Civility
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Object:
Contents
"Civility" by Lamar Massingill
"Anybody Listening?" by C. David McKirachan
* * * * * * * *
Civility
by Lamar Massingill
Ephesians 4:25--5:2
All of the words in this passage from Ephesians 4:25--5:2 add up to one thing as I read them: civility. We are to be civil to one another, which is not an altogether "Christian" virtue, but a human one, and there is not a whole lot of difference. The more we learn the way of Jesus; we learn more what it means to be a human being. Civility would consist of phrases such as put away falsehood, tell the truth, do not sin, no longer steal, do honest work, talk no evil, put away bitterness, wrath, and anger, and so forth.
I think this is what we lack in our land of disappearing plenty. There have been a number of books written on the subject of civility, for the most part by those who grieve the demise of it. By civility, I'm not talking about good manners, as one can possess those and still be as immoral as one who creates the problems of society and refuses to become part of the solutions.
However, if we define civility as a primal ethic that would change a nation of people and is synonymous with morality, then we are onto something good. One of those books regarding civility was written by Stephen Carter. Its title is simply Civility. He places civility, not in the category of good manners or good taste at the expense of profound truth and morality, but in a category of something this ailing democracy of ours needs badly, and without which it has small chance of recovering.
Part of our problem regarding civility is our inability to deal with diversity. We are a multicultural nation and that is becoming more and more of a problem because we don't realize that we are all part of one another, regardless of who we are. In a sentence, we simply don't want to be civil to those who are different.
Diversity just may be the hardest thing for a society to live with, and it may also be a reality that would be dangerous for a society to live without. Without diversity, we will never learn civility. Even Jesus said that it is easy to be civil to those of your own kind.
It's often alarming and should come as no surprise to us that people everywhere in our country are very much alive to their own nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, and sexual orientation -- all those legitimate differences within our common humanity. We must accept, respectfully so, the diversity that is the beauty of America, because people cannot be asked to serve the greater whole of the country until their own separate identity is acknowledged and celebrated.
People must feel individually significant if they are to share their own gifts with the democracy. So it seems to me that the challenge for all Americans is to unite the separate and particular with the universal and all-inclusive. Or, as William Sloane Coffin put it, "Recognize the need for roots while insisting that the point of roots is to put forth branches."
All human beings have more in common than they do in conflict. All of us have the same common needs, regardless of the particular adjectives that describe us. James Baldwin said, "Each of us, helplessly and forever, contains the other -- male in female, female in male, white in black and black in white. We are part of each other."
At its best, civility has little to do with taste and everything to do with truth. The great truth it affirms, in spiritual terms, is that everyone from the Pope to the loneliest wino on the planet is a child of God, equal in dignity and deserving of equal respect. It is a spiritual truth that we belong to each other as much as we belong to God. From a Christian point of view, Christ died to keep us that way, which means that our sin is only and always that we tend to put asunder what God has joined together. Civility at its deepest level celebrates rather than fears our human differences.
Actually, the Declaration of Independence says the same thing: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."
Freedom demands that we treat our fellow citizens with civility or we will surely fail and it will be our fault. It's disturbing that I don't see much today. Perhaps we all could commit ourselves to begin a "new birth of freedom" (Abraham Lincoln) and realize that freedom does not mean that you can just do what you please, but instead can be pleased to do what you must. Maybe then we can celebrate each other's presence and not look away when we pass someone who is different.
This is the way Saint Paul challenged the followers at Ephesus to treat one another: actions full of civility and truth and morality. These actions had not so much to do with manners as they did with love, and if we fail in love, says Saint Paul in First Corinthians, we fail in everything. If we care and love ceaselessly for one another, for not only our multicultural nation, but also our planet, then our country will begin again to feel hope swelling in our spirits. If, and when that happens; if and when our celebration of diversity is equal to our unity; then we will more than survive, we will thrive.
In the last century, we created a world for some of us, maybe in this new millennium, full with diversity, maybe we can create a world for all of us.
The Rev. Lamar Massingill, a former Southern Baptist pastor, and also long time minister at the historic United Methodist Church in Port Gibson, Mississippi (1988-1999), is now Religion Editor for the Magnolia Gazette (magnoliagazette.com), for which he writes a weekly column. Massingill has traveled nationally and internationally and has lectured widely on the interaction between religion and psychology. He recently retired from the parish church after thirty years of pastoral ministry.
Anybody Listening?
by C. David McKirachan
John 6:34, 41-51
I have a tooth, in the back, upper left that communicates with me. Anything cold that touches it sends a sensation up into my jaw that approximates a roofing nail being driven into my face. Now, I've never had a roofing nail, or any other kind of nail driven into my face, but that gets the idea across. Ouch! I wince, trying to get away from the pain. It is evidence of something not so good going on meeting a nerve that is perfectly healthy. The interaction yields the roofing nail. It is proof and ongoing evidence that I need to go to the dentist and have my friendly doctor do whatever needs to be done. I don't want to because it will probably cost money, I don't want to be bothered, and I keep hoping it will go away by itself. I'm a silly man.
I consider a sermon a success if it makes someone wince. My words are not golden apples of eternal truth. Nope. But if I can be an ice cube on a place where there's something going on, then maybe, and I emphasize the maybe, they might do something about their pain. We've all got them, those places in our lives where there's sin at work. But we rarely want to do anything about these places because of, see above. We're resistant. It's called normal. It's called sad.
I've noticed that there are various strategies people use to avoid dealing with the pain inflicted by such successful sermons. The most common is to ignore them. Another is to question my credentials; after all, I'm just a minister. Another is to complain about my delivery. Another is to get angry at the messenger that is I. Let's be clear about the truth that these may be perfectly valid criticisms. Bring them on. But there could be something important coming from this under-equipped fool, buried in his badly delivered speech, offensive in the extreme that got to you. Maybe the messenger is less important than the Spirit at work on you.
This is not a defense for bad preaching. There is none. But it is a realization that if we are unwilling to at least listen for the small whispers of the Lord, how they convict and stir us, perhaps we're not going to hear the Good News no matter how it's delivered.
Jesus may have been getting at this when he said, "Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me." He preached, taught, and offered the incarnate word on a pretty consistently high level. But, see above.
I love preaching the word. I love how it takes us into a place where we have to be honest, not only about our limitations but about our potential as well. There is a fierce glory there that is rare in our world. But I think we must preach in the Lord, knowing that our words are just that, words. We are silly people, we preachers, just as susceptible to all of the above excuses as anyone else. But we must not be too hard on ourselves. It's not all our fault that we are rarely successful at changing the world with our preaching. A lot of the world doesn't want to be changed. All we can do is give the recalcitrant to our merciful and loving God. I guess we have to love them. That's what he did. And I guess we have to pay attention to our own moments of painful realization. Ouch!
But, see above.
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. McKirachan is the author of I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder (Westminster John Knox).
*****************************************
StoryShare, August 12, 2012, issue.
Copyright 2012 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
"Civility" by Lamar Massingill
"Anybody Listening?" by C. David McKirachan
* * * * * * * *
Civility
by Lamar Massingill
Ephesians 4:25--5:2
All of the words in this passage from Ephesians 4:25--5:2 add up to one thing as I read them: civility. We are to be civil to one another, which is not an altogether "Christian" virtue, but a human one, and there is not a whole lot of difference. The more we learn the way of Jesus; we learn more what it means to be a human being. Civility would consist of phrases such as put away falsehood, tell the truth, do not sin, no longer steal, do honest work, talk no evil, put away bitterness, wrath, and anger, and so forth.
I think this is what we lack in our land of disappearing plenty. There have been a number of books written on the subject of civility, for the most part by those who grieve the demise of it. By civility, I'm not talking about good manners, as one can possess those and still be as immoral as one who creates the problems of society and refuses to become part of the solutions.
However, if we define civility as a primal ethic that would change a nation of people and is synonymous with morality, then we are onto something good. One of those books regarding civility was written by Stephen Carter. Its title is simply Civility. He places civility, not in the category of good manners or good taste at the expense of profound truth and morality, but in a category of something this ailing democracy of ours needs badly, and without which it has small chance of recovering.
Part of our problem regarding civility is our inability to deal with diversity. We are a multicultural nation and that is becoming more and more of a problem because we don't realize that we are all part of one another, regardless of who we are. In a sentence, we simply don't want to be civil to those who are different.
Diversity just may be the hardest thing for a society to live with, and it may also be a reality that would be dangerous for a society to live without. Without diversity, we will never learn civility. Even Jesus said that it is easy to be civil to those of your own kind.
It's often alarming and should come as no surprise to us that people everywhere in our country are very much alive to their own nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, and sexual orientation -- all those legitimate differences within our common humanity. We must accept, respectfully so, the diversity that is the beauty of America, because people cannot be asked to serve the greater whole of the country until their own separate identity is acknowledged and celebrated.
People must feel individually significant if they are to share their own gifts with the democracy. So it seems to me that the challenge for all Americans is to unite the separate and particular with the universal and all-inclusive. Or, as William Sloane Coffin put it, "Recognize the need for roots while insisting that the point of roots is to put forth branches."
All human beings have more in common than they do in conflict. All of us have the same common needs, regardless of the particular adjectives that describe us. James Baldwin said, "Each of us, helplessly and forever, contains the other -- male in female, female in male, white in black and black in white. We are part of each other."
At its best, civility has little to do with taste and everything to do with truth. The great truth it affirms, in spiritual terms, is that everyone from the Pope to the loneliest wino on the planet is a child of God, equal in dignity and deserving of equal respect. It is a spiritual truth that we belong to each other as much as we belong to God. From a Christian point of view, Christ died to keep us that way, which means that our sin is only and always that we tend to put asunder what God has joined together. Civility at its deepest level celebrates rather than fears our human differences.
Actually, the Declaration of Independence says the same thing: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."
Freedom demands that we treat our fellow citizens with civility or we will surely fail and it will be our fault. It's disturbing that I don't see much today. Perhaps we all could commit ourselves to begin a "new birth of freedom" (Abraham Lincoln) and realize that freedom does not mean that you can just do what you please, but instead can be pleased to do what you must. Maybe then we can celebrate each other's presence and not look away when we pass someone who is different.
This is the way Saint Paul challenged the followers at Ephesus to treat one another: actions full of civility and truth and morality. These actions had not so much to do with manners as they did with love, and if we fail in love, says Saint Paul in First Corinthians, we fail in everything. If we care and love ceaselessly for one another, for not only our multicultural nation, but also our planet, then our country will begin again to feel hope swelling in our spirits. If, and when that happens; if and when our celebration of diversity is equal to our unity; then we will more than survive, we will thrive.
In the last century, we created a world for some of us, maybe in this new millennium, full with diversity, maybe we can create a world for all of us.
The Rev. Lamar Massingill, a former Southern Baptist pastor, and also long time minister at the historic United Methodist Church in Port Gibson, Mississippi (1988-1999), is now Religion Editor for the Magnolia Gazette (magnoliagazette.com), for which he writes a weekly column. Massingill has traveled nationally and internationally and has lectured widely on the interaction between religion and psychology. He recently retired from the parish church after thirty years of pastoral ministry.
Anybody Listening?
by C. David McKirachan
John 6:34, 41-51
I have a tooth, in the back, upper left that communicates with me. Anything cold that touches it sends a sensation up into my jaw that approximates a roofing nail being driven into my face. Now, I've never had a roofing nail, or any other kind of nail driven into my face, but that gets the idea across. Ouch! I wince, trying to get away from the pain. It is evidence of something not so good going on meeting a nerve that is perfectly healthy. The interaction yields the roofing nail. It is proof and ongoing evidence that I need to go to the dentist and have my friendly doctor do whatever needs to be done. I don't want to because it will probably cost money, I don't want to be bothered, and I keep hoping it will go away by itself. I'm a silly man.
I consider a sermon a success if it makes someone wince. My words are not golden apples of eternal truth. Nope. But if I can be an ice cube on a place where there's something going on, then maybe, and I emphasize the maybe, they might do something about their pain. We've all got them, those places in our lives where there's sin at work. But we rarely want to do anything about these places because of, see above. We're resistant. It's called normal. It's called sad.
I've noticed that there are various strategies people use to avoid dealing with the pain inflicted by such successful sermons. The most common is to ignore them. Another is to question my credentials; after all, I'm just a minister. Another is to complain about my delivery. Another is to get angry at the messenger that is I. Let's be clear about the truth that these may be perfectly valid criticisms. Bring them on. But there could be something important coming from this under-equipped fool, buried in his badly delivered speech, offensive in the extreme that got to you. Maybe the messenger is less important than the Spirit at work on you.
This is not a defense for bad preaching. There is none. But it is a realization that if we are unwilling to at least listen for the small whispers of the Lord, how they convict and stir us, perhaps we're not going to hear the Good News no matter how it's delivered.
Jesus may have been getting at this when he said, "Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me." He preached, taught, and offered the incarnate word on a pretty consistently high level. But, see above.
I love preaching the word. I love how it takes us into a place where we have to be honest, not only about our limitations but about our potential as well. There is a fierce glory there that is rare in our world. But I think we must preach in the Lord, knowing that our words are just that, words. We are silly people, we preachers, just as susceptible to all of the above excuses as anyone else. But we must not be too hard on ourselves. It's not all our fault that we are rarely successful at changing the world with our preaching. A lot of the world doesn't want to be changed. All we can do is give the recalcitrant to our merciful and loving God. I guess we have to love them. That's what he did. And I guess we have to pay attention to our own moments of painful realization. Ouch!
But, see above.
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. McKirachan is the author of I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder (Westminster John Knox).
*****************************************
StoryShare, August 12, 2012, issue.
Copyright 2012 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
