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The Way of Jesus In Public Life

The Way of Jesus (in Public Life) – With Love

Lydia Shiu

Oct 20, 2024

We’re in a sermon series this season, talking about The Way of Jesus, especially in Public Life.

What does that mean?
What does it look like?
What should it or could it look like?

Why does it matter that we engage in (not just a private way) our own lives, our own families, our own salvation or righteousness, but what would it mean to live and move in Christ-like way, especially in the ways we engage the world around us in a public way? It’s alongside in this American election season. So engaging in politics, but not only that, is in question for us, but also our communities, our towns, our school, our work, our fields and so much more. Because the fact of the matter is, we’re not an island, yeah. We are deeply interconnected, we know this, so we have no choice.

As I share, I have invited my artist friend Cara to do her art live with me. She uses newspaper collages to create what I see as often public spaces, so I just wanted to co-create with her this moment today, as I talk about engaging in public life and as she creates art with newspapers. I wanted to invite some art, beauty, creativity, and live action public work of art during my sermon today.

Let me pray for us to get us started.

Jesus we invite you now to sit with us, to show us your way, to give us your wisdom, to know your heart, that we may be your hands and feet in the world we pray Amen.

My little girl started Kindergarten this year, and I have many feelings about that. But it has thrust me into this greater community right in my town, a whole elementary school of kids ranging from Kindergarten to 5th grade, and their families, and the public school system and so forth. It feels like she grew up overnight. She used to be my baby but now she’s going out into the world!

One day she came home from school a few weeks ago, and started reciting the pledge of allegiance. I was like oh right, it’s a public school, they would do something like this. But it was strange to hear my 5 year old go

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, invisible, with liberty and justice for all.

I was astounded that she had memorized it already, so proud of her, and I too still remembered every word from school days even though I probably haven’t recited it in a few decades.

As she kept repeating it, I finessed it with her. Indivisible. She asked,

What does indivisible mean?

Sigh, it means it’s not able to break up into different parts. It’s together.

What does liberty mean? It means freedom, like everyone’s free to be themselves.

What does justice mean? It means doing the right thing, but not just for you but for everybody.

And I thought about how the United States of America is not indivisible but in fact so divided politically. How more and more women are losing the freedom to do what’s best for their own body and family, and how justice is something that we continually have to fight for, for housing justice, racial justice, economic justice.

She kept saying it over and over again.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

And then my 3 year old says

I pledge allegiance

normal

Under God

With love

Normal, God, with love. Ooh I’d like to pledge allegiance to that too! I loved that.

And I think that’s a pretty good addition. With love.

Because I think to follow in the way of Jesus into public engagement with the world means to do it with love. Because,

“For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”[b” Galatians 5:14

In Mark 12:30-31

Jesus said

30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’[a]

31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] There is no commandment greater than these.”

The first commandment is Love the Lord your God. The second is Love your neighbor. And I think there’s a third commandment right snuck in there that we often don’t discuss enough, “as yourself”, meaning, love yourself.

That the wisdom is that in order for us to rightly love our neighbor well, we must know and do it in a place of deep love for ourselves first. And today to talk about “the public life”, strangely enough, I’m going to start with the place where it starts, the self, the “as you love yourself.”

I know you know this, yes yes, I love myself of course. I’m quite selfish Lydia, you don’t need to preach to me twice about loving myself. We need to learn in church how to love others and serve others.

I actually think that in church we’ve often focused on serving others especially in some of our Christian traditions of being missional that we’ve gotten some things mixed up in there. We performatively love others, help others, serve others, because it’s the commandment, the right things to do, as a fuel and credit to us externally, rather than it being the other way around, where we love ourselves to fully and authentically that love for others fuels out of that naturally. And so we get burnt out. Resentful.

We help others going, you see God, I’m doing my part, I’m serving you, I’m being a faithful servant right? When in actuality, our service should come out of a generous luxury of knowing that you are an heir to the throne. God never wanted hard working soldiers of the Lord, we overemphasized that metaphor, to be the defenders of the Word, when what we were meant to be is closer to that image from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe the children’s story by C.S. Lewis, beloved children that are kings and queens.

I’ve been learning through my community organizing work through GBIO (The Greater Boston Interfaith Organization) in the past few years, there’s this thing the organizing world talks about, to raise leaders in organizing, we do 1-1’s and in 1-1’s one of our goals is to, tap into their self-interest. That’s right, Self interest. That’s been a real interesting thing for me because I grew up denying myself, picking up my own cross, dying to myself so that Christ in me can live. As good Christians we were taught to be selfless. Self-interest sounds like a dirty word to me.

In a book called Doing Justice: Congregations and Community Organizing by Dennis A. Jacobsen, he says that,

“church people, trained in the art of destructive self-denial, tend to identify self-interest with selfishness and thus see self-interest negatively as implying self-centeredness, egotistical behavior, narcissism”

and so on. He says that Organizers see self-interest as a relational concept to be distinguished from the non relational concepts of selfishness and selflessness. Here’s what he means.

He says,

“Selfishness is egocentric, self-obsessed, small-minded, neglectful of others and greedy. The selfish person is emotionally truncated, antisocial, and incapable of developing genuine relationships. We are clear about the deficiency of people who act selfishly. No one wants to be around them.”

“We are less clear about selflessness. “He never thinks of himself”

is, after all, widely considered to be a compliment. We consider selfless people to be saintly, humble, kind, loving, and generous. But we also do not admire a human doormat.

“She lets others walk all over her”

is a derogatory statement. So also is the observation:

“He doesn’t have a clue who he is”

“she has no idea what she wants in life.”

In reality, say organizers,

selfless people tend to be perpetual victims and/or do-gooders who operate on the basis of manipulation and do not know how to create mutuality in their relationship.”

I’m quoting a lot but he just explains it better than I can. He goes on to say,

“Organizers view self-interest as the only true way of relating to another person because self-interest respects the two sides of the relationship. Selfishness denies the “other” in the relationship. Selflessness denies the “self” in the relationship. Self-interest honors both the “self” and the “other” in the relationships. Organizers say that to know your self-interest, to declare your self-interest, and to act on your self-interest is an act of political courage.”

He mentions that many women were often taught to put the needs of men before their own. That church folks learning self-interest require considerable reorientation, introspection, dialogue, and agitation. Do you feel some of that as I’m talking to you about self-interest right now? Maybe even some detachment, boredom, or critique? That’s alright, that’s good, that’s a part of the process. I like it. Stay with me.

More quotes from this guy, cause he gets personal,

“The summons of Jesus to self-denial seems on the surface to be diametrically opposed to self-interest. And those Christians in the pulpit and in the pew who live theologically on the surface have mastered the art of self-denial. Their lives have become one long sacrifice. Clergy often become so driven by the desire to be of service to others that they are in constant disservice to themselves. Many pastors are addicted to work and to the praise of their congregants, without any truly intimate relationships, rarely at home with their families. My first marriage ended in divorce, in part because of my habitual “self-denial” as a pastor. I allowed the church office to be in the front room of the parsonage. I welcomed street alcoholics at the front door and the homeless into a spare bedroom. At one point I invited a violent ex-con who had violated his parole to hide out for several weeks in the parsonage. I thought I was denying myself and taking up the cross. My wife had a more realistic appraisal of what was going on.”

The message of self-denial was never meant to be about denying your true self, but to deny the self ego. And most of us, many of us, actually aren’t in constant awareness of our true self and that’s why in prayer and mindfulness practice, we have to sift through so much of our own initial voices to get to the truth of our inner spirit. It is not quick and easy work but a deep spiritual work to deeply know ourselves, to ask what really, I mean really is my self interest, and it probably isn’t the first three things that pop into your head.

You see, affirming of the self, real love for the self, is an ongoing holy work that is and should be baked into the basis of all our righteous/justice work. Knowing that before you were sinners, that God created us in the image of God, and said you are good. And just rested on the seventh day just to enjoy you and not do any work, to model just the basking of God’s good creation and enjoying and fighting the need to fix yourself or fix everything all the time. Just rest. You good! And out of that place, we go back to our creative just public works.

Earlier this week I was at a gathering for a grant I received through Leadership Education at Duke Divinity. Fifty of us were gathered from all over the country to reflect together and learn about change leadership and what it takes to pivot organizations. I met so many fascinating folks that inspired me, intimated me, lifted me up and down, and drained me. And I thought about the work of my friend Bonnie through her organization Route One where she takes volunteers into strip clubs to connect and support the women working there. Or when I heard stories from a former lawyer who’s now lobbying and advocating against capital punishment. And so many more I won’t list off but that are each boldly leading in the public sphere with work that is specific to their own individual passion and gifts. And the grant that we all received was specifically to figure out, that as leaders, what is it that’s going on internally and how do we find that inner wisdom, discernment, and strength to carry our respective organizations to the next level.

One guy I met, Josue, who is the Director of Black Lives & Contemplation at the Center for Spiritual Imagination, he told me his work is about contextualizing contemplative practices, which many of us in the Christian faith have been rediscovering but often in white contexts that have filtered actually eastern meditative practice roots into Christian contemplation that looks very quiet and still. Josue reminded me that James Baldwin was a contemplative, and about Howard Thurman’s method of “centering down,” that seeing people of color and afro cultures as simply loud is actually racist, that his work excavates and reclaims the contemplative practices of the afro/latin cultures.

As he spoke about his reality, his context, and his work and trajectory, it rose up in me my reality, context, and work of contextualizing my faith with my identity and culture, decolonizing my theology and reclaiming my own spiritual traditions and roots, like finding the Gi (the Chinese call it Chi, the flowing energy) in the Holy Spirit. And when I preached on it a few years ago, it’s one of the most referred sermon that I get from folks when I have met many of you. Such beauty in us affirming ourselves and loving ourselves and finding ourselves and actually there is the place of beauty in which we are able to rightly engage in public life.

So it was with Jesus in Mark 6:30-32, it says,

The apostles gathered around Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.

Jesus did all he did because he had the desert time. Because he knew who he was in the eyes of God. He was able to heal, and preach, and teach because he knew the voice that said to him,

“You are my son, in whom I am well pleased.”

Why would you care about the women in the strip clubs?
Why would you care about capital punishment, to the point that the family of the man on death row is texting you daily?
Why would you care about Black spirituality?
Why do you think I care about Housing Justice?

It’s all actually a very very private matter when you really hear where it came from.

Our social justice ministry at our church, called Faith Into Action, we are just coming off of a big Housing Justice Campaign. Look, I’m still trying to figure out what community organizing is, self-interest, they also talk about power a lot, which is also a mixed up thing as someone who was raised in the church. One of the organizers really motivated me, coached me, and really drew me out as a leader. You know how he did that?

He didn’t tell me how impressive the work was, or how much need there was. He kept asking me,

why do you care? Why do you show up? Do you want to do this, really? Why do you want to do it? What’s coming up for you?

His coaching, motivating, and raising me to a leader method was all just about me and making me talk about myself. It was almost annoying, organizers call it agitation, like I’m trying to do social justice, why do you keep asking me about me?

One of the Housing Justice Campaign MVP’s, is a woman named Arlene. She’s a tenant of a public housing in Brookline. She shared her testimony, her story again and again at senate hearings, actions, to media outlets, in meetings with the Governor, you’ve heard her story if you’ve come out to any of the housing justice action. She grew up in an abusive home, went through foster homes, has been homeless, and when she got a place in that public housing, where she could shut that door and no one could come in to hurt her…I cried every time I heard that story of hers. Not exactly my story but it brought up things for me that were very personal, so much so that I showed up for that campaign for a year as an organizer. And I led, out of my own self-interest and co-chaired an action with 1,700 people gathered. The result, we had a big win with $2 Billion going toward public housing.

Why do you do what you do?
What do you care?
Why do you show up to your kids’ school?
Why do you see economic injustice in our city planning?
Why is food insecurity important to you?
Why do you give money?
Why do you vote?
Why do you protest?

Tap into your why and there’ll be so much more power in what you do. That’s why we’re doing listening sessions to share and listen.

You cannot bypass self-interest conversation or awareness about your own story to doing social justice work.

You cannot bypass the work of reflection in knowing truly who you are and what you want and achieve great impact.

You cannot bypass loving yourself as you love your neighbor and engage in a healthy way in public life.

Because if you do so, you will not know why something is pissing you off, you will not have the energy to go on when challenges come, you will not be strong enough when the enemy attacks you, you will not know why you are moving and busy and tired all for what.

Get yourself right before you go public. You’ve got to. This is the Way of Jesus in Public Life. I don’t need to give you a theology of service and mission. The centrality of the Gospel is this, that God loves you, you, not productive you or efficient you, but just you, exactly you, as you are and your story, everything that made you exactly you are now.

So what is that?
Do you know who you are?
If you could see what God sees in you?

Meditate on that first and then love your neighbor.

Let me pray for us.

God our creator, one who birthed us from your love. Help us to go back to the place when we sat at your feet and meditated on you. Then push us out into the world with clarity for what you want for not just me personally but my community, my town, our country, our world. Help us to see that abundant overflowing love you have for us, and to know that so deep and in a real way that we can’t help but see that same one love you have for that sibling on the other side of the world that I’ve never met, for that family member that seems a million miles away from me politically, that same oneness of the holy spirit for the stranger on the street. Remind us of that one love again and again. we pray, in his precious and holy name, Amen.