Chalice Lighting by Christine Leahy
Hi, I’m Christine. Can you help me? I need to learn the art of asking for help. Why is that so hard?
I was born to two people who were incapable of healthy parenting, unable to create a safe, loving environment, and unwilling to reach out for help. Being bounced between various foster homes for years, I became stubbornly self-reliant and determined not to place my future in the hands of others.
Over the years, I’ve reaped the benefits of self-reliance and determination. I’ve enjoyed a satisfying career, mastered a breadth of skills, and savored the satisfaction of doing it myself. But, I’ve also experienced health-damaging exhaustion and heart-crushing loneliness. I’ve learned that stubborn self-reliance is counter to a sense of belonging and well being. This lesson shows up frequently in my life.
As a single mom to a 2-½ year old, I am becoming more open to asking for and accepting help, yet I still can’t say it is my strong suit. Soon, I’ll be adopting a second baby and oh, baby, I’m going to need help! A dear friend asked how she could help. I said, “Please nag me until I’m willing to ask for help.” That’s asking for help, isn’t it?
Recently, I was determined NOT to ask a friend to assemble a new elliptical trainer even though he offered openly. For some really important reason unknown to me now, I needed to assemble that machine myself, so I did. Unfortunately, I attached one section incorrectly. With regular workouts, the muscles were strained until a disc slipped in my lower back. Stubborn self-reliance can be really painful! For weeks, I required help with literally everything! Thankfully JUCers were there for me.
I’m grateful for that slipped disc…you see needing to accept help allowed me to connect with more of you and experience this community’s amazing capacity for caring.
What did I learn? Daring to ask for help and to share your caring is joyfully infectious. I light this chalice inviting each of you to join in asking for and creating an epidemic of caring!
Reading: The Parable of the Good Samaritan from the Gospel of Luke
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."
Sermon
It was almost 40 years ago. We were driving our Ford Fairlane north on Interstate 81 in upstate New York. It was a cold, gray day in early January; the temperature was probably in the teens or low twenties. We had driven down from Syracuse to Philadelphia to visit my wife Phyllis’s aunt and uncle for a few days. Now we were headed back up to Syracuse, noticing how much colder it was getting as we drove north.
As we sped along we saw a car pulled off on the side of the highway. We could see several people in the car. A man was standing outside the car and made a slight motion as we drove past. He didn’t make a clear effort to flag us down. We weren’t sure if he even meant to signal us. Within a couple of seconds we decided we had better stop and check. It was pretty cold and this could be dangerous to be out for a long time. We pulled over and backed up.
It turns out that there was a whole family, including a couple of kids and a grandparent. They were having car trouble. They had been pulled over for about half an hour and had been trying to wave someone down. No one had stopped. His small gesture when we drove by was the result of his almost having given up. The father wanted to get to a place where he could arrange for the car to be towed. We put the kids, grandmother and dad in the back seat. They were glad to be in a warm car. Within about ten minutes we found an exit with services. We found a service station with a tow truck. The kids and grandmother stayed at the station. They all thanked us profusely. We headed on our way up north. All of this had delayed us maybe fifteen or twenty minutes.
As drove on we talked about our little incident. We were both amazed that no one had stopped. These were not scruffy and dangerous looking people. They were a family with car trouble on a cold winter day. It seemed unbelievable to us then, and it still does, that no one would stop. Then, as we talked about it, we admitted that we came very close to not stopping ourselves. The realization that we had come so close to just driving past them horrified me. We made a big difference that day, and all we did was give a cold family a lift.
A couple of years later we saw the other side. The fuel pump on our new little Fiat sports car decided to stop working in the middle of the Hopi Indian reservation. We stood there in the desert heat trying to get a ride to the next settlement as car after car passed by. We were in the middle of nowhere, standing by a car on the side of the road. Finally someone stopped and gave us a lift.
The parable of the good Samaritan has become one of the best known parables from the Christian scriptures. The phrase “good Samaritan” has become so much a part of our language that I bet a lot of people don’t know that it comes from the Bible. (And how many of us can find Samaria on a map? It’s a small area between Judea and Galilee.) What goes through your mind when you hear the story? If you are like me, you wonder how anyone could be so callous as to walk by some poor half dead person on the side of the road? Yet the priest and the Levite (Levites were also a temple functionaries) pass by, perhaps worried about the impurity of touching someone half dead. The Samaritan, the passerby who is not a religious man, is the one who shows mercy.
I bet every one of us has played all the roles in the story at one time or another. At our best, we have played the role of the good Samaritan, going out of our way to help another person. We don’t have to do something extraordinary or heroic to be the Samaritan. We just have to let ourselves be moved by pity and respond to that basic human impulse. Every time one of us acts out of kindness and consideration, we are the good Samaritan.
And at one time or another each of us has played the role of the person at the side of the road. Maybe we weren’t half dead. But each of us has needed help. And each one of us has been the recipient of simple human kindness. Think of the simple acts of kindness that have made a difference in your life. And how acts of simple kindness stand out in our memories! Certainly the poor robbed man in the parable would never forget the Samaritan. I know I will never forget the Indian man who picked us up in the desert, nor the dozens of others who have been there when I needed it.
Alas, I don’t like to think of how many times in my life I have played the part of the priest or the Levite. How many times have I turned away from another’s suffering? How many times have I figuratively walked on the other side of the road? I think this is especially a problem today. Like the man who questions Jesus in the parable, the issue of who is our neighbor confronts us all. Today we live among strangers. Unlike people in the past who lived in small groups among people they knew well, most of us live in large urban centers. Every day we encounter strangers we will never see again. Beyond that, mass media drown us in images of unspeakable suffering all over the world. It is easy, too easy, to go numb, to exhaust our capacity for feeling compassion.
Religious communities have always been places where people commit themselves to helping one another, and so it is with us. Central to our purpose for existence as a congregation is to be here for each other. Our mission statement talks about three central areas: nurturing our spiritual community, growing our movement and serving the wider community. One of the ways that we nurture our spiritual community is by caring for one another. In the religious language of churches, this is called pastoral care. The term pastoral care, unfortunately, does not mean taking care of the pastor or minister. It means caring for the members of the congregation, literally caring for the flock (though most independent minded Unitarian Universalists don’t like thinking of themselves as part of a flock).
Pastoral care is one of the most important things that we do. Yet it is the least visible. Much of what we do in social action to serve the world is, by contrast, highly visible. We see most of the marvelous work: building habitat homes, housing the homeless, supporting human rights in Central America, holding forums, donating to social service agencies, environmental activism, and all the rest. Similarly, much of the work we do to help support the growth of our movement is out in the open: leading workshops, producing videos and such are public by nature.
Pastoral care, however, is largely invisible. It is invisible by nature. We don’t publicize it when someone comes in for counseling. We don’t let others know when we help a family out during a financial crisis. So much of pastoral care is and must remain confidential. Today, however, I want to make pastoral care more visible. Pastoral care, after all, is how we take turns being the good Samaritan. Pastoral care is how we give shape to our compassion. Compassion needs to be organized. When we organize and institutionalize our compassion we can do so much more good.
Let me begin by simply honoring and celebrating all that we do. In your order of service today is a list of our pastoral care activities and the key contact people for the several areas. These volunteers spend many hundreds of hours helping care for our members. We often talk of holding people in the gentle embrace of compassion and concern. The team of volunteers in pastoral care does an amazing amount of invisible work that puts compassion into action. They provide meals and rides. They make hundreds of phone calls. We have scores of people involved in chalice circles. When someone dies, we provide hospitality at memorial services. This fall we will host, in conjunction with the Mountain Desert District, a pastoral care conference where people from our sister congregations will explore with us how to do an even better job of pastoral care.
I know for a fact that there is an abundance of compassion in this congregation. We are kind, gentle, caring people. However, we face many challenges as we try to put our compassion into practice. Let me mention some things I would like to see us do better.
First, we need to learn to ask for help when we need it. We are getting better at this, but we have a long way to go. I can imagine a retelling of the Good Samaritan story. This time the poor half dead victim on the side of the road is a member of JUC. The story is the same up to the time the Good Samaritan arrives. The Good Samaritan rushes over and offers to help. Only in this story, the JUC member says, “No, no, don’t bother. I’ll be all right. I’m sure I can manage.” We value our independence; we value it way too much. Men are worse than women in this regard. I thank Christine for her chalice lighting this morning. It speaks of learning that it is all right to need help. It is also all right to ask for it and to accept it. Let me mention a couple of true stories I have experienced here. Several years ago I saw a member I had not seen for a while. I greeted him and asked how he was doing. The reply was that he was much better now. Much better? I asked if he had been ill. Oh, no, he said. He had been in a terrible accident and had almost died. He had been in intensive care for days and then hospitalized for weeks. I was flabbergasted. I said I had not known. He replied that he had not let us know because he did not want to bother anyone.
I had a similar experience a couple of years ago. This time the story was that the member had been in the hospital for open heart surgery. He (and note that it is a he, but our women aren’t much better so don’t get smug on me now)—he, too, had not wanted to bother anyone.
This is not OK. I am not amused by this misplaced pride and self reliance. I want to know. We ministers and those on pastoral care and all your friends want to know if you are having heart surgery, or have had a diagnosis that is going to change your life, or if you are recuperating and could use a few hot meals. We can only care for each other if we know.
Which brings me to my next point. It is all right to be a snitch for pastoral care needs. If you know of someone who needs help, let me or someone else know. Do not assume that we know. If you know that someone is going to have surgery, for example, I would love to hear about it. I would rather hear about it from five people than not hear at all. Be a pastoral care snitch. It is the loving thing to do. Your friend or family member will be grateful. Often someone is not willing to ask for help themselves but is glad when help comes.
In addition, be part of our pastoral care effort. It takes all of us. Often the best pastoral care is the kindness one friend shows another. I know that most of the pastoral care that goes on I don’t ever hear about. A phone call, a note, a kind word, a helping hand makes a huge difference. Each of us has to pay attention. People often show they need some help in very subtle ways—an offhand comment, a tone of voice, body language. We miss so many quiet cries for help. We have wonderful volunteers and staff working on pastoral care. But pastoral care is everyone’s job.
Finally, I encourage you to consider being a more formal part of our caring effort. As we grow and welcome new people, our needs grow. Consider being part of one of our teams of volunteers. Talk to Sue Parilla, our volunteer coordinator, or to a member of the pastoral care group. You know, when we give we receive so much.
There is enough love here. I am convinced of that. I see it all the time. My prayer is that we learn to give that love form, to organize that love, to focus that love where it is needed most. This is the great challenge for us as we strive to care for one another.
Let us allow the love that lives in every heart express itself. Let us learn to receive as well as to give. Let us always be a community that cares deeply for one another, and may every single person here know that he or she is truly held in an invisible embrace of concern and compassion.
Amen.