Sermon by Nanette Sawyer | September 17, 2023

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 17, 2023

Welcome Them All

Nanette Sawyer
Associate Pastor

Psalm 103:1–13
Romans 14:1–12

Welcome them, welcome them, welcome them.

That is what we should do with people who disagree with us, according to Paul. Jesus takes it ten steps further when he says love your enemies, but let’s stick with Paul’s instruction to welcome people with different opinions.

It’s so hard to do, because we really want to be right. I think that’s a human tendency. We want to be right, because we want to be good. We want to feel safe and affirmed and loved. We want to feel valued.

And if we’re wrong about something, then are we just failing? And if we’re failing, are we somehow bad? If what we thought was right turns out to be wrong are we less than lovable because we have missed the mark?

What’s at stake in these differences of opinion is not usually the topic of the disagreement. What’s at stake is often so much more. If I make a mistake, am I a mistake? Will people judge me or, worse, despise me? The impulse to be right — to prove that we are right, to defend our position — that impulse is strong in human beings.

Dale Carnegie wrote a famous little book first published in 1936 called How to Win Friends and Influence People. In it he tells this story:

“I once employed an interior decorator to make some draperies for my home. When the bill arrived, I was dismayed.

“A few days later, a friend dropped in and looked at the draperies. The price was mentioned, and she exclaimed with a note of triumph, ‘What? That’s awful. I am afraid he put one over on you.’

“True? Yes, she had told the truth, but few people like to listen to truths that reflect on their judgment.

“So, being human, I tried to defend myself. I pointed out that the best is eventually the cheapest, that one can’t expect to get quality and artistic taste at bargain-basement prices, and so on and so on.

“The next day another friend dropped in, admired the draperies, bubbled over with enthusiasm, and expressed a wish that she could afford such exquisite creations for her home. My reaction was totally different. ‘Well, to tell the truth,’ I said, ‘I can’t afford them myself, I paid too much. I’m sorry I ordered them.’” (Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People)

There was something more at stake than the curtains and the cash in these conversations. We humans care what other people think of us. We want to be right, because we want to be good, and so we try to defend our positions.

Jonathan Haidt is a moral psychologist who tells a similar story in his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. He says,

“I was at home, writing a review article on moral psychology, when my wife, Jayne, walked by my desk. In passing, she asked me not to leave dirty dishes on the counter where she prepared our baby’s food. Her request was polite but … [her tone seemed to imply] ‘As I have asked you a hundred times before.’”

He responded with an explanation about the baby having woken up at the same time that their elderly dog barked and needed to go out for a walk, and he said, “I’m sorry, but I just put my breakfast dishes down wherever I could.”

But he happened to be writing an article about how people create rational justifications for their intuitive gut reactions. So he more carefully examined what had happened inside him during the exchange with his wife. He listened deeply to his own experience. He wrote,

“I disliked being criticized, and I had felt a flash of negativity by the time Jayne had gotten to her third word (‘Can you not …’). Even before I knew why she was criticizing me, I knew I disagreed with her.”

When he had that flash of feeling bad, that flash of negativity, as he calls it, he developed his explanations in a split second. Only later did he realize how he had spun the story a bit to prove that he was righteous and good.

“It’s true that I had eaten breakfast, given Max his first bottle, and let Andy out for his first walk, but these events had all happened at separate times.

“Only when my wife criticized me did I merge them into a composite image of a harried father with too few hands, and I created this fabrication by the time she had completed her one-sentence criticism [can you not leave the dirty dishes on the] (‘… counter where I make baby food?’) …

“I then lied so quickly and convincingly that my wife and I both believed me.” (Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, pp. 61–63)

He believed himself — because more was at stake than the dirty dishes and the baby food. His identity as a good person was at stake.

Both Jonathan Haidt and Dale Carnegie describe a deep listening to themselves that helped them understand themselves more deeply and truly. And in understanding themselves, they also better understood a human tendency. Their deep listening made it possible to have compassion for themselves and others.

Carnegie says,

“Few people are logical. Most of us are prejudiced and biased. Most of us are blighted with preconceived notions, with jealousy, suspicion, fear, envy, and pride. And most citizens don’t want to change their minds about their religion or their haircut or communism or their favorite movie star …

“We like to continue to believe what we have been accustomed to accept as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse for clinging to it. The result is that most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.” (Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People)

Jonathan Haidt demonstrated that in his experience. His wife’s request was polite, but he still experienced a flash of negativity, an instinctual impulse to defend himself. The impulse happens before the rational mind gets involved.

This is how our faith is filtered through our biology. We live our faith in these very bodies, these clay jars, as scripture says. We may have religious commitments that we believe with our minds, but our instinctual reactions are always going to be faster than our rational minds. That’s biology. The instinctual part of our brains, sometimes called our lizard brain, is the part of our brain that makes us withdraw our hand from a fire before it can burn us.

We don’t have to think with our rational mind “Oh this is a fire; it’s hot; it will burn me; I better pull my hand away.” If we had to think about it, we would get burned. Instead, it’s a sensation, a gut reaction, an instinctual split-second reaction. Afterwards our thinking mind processes it.

Our lizard brain tries to protect and defend us. It takes over when we feel threatened, and it shuts down our rational brain. Putting new information into our rational brains will not change our gut reactions. But our gut reactions do change when we have new experiences.

We have to experience safety before we will trust that we are safe. We have to experience respect and honor before we will trust that we are respected and honored. We can help each other experience that by conveying respect and honor to each other through emotional warmth, attentiveness, and genuine interest in each other’s experience.

It’s a way of being in the world that we can foster and develop in ourselves. And it’s a true gift to each other and to the world when we can give that to each other. We can do this in a meeting, or at a volunteer shift, or when we greet each other after worship, or by inviting each other to a social event.

The hardest time to do this is when we are having a disagreement with someone. Can we hold someone in unconditional positive regard when we feel we want to defend ourselves? It’s very difficult, and none of us can do it all the time. Sometimes we get triggered.

But on the receiving end of that kind of generous attention and underlying respect, our lizard brains get calmed down, and we are better able to be open to each other and to learn from each other.

The Apostle Paul says, welcome them: the ones who eat meat and the ones who don’t; the ones who celebrate holy days and honor sabbath days and those who don’t. Welcome them all.

In response to Paul’s urging I ask, what does welcome look like when we disagree?

Welcome looks like deep listening to each other, approaching each other with honor and respect, warmth, attentiveness, and genuine interest.

Welcome also looks like deep listening to our own experience, recognizing when the flash of defensiveness arises instinctively within us. Before we start defending our opinion, we can slow down our response, allow a little silence, take a deep breath, and give our rational brains time to catch up. This is taking responsibility for our reactions and dealing with them proactively and strategically.

And finally, welcome looks like deep listening to God’s love for us. When Paul says welcome everyone, he tells us why: because God has welcomed them. God knows all the back story. God knows about the traumas that we have each experienced.

God knows about the scars and the fears and the hopes and the longings that shape each of our lives and each of our responses to each other. God welcomes us each, and all, even when we make mistakes, and even when we hurt ourselves or each other.

God’s love for us is based on the very simple fact that we exist, created holy, imprinted with the image of God. Nothing can remove that image from us. Although we may bury it under shrouds of fear and shards of anger, it is still there, and God knows it.

We are the Lord’s. We belong to God in life and in death. Prayer practices, meditation practices, can help us listen to that Holy Love so deeply that we feel safe and valued enough to open ourselves more thoroughly to those who differ from us.

We all want all people to be recognized as children of God, made in the image of God. We want to be at ease with each other, experiencing and sharing the love of God. We want to be good people and good Christians, good followers of Jesus.

Wanting it is the beginning. That’s good. Doing the work for it, that’s discipleship.

May God give us strength and tenderness,
persistence and patience,
courage and compassion,
as we walk this path of discipleship together.

Amen.