Will Campbell tells this story about his friend P.D. East, “You know, Preacher Will, that church of yours is like an Easter chicken my little Karen got one time. Man, it was a pretty thing. Dyed a deep purple. Karen loved it. But pretty soon that baby chicken started feathering out. And you know what? Them new feathers weren’t purple. No siree bob, not at all. That chicken was a Rhode Island Red.”
“So,” P.D. said, “we took that half-purple and half-red thing out to Grandma’s house and threw it in the chicken yard with all the other chickens. At first it was different from the other chickens. It didn’t bother any of the others. Wouldn’t fight back or anything when the other chickens pecked it or chased it all over the yard. Pretty soon it was behaving just like the rest of them chickens. Yes siree bob, the chicken world turned that Easter chicken around. And now you can’t tell one chicken from another. They’re all just alike. The Easter chicken is just one more chicken. There ain’t a thing different about it.”
We are called to be different. In this world in which we live are calling is based upon the commandment to love God and to love each other. How sad it would be if there wasn’t a thing different about us.
Love God. Love each other. Parents love your children. Children love your parents. Love your spouse as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Be busy about love. “It’s not enough to be busy,” writes Henry David Thoreau, “so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?” If we love God, we are to be busy about loving each other. Love of another kind it will demands that we…
*Show up...be present with our whole self in the moment.
*Speak up...speak up about how we feel about each other. Speak the truth in love.
*Listen up...we may love each other best by listening to each other.
*Let up...let up on the need to control the outcome. Trust in a greater wisdom and mystery that all things really do work together for good.
I enjoyed Frederick Buechner’s character, Leo Bebb, a peculiar old evangelist with a spotted past. You grow to love him. I especially like one particular story when Leo decides to throw a thanksgiving feast, a love feast for everybody who has no where to go.
When all have assembled, Leo looks out at the room full of people sitting around the tables. He welcomes them by saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a great feast, a love feast where no one is a stranger. We all got secrets, hurtful things. Long ago things. We’re all scared and lonesome, but most of the time we keep it hid. It’s like everyone of us has lost his way so bad we don’t even know which way is home anymore; only we’re ashamed to ask. You know what would happen if we would own up we’re lost and ask? Why, what would happen is we’d find out home is each other. We’d find out home is Jesus loves us lost or found or any which way.”
We may love each other best by opening up to each other, by owning up to the truth that we’re all lost. We are not nearly as certain as we appear to be, not any one of us. We are, after all, eternally rookies; forever learning. Being a good person and being a good friend means being in touch with just how lost and scared and lonesome we really are. Offering empathy is empowering others for the journey.
On Wednesday evening, April 19, 1995 something horrible happened that I will never forget as long as I live. In the hours and days that followed many remarkable things happened that have also left their mark upon my life. I remember that Wednesday evening as we gathered. We were all in shock. We were all shook by the explosion that rocked our city, our state, our nation, and our world. We had feelings we would feel for along time to come. We were on frighteningly new turf.
And in walked James and Libby Kirkendall. When I looked into James eyes I discovered something different. You see the Kirkendall’s experience with this kind of travail. They knew such fear and devastation from their experiences in Beirut and in Iran. hey had seen war-torn buildings. They had encountered hate and anger of such gruesome proportions. I could read it in his eye, and yet he was not only feeling this for himself he was feeling this for me and for our church and our city. He and Libby had been there. They had felt what we were feeling. You call that empathy. It’s called loving one another. It is the way of Jesus. It is the way Jesus believes all men and women, boys and girls will know that we are his disciples. We love each other by being real and human with each other.
Empathy isn’t a sort of sniffling sympathy that acts more concerned than it really is or a sort of sentimentality that is forced or contrived. Empathy is a muscular word. It is the characteristic developed by one who has been there, one who is well versed in the human condition. We love each other when we let each other know that we are walking the same path together. Pathos is sharing a passion for living in the real world. We love each other when we are ready to share in an adventure of discovery with each other. We love each other when we acknowledge that no person we encounter needs God any more or any less than we need God. We share the common experience of needing to be loved and of needing to love.
When Abraham Lincoln was President, he attended worship at a church near the White House. He would slip in through the side door and then into the minister’s study so that he could sit there and hear the sermon without disrupting the congregation. Before the service was over, he would slip out and be on his way.
One evening as he and his aide were leaving the church the aide asked him what he thought about the minister’s sermon. Lincoln thought for quite some time before replying. Then he said, “Well, I must say that the content was excellent, and Dr. Gurley certainly preached with great eloquence. You could tell that he had really put a lot of work into his sermon.”
The aide remarked, “So you liked it? You thought it was a really great sermon?”
And Lincoln replied, “No, no I didn’t say that.”
“But,” countered the aide, “You said the content was excellent, it was delivered eloquently, and he obviously put a lot of work into it.”
Lincoln responded, “That’s true, but I didn’t say it was a great sermon.”
“Well, why not? I don’t understand,” asked the aide.
Lincoln’s answer was profound. He said, “Because Dr. Gurley forgot the most important ingredient of all. He failed to ask us to do something great.”
Jesus was always asking those who would follow him to be different, to do something great. Jesus, you see, believed we were getting close to God when we really did love God and really did love each other.