Hug Her, Said a Woman in the Crowd: A Sermon for Valentine's Day, 2000
This is not a fund-raising sermon. This is an auction sermon. This is a sermon I agreed to preach sometime following our biennial talent auction in November of 1998, and it is a sermon for which one of our families paid handsomely. This is not a fund-raising sermon. This is a sermon about love. This is a sermon for Valentine’s Day. This is a sermon about the kind of love that reaches beyond the self. This is not a fund-raising sermon. This could be a fund-raising sermon. But it isn’t.
Do you remember the passage in Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians in which he says, “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal,” and then he goes on to give his own definition of love. “Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful. It is not arrogant or rude.” And then he says, “Love does not insist on its own way.” That’s the piece of love I want to get at today. “Love seeketh not her own,” saith the poetry of King James’ day. “Love does not insist on its own way.” “Love seeketh not her own.”
That’s where this sermon begins. Well, it really begins with Kurt Vonnegut’s story of the shopping bag lady, but we’re not ready for that story yet. We’ll come back to her at the end. Let’s begin with ourselves and with this one brief life we have been given to lead. What do we want from this life? Given the choice, would not many of us seek happiness? Do you know the definition of ‘happy’? “Favored by hap, by chance, by luck, by fortune.” That’s the definition. Let’s just say that most of us would like to be standing in the right line when hap is passed out.
And so how is it we go about seeking happiness? The first stage- and this stage comes at different ages for different people, and for some people it does not come at all- at the first stage, we are faced with the task of a full-scale self-assessment. Who are we? Which is to say, what do we have to work with? What cards have genetics and heredity dealt us? How damaged are we- by our background, our history, our parenting, the choices we’ve made? Who are we? What are our roots? Where did we come from? Has the sailing been rough? Has the sailing been smooth?
Who are we? Do any of us now see or have we ever seen a therapist? Are we trying to untangle the strands that have made up our lives? Do we wish we could? Who are we? Does coming to First Parish help to answer that question? Do insights come here, not just from words spoken, but from the place we go when we hear a particular piece of music, or when we glance out the window just so? What about groups we might be in, or friends we have? Do they mirror back to us who we are? Do they see something in us that we do not or cannot see? Are these people willing to tell us who we are? Can we handle it if they do?
Who are we? If we are brave enough, we may, from time to time, catch a glimpse of ourselves. This leads to stage two. Who do we want to become? Do we like what we see? The first question is “who are we?” The second question is “who do we want to become?” It is often in the answering of the second question that we get into trouble. If we do not like what we see in the first stage, and I mean this both literally and figuratively, we may try to fix things in the second stage. If we do not like how we look, and this is the literal part, we may tinker around with our body. This culture of ours gives us constant reminders of what the ideal person looks like: young, trim, healthy hair, confident but not brash, tall rather than short, good complexion, which is to say, white, articulate, erudite, brave, clean and reverent.
If we do not like what we see when we answer the question “who are we?”, we may try to fix things, and now I am thinking figuratively. A more comical acting out of this comes on Paul Revere Road, particularly in the spring. I love working in my yard, with the trees, with the lawn, with the garden, with the shrubbery. There I am on a Saturday morning, and I glance outside, and my neighbor is raking or mowing or planting. “Oh my God,” I say to Elizabeth, “I’ve got to get outside. He’s raking. I’ve got to rake. He’s mowing. I’ve got to mow. He’s planting. I’ve got to plant.”
There are less comical examples. They all fall under the category of “the privileged seek happiness.” I believe there have been other Sundays when I have ranted and raved about this. This phenomenon in other generations has been called “the rat race.” Please notice the choice of a rodent. We want this thing called “hap”, and we equate it with things and the things cost money, so we work harder and longer to make more money to have more things. The problem is we don’t always end up with hap.
“Who do we want to become?” is the second question. If only we had that job instead of this job, if only we were in relationship with that person instead of this person, if only my children had the same grades/ambition/skills as those children, if only we lived in that house instead of this house, if only our marriage were like that marriage, if only we were seen with that crowd instead of this crowd, if only…This is the way some of us answer the second question, “who do we want to become?” in response to the way we have answered the first question, “who are we?”
Two things must be said here. First, not all of us, by any means, respond to the “who are we?” by asking these questions. And secondly, those who do, know they are falling into a trap. They know that’s not who they want to become, but they can’t do anything about it. They think they’re expected to answer the question that way, and this “pursuit of happiness” business is not all that easy.
The fact is, it is a trap. We’re given mixed messages. We need self-knowledge. We need self-esteem. It’s the way we hold it all together in the face of all the forces that would pull us apart. The trap is when we consider “the pursuit of happiness” and “the desire to make ourselves as perfect as we can” an end in itself, instead of a means to something even better. We are now circling around to Paul’s letter to the Corinthians and to something called the Golden Rule and to the story that Kurt Vonnegut tells so beautifully.
Consider this business of the pursuit of our perfect selves, this way we sometimes fall into when we think of what we want to become: have you heard the expression “House of Cards”? It all comes to naught. It is doomed. And we know that. And we pursue all of it anyway, most of us. But there is a Plan B. Plan B is what the winning bidder of this auction sermon wished to have said. Plan A was my self and your self as an end in itself. Plan A was imagining the perfect self for ourselves and going after it, at all costs. (Please notice the phrase “at all costs.”) Plan A was an outcome that, at the end, comes up empty, as in “my life is empty.”
Plan B suggests that we can accept ourselves, with all of our shortcomings, all of our pretensions, all of our blemishes. Plan B suggests that we can always keep working on coming to the place we want to be, and in the meantime, we can try love. “Love does not insist on its own way,” says Paul. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” says Jesus. “‘Hug her’, said a woman in the crowd.” “The living tradition we share draws from many sources,” say the words of our Unitarian Universalist Purposes and Principles. From the Christian source comes this word from our sponsor: “love your neighbor as yourself.” The Church has called it the Golden Rule, as in “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your mind, and with all your soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.”
Here’s the “Gary Smith Valentine’s Day 2000” take on all this: if we wish to be favored by hap, try loving others “as yourself”, which is to say, love your neighbor without thought of yourself, without thought of any “thank you”, any reward, any stars in your crown. Don’t wait to be perfect to do this. There’s no time. Don’t make an action plan. Don’t enter this in your Palm Pilot. Just try some simple thing today that involves loving your neighbor. Do it without guile. Do it without thinking about it too much.
Here’s the “Gary Smith Valentine’s Day 2000” take on all this: synergy will take over. You may like it, this love of neighbor stuff. And you will want to become a better person so that you can love more. The two forces will work on each other: becoming the person you want to be and loving your neighbor. They will become one. And you will find happiness. This is not some pop culture, “feel good” piece of advice. This is ancient wisdom. This is the core teaching of our Christian brothers and sisters for centuries. What if love is some divine force that pulls us toward our neighbor? What if we find ourselves living into the paradox that the more we love our neighbor the more we come to love our own selves, the more we come to accept our own imperfect selves. What if we find ourselves living into the paradox that the more happiness we bring to our neighbor the more happiness we find for ourselves, and that it just happens, and we can’t plan on it, and we can’t force it.
Kurt Vonnegut tells the story of a shopping bag lady named Mary Kathleen who surrounds the story teller and will not let him go, surrounds him with all her shopping bags and takes hold of his wrist and will not let him go. In fact, she will not lower her voice. “Now that I’ve found you, Walter [she calls him Walter], I’ll never let you go.” Vonnegut says this kind of melodrama will always draw a crowd.
“You used to tell me all the time how much you loved me, Walter,” Mary Kathleen cries out even louder. “But then you went away, and I never heard from you again. Were you just lying to me?” Vonnegut says the man cannot make a sound. “Look me in the eye, Walter,” she says. And then Vonnegut says that this unlikely tableau represented “a miracle that our [street-side] audience must have prayed for again and again: the rescue of at least one shopping-bag lady by a man who knew her well.”
“Some people were crying,” so the story goes. “I myself was about to cry. ‘Hug her,’ said a woman in the crowd. I did so. I found myself embracing a bundle of dry twigs that was wrapped in rags. That was when I myself began to cry.” It is story enough for a Valentine’s Day. “Love does not insist on its own way,” says Paul. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” says Jesus. “‘Hug her,’ said a woman in the crowd.”