"Our Fascination With Flaws" Sermon Delivered By Reverend Richard E. Stetler – August 26, 2012 Centenary United
Ecclesiastes 11:1-8; Luke 13:10-17 Many of us have
recognized that we are blessed with a sense of balance and beauty when
it comes to evaluating the uniqueness of people, experiences and various
aspects in our material world.
It is from this gift of insightfulness that we become attracted
to flaws in what our senses tell us.
Test yourselves this week when you are with people or find
yourself in a new experience.
What are some of your first thoughts? For example, do we
ever find ourselves at one of our popular beaches thinking, “Anyone with
such a mature figure should
never wear a bathing suit like that.” Or, “How did that guy attract such
a gorgeous wife?” Have we
ever gone into someone’s home and found a picture or two that needed
straightening? Why is it
that we could have admired their cedar furniture or some of the rare
collectibles, but we chose instead to focus our attention on crooked
pictures? Women always have
a field day with me.
I think I must awaken their
maternal instincts when they are around me.
They are forever picking a hair
or lint off my sport coat when I’m talking with them.
Sometimes they say, “Here, let me fix you up” and they proceed to
adjust the knot in my tie that had slipped. One Sunday morning one of
the church members said, “Dick, I notice by your tie that you have
finally entered the 20th century.”
That one made me laugh because
we were already in the 21st century.
I concluded that she had been evaluating my ties for quite some
time. Inside of us is a
finely tuned sensor that is drawn to noticing flaws in people.
I was not in my office for two
minutes when my secretary asked, “Did Lois see you before you left the
house this morning?” I had to
confess that she had not. She
said, “Please go home and let her look at you.”
I learned upon my arrival that my color blindness was more than
shading difficulties. You may have
noticed from our lesson in Ecclesiastes that the author had a habit of
lifting up an aspect of life to celebrate and then ended the passage by
a thought that canceled it. For example, “No matter how long you live,
remember that you will be dead much longer.
There is nothing at all to look forward to.”
(Ecclesiastes 11:8) We have to remember
that such words came from a writer that had no hope of surviving death.
His words, however, may reflect the way a lot of people today think
about their lives. Most of
us have been raised in an environment that assumes that we survive the
death of our physical bodies.
When that understanding is absent, people have no resource that
helps them to think otherwise.
There is something about such pessimism that is humorous.
Listen to another one of this author’s insights:
Go ahead and eat
your food and be happy, drink your wine and be cheerful.
It is all right with God.
Always look happy and cheerful.
Enjoy life with the ones you love, as long as you live the
useless life that God has given you in this world.
Enjoy every useless day of it, because that is all you are going
to get for your trouble. (Ecclesiastes 9:7f) This same
perception surfaced in our Gospel lesson today.
As you may recall, Jesus summoned a woman to come to him that had
been suffering from a severe spinal disease.
He laid his hands on her.
For the first time in eighteen years, this woman that had severe
curvature of the spine was able to straighten up. What could possibly be
the flaw in such a healing? Again,
we are dealing with a difference in how people perceive events. One of the
officials in the synagogue watched what Jesus did and became overcome
with anger. The official
said in a voice that could be heard throughout the synagogue, “There are
six days in which we should work, so come in here during those days if
healing is what you seek, but not on the Sabbath!” (Luke 13:14)
From all the possible interpretations we might give to this
event, this official found fault with Jesus because he viewed the
healing as working on the Sabbath. flaws
we notice in others are more reflective of our values and our
preferences than of anything else.
This was obvious with the synagogue official because many of the
religious leaders were feeling threatened not only from seeing Jesus’
miracles but also by the size of the crowds that surrounded him. They
were looking for ways to bring an end to his ministry. They wanted to
discredit and disgrace Jesus.
There is no other
time in the society of the The practice of
pointing out flaws is ancient.
Even Jesus became weary of such judgments.
He said, “You nitpick at each other.
You strain the fly from your soup while you swallow a camel.
(Matthew 23:24) You should
first remove the log out of your own eye before you attempt to remove
the speck from the eye of others.” (Matthew 7:5)
Gifted men and
women fall from grace because of an affair that surfaced, because of a
partial truth they once told, or because of an allegation of misusing
funds for an unlawful purpose. In fact, this fault-finding practice is
so widespread and it goes to such mean and cruel depths that people with
remarkable leadership qualities would never dream of running for office.
They would not put their families through such public scrutiny
just to gain a seat in government.
Who are the real
losers because of this practice? Think
of what we miss when our attitudes about people hinge on their perceived
flaws. One of the fascinations
we have with Jesus is that he loved flawed people and preferred to be
with them instead of with those that had taken their religious practices
to great heights of faithfulness.
How many colorful,
engaging personalities have we missed because flaws blinded us to their
remarkable qualities? When I was in high
school biology, pupils in my class were linked with a partner for the
semester. My partner was a
girl that was not physically attractive.
Some of the guys teased me about who I
got stuck with.
They had a lot of unflattering
things to say about her. As we worked
together, however, I became blind
to her physical features.
She had a sparkling personality.
She had depth and insight. We laughed all the time as we
dissected various creatures or placed slides of microscopic protozoa
under the microscope. We
became good friends and frequently we sat together during lunch.
She was one of those fascinating spirits that people could easily
miss because of what they valued.
We do not perceive others
as they are; we perceive others because of who we are. There was a time
when the well-known pastor, Peter Marshall, was approached by several
laypersons in his church.
They had just caught a couple kissing very passionately in their
sacred chapel.
They demanded that Dr. Marshall remove them immediately.
He refused. The group became
incensed with his refusal.
They reminded him in no uncertain terms of his responsibilities.
They also demanded to know why
he would turn his head once
they told him what was going on in their chapel.
He politely allowed them to
finish their comments and then he said, I just performed
their marriage ceremony.
They have no other time to be together because the groom has to be at a
staging area in two hours to join the Allied Armed Forces in The point of my
message today is that Jesus in many respects was like the rest of us.
As we have said, Jesus was also attracted to the flaws in people.
However, what he noticed did not evoke his passion to criticize,
belittle or judge people harshly, but to perceive others with love.
He saw flaws as an opportunity to be helpful.
In this case he brought healing to a woman with a badly diseased
spine. Jesus never taught
his disciples to monitor one another’s behavior from
a
superior, self-righteous
attitude. He said, “Love
one another as I have loved you.”
All of us are at
different stages of development during our life’s journey.
A number of us have matured quite well in several areas.
While this is to our credit, such growth should lead us to
exhibit patience with those that are still learning and have remained
open to change. Such differences
will always be present in everyone because all of us have grown up in
the midst of different influences.
We have had different teachers and role models.
The beauty of our
diversity is that we can learn from each other.
As we engage in teaching one another from a loving spirit, many
of their rough edges can be made smooth, their choice of words can
become more supportive, compassionate and less toxic, and their
hostilities can be tempered by the insights and guidance that we
provide. During one of my
classes on Spirituality at my former church, we were discussing the
reasons for offering course
corrections to others even when they are unsolicited.
A woman in the class told us that her supervisor was a wonderful
man. She felt badly for
him, however, because frequently he engaged in behavior that was out of
character. In fact, his
actions were childish. People had to be guarded around him because of
his practical jokes that were neither practical nor funny. At the risk of
being misunderstood, she went into his office one day and told him about
the feelings of his office staff.
She said, We all love you and
enjoy working for you but there is something about you that has us on
guard everyday. Because we
never know what you are going to do next, all of us remain distracted
waiting for something to happen that you find funny. We don’t understand
why you feel the need to do these things. No one knows I am coming to
talk to you about this.
However, it would be a wonderful change for all of us if you put your
practical jokes to rest. The change was
immediate. He confessed
that he had no idea that his attempts to bring comic relief to his staff
were being so misunderstood.
He thanked her profusely for telling him.
The course correction
was made and an entire office was grateful.
No one knew what brought the change.
She did not tell anyone the advice that she had shared with her
supervisor. We all make judgments of one another. The fact that we are drawn to the flaws of others can become a very powerful and useful gift. When we use this gift through a spirit that is compassionate, our observations can offer to others a different way of communicating, a different attitude to use when their world is not the way they want it or a different spirit to navigate through the painful episodes with which some phases of life are filled. While Jesus healed
a woman of severe curvature of the spine, think of the positive changes
we could bring to others by words offered in kindness.
We all need course
corrections but how wonderful it is when our observations help
someone to choose a different path that helps them to become more of
what God designed them to be. |