First Parish Bedford UU

A Sermon by Rev. John E. Gibbons

delivered on Sunday, November 13, 2011

at The First Parish in Bedford, Massachusetts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Several of you have commented to me that you much enjoyed last Sunday’s service with British Unitarian minister Martin Whitell and our other international guests, Lis Dyson-Jones from the UK and Nangroi Suting from India, as well as Cathy Cordes’ report from our Ugandan partner school.

 

I must admit that it frequently happens to me that one of our Sunday hymns get stuck in my head for the rest of the week and I even today am tortured by Blake’s poetry still ringing in my ears: “And was Jerusalem builded here, Among these dark Satanic Mills?”

 

Starting with Martin’s children’s story, illustrated by 3 mouse and rattraps he brought all the way from England and which, by its gory end, had all the barnyard animals dead for their failure to empathize with one another, Martin went on to eloquently sermonize on the theme that “Other People’s Problems Are Our Problems Also” which throughout he repeated as a refrain, “Other People’s Problems Are Our Problems Also.” Thou shalt not stand idly by, Martin intoned. Be like the Good Samaritan, he parabled.

 

Well, I’m going to take a different tack this morning and, indeed, one alternative title to my sermon might be, “Other People’s Problems Are Often Not Our Problems Also.”

 

It was F. Scott Fitzgerald who famously said that “the true test of a first-rate mind is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time.” There is considerable truth to Other People’s Problems Are Our Problems Also (witness Penn State, just for example), but there is also some mischief to that notion that may be countered by the proposition that Other People’s Problems Are Often Not Our Problems Also.

 

I first felt this sermon coming on a few months ago when I read an op-ed piece in The New York Times by David Brooks titled The Limits of Empathy. Nobody is really against empathy, of course, but Brooks made the point that “feeling someone else’s pain” is not really adequate to making a real difference.

 

“In the early days of the Holocaust, Nazi prison guards sometimes wept as they mowed down Jewish women and children, but they still did it,” Brooks said. “Subjects in the famous Milgram experiments felt anguish as they appeared to administer electric shocks to other research subjects, but they pressed on because some guy in a lab coat told them to.”

 

Brooks cited a philosopher named Jesse Prinz whose research informs him that “empathy is not a major player when it comes to moral motivation. Its contribution is negligible in children, modest in adults, and nonexistent when costs are significant.” Empathy is a “fragile flower,” easily crushed by selfish interest.

Empathy can also lead people astray: “It influences people to care more about cute victims than ugly victims. It leads to nepotism. It subverts justice; juries give lighter sentences to defendants that show sadness. It leads us to react to shocking incidents, like a hurricane, but not long standing conditions, like global hunger or preventable diseases.”

 

Observers like Nicholas Kristof and others have noted that individuals, particular endangered men and women – or even more persuasively endangered dogs and cats – can generate a more sympathetic response than collective conditions, even when the collective conditions could be changed.

 

I credit our son’s noble vegetarianism – to which I have nothing but admiration – to PETA’s direct mail campaign that featured horrible photos of vivisected rabbits. I would not vivisect a rabbit but I wish there were as effective campaigns against wars and genocides and economic injustices that, as yet, do not have sympathy-inducing photogenic models.

  

Horrified by the prospect that a cute little mouse might meet its end in a nasty trap, if you take the advice of Rev. Martin Whitell, you could have the whole barnyard making themselves comfortable in your house, sitting in your favorite armchair, having a glass of malbec to go with your nice cheese. To which I say, get the animals out of the house! You will feel much better. Other People’s (or other species) Problems Are Often Not Our Problems Also.

 

Recently I had lunch with my friend and colleague Rabbi Howard Jaffe from Lexington. Howard had just finished preaching his high holy day sermons and in one he reflected on the depressing state of Israeli/Palestinian prospects for peace. Howard is an unconditional but not an uncritical supporter of Israel. Peace will only be accomplished, Howard believes, not when people feel some kind of sympathy for Palestinian aspirations but only when peace is seen in the vital self-interest of both parties.

 

Howard illustrated his sermon with a story from the Talmud that I had not heard before, and it is a story so stark and counter-intuitive that it will give you something to talk about over lunch and beyond.

 

Howard says this story illustrates a fundamental way in which Judaism differs from Christianity and some core unarticulated values embraced by the Western world. It is a Talmudic conundrum of two people traveling in the desert, but only one has sufficient water to survive. The story assumes that no more water can or will be found in sufficient time. Do they share the water, knowing that they will both die? Does the one who has the water sacrifice him or herself and give it to the other person, so the other one can live? Or does the person who has the water drink it, even though it means the other person will die?

 

The question is not what would a person do, but what should a person do. Should the person who has the water drink it, give it to the other person, or share it?

 

Howard says that he’s shared this story with dozens of Christian ministers and priests and every single one has responded that the person should either give the water to the other person or share it.

 

“The Jewish answer, however (given in the Talmud), is that the person with the water should drink it,” Howard says. “Judaism teaches that one is not required or even allowed to give up his or her life in favor of another.”

 

 

Howard says that this same lesson applies to the community as well: there is another passage in the Talmud that describes a scenario in which two cities share a water supply that originates with the community on the top of a hill. The Talmud rules that the upstream community takes precedence if there is only enough water to provide drinking water to one community, because the water “belongs” to the upstream community. The community is not obligated, or even allowed, to endanger itself in favor of the other community.

 

I think it is very important for us as Unitarian Universalists – a faith tradition informed by Christianity and Judaism but neither Christian nor Jewish – to try to understand this Talmudic wisdom, though I expect we resist it. Yes, of course, empathy is a good thing; but self-interest and survival are vital things, too. Sometimes simultaneously we need hold contrary convictions in our hearts and in our minds.

 

It is not coincidental that one of my mentors in pastoral counseling is the late Rabbi Ed Friedman.

 

The core of Friedman’s approach was to encourage self-differentiation: only when you know who you are and what you want can you interact in a healthy way with another person. If you do not maintain your immune system you will be vulnerable to infection. Put on your oxygen mask before you attempt to help someone else. Don’t absorb other people’s problems like a sponge but maintain the boundaries of your own integrity and selfhood. Other People’s Problems Are Often Not Our Problems Also.

 

When we allow ourselves to become excessively interdependent with others, we become unhealthily enmeshed. Friedman did not advise others to get all touchy-feely kum by yah hokey-pokey empathic and sensitive. Often what the world needs more of is, not so much love sweet love, but a good dose of insensitivity training!

 

Years ago I preached a sermon on one of Friedman’s fables about the guy who, while walking on a bridge, is thrown a rope by another man who then throws himself off the bridge and is left dangling in mid-air with the other poor guy, still on the bridge, holding the other end of the rope. Perhaps you have found yourself holding a rope for some fool that now says his salvation depends on you?! The ethical, healthy and responsible thing to do, Friedman counseled, is to let go of the rope!

 

The children who do the best in life, Friedman advised, are the children of parents whose salvation does not depend on the success of their children.

 

Friedman also had an animal story that is not quite fit for the pulpit but is titled Burnout and begins, more or less, “Once upon a time there was a scavenger fish that lost its taste for (poop):

 

 

Well, this story goes on until one day this fish got tired of her diet, changed her ways, and then all havoc broke out in the aquarium environment. She became self-differentiated, realizing that other fish’s problems were not her problems also. 

It is when, and only when, you decide how much crap you’re gonna take, that change then happens. 

 

Stand for something, my mother used to tell me, or you will fall for anything. A corollary axiom that I have told you previously is this: The trouble with changing your life is that you have to change your life to do so.

 

I do not change the slightest of any of my many neuroses until, for whatever reason, I have to change…that is, until it is in my self-interest.

Friedman is representative of what is called a family systems therapeutic approach which says that one ought not waste one’s breath trying to change the most problematic member of the family but rather that one should try to bolster the healthiest, most resilient and most adaptable member, such as the scavenger fish who had the capacity to lose her taste for poop. If she can change, the others will necessarily change in response to her self-differentiation.

Last week at Occupy Boston, I saw a person holding this sign saying “I AM VERY UPSET” and, though I do have a hopeful feeling about the Occupiers, I just don’t think that is a sufficient manifesto. Somehow if that protest is to make any difference at all it will be necessary for them (and us) to say “I AM VERY UPSET” and “I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE.” And know exactly the meaning of IT.

 

So if other people’s problems are often not our problems also and if empathy gives us little more than a warm and fuzzy feeling, what is the alternative? I return to David Brooks who says, “Think of anybody you admire. They probably have some talent for fellow-feeling, but it is overshadowed by their sense of obligation to some religious, military, social or philosophic code. The code tells them when they deserve public admiration or dishonor. The code helps them evaluate other people’s feelings, not just share them….. The code isn’t just a set of rules. It’s a source of identity. It’s pursued with joy. It arouses the strongest emotions and attachments. Empathy is a sideshow. If you want to make the world a better place, help people debate, understand, reform, revere and enact their codes. Accept that codes conflict.”

 

I submit to you that one of the primary reasons we gather together in religious community is to help one another forge a code that we can live by. We gather together not solely to gather together, not solely to enjoy one another’s company nor to share our sorrows. True – we gather together in religious community because, well, other people’s problems are our problems also. But we also gather together in religious community to figure out what each one of us stands for and because this religious tradition has some core elements of a code that we can live by.

 

What I want to suggest to you now is that participation in this church is more than a warm and fuzzy kum bah ya let’s do the hokey pokey moment. Many of you are already members of this church and today we’ll be welcoming at least 15 people who have chosen to be members and I’m saying that we’ll welcome them not because they’ll build our sense of community or some other empathic reason – though that is also true – but indeed because they (like we ourselves) are trying to figure out a code that they can live by – and they hope (indeed they pray) that participation in this community will help them do that inner intimate work of code-making.

 

 

There’s an old guy who lives at the VA – he’s 84 I think – he’s a member of our church, his name is Frederick Bushnell and he grew up a Boston Brahmin on Beacon Hill. His father was a big shot attorney general but Frederick wandered – he drank a lot I think – and he ended up in India where he became Ananta and he lived there for 35 years as Guru Ananta, “the infinite.” The ashram gave him his own island where he built temples and sculptures and shrines. He was written up in Newsweek! This is one of our members! And last week Ananta asked to be reminded of the code he’d learned 70 years ago in his Back Bay Unitarian church. Etched on his mind and heart was an old Unitarian formulation, written by James Freeman Clarke. It’s on this poster we usually keep behind a door in a back stairwell:

 

 

Last week Ananta asked me to remind him of the code that gave him his ethical start in life and that he has lived by. He got so excited that I too knew its words. 

For most of us, those old words don’t exactly resonate today – and yes we’ve got newer purposes and principles and slogans printed and postered here and there – but their real purpose is just to give you some clues so that you may be clearer as to the code you will choose to live by.

 

Today we welcome new members and we welcome them, I submit, not solely on the basis of empathy or warm feeling of community, but on the basis of common commitment to forge a code that we can live by.

 

Just remember that other people’s problems are our problems also. And other people’s problems are often not our problems also.

 

We welcome those who are trying to figure out the gift and conundrum of life.

 

 

 

Here in this church, human beings have gathered for centuries seeking a higher purpose and deeper life than they could find alone. We are grateful today for each one of you, that you have found your way here, and that you have decided to make a commitment to this faith community. We hope that as a member of this church you will allow yourselves to know and to be known, to minister to and to be ministered unto, to love and to be loved, by this congregation.

 

We never really know what combination of fate and friendship and good luck it is that brings certain people together in this world for any purpose. But we believe that membership in the church calls each of us here to celebrate the fate that has drawn us together, and to regard each one a spiritual friend and a potential teacher, even of occasional hard lessons.

 

The relationships we form in our church are based on needs of the soul -- needs that render each of us vulnerable, and therefore reliant on each other’s grace and goodness, and generosity of spirit. As members of this church we pledge to be guardians of each other’s spirits, to respect the ultimate privacy of each one’s human struggle, and to believe in each one’s inherent dignity.