We’re having a lot of conversations about breaking down stereotypes in our world today. This is a great thing, because even though we sometimes use stereotypes to help us figure out who we are, we can also use them to reject people that are different. Stereotypes can become threatening, hurtful and wounding in a variety of ways.
I know a thing or two about being the target of stereotypes and I’m sure I’ve been guilty of projecting them as well. In this short video on untamed women of the Bible, I talk about women who “smash the brands,” in the Old Testament and challenge the names used to label women who tried to express their individuality in ways that were not culturally acceptable. Stereotypes can cause division, suppress identity formation and lead to great suffering, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
For the past decade, I’ve worked with some of the most traumatized and rejected people in our culture who suffer from stereotypes. Homeless, refugees, immigrants and the poor. However, it has been my experience that when we decide to answer the cry for love and acceptance that comes from all human beings, particularly those who have been rejected, prejudice and stereotypes are shattered.
This is one of the first steps in effective social justice, heart change. It is in human community where we learn to trust one another and become open to difference that we discover our own deepest needs are met. This is where things like meaning and purpose are born, in love and friendship among strangers. This is where we overcome our own deepest fears and are able to lift others out of suffering.
I have found that it is impossible to break down a stereotype, or experience change in your heart just by talking about it. The walls between us come down as we decide to take action, to be in community with those who are different than ourselves.
There is a great scripture from my tradition that says, “do not forget to show kindness to strangers, in doing this, many have entertained angels unaware.” (Heb 13:2)
In my work with the homeless population, I experienced this more than once. The presence of the sacred as I opened my heart to the strangers in my community. Of course, my work was always tinged with fear, and I had to use some discernment to keep myself relatively safe. But heart change does require some risk, mainly the risk of moving out of our own comfort zone and opening our minds and hearts to the rejected. This is how the world changes, one heart at a time.
I wrote a song about it called “Tending Angels” and got to work with an award winning film maker, Tracy Facceli, to tell the story in this short music video. We wanted to break down the typical stereotypes of the homeless and show the real reasons people spiral into shelter insecurity. I hope it inspires you to spend some time with those who are different than you, particularly those who feel rejected. It is as simple as offering friendship. What you find might surprise you and it will most certainly change you for the better.
I’m Sherry Cothran, a pastor, singer-songwriter and author who was once known as the lead singer of the popular rock band, The Evinrudes. Check out more of my story here.
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Walking the dog this morning in a neighborhood frosted by snow. My highly attuned yellow lab/squirrel dog is always a little freaked out by the change of pace, the stark quiet. Last night’s threatening ice has brought the school buses, harried drivers late for work and noise pollution from the interstate to a hush. Robins, cardinals, blue jays, mockingbirds, finches, crows and blackbirds pierce the air with song as they have all come out from their hiding places to find today’s crumbs of bread.
We all yearn for spring, for the thaw, with its fluorescent green and goldenrod. In the doldrums of the long winter, we are oblivious to spring’s surprises, her thunderstorms and her turbulent tornadoes. We are not ready for what we love. We’re living in a new normal. More ice, more snow, more fire, more wind, less rain and more rain than ever before. More heat will come with summer, more than we think we can bear.
The world is a beautiful and terrifying place all the time and it is where I belong. I belong to the earth, to the rivers, lakes and oceans, to the wind and the air, to the fires that rage, they are all me and I am them. In this biosphere, space ship earth that we are living on, we all get recycled. We are reminded of this on Ash Wednesday, how very recyclable we are. I will say, as I take my finger and smudge it in some dust, push back the hair of those who have come from their precious brows and make the sign of a cross, “from ashes you came and to ashes you shall return.” It’s a sobering reminder that we are all connected through our very birth and death to one another, to creation, that all things capable of life are in fact, in one form or another, still living.
This comforts me.
I overheard two older men in a coffee shop this morning talking about “little deaths.” One of them was a Wise Old Man,I could tell, he was the one giving the advice to the man who was facing cancer. He talked about the “little deaths” in the form of all the things we lose, the car keys, the wallet, the life we once had, a loved one, our mobility, our freedom. He then said something about attunement. I became aware that I was eavesdropping and then stopped listening, though I could not help but smile. Attunement is simply the act of bringing all things into harmony. This WOM was trying to help the other find harmony in the act of living and dying. It was a beautiful thing to experience, the exchange of loving and caring in the act of comforting through truthfulness and wisdom.
Each day, we have something to give to someone along the way; a smile, a word of encouragement, an expression of hope. Think of all the things the world gives you without ever asking for anything in return. The sun shines, as does the moon, creating day and night, we love the contrast of light and dark and the beautiful moments as it changes. The earth brings food, creation brings rain and all the things that are needed for the conditions of life are provided for us for free. How much more we can offer the earth and one another when we live each day in the mindfulness that we belong to an order much greater than ourselves, and yet we have been invited to experience it, to become attuned to its natural rhythm, to rescue creation, each in our own small way, from the damages done.
This week, to those of us who receive the mark of the cross and follow the Christ on that journey of life and death and resurrection, let us meditate on that phrase, “From ashes you came and to ashes you shall return.” Let it be a reminder that though our bodies belong to the earth, our spirits were meant to soar and we belong to a greater gift than we could ever give, made real to us in so many ways, every day. The gift of life unending, the gift of the ashes.
I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have spouses be as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.
Paul, a good Torah scholar, is building a wonderful profile of what are considered basic assumptions for living as a Christian community. By chapter seven, he’s already checked quite a few things off the list. Quite a a few heavy hitters: salvation, divisions in the church, God’s infinite wisdom, more church divisions, the ministry of the church leaders, sexual immorality, lawsuits between members, marriage and fidelity, what to do about the unmarried, and on and on, and oh yes, the big one, the end of the world. By the time we get to his pinnacle statement, really the climax of 1 Corinthians, chapter 13, the one that tells us in no uncertain terms Paul’s core theology – that love is the most powerful force in the universe, he will have also covered the topic of head coverings for women and mentioned, again, divisions in the church the authority of the church leaders.
You see, it became necessary for him to lay down some ground rules because there were problems, I mean, there’s no need for rules unless there are problems. And like a psychologist friend of mine likes to say, “wherever two or three or gathered, there will be cognitive dissonance.”
But this basic assumption on his list, this statement that the present form of this world is passing away, what’s up with that? And what’s the deal, really? He said this two millennia ago and we’re all still here, in the present world…. the world as we know it has not yet passed away. What’s he talking about anyway?
That question leads us to the basic assumptions of the Christian community Paul is addressing. Paul, a self proclaimed “Jew of Jews”, an avid Jewish scholar, versed in the Torah, and the community he was addressing, still basically functioning under the traditions of a Jewish community who had now embraced Christ as the embodiment of their prophetic oracles pointing to a messiah — Paul the converted one –would have known that there were a set of basic assumptions within the faith community he could speak to and build upon and otherwise use for his great mission.
We are no different, when we come together on Sunday morning we all assume that we have basic assumptions, we are all followers of Christ, dedicated to being disciples and using Scripture, Experience, Tradition and Reason as our guiding principles. We are not only Christians but we inhabit a denomination, Methodism, that has certain guidelines and framework within which we practice our faith, we may not agree with them all and by the way I just gave you the four pillars of the Wesleyan quadrilateral in case you missed that.
So, when we worship or interact with one another, we hold these basic assumptions up as a kind of framework for our interaction, we know who we are, how to be, what we are seeking from our experience. Of course, the problems come, and they always come, when these basic assumptions are transgressed or otherwise tossed out the window. Sometimes the basic assumptions are too narrow and call for a shift, these days we take Paul to task on some of his more limited statements on gender, our interpretation of his core message, love, as Paul would state, has room to evolve as we evolve. But generally, as we evolve, there are certainly problems when we fail to evolve in love.
Problems were occurring in the church at Corinth, there was some kind of upheaval, uproar, or otherwise nasty church conflict. The basic assumptions had been transgressed, love had not evolved in the people.
So Paul reminds them of who they are and whose they are – to be a follower of God in the Jewish tradition meant a couple of very unique things that we may take for granted today. In a world where there were many gods to choose from, gods that could promise all kinds of things like success, fertility, and much, much more, perfectly legitimate gods by the standards of the ancient near east, the one thing that made Israel unique was that they were not to chase after these gods, this always got them into big trouble. The second thing that made them completely unique and different from all the other religious zealots in the land was that their God commanded them to love the stranger. Love the stranger and do not chase after other gods — these two things would have been basic assumptions, as they are for us today in our Christian community.
So, into the litany of basic assumptions, Paul throws in these three verses :
7:29 I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none,
7:30 and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions,
7:31 and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.
What is unique and different about being a Christian is that we believe we can trust in love, we believe that love really is the force that holds the world together, we believe that love is the only permanent thing, that anything that goes against love is impermanent. We believe that without Divine and unconditional love, the world is, as feared, passing away.
This is why we don’t chase after other gods, because their interest in us is not based in love. It is rather, based in manipulation, the pursuit leads us to wither and die.
Trust in love. If you lived your whole life by this one rule and followed no other rule, it would be enough. Trust in love. It’s difficult, it was very difficult for the Israelites, as Paul tells us earlier in his litany, they got it wrong very often but when they did get it right, it was spectacular. It is difficult to follow this cloud of love around, isn’t it? Love doesn’t make plans, it’s just love. Love grows and changes us and the world around us as it builds its foundation, this is what makes love frightening. And we have a hard time trusting in love as the world of permanence, the world that does not pass away, the form that holds us together, because we don’t often recognize what Divine love is. We have often grown up in systems where we had to manipulate, hurt, beg, cheat, lie, appease, or control the behavior of others to get what we needed, we fail to understand what unconditional love means and so we don’t trust it when it comes around. We get caught up in these ways of behaving to get our needs met and we end up never really finding the intimacy we crave, the embrace of God, because we find it hard to let go of these ways of being, we refuse to unlearn our behaviors that take us deeper and deeper into distrust.
Yet, in our Christian community, we say that we are a community of love and we are committed to this form of the world that will not pass away, while all else perishes.
You want to know God, know love, we claim. Seek to know love, seek to trust love where you find it in its purest form.
This is how we know love, by the way we are with one another. The thing about love is – a quote my mentor loves to say, “Our God may be one but it takes two to find Him.” It is in relationship that is committed to the kind of Divine love we talk about here that we find it and we begin to trust it and move towards it.
What does Paul, in his climax chapter, chapter 13, say about this love that holds all things together? Does he say that…..
Love is impatient? Love is unkind? That love bears false witness about another person? That love is jealous? That love is easily angered? Does he say that love keeps a record of wrong? Does he say love never protects, never trusts, never hopes, never perseveres? No, but this is what most of us have come to understand as love in this world that is passing away.
No, Paul tells us the truth, that love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love is patient, kind, love perseveres, love believes, love keeps no record of wrong, it is not jealous, it does not boast. This is why love builds a world that does not pass away, it keeps on giving of itself without reserve or conditions because it is a force between souls connected to God. In fact, Paul tells us, unabashedly and without quivering that love, in fact, never fails. This is why God made it a part of his deal with his people, to love the stranger would require a kind of risk, the kind of risk that asks one to trust in love.
We think so many other things in this life are permanent, we think so many other things in life make us special. But Paul says that all else belongs to a world that is passing away, a world of impermanence. A world undergirded by fear and anxiety and frenzy and distrust. A world of manipulation and back-stabbing. Paul says, yes, we live in this world but act as if you are not owned by it, don’t go chasing after those other gods, I’m telling you, they will only deliver you to the grave. But love, love will take you somewhere you never imagined.
Basic assumptions. Our basic assumption as a community of faith is that we invest ourselves fully in this kind of love. We don’t move forward, really, as a community of change and transformation, or as spiritual beings until we learn to trust love more than self-defeating beliefs, until we learn to trust love more than the bullies among us, until we learn to trust love more than the fear mongers in our world, until we learn to trust love more than the other gods that hold sway over our lives.
Friends, this is our starting and ending point for being the church in the world. The world doesn’t need another religion with an agenda to save the world, it just needs people who are committed to love. If we do this, if we are committed to this, we will thrive. If we work against love, we will fail. It is as simple as that.
As a pastor, as a leader, it is this basic assumption upon which I do all my work. If I cannot lead from this basic assumption, I am doomed to fail. But it is not only I but the very world that I inhabit, when we cease to tell the story of love, how love has saved us from ourselves, from situations in which there seemed to be no way out, if we cease to have a story of love in us then Paul’s prediction of the end of the world is now. When love’s story ceases, it will be the end.
But if we do learn to trust in love, it will strengthen us, it will create a way forward for us, it will help us to grow in our voice and our resolve, it will connect us with the very story that is written upon the walls of our very own souls.
As a church we are caught up in the greatest love story ever told: a love story for which Christ gave his life. It is sad that we usually only hear Paul’s core theology at funerals
When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:
‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’(1 Cor. 15:58)
Friends, he’s talking about the triumph of love, it is the core being of the God of the Hebrews and the Christ of the world. To quote the woman from the Song of Songs: “love is strong as death.” (8:6)
As long as this love has a story to tell in us, it will be the world in us that will never pass away.
It is 4:30 a.m., I am dreaming. I am stepping over the two-inch elevation in the concrete sidewalk in front of the church, it doesn’t qualify as a step, it’s a flaw. I need to get that fixed, I utter, again, letting the guilt rise in me that some elderly person will trip over that someday, I just know it. Then I glance at the railing, knocked out of its base and made wobbly by a truck backing in to load supplies for a birthday party, it was Hispanic, a very large party, and yes, there was lots of Corona, and no, Methodists do not allow alcohol on the premises, but even though the clause in the building usage permit that says “no alcohol on the premises” was translated into Spanish, somehow, it was not comprehended; so the railing was busted and it’s been two years and no one has really noticed, there are just too many other things to fix. Just as this elderly person falls, they will grab for the railing to secure themselves, I think, and it won’t hold them. They will be reading those two cornerstones to the left as they walk along, 1889/1969, placards to the banner years, and be thinking something fond like, “I was baptized in this church,” and then they will fall. I apologize in advance to those who are injured upon attempting to enter this church, for vanishing feelings of fondness, I apologize that despite my best efforts and my youngest, most energetic years, I cannot seem to make the entrance stable.
As usual, there are McDonald’s styrofoam cups lining the steps by the front doors, wadded up toilet paper, wet from last night’s rain, an empty liquor bottle. I step over the flaw, go get plastic gloves and remove the debris for another day (sometimes I walk past it, just being honest here, and it is secretly removed by someone else, this is grace.)… | READ THE FULL POST comment, and share on my website SherryCothran.com
You Can’t Play A Player | “I came to Nashville as a tramp,” he said. Just another guy in the crowd of those who come for our weekly meal, I learned his name and began calling him something other than tramp, not sure if he heard me. “Gossip on the street is that Nashville is tramp friendly,” he said. He came here to make a go of it, but he soon realized that all the “tramps” were just taking advantage of everyone’s kindness and not getting any better, he discovered how easy it was to just live off the good will, never taking the hard steps towards becoming self sufficient. He was having a hard time getting motivated.
He was a bit of a philosopher, I pointed out, a good quality, but also, a tortuous one. He went on the pontificate that this realization made him question whether or not having all of these free services for the homeless is a good thing, “doesn’t it just make the problem worse?” he asked. He also said that it seems really condescending from his perspective, that churches would just offer meals and assistance without ever really getting to know people or trying to change the problems. Basically, in his opinion, churches were just being played by the “tramp” community in Nashville and it was disturbing to him, though, he was deeply appreciative, he said, “don’t get me wrong.” I would never.
He had a great point. You’ve most likely heard the phrase, from some cobweb deep in one of the prophetic books of our Old Testament, often pilfered for political speeches, “Charity gives but justice changes.” This is what he was referring to. He didn’t see any real changes happening around him. He thought we were all engaged in a giant game of blowing smoke, all being played by the players… | READ THE FULL POST comment, and share frommy website SherryCothran.com
I could tell, he was the one giving the advice to the man who was facing cancer. He talked about the “little deaths” in the form of all the things we lose, the car keys, the wallet, the life we once had, a loved one, our mobility, our freedom. He then said something about attunement. I became aware that I was eavesdropping and then stopped listening, though I could not help but smile. Attunement is simply the act of bringing all things into harmony. This WOM was trying to help the other find harmony in the act of living and dying. It was a beautiful thing to experience, the exchange of loving and caring in the act of comforting through truthfulness and wisdom.
