Ephesians 4:25-5:2 Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark August 8, 2021
I don’t remember what day it was—sometime in the last month. I don’t even remember the particular stories on the evening news. Probably something about deadly wildfires in California and deadly floods in Germany. Maybe images from our southern border of families desperate for a safe place to call home. An interview with an overwhelmed nurse in an overloaded COVID unit. Women and girls in Afghanistan despairing of what is coming next. In other words, a typical news day.
I do remember the swirl of emotions that threatened to drown me. Sadness, rage, grief, fear, hopelessness. Even more, I remember my instinct to shut it all out. I wanted to harden my heart to the pain of the world, or at least to narrow my circle of caring to a size my heart can manage.
I don’t know why that evening’s news hit me so hard. My unwelcome reaction to it prompted me to reflect on the challenge of Paul’s call to be tender- hearted in a world where we hear of every tragedy the minute it happens. This week I read an article about a study by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar. In 1993, Dunbar proposed that, among primates, the size of social groups in a species correlates to the size of their brains. Based on our brain size, he posited that human beings can have meaningful relationships with about 150 other people. His subsequent research points to concentric circles of relationships, with most people having a very small group of intimate friends, a slightly larger group of casual friends, and a wider circle of meaningful connections, adding up to his magic number of 150.
Other researchers argue with his conclusions. Still, Dunbar points to a reality: our brains can only hold enough information to maintain meaningful relationships with a limited number of people.
I found myself wondering how that applies to our capacity to care about large numbers of people. If our brain size shapes how many people we can really know, does the size of our hearts shape how many people we can really care about? How big do our hearts need to be to respond to all the pain we hear about in a single evening newscast, the pain not just of humans but all of creation? Has our capacity to rapidly communicate bad news outpaced our cognitive and emotional ability to absorb it?
My questions lead me back to some of my favorite gospel stories. The disciples look out on a crowd of 5000 hungry seekers. They feel so overwhelmed that they tell Jesus to send them away. Jesus looks out on that same crowd. We don’t know if he too feels overwhelmed. All we know is that he opens his heart and feeds them.
Later in the gospels, a lawyer quotes the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself and asks how neighbor should be defined. Jesus responds with the story of the good Samaritan. Jesus perceives that the lawyer has drawn a circle of neighborly love that leaves out the much-maligned Samaritans. Jesus challenges him to widen the circle. Jesus does that over and over again—widening the circle of caring to include tax collectors, lepers, Roman soldiers, with little regard for what his disciples imagined to be the limitations of their human hearts.
Our epistle reading picks up on the gospel theme. The central struggle in the early church—in Ephesus and elsewhere—is not about theology; it is about how to bring two groups—Jews and Gentiles– together as one community. “Be tender- hearted,” Paul writes—not just with the people you define as “your” people, but with those you used to consider outside your circle of caring.
The biblical witness is clear: we are called to continually widen our circles of caring. But the Bible wasn’t written in a time when bad news traveled across the globe instantaneously. Jesus stretched the 150-person limit far enough to feed 5000 hungry people; how would he have responded to a billion hungry souls? I find myself wanting to ask Jesus to consider an adjustment to fit this age of hyper- information. Given that our awareness of other people’s pain has multiplied exponentially while the size of our hearts has not, would you consider letting us narrow our circles of caring to a more reasonable size?
Of course, before I even ask the question, I know Jesus’ answer: no.
No, I will not make my teachings easier because you think you live in harder times. My teachings, I imagine him saying, seemed impossible to my disciples back then in ancient Palestine—and they kept trying. They seem impossible to you too. To be my disciple is to keep trying.
Accompanying Jesus’ “no,” is a “yes.” No, I will not make it easier on your tender hearts. Yes, I will be with you– your tender-hearted guide and friend.
Our faith challenges us to keep trying to do what seems impossible for ordinary human beings—to remain tender-hearted when we are bombarded by the world’s pain. Thanks be to God, our faith equips us to rise to that challenge. When I am tempted to harden my heart to the pain of our world, when I find myself wanting to draw a tighter circle of caring to protect my tender heart, there are touchstones of our faith that help me remain open—if I remember to touch them. This morning I will share five of my touchstones—five promises of faith that help me. I invite you to listen for which ones might help you rise to the challenge of being tender-hearted in this overwhelming world. Perhaps you might identify some others as well.
The bedrock from which all these touchstones originate is the assurance that I am not alone. I choose to trust—though I can’t prove it and I don’t always even
feel it—that there is a power of love at work in the world. I am part of it, and it is much, much greater than me. I choose to trust that power—what I call God—is at work in ways I will never fully understand in those parts of the world I see on the news.
From that bedrock, the first touchstone emerges: prayer. Again, I cannot explain how it works, but I choose to trust that my prayers matter. Instead of closing my heart to someone because I can’t figure out what to do to help, I can open my heart and pray. I can participate in a mysterious and miraculous energy of healing and hope that is not constrained by time and space or even by the limits of our human brains and hearts.
My second touchstone is the parable of the mustard seed. What I can do seems way too small to make a difference. By the grace of God, I can choose to do it anyway, for Jesus reminds us that tiny seeds produce glorious trees and tiny actions can multiply exponentially. I may never see the results of my efforts; the promise of our faith is that God works in and through and beyond the mustard seeds I plant.
Then there is the touchstone of community–from individual loving relationships to a church committee working for racial justice to the expanded circles of the United Church of Christ’s peace-making in Oaxaca and tree planting in Kenya. On my own, I can toss out a few mustard seeds and hope one will take root. When I am part of a community, we can plant a garden—mustard and thyme and mint and lentils and more. We can take turns planting and watering, weeding and resting. Our community extends to future generations, and we pray they will reap an abundant harvest from our shared efforts.
My fourth touchstone is the assurance of God’s healing power. When our tender hearts break from the pain of the world, they can heal. By the grace of God,
they can heal stronger than ever, with greater capacity to care. Our hearts can expand, far beyond what we imagine possible.
Finally, perhaps most important of all, I rely on the promise of God’s grace. When I can’t get there, when I feel my heart hardening or my circle of caring contracting, God showers me with grace. God assures me that this life is not a contest to be judged but a journey to be traveled. God urges me to try again.
Yesterday, I searched around my house and found five stones, which now live in this bowl which will live by my side of the couch. Tonight, when I turn on the evening news and begin to feel overwhelmed, I will pick up my bowl and touch these stones. I will try to remember that I am not alone, that there is a power of love at work far beyond what I can imagine. I will pray for people in pain. I will find something to do, no matter how small, to be a source of hope in the world. I will take turns working and resting with members of our church. I will allow my heart to break, trusting that it will heal. And I will rely on God’s grace, knowing that all God asks of me is to keep trying to live tender-hearted.
I invite to find your own stones to put by the side of your chair. I invite you to claim and hold the touchstones of our faith that can help you live tender-hearted. Amen.