Values
Seventh Sunday after Epiphany
February 24, 2019
Genesis 45:3-11, 15, Psalm 37:1-12, 41-42, Luke 6:27-38
A couple of weeks ago, in the advice column of the Boston Globe, there was a letter to Miss Conduct. The title of the column was “Advice: A friend tries to get out of paying her share. I’m sick of it. No one in our group wants to confront her.” from Anonymous, New York.
The person asking for advice explained her situation like this: We have a friend group, and whenever we go out for dinner for a birthday, we pick up the tab for the birthday girl, and split the check. One friend always under orders, ends out picking food off our plates, and then pays only for what she orders. Anyway, the gist of the letter was that this friend was getting tired and resentful of the miserly ways of this cheapskate friend. Miss Conduct answers suggesting that Anonymous, New York, needs to weigh up what is really bothering her: is she discontented with the group? Is she unhappy because everyone complains about this cheap friend behind her back, and won’t confront her? Then Miss Conduct concludes with, “is the friend group important enough that you can swallow your pride and just think of this as one of the endearing, yet absurd traditions of the group that is worth enduring?”
And what this dilemma seems to boil down to is values. What is more important friendship or fairness?
Our lectionary lessons challenges us to take up Kingdom values – especially the passage regarding Joseph in the Old Testament, and this continuation of Jesus’ sermon on the plane in Luke’s Gospel.
If you are not familiar with the story of Joseph, Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery because he is, in their minds, a smarty-pants know-it-all, a spoilt youth, and favorite of their father. So Joseph ends out in Egypt, and becomes one of the most powerful men in that nation because of his ability to interpret dreams and read the portents. And then his brothers, many years later, have to grovel to ask for his help because back home they are experiencing a severe famine. So in summary Joseph forgives them eventually, and they all go and live with him. That’s forgiveness for you. He chooses forgiveness over just deserts.
In our Gospel lesson we hear the command to be selflessly forgiving, generous, and loving – toward people who don’t necessarily deserve that from us. It’s a high order from Jesus. How do we live up to such a seemingly impossible calling? Is it too much to ask to live in a world that is fair – not one that elicits so much personally from us? Asking us for things that get stuck in our gullets – stuck in our collective craw?
And it would be remiss for me to leave out the Psalm for today, Psalm 37 – that calls us to live a life of faith putting behind us jealousy, and fretting, and anger – and to keep our faith in God who will help and rescue us.
When I read these lessons for this morning – It made me think of all those wonderful poems and charges in poetry over the last couple of centuries that call us to live our lives from our best selves. Not the petty self, not the hungry and angry, fed up, annoyed and selfish self. The person that can be found around the world 10 minutes before bedtime.
I think of Rudyard Kipling’s “If,” which is a poem that every school boy in England at a particular time had to memorize. “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too.”
Or the poem Desiderata by Max Erman, “Go placidly among the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.”
Or the poem Invictus that carried Nelson Mandela, president of South Africa from 1994-1999, through his 27 years of imprisonment enduring unimaginable hardship. The last stanza states “It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.”
And there are so many of these beautiful chestnuts, poems that implore and elicit our best version of ourselves, that I could quote to you all morning.
But the point of what Jesus has to say, or what Joseph exemplified in our Old Testament story, is that they are not the only heroes. We are the heroes too. Let’s think about heroes for a moment. Why do we admire them? We admire heroes because they live out their individual callings, according to their highest calling and values.
We can do that too. But part of living out our most important values is to figure them out. Who are you when you are your best?
For a couple of weekends in the last month as some of you know, I have been leading board retreats – one for our camp and conference center, and one for St. Andrew’s Church Wellesley which is my husband’s parish. And one of the exercises that I had both boards do is to look at a list of values – which was produced by Professor Brene Brown of the University of Houston in her book Dare to Lead.[1] You have copies of the value list too in your service sheet.[2] And what I had participants do is to figure out their highest values. Brene Brown encourages people and corporations that she works with to figure out what are their top two values. She has done this exercise with over 10,000 people so it is possible. And what she acknowledges is that when you first see this list you will probably circle between 10-15 values. But then she encourages people to start to narrow the values down. Are there some values that can be embedded in others – so for myself – I was drawn to love and kindness, but felt comfortable enough to couch those two under the value of faith. Family was another value that I found I could embed under belonging. What Brene Brown says, is that this is an exercise of prioritizing your values – and she adds quoting Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, “If you have more than three priorities, you have no priorities.”
And so for fun, or for a challenge, I encourage you to take a look at this list. What are your values – not your aspirational values – but the values that you truly strive to live out in your daily lives? And after you do that ask yourself a few questions – like – What are three behaviors that support my value? What are three slippery behaviors that are outside your values? What’s an example of a time when you were fully living into that value?[3]
And what Brene Brown says is that when we know our values, and we are aware of our values (and she believes this takes a conscious exercise of deliberation), we can choose to be “courageous over comfort, …[choose what’s right over what’s fun, fast, or easy;…[adding] it’s practicing your values, not just professing them.”
So what does this have to do with faith – what does this have to do with our lectionary readings? What does this have to do with Anonymous from New York? Well, each of us is endowed with God given values – and each of us have been given in our hearts one value over another. And those values are how we discern what God is calling forth from us, what we can contribute to our church and to our communities and our families and friends. It helps us make decisions when we are hard pressed to make them. And that is what Miss Conduct is asking of Anonymous – what in your heart of hearts is of most value? That friendship group? Integrity? Honesty? Or Fairness?
But when you know your values – and you live them out – it will be like the promise, that beautiful good news, that Jesus says to us at the end of that very challenging Gospel passage – “A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be into your lap; for the measure you give, will be the measure you get back.”
Thanks be to God
| List of VALUES Accountability Achievement Adaptability Adventure Altruism Ambition Authenticity Balance Beauty Being the best Belonging Career Caring Collaboration Commitment Community Compassion Competence Confidence Connection Contentment Contribution Cooperation Courage Creativity Curiosity Dignity | Diversity Environment Efficiency Equality Ethics Excellence Fairness Faith Family Financial stability Forgiveness Freedom Friendship Fun Future generations Generosity Giving back Grace Gratitude Growth Harmony Health Home Honesty Hope Humility Humor Inclusion Independence Initiative Integrity | Intuition Job security Joy Justice Kindness Knowledge Leadership Learning Legacy Leisure Love Loyalty Making a difference Nature Openness Optimism Order Parenting Patience Patriotism Peace Perseverance Personal fulfillment Power Pride Recognition Reliability Resourcefulness Respect Responsibility Risk Taking | Safety Security Self-discipline Self-expression Self-respect Serenity Service Simplicity Spirituality Sportsmanship Stewardship Success Teamwork Thrift Time Tradition Travel Trust Truth Understanding Uniqueness Usefulness Vision Vulnerability Wealth Well-being Wholeheartedness Wisdom Write your own: |
[1] Dare to Lead, Brene Brown, 2018, p. 188.
[2] also in print at the end of this sermon text
[3] Dare to Lead, 2018, Brene Brown, pp. 185-193
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