimes the truth makes no sense.
~Tao Te Ching, translated by Ron Hogan
As you’ll (no doubt) remember, we started a few weeks ago with the idea that the job of the church is to ONLY NOTICE, to notice pain, sorrow and joy in people and to be WITNESSES to that. Then last week, we talked about the radical restructuring of many aspects of our culture, all based in this concept of open source, and the implications of open source on religion is just stunning. First, it’s a move towards decentralization and away from hierarchies. Second, it is open for anyone to create and innovate and share, if they want to which means it’s more inclusive, less dogmatic. Third, we share in the capitalization of it, but we don’t gain monetarily like we would if we capitalize it, we probably let go of property. Fourth, we have no control over it, and we give up the illusion of control, too. And fifth, we do our part and let the spirit go from there.
I’ve been mostly struck with the role of the church in society, if church is indeed open source, and if indeed, these changes are on the horizon. And, truth be told, I’ve been thinking about the role of clergy, too. If there is this radical decentralization, and this real sense of inclusion, what do pastors do? And if we let go of property, do we really need pastors, if they’re not going to be the executive directors of non-profit organizations?
So let me just tell you. I have come upon the reason for the church this week, and it’s two-fold. The first reason for the church? To foster passion. And what’s our church’s theological word for passion? It’s calling.
I tweeted a question, “What would it mean if the church’s job was to foster passion. One minister friend texted back, “we’d better become a lot more tolerant of mistakes!” And in this new vision of church, we’ve covered that! We are more tolerant, even celebrating our differences.
What is passion? The dictionary has a couple of definitions, but the one that I’m talking about is, “an intense desire or enthusiasm for something.” I’ve been drawn in all week by people who are passionate about what they do. Passionate about something, no matter what that thing is.
Think for a minute with me. What is that THING that you’re so passionate about? What makes your heart sing, like Renee’s heart sings when she creates a piece of art? What makes your pulse quicken like discovering a new shortcut in code for the website you’re working on? What makes your feet dance, like when you’re working with a client and they have an Aha! moment? What makes your brain smile, like getting a concept that has eluded you for weeks?
Why is it important that the church foster passion? Did you happen to see the report from Justin Wolfers and his spouse, Betsey Stevenson? The one on why women are reporting that they are less happy than they did in the 1970’s? They write:
Finally, the changes brought about through the women’s movement may have decreased
women’s happiness. The increased opportunity to succeed in many dimensions may have led to an increased likelihood of believing that one’s life is not measuring up. Similarly, women may now compare their lives to a broader group, including men, and find their lives more likely to come up short in this assessment. Or women may simply find the complexity and increased pressure in their modern lives to have come at the cost of happiness.
If women (and, by the way, women are not unhappier than men) are so miserable, why? Wealth, opportunity, haven’t put the Uhnh! into life. What would?
But passion can’t be the Church’s only drive. Passion that is not tempered by compassion is greed, lust, gluttony, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. The church must foster passion with compassion.
This week’s Ted Talk is from the first American to be ordained a Tibetan Monk by the Dalai Lama, Robert A.F. Thurman. He is a scholar, author and tireless proponent of peace.
[In the} Vimalakirti Sutra, an ancient work from ancient India…the Buddha appears at the beginning and a whole bunch of people come to see him from the biggest city in the area, Vaisali, and to bring some jeweled parasols to make offering to him. All the young people, actually, from the city -- the old fogeys don't come, because they're mad at Buddha, because when he came to their city he accepted, he always accepts the first invitation that comes to him from whoever it is, and the local geisha, a movie star sort of person, raced the elders of the city in a chariot and invited him first.
So he was hanging out with the movie star, and of course they were all grumbling, "He's supposed to be religious and all this, what's he doing over there at Amrapali's house with all his 500 monks," and so on. They were all grumbling, and they boycotted him, they wouldn't go listen to him. But the young people all came. And they brought this kind of a jeweled parasol, and they put it on the ground. And as soon as they had laid all these, all their big stack of these jeweled parasols that they used to carry in ancient India, he performed a kind of special effect which made it into a giant planetarium, the wonder of the universe. Everyone looked in that and they saw in there the total interconnectedness of all life in all universes.
And of course in the Buddhist cosmos there are millions and billions of planets with human life on it, and enlightened beings can see the life on all the other planets -- so they don't, when they look out and they see those lights that you showed in the sky, they don't just see sort of pieces of matter burning or rocks or flames or gases exploding, they actually see landscapes and human beings and gods and dragons and serpent beings and goddesses and things like that.
He made that special effect at the beginning to get people to think about interconnection and interconnectedness and how everything in life was totally interconnected.
And therefore it will become intolerable — what compassion is, is where it will become intolerable for us, totally intolerable that we sit here in comfort and in pleasure and enjoying the life of the mind or whatever it is, and there are people who are absolutely riddled with disease and they cannot have a bite of food and they have no place or they’re being brutalized by some terrible person and so forth, it just becomes intolerable.
You see, with all of us knowing that we’re all connected, we’re given the opportunity by technology to become Buddhas, to become enlightened, to understand how we are all connected. And by being connected, to buck against the system, and feel compassion for everyone. Thurman continues:
The Dalai Lama always likes to say, he says that when you give birth in your mind to the idea of compassion, it’s because you realize that you yourself and your pains and pleasures are finally too small a theater for your intelligence, it’s really too boring whether you feel like this or like that, or what, you know — and the more you focus on how you feel, by the way, the worse it gets. Like, even when you’re having a good time, when is the good time over? The good time is over when you think, How good is it? and then it’s never good enough.
But of course, … I think the key to saving the world, the key to compassion is that, it is more fun. It should be done by fun. Generosity is more fun, that’s the key.
Because, you see, passion and compassion are intricately interwoven.
If you reach your passion, you will reach with compassion to help others reach their passion. And if you have compassion, blocking others from their passion becomes intolerable.
I find our text this morning about marriage to be pretty funny, in light of the report about women being unhappy. They actually say that divorce rates are going down, by the way, because marriage rates are going down.
But it struck me this morning that the key to Jesus’ message here is that we’re connected, intimately, with our spouses and children. Why? Because, as the Buddha would say, we are in them, we are interconnected.
And are we to seek the kingdom like a little child? You know that one of the stages of development of children is beginning to see themselves as separate. From the beginning, we have no sense of self, but a sense of deep connectedness.
The Buddha. The Christ. The Universe. Children. It’s all connected. Passion with compassion.