The Morning Call
Life coach Tony Robbins tells the story of driving a race car with an experienced professional driver beside him. The passenger also had the ability to control the car. Robbins reached speeds of well over 100 mph. He was getting the hang of it when his passenger threw him a curve ball. Tony reached a curve, and his passenger aimed the car toward a wall. The passenger then told Tony that he had to get the car out of the spin to avoid colliding with the wall at a high speed. But Tony said that as he was embraced by the spin the only thing that he could focus upon was the wall that was approaching. The passenger eventually took Tony’s head in his hand and shoved it in the direction where Tony needed to go to get out of the spin. When his head was shoved and moved into the right direction, Tony naturally turned the steering wheel in the correct direction and avoided colliding with the wall. Being in a spin can happen to you but it’s where your head is that determines whether you will crash or successfully complete your journey.
There is nothing wrong with our vehicles. It is our heads that are messed up. That is why we are not living victorious lives.
Walter Isaacson writing in the Harvard Business Review penned an article titled “The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs.” The phenomenon that made Jobs so compelling was his willingness to make revolutionary moves that went beyond conventional thinking and action. Apple once did a commercial which exclaimed: “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” I like to think that it is the people who are courageous enough to move, to go against conventionality, who are the ones that change the world. Rosa Parks changed the world by not yielding her bus seat to a white man, refusing to go to the back and rejecting segregation. Mother Theresa moved the world by providing ministry to people who had been forgotten. Nelson Mandela moved his South African nation, locked in the evil of apartheid, to the greater possibilities of ubuntu, where we recognize that our destinies are inextricably bound. Movement is also represented in the birth of Christ and God’s life-giving force that changes the world. Jesus has come into the world, not to keep it as it is, but to bring transformational hope.
As we begin a new year, people are searching for authentic ways to connect with God. Our faith communities are called to help people become flexible in an inflexible age. When Henry Ford began manufacturing automobiles he said, people could have any color in their car selection, as long as it was black. Our faith communities can also be as inflexible and unyielding, where we are tempted to say: “it has to be our way or no way.” A moribund faith lacks the flexibility for customization, which is the challenge that a new generation of believers call our faith communities to recognize. A faith that is centered in Jesus Christ is flexible enough to reach people coming from different experiences and expressions.
Our focal point as people of faith is love. God’s love for humankind; our love for brothers and sisters; our willingness to love the stranger. Love is an action verb that encompasses our faith. Scientists have determined that if you are in a committed relationship, holding your partner’s hand is enough to lower your blood pressure, ease stress, improve health and lessen pain. Neurobiology tells us that every relationship into which we enter can even change our brain chemistry. Neural transmitters in our brains search for the experiences of love that we may remember from our childhood or even our first bonding experience with our mothers.
Our faith communities should also form supportive relationships, grounded in love. There is a feeling that we probably experienced when we were infants, that we seek as we grow into adults; it is what one neuropsychiatrist refers to as feeling felt. It is this feeling felt that promotes physical well-being, longevity, mental and physical health, happiness and even wisdom. People are asking their religious leaders today, “do you feel me.” That is, “do you understand me, and will you take time to hear my story and see me?” Love is shared through relationships that move us to learn how to live within the world by our openness to experiencing another person’s journey. When we enter new relationships, we forsake some old habits and adopt new perspectives. Our brains are extended as result of the extension of ourselves. When our heads move, we move.
The church is also an instrument of love where people want to feel felt and experience the embrace of a loving faith community, where God’s people experience reception and acceptance. Such love is centered in diversity. Where there is no diversity there is no tolerance, and without diversity new ideas are impossible to form. We must be open to love if we are to feel felt while creating the neural and spiritual force that is welcoming, affirming and celebrates.
The church is called to create a great product that meets the needs of all of God’s people. Our task is to improve its product and make it accessible to God’s people. Sinners who realize that they are delivered by the love of God, pass that love on to all of God’s people and create the foundation for making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.
Alain Badiou, in his book In Praise of Love, tells us that risk is central to love. A loving relationship demands multiple and shared perspectives, which always gives rise to incongruence and tensions. Love involves the presence of risk, the possibility of failure and the need for vulnerability. If we are committed to building a community of faith that is centered in love, we must live with risk taking, open ourselves to diversity and live the dynamic of inclusion.
To meet your destiny, things cannot remain the same. We must open ourselves to what the Spirit is calling us to become. Our future is grounded in sharing love for each other. It is a basic message that your grandmother taught you, that you can attract more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.
Diana Butler Bass describes in Christianity After Religion, the idea of holy discontent. It is the discontent that we have about the failures of the church or Christian community. Some people are discontented that the last preacher has departed. Some are discontented because the new preacher is present. Some are just discontented. It can be loneliness. It can be angst. It can be any number of sources, but the discontent is present.
Our discontent is reflected in the struggles that we have in the faith community around issues of inclusiveness and how it is that we can begin transforming the church. But Bass tells us that our discontent is also a gift. Our discontent is the recognition that something is wrong. Discontent is also the beginning of change. Only when we own our discontent do we create the impetus to change our circumstances. Only when we embrace our discontent can we move toward health and happiness. Only when we focus upon our discontent can we begin to reach for more.
Martin Luther King Jr., reflecting upon the Montgomery bus boycott, talked about the mass arrests the police initiated to break the boycott. The significant reaction of the community was that it embraced the situation. When 90 people were indicted by a grand jury, almost all of them rushed to the courthouse to produce themselves for arrest. Most of the people went to the sheriff’s office to see if their names were on the grand jury list; they were disappointed if their names did not appear.
The reality is that once fear-ridden people face their angst, transformation can happen. The story was, told about, Ms. Pollard a 75-year-old woman who also participated in the boycott; she was asked one day if she was tired of walking. In her ungrammatical profundity she said, “My feets is tired but my soul is rested.” Our feet may be tired, but our souls are rested. The key to your transformation is focus. Embrace your disappointments, embrace your failure, embrace your oppression, embrace your discontent, and use it as the fuel that moves you from where you are to where it is that you want to be.
Focus on Jesus, the Prince of Peace, and the Lord of Lords. Jesus is our courage. Jesus is our sustainer. Jesus is our guide. Focus on Jesus today and all the other things will be added unto you. Focus on making our world a community of love that lights people up for Jesus Christ. If you are looking for a blessing, be a blessing to someone else. Amen.
The Rev. Larry Pickens is the executive director of the Pennsylvania Council of Churches.