Shed A Little Light - sermon January 18

Shed a Little Light

Rev. Alison Longstaff, Jan 18, 2015

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

2 Kings 4:1-7; Matthew 14:13-21; New Jerusalem’s Heavenly Doctrine 151-2  

Elisha said, “I wonder how I can be of help. Tell me, what do you have in your house?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Well, I do have a little oil.”

On this Martin Luther King Sunday, I wanted to talk about what it takes to be a hero, and it might not be what you think. 

I first saw Joe Black in the line at Café Crème down here on Front Street.  My immediate impression of his mustache and tattoos and piercings was, “Scary.  Give that one lots of room!”

 

I happened to be in line with Carolyn Lockwood.  What she said to me next dragged my needle right off that record.  She said with a big smile, “Have you met Joe Black?  He is such a great guy.  Everyone loves him!”  I then learned about his daily Facebook “Message of Awesomeness,” and of the many other ways he brightens the lives of many in this community just by showing up in life with optimism and words of support and encouragement.  Jaded cynics beware.  Joe’s light shines on through the darkest days.  He is a local hero.  

Here I sat down with Joe and asked him the following questions. He answered with his heart.  I have included some summations of his answers. His words encouraged us all to make what difference we can with what we have.  He revealed how we never know when kind words from us might save someone's life.  His words of kindness and way of being loving has inspired at least one person and probably more not to commit suicide.

Tell us a bit about your background, where you grew up and went to school.  How would you describe your childhood and teenage years?   Joe grew up in Bath, attending the local schools.

You got an award from Maine Street Bath, what was it for?  It is for being a good citizen---for his Messages of Awesomeness and Hugs and contributing in many ways, such as the reading program and youth program.

You post daily messages of awesomeness on Facebook and have a commitment to being positive and loving.  What else do you do, and why do you do these things?  He helped see that a skate park was built and he promotes literacy in the schools.

So, do you feel positive and loving all the time? Not at all.  Sometimes he is writing his positive messages to remind himself to stay positive. 

Tell me about a few favorite memories or moments that have happened because of your commitment to being positive and loving and real. A woman told him she was still alive because of his words of encouragement.  Just seeing him stopped her from killing herself.

It sounds very rewarding. What does it cost you to put yourself out there the way you do?  He said it costs him nothing.  He just tries to be himself every day.

We applauded Joe.  He sat down, and then I tied the interview and Scripture together with the theme.

Our Scripture readings pointed us to the way God can take the few resources that we have and make them more than enough for us to accomplish good in the world.  God works through what we love, which is represented by the oil in the widow’s house.  All she had was a little oil, and she thought it was nothing.  But oil represents love.  Oil represents the best in us, it is the spark of joy that can make us serve for hours without fatigue because we are so full of love.  That spark is different for each of us.  It is a spiritual love that shows up in physical ways.

When we tap our inner love, we discover that it is something that never runs out.

That is the message in today’s Scriptures.  That there is always enough when we focus on what matters spiritually. Who among us has not experienced that timelessness and inexhaustible focus that can come over us, when we are engaged in something that truly calls to us?

Our deep spiritual love is bigger and harder to define than the ways it shows up in what we do on earth, but we can get glimpses into what it is by what we love to do.

Some understandings of Swedenborg say that we have a “good” love and an “evil” love, and that we have to “shun” the evil love and try to let God put the good love in us more.  But there is another way to look at it that is simpler and easier to work with.  Let’s picture us as different parts of one body, and I might be, say, part of the liver, and you might be part of a muscle on the right arm, or a red blood cell, or maybe a brain cell. There is so much possibility, and every single cell is needed.  I can be a healthy liver cell, or an infected one.  I might be disease-free or covered in cancer.  But I remain a liver-cell.  I am neither evil nor good, I am a potential useful contributor, but my usefulness is impaired or not by the darkness or disease that is attacking me.   I am what I am.  The problem is the disease or imbalance that affects me. My job is to become aware of and work to remove the diseases or imbalances, not shun my very nature. This model takes a lot of shame and blame and self-loathing out of the picture. It recruits us in being strong against the blocks, or “cancers and diseases” that stop us from living our love.  Do you see the difference in the model?

It is like the difference between a healthy rabbit and a rabbit with rabies.  The rabbit isn't “evil”.  But the rabies will cause the rabbit to do harm until the rabies is removed from it. That is how good loves can be hijacked for harm.  We are made to be expressions of good love.  We can learn about the things that twist our good love and do harm through us by learning about the “hijackers” and protecting against them.

In any case, our good deep spiritual love can show up in all sorts of diverse natural expressions.  For one person, it might show up as rescuing cats; for another, volunteering many hours for a hospital.  For you it might be helping one person at a time with a kind word or an errand; for me it might be making people smile and chuckle in the grocery checkout line.  The speaker at Rotary two weeks ago went to Cambodia to work on a clean drinking water project!  But for someone with massive health challenges it might be all they can do to be patient and kind with their caregivers.  But each one, no matter what the scale, is making a difference in the world towards greater ease, greater peace, and a better life for each other. 

It isn't size or scope that matters.  It is what we do with what we have at hand no matter how small that matters, and God promises that whatever that is, it is enough. 

And it isn't a competition.  It is good that we give awards to thank the ones who make a difference. I loved witnessing the standing ovation offered to Joe when he won his Main Street Bath Award.  But most of us will go unrecognized, and that is okay, because when we are truly living our love, we don’t really care about being recognized anyway, we are having too much fun living our love.

In our Hebrew Bible lesson the widow was also advised to “sell” her oil.  This means that she was commanded to value it and to allow others to value it.  This is not a lesson in capitalism but in self-respect.  It is we who can fail to recognize the value of what we have to offer and can have a hard time accepting love and respect and praise from others for what we bring to life. One woman in this congregation whose initials might be A.S. regularly dismisses her kindness and gentleness and sweetness as being not worth much, and yet there isn't a soul in this congregation who doesn't see her as a treasure beyond words.  (And by the way, before I was married, my initials were A.S. and I still struggle to see that what I bring to the world is valuable, so I am preaching what I need to keep learning.  Why is it is so much easier to see the lovability and worth of someone else, while I struggle to give it to myself?)

So, no matter what your initials are, if you are a self-dismisser I encourage you to rethink and realize the worth you bring, yes, just by being you.  It is no big and great and hard task.  It is like brushing the dirt and stones off a beautifully planted garden, and letting God’s love do the rest.  You are the garden.  You are the seeds.   You are the beautiful plant just needing the right conditions to blossom.

Swedenborg teaches that our very nature is love, and he calls us to “repent.”  “Repent” is an old fashioned word that means “use God’s help to remove the things that block you from being more loving.”  Our job is “repentance”.  God’s job is to do all the rest.  God stands ready to help us battle the weeds and insects and (switching metaphors) spiritual cancer cells that may attack along the way.  Those things are not our fault.  They just are, from years of human darkness on this planet.

Yes, there will be weeds!  There will be nasty creatures that try to stunt our growth, block our path, and eat our happiness.  But God is bigger and stronger than any weed or insect or spiritual cancer cell.  And God made us to grow and bloom and spread joy.

The hero’s journey is not an easy one, but it is the only one worth travelling.  The path to love, the path to you becoming your best self is the path to more joy than you can imagine.  Even death is no enemy when your deepest love is the goal.  Just ask Jesus.  So even though you may feel sometimes like you are walking through the shadow of death, fear no evil.  The God that made you—the God of Love—is with you, and the angels, and all these people around you too.  And all are whispering, “Grow!”

Amen.

Musical interlude "Shed a Little Light" by James Taylor

Shed a Little Light by James Taylor

Let us turn our thoughts today to Martin Luther King,
and recognize that there are ties between us—all men and women

living on the earth—ties of hope and love, of sister and brotherhood.

That we are bound together in our desire to see the world become

a place in which our children can grow free and strong.
We are bound together by the task that stands before us and the road that lies ahead.
We are bound and we are bound.

There is a feeling like the clenching of a fist
There is a hunger in the center of the chest
There is a passage through the darkness and the mist
And though the body sleeps the heart will never rest

Shed a little light, oh Lord! So that we can see—just a little light, oh Lord.
’Want to stand it on up, stand it on up, oh Lord.
’Want to walk it on down.  Shed a little light, oh Lord.

Can't get no light from the dollar bill. Don’t give me no light from a TV screen.
When I open my eyes I want to drink my fill from the Well on the Hill.
Do you know what I mean?

Shed a little light, oh Lord! ….

Oh, let us turn our thoughts today to Martin Luther King,
And recognize that there are ties between us—all men and women

living on the earth—ties of hope and love, of sister and brotherhood.

Readings:

2 Kings 4:1-7

One day the wife of a man from the guild of prophets called out to Elisha, “Your servant my husband is dead. You well know what a good man he was, devoted to God. And now the man to whom he was in debt is on his way to collect by taking my two children as slaves.”

Elisha said, “I wonder how I can be of help. Tell me, what do you have in your house?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Well, I do have a little oil.”

“Here’s what you do,” said Elisha. “Go up and down the street and borrow jugs and bowls from all your neighbors. And not just a few—all you can get. Then come home and lock the door behind you, you and your sons. Pour oil into each container; when each is full, set it aside.”

She did what he said. She locked the door behind her and her sons; as they brought the containers to her, she filled them. When all the jugs and bowls were full, she said to one of her sons, “Another jug, please.”

He said, “That’s it. There are no more jugs.”

Then the oil stopped.

She went and told the story to the man of God. He said, “Go sell the oil and make good on your debts. Then both you and your sons may live on the rest.”

Matthew 14:13-21

When Jesus heard that John had been killed, he went away from there by boat for a deserted place. But when the people heard it, they followed Him on foot from the cities around the lake. When Jesus went ashore He saw the huge crowd. And He was moved with compassion toward them, and He healed their sick.

When it was evening, His disciples came to Him, saying, “This is a lonely place and the day is now over. Send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy themselves food.”

But Jesus said to them, “They do not need to depart. You give them something to eat.”

They said to Him, “We have only five loaves here and two fish.”

He said, “Bring them here to Me.”  Then He commanded the crowds to sit down on the grass. He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke and gave the loaves to His disciples; and the disciples gave them to the crowds.  They all ate and were filled. And they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments that remained.  Those who had eaten were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine 151, 152 portions

151. To do good to the neighbor which is actually good, it must be done from a good love—that is, for the sake of helping or serving others. Those who truly love serving others are not eager to hear of reward, for they simply love to help others, and they get satisfaction from making a difference.  In fact, they are sad if they consider that what they do might be for selfish reasons.

152. Those who do good because they want something for themselves out of it do not do good in service to the Lord, but in service to themselves.  For their first motivation is self-serving—they are looking out only for themselves. Meanwhile they view the good of the neighbor, which is the good of fellow-citizens, of their community, of their country, and of all humanity as nothing but a means to an end.  This means that a short-sighted attachment to self-service and gain at others’ expense can lie hidden inside good deeds, and so far as self-service and selfish gain lie hidden within a good deed, it is not actually good at all.