The Rev. Keri T. Aubert Proverbs 31:10-31

All Saints Episcopal Church, South Burlington, Vermont Psalm 1

September 20, 2009      James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a

Proper 20, Year B, RCL     Mark 9:30-37

In today’s gospel reading from Mark, the disciples come off sounding something like a group of third-graders at recess on the first day of school. They don’t really understand what the teacher told them about what’s going to be expected of them, but they’re pretty sure that if they did understand, they wouldn’t like it. Afraid of both the teacher and of what they might discover, they opt not to ask questions. Instead they get into an argument about something they can understand, the schoolyard pecking order. Caught by the teacher, they are too ashamed to explain, so they just stand around shuffling their feet. Knowing children, the teacher guesses what’s going on and gives them a lesson in cooperation, by sending them all off to help with the preschoolers.

No matter how old we are, life continues to throw us challenges. In the third grade we had to learn addition and subtraction, but as adults we have to be able to manage our finances. In the third grade we began to comprehend the harsh realities of loss and grief, but as adults we start to understand just how deeply they loss and grief us. Our concerns are bigger than they were when we were eight, but sometimes we react in similar ways. Perhaps, like the disciples, each of us houses an inner third-grader, one specializing in fear, denial, control, and shame. Fear, denial, control, and shame unfortunately don’t miraculously depart from us when we turn eighteen. Sometimes it’s just the opposite: as the stakes get higher, so do our reactions, and if we are unable to manage them, we just get in bigger trouble.

On NPR’s All Things Considered last week, one story began like this: “What do sardine populations, Wall Street and Antarctica have in common? The answer is, they can all reach a critical moment—a tipping point—and change dramatically and unexpectedly. Fish populations can crash. Markets can, too. And Antarctic ice shelves can melt with little warning. Those sudden changes can have an enormous impact, so it would be great to know about them before they happened. Some scientists believe they might be able to predict tipping points.” [i] These scientists note that different systems demonstrate similar patterns and behavior. They’re looking for mathematical predictors of when crashes might be coming. I heard this story as I was on my way home from visiting a parishioner in the hospital. From the opening lines, and with the recent history of All Saints in mind, I began wondering whether, for individuals and for communities, there can be emotional tipping points. I suspect that there are emotional tipping points, and I also suspect that there are ways to slow our approach to them.

For individuals, I’ve begun to hear more lately about what is called “emotional resilience.” According to one definition, “Emotional resilience refers to one’s ability to adapt to stressful situations or crises. More resilient people are able to ‘roll with the punches’ and adapt to adversity without lasting difficulties; less resilient people have a harder time with stress and life changes, both major and minor. It’s been found that those who deal with minor stresses more easily can also manage major crises with greater ease, so resilience has its benefits for daily life as well as for the rare major catastrophe.” [ii] This author lists the following characteristics of emotional resilience: emotional awareness, perseverance, internal locus of control, optimism, support, sense of humor, perspective, and spirituality. Regarding spirituality, this secular author writes, “Being connected to your spiritual side has been connected with stronger emotional resilience, especially if you're internally connected and not just going through the motions of attending services.” [iii]

Maybe this is the secret for All Saints, which as a gathered community has had its share of challenges in recent months, and which has showed itself to be impressively resilient. When Stewart left, no one could have predicted the stream of events that would follow. This congregation continues to be affected in seemingly impossible numbers by death, illness, and injury. More recently, there have been job losses. People we don’t even know are seeking us out in their final days. I’ve been involved with a number of congregations, and I’ve never seen anything remotely like it. And of course, that’s just the stuff going on inside the congregation. I think that the world as a whole feels unusually unsettled at the moment. Maybe it’s the fall equinox coming up Tuesday afternoon, but the roots are probably more concrete. The economic crisis continues, and local social service agencies are busier than ever. The ugly political rhetoric is unlikely to reassure us that our elected government has the ability to help us out of the mess. Such concerns—from unemployment to illness, and both personal and political—affect us individually and as we bring those concerns into community.

When Stewart announced his retirement, I can imagine that a whole bunch of you responded with something like [fingers in ears and singing la-la-la]. It might even be that a few of you, something like those third-grade disciples, got into an argument about who would be in charge. Even so, following Jesus’ lead and facing the realities that arose, you put your efforts into serving one another, and the congregation is stronger for it. At least one of you believes that rising to the challenges has brought you together as a community, and I tend to agree with this assessment. I’ve also discussed with several of you my impression of All Saints—first attained my second time here as a visiting preacher and presider—as a community that is a particular location for healing. But that doesn’t mean times haven’t been hard, or that there aren’t hard times yet to come.

As we face those hard times, today’s collect is both a prayer and a reminder. Remember, it goes like this: “Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure. . . .” In his reflection on this prayer, noted preacher Herbert O’Driscoll has this to say:

. . . a healthy spirituality . . . begins by learning to love life and the world and the whole creation. It flows through the realization that we receive every iota as a gift, and it fully matures by our developing the capacity to accept it all gratefully and, when life requires it, to let it all go gracefully.

Is this easy to accomplish? Far from it. That sequence of developing our relationship with the world around us is also our struggle to become a mature and balanced human being. Our struggle is to be involved with life, not to be consumed by it—to be capable of committing ourselves deeply to it, while also detaching ourselves from it. In other words, life can be wonderful and precious and worth our giving everything we have and are to it precisely because it’s more than merely itself. Behind and beyond it, hidden within it and threaded through every part of it, is the source of life. That source is God.[iv] 

O’Driscoll goes on to say that in this prayer, “There is not a word about spurning earthly things. There are a multitude of things in God’s creation we can enjoy and savor and delight in, but the mysterious truth is that our enjoying, our savoring, and our delighting are possible only if we can become free of the fear of losing them.”[v] 

This is a lesson that must be learned by disciples and third-graders alike. And it’s perhaps a particularly appropriate lesson for the fall. The geese are honking, the leaves are turning, and a morning chill is in the air. We’re putting our gardens to bed and bringing the blankets up from the basement. Change is all around us, as it always is, even when we fail to notice. When we do notice, its sharp edges may remind us that God is present.

This week a friend forwarded an email that he got from a website that sends out daily quotes for mediation. That day’s quote was from Rumi, and it goes like this:

Make me sweet again,

fragrant,

fresh and wild,

thankful for 

any small event.