The Rev. Sara Warfield
Scripture: Ephesians 4:25-5:2
In his book Zero to the Bone, poet and essayist Christian Wiman tells this story:
My wife and I learned something strange recently about our already strange dog, Mack, the midsize black-and-white mutt we've had for almost a decade. With his keg chest and stub legs, his hunter's nose and soulful eyes, he looks like a black Lab crammed into the body of a beagle. He was on doggy death row when we got him from a shelter in Alabama, and he was so odd and nervous that you could never tell what was going to turn his terrors on. More than once we returned home to find him paralyzed (for how long?) on a small rug or even a piece of newspaper as if he were stranded on an island amid dangers we couldn't see. Mack has been having some troubling health issues lately, and in the course of the vet's investigations there was an incidental finding: Mack has a bullet in him.
I don’t know where your mind goes when you hear this story, but, despite myself, I start imagining what sort of person points a gun at a short little dog and pulls the trigger? What does this man look like? Is he high? Deranged? Or simply angry? How helpless does a person have to feel in order to believe that the only control he has over his world is killing a dog?
Wiman goes on to write, “There is not a person reading these words, there is not a friend or family member from whom you feel utterly estranged…who does not have, festering somewhere, a bullet in them.”
So, as I think about Mack, despite myself, despite my rage, I start to wonder about the man who pulled the trigger: what is the hidden bullet festering in him?
—
Dogs who have been traumatized in some way or another, who have a metaphorical bullet festering in them in some way or another, each inhabit their trauma in different ways. Some try to make themselves as small as possible. They hide in order to protect themselves from the danger that their body tells them is always close by. They cower into corners or burrow themselves under a couch or table. Others make themselves as big and loud as possible. They become mean and aggressive as preemptive protection from the danger their body tells them is always close by.
People are not so different. The silent child who never quite picks her head up to look you in the face. Loud, mean politicians who cut down anyone who dares to question them.
—
Today’s reading from the letter to the Ephesians says, “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.”
The person who shot Mack the dog. The loud and mean politicians. They make me angry. What’s wrong with them? Don’t they know what kind of harm they’re causing?
Oh, and also the people who support those politicians, particularly those who are often called Christian Nationalists. How do they hear Jesus say that loving God and loving their neighbors as themselves sum up all the law and the prophets, and then they go on to support politics that demonize, restrict, and even seek to harm certain neighbors?
It confounds me. I get so angry.
And that anger is okay, the letter to the Ephesians is telling us. Anger is always pointing us towards something deeper. Where there is anger, there is injustice, real or perceived. Anger is telling us that something needs to change, and it’s giving us the energy to initiate that change.
But, this scripture tells us, we cannot stay in our anger. Anger may be the starting point, but it is never the stopping point.
—
The letter to the Ephesians is actually a sermon itself. It is instruction in the kind of behavior a new life in Christ calls us to. “Putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.”
For we are members of one another. For we belong to one another.
So, so far we’ve heard two truths:
There is not a person in this world who does not have, festering somewhere, a bullet in them.
There is not a person in this world who, according to our scripture, does not belong to each of us. And there is not a person in this world who does not long to belong in some way.
That bullet is almost always an experience of rejection of some sort. Perhaps constant belittling by a parent or teacher or coach, bullying by classmates, abandonment by a friend, humiliation in front of peers, something. We’ve all experienced it to some degree or another in some part of our lives. And ultimately what that bullet tells you is: you do not belong.
It is our call as followers of Jesus to create the kind of belonging that is based in God’s limitless love. When we don’t create loving, respectful belonging, people will find other ways to deal with that bullet, that rejection hidden in them. And usually the thing we turn to is what makes us feel more certain about our world, more in control of our environment: racist ideologies, black/white fundamentalist religions, politics that clearly dictate who’s in and who’s out. Belonging built around who doesn’t belong.
—
Buster is my parents’ 18 year-old dachshund. My mom got him from a dachshund and corgi rescue when he was only a few years old. She chose him because he had a long, thin scar that ran the whole length of his spine. Buster’s fur is black, but it is a haunting gray all along that scar. A sure sign of the bullet that he carries with him. When I first met him, he barked viciously at me, and when I extended the back of my hand so he could sniff me out, he dashed away and hid behind the couch. His trauma response was fight AND flight. And for the longest time, he would not go anywhere near my dad.
My parents tended to him carefully. They gave him quiet and space when he needed it. When he did venture close by, they would slowly extend their hand until eventually he stopped snarling and backing away and started getting curious. Treats helped, of course. After awhile, he started napping closer and closer to their feet. Then he started jumping up on the couch and napping next to them. And then he discovered that laps were even more warm and snuggly than couches.
What my parents wanted to do from the start was scoop him up in their arms and nuzzle his face and let him know how loved he was. But he wasn’t ready for that. The bullet, the rejection, inside him wouldn’t let him believe it. Not yet.
Over time, very slowly, through their every action, through both their restraint and their care, my parents demonstrated to Buster that he was family, that he belonged.
—
People are not so different. We don’t show them belonging by yelling, “Why can’t you understand that I love you?” We don’t show them belonging by telling them they’re being ridiculous for having the fears they have. We don’t show them belonging by forcing them to behave in the way we wish they’d behave, or by trying to convince them that our opinions and beliefs are healthier or more loving than theirs.
We show others belonging by paying attention, by listening more than talking. Listening to their experience of the world. To their fears. We show them belonging by showing them that the relationship is what is most important. Yes, sometimes that means telling people how they hurt you, by showing your anger, but not staying in your anger but moving into a place of loving accountability.
Do you know how transformative it can be to move through conflict with someone with honestly and care? How much stronger a relationship becomes when disagreements or even harm are addressed transparently and worked through with love?
The epistle says, Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.
Now not everyone is going to be willing to engage you in this way. Not everyone is going to accept the belonging you’re offering them. But, as Jesus said, if anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave. Living your faith is about what you do, how you respond, how you engage. What the other person does is up to them.
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Today we will be welcoming nine new members into the belonging of our St. Luke’s community, and reaffirming the belonging of another longtime member.
And I thought it would be a good day to go over our own little St. Luke’s epistle about how we agree to engage with each other, how we seek to belong to one another. Our Ten Agreements for Respect, a copy of which are in your white handout, give us a way to be transparent and honest and compassionate with one another, not just through conflict, but especially through conflict.
I hope these agreements, which you’ll be hearing in a moment, are a way for us to remember that we all have a hidden bullet, a secret rejection, we’re carrying around inside us and, we as Christians, as members of the St. Luke’s family, are called to be gentle with each other. We are called to create belonging for one another.
Amen.
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