Sunday, April 7, 2019

Sermon: Affection


Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year C
The Rev. Vicki K. Hesse,
Director of the Whitaker Institute,
Episcopal Diocese of Michigan
Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Detroit, MI
Sermon Preached on April 7, 2019

O Lord, take my lips and speak through them;
take our minds and think through them;
take our hearts
and set them on fire with love for you. Amen.

Many years ago I worked
as a computer project manager.
This one customer, Mr. Sedat,
Knew something very important:  
the difference between effectiveness and affection. 

Over the span of a year,
we met once a month to plan, review progress,
make changes and follow up on outstanding issues.
At the end of the project,
we invited my “big boss” to come and
meet the customer to show that the work was done. 

At that one-hour meeting,
Mr. Sedat asked my big boss about
his children, wife, parents, childhood, friends,
and about his life.  
For 50 minutes.
He had someone bring in tea and coffee
and lounged in conversation about personal things. 
In the last 10 minutes,
he simply shared the results of the project
and thanked the big boss. 
I was stunned,
as I had prepared charts and graphs to show the results
which was not needed at all!

Mr. Sedat simply befriended my boss,
who left that day so pleased to know Mr. Sedat
and they promised to do more business together soon.

Now, I notice that there are many societal issues
whose solutions are couched in results measurement.

Climate change?
Cut fossil fuels by x amount,
increase forest carbon by Y
and problem solved.

Weight problem?
Count calories, reduce by x amount,
exercise by y and problem solved.

Face it, our society has an inclination
towards utilitarian morality.
And I can say that this applies to me, too.
Today’s gospel reading
has something to say about this problem of utility. 

It’s the week just prior to
Jesus’ triumphal entry to Jerusalem, and
Jesus had just raised Lazarus from the dead.
And many people believed in him.
He had learned that the chief priests and Pharisees planned to put him to death. 

With that backstory, we enter today’s gospel.
The family of Lazarus
held a dinner party for Jesus and his disciples. 
At that dinner party,
Mary poured expensive perfume
on Jesus’ feet and wiped them with her hair. 
Judas exclaimed in the midst of that action
why the perfume instead of giving to the poor? 

There, we hear about this perspective of utility.
We hear the difference between
the way of Mary and the way of Judas.
What was true then is true today –
two options:
the way of effectiveness and utility and
the way of humility and affection.[1]

Just to be clear, aside from Judas being a thief,
he was the utilitarian. 
He was calculating the costs and benefits
of that expensive perfume. 
And with quick math
he decided that the best use of that perfume
could be reasoned logically.

He was not concerned about particular poor people,
but for “the poor” as a generalized blob. 
Total the number of meals served,
beds filled,
healthcare units distributed
and problem solved.
For Judas, that nard could be broken down
into a price that could create an abstract good.

But Mary had a different way.
She was not measuring costs and benefits. 
And in her slow contemplation,
she decided that the best way was affection,
to be guided by love
for the One who was before her:
that specific person whose value is priceless. 

She showed her love as abundant, effusive, excessive.
Her gesture of anointing
was not to show the value of the love,
but “to show how impossible it would be
to fix any value to such a person.”

The perfume was simply a symbol
of the infinite love that exceeds any measurement.

If there is any hope in the knowledge
that we will have “the poor” with us,
it is that the way of Mary – of affection and love. 

Pause

These two ways of
effectiveness and utility or
humility and affection – are relevant today.

The novelist Jonathan Franzen
recently unsettled the environmental conversation.
He questioned the over-focus on the current level
of atmospheric carbon: 411.
CO2, as a number, means little, he implies.

He shared about the paralysis we all feel
when faced with challenge of climate change.
He wrote of the stress that this had on his daily choices, 
so he disconnected from caring for creation.

Franzen wrote about the time when
he started to care about climate change
by watching birds.
As he paid careful, specific attention
to that tiny part of creation,
he learned about
the effect of deforestation on migration.
He began to care about the earth
not because of a carbon count
but because of the specific creature
that lived in the forest: the Cerulean warbler.


Once he started watching birds,
and worrying about their welfare,
he says he became attracted to St. Francis’s Christianity:
of loving what is concrete and vulnerable
and right in front of you.

Perhaps, when we pay attention
to the specific and concrete person right in front of us, 
The Way of Affection governs our choices. 
That person in front of us has
a story, a family, friends, an interesting life. 
When we pay attention to that person,
our lives and we are transformed
by God’s love incarnate.
When we go out and get to know real people, well,
the danger is that we might love them. 

In 2009, I came face to face with how this works
at the other border, Mexico.

That summer, my spouse Leah and I
traveled to El Paso, Texas
where for a week we lived with two Dominican Sisters. 

These nuns founded and ran Centro Santa Catalina,
a Community Center based
across the border in the city of Juarez.
They minister among and with
the poor women and children of the Colonia
located on what was once the city garbage dump. 

During the day,
we hung out with the women of the Center.
We talked, shared,
tried to teach each other our language
and played with the children. 
We saw how they lived with so little
in terms of material wealth and
so much in terms of abundant joy.

Many have built their homes over time,
often starting with cardboard and wood pallets,
and eventually graduating to cinder blocks. 
Most of their homes have no water, sewer or
electrical services; and for those who do,
the services are inadequate and unreliable. 

One day for lunch, we walked
from to Irene’s house, past rancid garbage
and
decomposing carcasses of cats and dogs,
over broken glass and wind-blown plastic bags. 
Irene, a widowed mother and grandmother
who works at the Center’s sewing co-op,
offered to prepare lunch for us in her home. 

Instead of a simple meal of beans and tortillas,
she called her grandson over
and handed him a couple of bills
from her now empty change purse. 
He slipped away and returned shortly
with a package of queso. 
She prepared a feast of enchiladas
filled with rice, beans, queso, tomatoes, salsa and spice.
The aroma filled the house!
She offered us a soda to drink. 

In my head, I cringed. I was measuring it all in my head,
Look, Irene, you have nothing!
You don’t need to feed us!  I was thinking.

Irene could certainly have fed us more simply,
scrounging up something from her near-empty pantry
and saving her money to feed her family for weeks.

Yet, thankfully, she did not understand my language.   
She only spoke in the language of God’s love
that works in God’s economy. 
Sharing what she had, with gifts from her neighbors,
trusting that it would all be enough,
grateful for our companionship.

She offered me a fresh perspective on affection.
She chose to offer us her extravagant hospitality,
to put this privileged, first-world women’s needs
over her own real needs.
Just as Mary poured out for Jesus
her expensive perfume,
Irene embodied God’s love.

. . . . . pause

Today, Mary shows us
how to love those in front of us
with all we have, excessively.

Through humility and affection,
“the poor” –
impoverished people and impoverished places –
will no longer be among us,
not because there is no need, but because (like us) 
they are named and love for who they are, 
specifically, beloved of God.

As we approach Holy Week,
God calls you to practice the Way of Love:
The way of our liberating, life giving and loving God
who knows you specifically, intimately, excessively.

You are not “the poor,” you are love made incarnate.

And, God alone grants us the grace
to love excessively
by fixing our hearts
where true joys are to be found:
Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.


[1] Sermon inspired by Rev. Ragan Sutterfield, “Wild Lectionary: Affection vs. Effectiveness” cited here on April 4, 2019.