First Church in Cambridge, Congregational UCC
17 April 2005
A Word About Tenderness
I want to say a word today about tenderness. You know what that is because you need it. You need it and long for it, and so do I. Because maybe you've had the kind of week in which someone rubbed salt in a wound, or found a vulnerable place in your heart and hurt you there, belittling you or berating you, making you feel guilty; or maybe a conflict in your family exhausted you with hot arguments or cold silences, or an injustice at work undermined your sense of purpose, or some mistake you made a long time ago came back to haunt you, or some weakness or sense of failure or inadequacy that you thought you had mastered tripped you up out of the blue, and you had to renew the old struggle; or maybe your kids did something dumb at school and you got a call from the vice-principal, or they ran a little crazy in town and you got a call from a neighbor, or you discovered that they have big secrets and bad friends and you have begun to worry that when a call comes, it might come too late.
And the last thing you need to hear at times like these is that you have only yourself to blame, that you should have been stronger, that you should have been smarter, that you should have known better, that you don't measure up, that you fell down on the job, that you should be ashamed.
And so I want to say a word today about tenderness. You know what that is because you need it and long for it, and so do I. Because there are times in your lives when things aren't working the way you planned, and the road you thought you would travel is not the road you are on, and the road you are on is unmarked, or a dead end, or a treadmill, but you're on it now, and you can't see how to get off. And times when the world will not cooperate with your dreams and will not be the bright stage for all the roles you believe you were meant to play, and so you can barely contain your inner rage and disappointment about how unfair it all is.
And the last thing you need to hear at times like these is that you should just suck it up and make do, or that since you got yourself into it, you need to get yourself out of it; or that you are too big for your britches, that you haven't planned right, lived right, done right, and that you should be ashamed.
And so I want to say a word about tenderness. Because on top of everything else, a reckless driver cut you off on the way to church today, and you of course slammed on your breaks and honked your horn, and when you did, he gave you the finger; and you, innocent and still trembling from how close you came to buying the farm, felt a primeval urge in your veins, and you wanted to punch that SOB's lights out and make him see the error of his ways, and you may even have trailed him for a mile or two, riding his tail, but then you thought about tire irons and Saturday Night Specials under the passenger seat and you cut it out. And you realized as you found your pew that you are tired of how hard it is just to go from point A to point B in the city and in life, you are indignant that nobody obeys the rules, and you are sick of the gratuitous violence that lies beneath the surface of the most comfortable lives.
And the last thing you need to hear is how foolish you were to do what you did, or how maybe you need an anger management course so that you can learn to just chill out, or maybe you need more exercise, and oh, by the way, you should be ashamed.
And so I need to say a word today about tenderness. You know what that is because you crave it. You long for it, and so do I. Because you get lost from time to time the way a sheep goes missing from a flock, not willfully, but more by degrees, by keeping its head down, by focusing on the tuft of green grass it has found among the rocks, and then on the next, and then on the next, never looking up, just nibbling and inching farther from the flock, inching and nibbling until it has munched itself into serious trouble.
And when you get lost like that, the last thing you need is a Pharisee to remind you that it's your own damn fault, and that if you had just been paying attention this would never have happened, and so now you can just freeze to death out there, or die of loneliness, because there are other, better, more docile and less stupid sheep back in the flock that deserve more attention.
What you need when you go missing is to be found. What you need is someone like a shepherd to look for you until he finds you and drapes you over his shoulders and takes you back where you belong. What you need is someone so glad to see you still alive and bleating, no matter how dirty or broken or pathetic you look, that his shouts of triumph fill the deep valley and echo back from the sky.
I'm speaking about tenderness today because you get lost from time to time, the way a coin goes missing, dropping to the sidewalk through a hole in a purse, slipping out of some snoozer's pocket and falling between the cushions of the couch, or rolling off a smooth countertop onto the floor; lost not like socks in the dryer that lose themselves on purpose, but like a casualty of carelessness, accidentally, like one more unattended and forgotten thing.
And the last thing you need at such a time is a Pharisee lecturing you that it's God's will to have been so neglected and mislaid, that it's your lot or role or even your glory in life to be so haphazardly wasted, that there's a reason and plan for everything and that you just need to be patient until it all becomes clear.
What you need when you go missing is to be found. You need someone like a woman with a lamp and a broom who will not rest until every last inch of the floor has been illumined and swept, until she finds you and puts you back in the olive wood box with the leather hinge where she keeps all her treasures. What you need is someone who cannot believe her good fortune at having found you even if you are not as bright as you were before you fell among the dust bunnies, and even if it has exhausted her to locate you. What you need is someone who is still not too tired after all that effort to throw open the doors of her house and let the neighbors know that now all is right with the world because she has you back again, and whose joy at finding you fills the village and echoes back from the sky.
I am speaking of tenderness today because you get lost from time to time, lost like a boy that goes missing trying to find himself, trying to become his own person, and who, when he's sated with self-indulgence and comes to himself, finds that he doesn't have a self, but has turned into someone he doesn't know, a pig person who eats what pigs eat, and who thinks that now even his own father will not know him as a son, but will be able to see him only as a hired hand; lost like a boy so lost that he is willing to stay lost, even when he's finally home.
And the last thing you need when you are trudging up the lane, shaky and mortified, smelling like a sty and rehearsing your lines, is for some righteous religious person full of moral clarity, with a lock on the culture of life, to point out the obvious—that you were naïve and willful, self-indulgent, over-confident, ungrateful, probably liberal, which is to say 'dissolute', and that if you are allowed back into the household even as a slave you'll be one lucky young jerk.
What you need when you come home still lost in your heart, still missing in your soul, still far, far away, is to be found. What you need is someone like a parent who totally adores you and for whom you can do no wrong, who sees you before you see him, who cuts you off in mid-sentence and falls on your neck with kisses. What you need is someone who gives you ruby rings and ermine-collared robes, who sends the jolly sound of pipes and drums throughout the house and strikes up all the laughing joy that cancels every debt, while the best meat on the farm turns roasting on the spit.
There will be a time and a place for judgment. A time and a place for remorse. A time and a place for what we usually mean by repentance, a time and a place for coming face to face with our mistakes and regrets, for taking responsibility for our carelessness and indifference, our aimlessness and self-preoccupation, our greed and dishonesty, our insecure and narcissistic betrayals and all our secret vices, to temper our rage and bring down our little tyrannies; there will be a time and a place for getting help, for change and growth and for forming new habits. There will be a time and place to sort out what we did wrong and what was done wrong to us, to heal and be healed, to forgive and to be forgiven.
But because so much of the time sin is more a matter of haplessness than perversity, because choice is never simple, never as free and as obvious as some people think; and because motives are never uncomplicated or completely conscious; and because pain is everywhere, bidden and unbidden; and because we are so hungry and thirsty for love and acceptance and worth that we are prepared to do almost anything to satisfy ourselves; and because more often than not people do not even know they are lost until they are found, the first thing has to be tenderness, not a quarantine to keep sin from spreading on contact, not a good scolding and to bed without supper. The first thing has to be a human hand in welcome, the first impulse to keep intimate company with everyone—no matter who they are or where they are on the journey of life; to keep company at a great, delicious and very costly meal. The first thing is mercy. And the second, joy.
There will also be another time for us to talk about the church as the collection of the tender, the wounded, and the erstwhile missing, and a time when we must talk more and more deeply and with more insistence about the church's calling to be a vessel of tenderness, to offer tender ministration to the heart-aching, blood-soaked frictions of our families, our politics, our workplaces, our markets and our suffering beauty of a world; another time to contemplate and to urge your full embrace of the church's calling also to be the earthly expression of the loud angelic joy that overcomes heaven when the lost are found.
But tenderness is enough for today. Today I feel moved only to say this one word. It is another way, my way, of saying 'Jesus', and of testifying to you with awe and thanks about who he is for me, and who I pray he might be for you. And so, dear ones, I offer you this word. I offer you him, for your finding, for your joy, for your peace and your salvation.
Mary Luti
© 2005, J Mary Luti