Walking A Mile in Another's Shoes

Scripture: Luke 23:26
Rev. Billie Watts

I am so happy to be here with you today. The conversations about my coming here began almost seven months ago – with much discernment along the way on all sides. I am very excited and humbled by the opportunity to serve with you. My first exposure to TP came ten or more years ago when the women’s ministry from Boerne came to visit the day center here. At that time, I would never have dreamed of being here in this role. One never knows how lives will intersect with others.

 

I am wearing a stole today for several reasons. To be able to wear such a stole in the Methodist church, one undergoes great scrutiny – called ordination. Having just been ordained this past June after a 7 ½ year journey (including seminary), I don’t wear this stole so you know who I am but because this stole serves to remind me that I am not alone – that I am to proclaim the Word as I best understand it while yoked with God. That keeps it real for me. Also, the staff in Boerne, where I have served for the last three years, gave it to me.  It depicts scenes from the life and ministry of Jesus – it shows how the gospel message intersects with the lives of others – Godly encounters and where they lead.

 

We don’t know much about Simon – the man who was conscripted into service by the Roman soldiers to carry the crossbeam upon which Jesus will be crucified. We read in Luke’s account that he was just coming in from the country – from Cyrene. Cyrene is modern day Libya, on the northern coast of Africa, where there was a sizeable Jewish population. We don’t know if he was Jewish and coming for the Passover feast – or if he was passing through town. Matthew and Mark’s accounts say he was a passer-by. If he was he was just coming in from the country, (as our text reads), he is most likely unaware and uninvolved and is thrust into a drama that he might prefer to avoid. Is he irritated at the intrusion or annoyed for it delays his business? Might he be repulsed by what he saw – or even assume that this man must be a criminal for he is being treated as one? Or does he have enough of his own problems with which to deal and no time for someone else’s.

 

Today’s text is one of the Stations of the Cross, which focuses on the pain and suffering of Jesus and how it intersects with our own lives, including what must be crucified in us to make room for something to be resurrected in us. I wonder about Simon’s reactions probably because I “confess to” similar feelings, especially when I’ve been caught up in something for which I felt unprepared or even worse, felt I was expected to DO something to offer relief. These reactions which we often have to the unexpected are called “growing edges” – places that we might not even realize we had until we encounter someone who rubs up against them. Those moments of realization can be “calls” to us – these very situations or people have the potential of becoming our teachers as they sharpen our understanding of who God is.

 

Nadia Bolz-Weber, founding pastor of the House for all Saints and Sinners in Denver, part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, is modern, edgy, honest, unconventional, and one of my teachers via her books. She believes, however, that these “growing edges” are not bad. “These jagged edges of our humanity are the places where God grabs ahold of us.”[1]

 

In Proverbs 27:17, we read that “Iron sharpens iron; one person sharpens another.” Another translation reads, “Iron sharpens iron; friends sharpen each others’ faces.” It was interesting to find out that the working edge of a knife or sword is called the “face.” And it began to make sense to me. It is as though the categories in which we place people and the labels we give them somehow turn them into a block of iron, erasing their individual humanity. In our encounters with others– our bumping up against one another –what doesn’t belong begins to be chipped away until faces start to emerge out of our generalities, prejudices, and judgments. With face-to- face encounters, we are less likely to pain groups of people with broad brushes. Christians are not all haters, police officers are not all racists, Muslims are not all jihadists, immigrants are not all criminals, and African Americans are people who still dream of being judged by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin.

 

We DO need one another – face to face encounters…and NOT just those like us but those who are different, racially, ethnically, economically, religiously. We need those who think differently, worship differently, live differently, and love differently IF we hope to experience shalom. Shalom is a rich concept that means far more than peace. It entails wholeness, living in harmony with one another, and a sense of completeness. This is not just a societal, justice, or especially political issue – it is a theological one – and our quest for today. We cannot fully know God without knowing others.

 

Joerg Rieger, one of my professors at Perkins School of Theology, prods us with this thought – “What if our blindness towards others also produces a blindness towards God? If so, then reconnecting with others is no longer an option.”[2] Encountering others is necessary to mend the fragmentation we experience. Now, it is the Spirit and love, not soldiers, compelling us. Without others, we tend to make God in our own image rather than be transformed into the image of God.

 

Someone might say, “Well, you haven’t experienced what I have at the hands of those “others.” Fair statement. We humans have inflicted deep wounds on each other, resulting in fear and distrust. But – can we move beyond it without minimizing it? Yes, yes, yes – with God’s grace, we CAN be victors instead of victims for as we read in Romans 8:37, “We are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” We have faith in the final, good judgment of God – and that liberates us.

 

Years ago, while on a family vacation, I snuck out early to walk alone on the beach. Someone beat me there, however, evidenced by the lone set of footprints in the sand. I wondered what it would be like to literally walk in that person’s footsteps. It wasn’t that easy. I had to adjust my stride, my gait, even the turn of my feet. Nothing about it felt natural. But the experience illustrated to me that until you really CAN’T effectively judge another until you walk a mile in their shoes. Sadly, this has taken more practice than I anticipated – and it is something I continue to learn as layers upon layers of growing edges are revealed. However, in these Divine encounters, I have met some of my greatest teachers. 

 

I imagine their faces of my teachers on a stole of my own design who have revealed the Gospel to me while crucifying in me my own prejudices, fears, self-centeredness, judgment, and self-interest. To understand such a crucifixion, I lean on Richard Rohr’s theology about the crucifixion of Jesus. Father Rohr, a Franciscan priest, speaker, author, theologian, and important teacher to me and maybe to many of you, states that the cross is not the price Jesus paid to convince God to love us – it is simply where love will lead us. If we love, if we give ourselves to feel the pain and love of the world, it begins to transform us. It is that place of grace where newness emerges.[3]

 

These faces have been channels of grace for me – whose faces do you envision as your own channels of grace?

1. my oldest son, who brought me a sense of shalom by leading me to a season of questioning and seeking when life butted up against my theology. Biblical literalism, and the judgment that often goes with it, were ultimately crucified in me – and what rose up – the Resurrection - was a bigger, more inclusive vision of God’s love than I’d ever imagined…a vision which I am very passionate about sharing.

2. The friend that I met my first day of seminary - an African American who survived the poverty of the ghetto. What was crucified in me, and what is being crucified in me (a hot topic today) is my own hidden racism, as well as an awareness of my own privilege based merely on my skin color. This growing edge was exposed thanks to our vulnerability with one another and through honest conversations What is being resurrected in me is a desire for deep listening as I learn what it is to walk a mile in her shoes. She is now part of our family, a trusted friend and my constant teacher.

3. The woman who taught me that the poverty of being is as devastating as economic poverty. Through the sharing of life, what was crucified in me was the notion that my options were her options and that my ways of operating in the world should be her ways. What rises up in me is greater empathy and appreciation for her as she skillfully juggles the complex reality of her life. Simultaneously, there began a fire in my belly for her fair treatment and the recognition and visibility of her personhood and gifts.

4. Many today face the growing edge of encountering those of the Muslim faith. I hate to bring it up in light of the tragedy in France this week – but maybe we must bring it up or we might encase our brothers and sisters of other faiths in an iron block, wiping out their humanity and suffering. Pain draws us together as Muslim parents’ knees buckle in Baghdad when innocent children were killed. We are shocked, but then we remember the slaughter of the innocents by King Herod and the millions killed in the Holocaust – who light was snuffed out by fear and hatred disguised as patriotism and Divine plan? May our growing edges reveal the faces of all those who suffer at the hands of misguided terrorists and lead us to love.

5. There is not time to tell you about the faces of those I’ve met in grief support groups, cancer support groups, and recovery groups. The recovery group where I served as clergy support had a slogan: “No perfect people allowed.” Whew! However, John Wesley says that we are moving on to perfection as we learn to love as Jesus loved. I pray it is so. In I John 4:12, we read, “If we love one another, God lives in us and his love is perfected in us.” 4:21 – “those who love God must love their brothers and sisters.” This is not a sappy, sentimental love, but the hard, demanding work against injustice.

 

Have you read your mission statement lately? It is to practice unconditional love and justice in action. And if that is not enough, there are the words on the website and in our bulletin:

            We serve and learn as brothers and sisters from all walks of life:

            Rich and poor

            Housed and homeless

            Gay and straight

            Black and brown and white,

            Secular and sacred

            phD and GED

            The people of Travis Park Church seek to live and love as God does: passionately   and unconditionally.

Oh brother and sisters – Iron is sharpening iron in this place called Travis Park. Faces are emerging out of labels and categories as people become real…and Divine. God is up to something here. This is a cross bearing church, for you have given yourselves to the pain and love of the world. In so doing, you are creating a culture of shalom – where we are all made whole by the sharing of joy, pain, life, and unconditional love. Isn’t our world painfully crying out for such places of love?

 

I close with these words from poet laureate, Warsan Shire, born in Somalia, raised in Britain, who penned this poem after the terrorist attack in Paris last November and which echoes today:[4]

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Travis Park – You are a sacred place of grace – and you had me at hello!

May we find rich blessing in the unique people of our communal life together.

In the name of the ONE, the Wholly Other, in whose footsteps we follow, AMEN.