Sermon #53 (19th September 2021 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)
Earlier in the year, following the retirement of our minister, we decided to start a new venture – a Pastoral Network – in hope of being a bit more intentional about sharing out the responsibility for pastoral care in the congregation, during this time of transition, and hopefully for the long-term too. This isn’t something we’ve done before, and though we did our homework, and sought advice, being eager to learn about how this sort of thing works in other churches, it also got us reflecting on our own prior experiences of giving and receiving support – that is, the seven of us who are currently involved in running the Pastoral Network: me, Jeannene, Chloë, Sonya, Pat, Marianne, and Michaela – over the summer we got into an important conversation together about the relationship between ‘the helper’ and ‘the helped’ and how, in the end, we are all a bit of both. Some days we’re more aware of our struggles and needs, and we’re the one crying for help, other days we’re more aware of our strengths and gifts, and we’re in a position to respond to others’ cries. Perhaps most days we might find ourselves a mixture, somewhere in the middle.
That was the key thing that came out of the conversation in our Pastoral Network meeting and the insight that inspired the topic of this service. None of us thought of ourselves as specially set apart ‘helpers’ – just by virtue of being human, we all have plenty of our own troubles to worry about – ultimately we’re just as much in need of help as anyone who might come to us for a listening ear. So we know how hard it can sometimes be to reach out and ask for the help we need when we are struggling – especially if we feel like we’re the only one – if we’ve got the (probably mistaken) impression that everyone else seems to be coping just fine with everything life throws at them.
The reading we just heard, by Erika Hewitt, highlighted one of the things that might sometimes inhibit us from asking for the help we need: this sense we might have that others have got it worse, so we’re not entitled to make a fuss, and we ought to suck it up or ‘keep calm and carry on’ without ‘bothering’ anyone; as Erika Hewitt’s friend said, after her toddler had a meltdown, which pushed her over the limit: ‘I work with a woman who lived through the Bosnian war, and she’s still smiling, so I figure I should be able to do this, I should be grateful and stop complaining.’ But as Hewitt reflects, ‘Pain is the most common human experience… [and also] the human experience we most exert ourselves dismissing or secreting away—for many reasons, real and imagined. What a loss it is to diminish our sorrow or fear, rather than bringing it to the companions and helpers that we trust, and to the proving ground of vulnerability between us.’
So perhaps that’s the first part of this morning’s – pretty simple – message: an encouragement to be authentic with each other about the realities of our lives, in all their complicated shadings, and not to pretend we’re OK when we’re not. To cry out for help when we are in pain or distress. Our sufferings, our vulnerabilities, often turn out to be our deepest points of human connection. But a lot depends on how we respond when we hear another’s cry for help. When someone is struggling, even if they reach out to us, it is not always obvious what sort of help is needed.
When I was preparing this service I was reminded of this lovely cartoon from thingswithout.com (which describes itself as ‘a comic about creatures who are kind’ – my favourite sort of comic). One creature says ‘I have a sad’ and the other asks ‘are you looking for solutions or comfort?’ The sad creature replies ‘I would like to be angry, then sad, then comforted, then adventure for solutions, then giggles’ to which his excellent friend and helper enthusiastically says ‘let’s start!’
This little cartoon tells us something important, I think. For many of us, when someone comes and tells us of their pain and distress, or some difficult stuff that’s going on in their lives, there’s an understandable human urge that arises to want to ‘fix’ the problem that we’re hearing about. We might have an urge to offer advice, or share similar experiences that we’ve been through, and it’s not that these responses are necessarily wrong, but they’re not always what is required. Often the person coming to us in pain might want, primarily, to be heard; to have their story listened to, and empathised with, to experience a sense that their suffering has been witnessed. As in our first reading, by Richard Gilbert, maybe someone needs us to stop and help them cry. Sometimes the person might be looking for practical help or advice, sometimes for distraction, sometimes simply for human connection and a sense of solidarity through the struggles of life. If in doubt, it doesn’t hurt to ask: ‘Do you want me to get involved, offer advice, or just listen?’ I expect most of us here this morning are familiar with the Golden Rule – ‘Treat others as you would wish to be treated’ – but I don’t know how many are familiar with the Platinum Rule? ‘Treat others as they would wish to be treated’. Take the time to find out about their needs. Their preferences.
So perhaps that’s the second key part of this morning’s message – when we hear another’s cry for help let’s be sensitive about how we respond – rather than assuming we know what’s best. At the same time, though, we need to be honest about what sort of help we’ve got it in us to give. If, in the moment we hear someone else’s cry for help, our own resources are particularly low, we’d better not over-promise about how much support we’re realistically going to be able to offer. And that’s something I’ve been especially aware of since the early days of the pandemic: pre-2020 I always tended to think ‘well, I’m having a bad day, but there are loads of people I could text to share my woes and get support, we’re not all going to be having a meltdown at the same time’. But last year when the pandemic struck, and it seemed like the end of the world as we knew it, we were all having a meltdown at the same time, and many of us didn’t have much surplus ‘cope’ to spare. And although, to some extent, many of us have got accustomed to the ‘new normal’ since then, I still get the impression that the cumulative impact of the last eighteen months has left us weary and spread rather thin. So it seems wise to check in with ourselves and make an honest assessment of our limits as a helper – especially as, at any given moment, we are likely to be dealing with our own ‘stuff’ too – we are each, after all, both helper and helped, so we need to keep an eye on our own self-care needs too.
That’s the third and final bit of my message for you today – yes, let’s help each other as best we can, but let’s also accept our human limits in the face of the endless need we’re all too aware of in this broken, hurting world – and, in moments when it’s all too much for us to carry, let us cry out in prayer and lamentation, to the One who holds all in Love.
To borrow a famous phrase from Martin Luther King, we are all caught in an ‘inescapable network of mutuality’ with all humanity – and indeed with all creation – in an interdependent web of life. Each of us both helper and helped; the one who cries out in pain and the one who hears the cry. And all of us, held in a larger reality in which we live and move and have our being – and in which we can perhaps find some ultimate solace – that source of all being which some of us call God.
In that spirit I’d like to end this reflection with a reprise of those words from George Odell that we heard earlier on, from today’s meditation, ‘We Need One Another’. And I’m going to put them up on screen now, and invite you to speak them out loud, as an acknowledgement of the struggles we all face in life, and an affirmation of the great gifts we can be to each other, if we have the courage to be vulnerable, and we open ourselves to give and receive in a spirit of love.
We need one another when we mourn and would be comforted.
We need one another when we are in trouble and afraid.
We need one another when we are in despair, in temptation
and need to be recalled to our best selves again.
We need one another when we would accomplish
some great purpose, and cannot do it alone.
We need one another in the hour of success,
when we look for someone to share our triumphs with.
We need one another in the hour of defeat,
when with encouragement we might endure and stand again.
We need one another to remind us that
we share this journey of life as we share the earth our home.
All our lives we are in need and others are in need of us. Amen.
Sermon by Jane Blackall
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