Rev. Joseph Boyd I have three stories to share with you. They’re really short, but they’ve taught me a lot about change. We have a groundhog that digs underneath our shed, and we call him Bobby. Jennifer daily will set out a bounty for Bobby to enjoy right outside the hole he dug. She sets out vegetable scraps, fruit and whatever we happen to have on hand. We’ve learned Bobby likes fruit but he doesn’t really like vegetables. We’ll come look outside Bobby’s hole in the afternoon and see all the vegetable scraps left but all the fruit is gone. Some people say groundhogs are a nuisance, but Bobby is someone we love to see, and we try not to scare Bobby too much as we walk by.
In that same area outside our house Jennifer and I were walking by and we saw this caterpillar that was 3 inches long – a beautiful light green with a black stripe down the middle. The caterpillar was crawling across the street, on a very busy street, where cars will often speed.
I thought nothing of this, and continued walking, off to my next appointment for the day. Jennifer stopped, and looked at me like I was completely clueless. She said, “this caterpillar is going to get squished by a car!” She went to the side of the street and got a leaf so she could pick up the caterpillar, because she said that they can bite, which is something I had never heard of. But she knows more than I do about most things so I believed her. She took a leaf and attempted to pick up this caterpillar using the leaf as a barrier, and every time she attempted to grab this caterpillar, the caterpillar’s body would flail violently as if someone was trying to attack. The flailing scared Jennifer, and she screamed: Ah! I was thinking: Ok this is a failed attempt, but we tried, so off to the next thing. So I begin to walk away, already lost in thought about my next thing.
I turn around, and I see something I didn’t expect to see. Jennifer is standing in the middle of the street behind the caterpillar as the caterpillar fairly quickly is crossing the street, as if trying to run from a predator. I ask: What are you doing? She responded she was going to make sure the caterpillar crossed safely, and she would make sure no one ran the caterpillar over.
The third story which takes place in the same area: Jennifer and I are going for a walk to get coffee at Kravitz at Fellows Riverside Garden. We walk, and just as we begin to turn the block a man not wearing a shirt comes up to us and says: “Don’t go down that way. A man has just shot two people, and he hasn’t been caught. He’s in this area, and he’s armed, so you probably don’t want to walk that way. I look down the street and I see a SUV with police lights, and the SUV has created a blockade on the street, and two officers step out with German shepherds, who I’m guessing are going to assist in the search.
The man with no shirt repeats: Yeah, you don’t want to walk that way. We head back to our house and a couple steps outside their house, a couple I’ve never met before comes out of their house and they shout behind us: “Hey!” And I look back and yell “Yeah?” A young man says: “You both live down the street, right?” I said “Yeah,” He shouted back: “Well I just heard on the police scanner there is a shooter who hasn’t been caught, and he is supposed to be down where you live, so get inside and don’t walk around here. I have my car keys on me, and even with this new news I still wanted to go out for coffee believe it or not. So I told Jennifer to look around, and let me know if she sees someone hiding. I said when we get to the car, I’m going to unlock, we’ll quickly get in, and I’ll speed away to somewhere safer like the Northside. We both look around to see if someone’s hiding, perhaps looking to steal a car, or catch a ride, and I unlock the car. I unlock it too early, and Jennifer said: We have to get in! We quickly get in, and in one quick move, back out, and head to Pressed to get coffee.
The reason why I shared these three stories is that they all happened in the same area: a happy well fed groundhog, a caterpillar with a protector, and a shooter on the loose and neighbors who are looking out for each other. I don’t need to say the obvious: We live in scary and unpredictable times. Life is precarious under the best of circumstances. That sense has been heightened by a global pandemic, new variants, and always the threat of violence whether it’s a violence inside our own bodies created by a pathogen or virus, or a violence that is in our environment threatening our very existence. How are we to live in this scary and precarious situation that seems to be relentless and without a clear and definite end?
I find for myself during this time that I can easily get worked up and feel anxious when I think I can predict the future, or when I even attempt to do so. I make up patterns in my head based on data I understand on a surface level, and I can’t help but wonder what this year will mean for all of us. It’s easy, way too easy to despair when we are faced with circumstances that are beyond our full and complete control. It’s easy to get dispirited when the future seems so unknown.
But you all have helped me and continue to help me to live a different way. I still have my fears, and I still sometimes try to predict the future, but you all remind me that there is another choice that we have in each and every single moment. It’s a choice that is ours today. We can move beyond merely being concerned with our own thoughts and fears, and we can sense where we are at this moment. We can allow ourselves to take in our environment: the places we live, the places we work, the neighbors we live next to, the animals and wildlife that co-habit this planet with us. And we get the choice to look out for each other, and be each other’s guardians. We get to literally travel this day in each other’s company, and we get to look out for each other’s safety and well-being. We get to notice not just what is threatening our life, but what is saving our life moment by moment, even when we’re not aware of it.
Many people mistakenly think that ministry is selfless, that it’s some rare and noble thing. It is noble I think, but ministry is just as much for the one serving as it is for the one being served. In fact, I would go as far to say that there isn’t really a server. Life is the server, and life is embodied in each and every one of us. When we share ourselves, and notice someone outside of ourselves, we actually just see a clearer picture of who we are. And that realization is a relief. We are not prisoners to our worst fears, our attempted predictions of the future. We are not prisoners to our greatest worries. We are set free when we see how we can benefit those in our immediate environment, and that freedom is worth more than anything monetary in this world. So I always tell people that ministry is not selfless. I’m interested in living with more freedom, and ministry is the key. Now please don’t let the word ministry be a stumbling block for you. I don’t mean anything explicitly “churchy” for lack of a better word. Another word for ministry is generosity: a generosity, a sharing of ourselves. Sharing ourselves with those in our immediate circumstances, and paying attention to what might be of benefit.
So you might notice that a lot of people, perhaps yourself included in your immediate neighborhood or workplace, are feeling kind of down lately. I’ve noticed that. They might be feeling tired, exhausted, angry, and even hopeless. Despair is the inability to see possibility in your immediate circumstances. So how can we help each other? Much of the time the answer to that question is: I don’t know. I’ve found through experience that this is almost always the best place to start. It might feel good to think we know what others need, but the truth is, we rarely do. Even when we think we do. Not knowing can make us curious, and it can make us better listeners. I don’t mean just listening with our ears, which is not terribly reliable all the time. But listening with our whole selves, listening to our environment, feeling the breath in our body, noticing where we are and what is around us. We tune into ourselves, and we tune into who and what is around us, and eventually – sometimes it happens quickly, sometimes it takes a while – we notice something we can do that might be of benefit to someone.
Sometimes that person to benefit is ourselves. We take a hot shower, we make a nice meal, or if you’re like me, you order a nice meal and do take out. You notice the feeling of sun warming your skin, and out of the corner of your senses you might notice a groundhog who would appreciate a snack, a caterpillar who needs a guardian, a couple of oblivious neighbors who are walking straight into immediate danger. We get the opportunity to be of service.
When we hear the term “Serving with Grace,” we might think that service is for other people, outside ourselves, but this is never the complete truth. We do it for ourselves, not because it always feels good, or because people are grateful for it. That happens sometimes, and that’s wonderful, but that’s not the reason to serve. Serving with grace, is realizing that every moment is grace. We are here due to efforts that go way beyond ourselves. It’s a grace to be with you this morning.
It’s a grace to be able to drink water and eat food, and communicate, and have even some of what I said be understood and appreciated, even by those I don’t know very well. Every moment we are alive is a moment of grace. Service awakens this truth in ourselves, and regular service reminds us of this grace. We feel this grace with greater and greater depth, and our sense of gratitude begins to grow. Do you want to know my definition of happiness? When our gratitude outweighs our fear. When we get to the point that our gratitude outweighs our fear, grace is the most obvious thing.
I feel very grateful for our church community during this time, and I’m grateful for all of you that are watching and sharing your presence. You teach me how to live, or more accurately how I want to live. I want my gratitude to outweigh my fear. I want to live a life of service. I want to experience grace for myself, any moment that I can.
In closing, I just want to emphasize that this is an everyday, normal experience. It’s not esoteric, and you don’t need to be a church goer to experience this. You don’t need to belong to a specific denomination, or believe in a specific creed. It is only about seeing how you might benefit those in your immediate environment. That’s it. It’s living with enough awareness that you strive to minimize harm. It’s living a life that respects and comforts those who are afraid, but who strives to never let fear have the last word. Fear is helpful and should be respected. Fear can guide us to make smarter and healthier choices, but fear is not the answer to this moment that we’re in. Gratitude is. Gratitude not for what we want, but gratitude for what we have.
This morning we get a choice to bring some color to this day. It might seem small and insignificant, but that is never our place to judge. We offer what we can from the circumstances we’re in – we share ourselves with our children, with our family and loved ones, with our neighbors, with our co-workers, those who think like us and those who don’t.
We do what we can to minimize harm, and we open ourselves to the grace of change. The grace of change is a reminder of how things actually are, not how we imagine them to be. We may imagine that we are the center of a changing landscape, the center of changing circumstances, but we are not the center. We are part of it, and we are changing too. We are changing and being changed by our circumstances in ways that are both subtle and profound. This change is not completely up to chance however. We get some choice of how we might change, or at the very least we can set the intention of how we wish to change – in which direction we hope to go, even if the journey is sometimes rocky and unpredictable. We can choose today to recognize the grace that we’re alive, and that we are alive with creatures small and greater than us who could use a little of our attention, a little of our care, a reminder that their life is also an embodiment of grace.
