Doing Dishes
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
May 1, 2022
Rev. Craig M. Nowak
As spring advances toward summer, and the daytime temperature reaches ever more agreeable heights in this part of the world, more and more people are venturing outdoors to do whatever it is they want or need to do. For my mother and I that means making the first of our semi-annual trips to the cemetery to visit “the gang” as my mother calls our deceased relatives buried there, which includes her parents, a number of aunts and uncles, and two sisters she never knew who died in infancy.
After placing flowers beside the headstone, we pulled back the encroaching lawn from some of the foot stones, curious to confirm or refresh our memories of just how long some of them have been gone, physically, anyway. As we turned and left the protective shade of the massive tree standing watch over the graves and walked across the sunlit lawn toward my the car, my mother expressed what I can only describe as wonder tinted with subtle hues of melancholy at the belief some hold that they will one day be reunited with their families and pets in heaven. A belief neither my mother nor I share, though she concedes it must be a comforting thought to those who believe it.
Whether comforting or not, the idea of heaven as a place you go…hopefully…after death has become so firmly ingrained in the Western imagination as to become practically synonymous with religion and religious belief itself. Indeed, if/when in conversation people outside of UU circles learn that I am a minister, they often seem to assume I believe in a heaven with a street address, that is, a physical reality in which one resides postmortem. An assumption just as likely to be accompanied by either eager embrace or scornful dismissal afterwards of anything else I might have to say regardless of topic of conversation.
Now, if you happen to believe in heaven as a place people go after death, I’m not going to tell you otherwise. The truth of the matter is, I and no one else, for that matter, can speak with certainty about what, if anything, follows death. Instead, I want to offer you not just the possibility but the certainty that heaven does exist this side of the grave, at least.
I kid you not.
Now, I confess, I can’t claim credit for this idea. That belongs to Jesus. No, not the sweet saccharine Jesus many of us grew up with or hear about still from time to time, but cranky Jesus, from our first reading. The guy running around flinging insults at the Pharisees, and not some garden variety insults, but the supreme insult. Remember, he calls them, “hypocrites!” In other words, Frauds, Fakes, Phonies.
What could be worse, right?
And of course it’s not that hard to understand why Jesus is so cranky and biting in his criticism. We know the feeling.
I mean, think of that smug you know who, who makes a spectacle of his alleged love of country while working behind the scenes to undermine democracy at every turn. I bet you can think of more than a few such people, in fact.
Or the CEO’s of such and such corporation who make big ta-doos about giving away enormous sums of money, which is then directed to help fix problems caused by their companies in the first place.
You know who I’m talking about. The kind of people who turn reading the news into a daily opportunity to get your blood boiling.
So maybe we shut off the news. Oh, but then there’s that neighbor or co-worker, you know, the one you never really liked, who’s always ready with a snide comment about what the person in front of them at the checkout was buying with an EBT (electronic benefit transfer) card but keeps their mouth shut when the cashier gives them back too much in change.
We get where Jesus is coming from. It’s like we’re surrounded by hypocrites. Woe to them!
God, self-righteousness feels good!
Actually, it doesn’t. Not really. I mean, not for long.
The thing is, cranky Jesus isn’t promising heaven to those able to identify and sneer at the hypocrites around them. He’s calling us to identify our own hypocrisy within. This is what Jesus calls, cleaning the inside of our cup. He’s reminding us the keys the kingdom, if you will, are fashioned not from aloof, moral superiority, but from deep, penetrating humility.
Heaven, this side of the grave, then, is accessed not with money, power, influence, or perceived moral superiority of any kind, but by simply doing dishes.
Not surprisingly we have tough time with this.
No one likes to be called, let alone think of themselves as a hypocrite. Resistance is all but assured, at first, especially when we remain focused on the most obvious, worse examples of hypocrisy in others. We protest, I’ve never professed to loving this country in one breath then actively supported it’s weakening or demise in another.
No, but have you ever celebrated Independence Day in July and sat out an election perhaps in November?
And sure, we may not be billionaires throwing money at problems we’re created and calling it charity, but haven’t we all, at times, supported a cause with one hand that works against the effects of something we consume with the other?
And can we really claim we’ve never judged another based on unexamined assumptions of “who” they are or found ways to justify benefiting from something we didn’t honestly earn or deserve?
Now, it is easy to conclude that because the Gospels present Jesus in a rather foul mood when as he rants on about hypocrisy that the point of all of this is to shame, to induce guilt, or even to excuse all hypocrisy and hubris because, well, everyone’s implicated to some degree. But that’s not what’s going on here.
Some years back I stumbled upon a British television sitcom some of you may know called “Keeping Up Appearances.” It chronicled the antics of Hyacinth Bucket, a middle class British home-maker desperately trying to be seen as upper class.
To fans of the show her efforts, such as insisting her last name is pronounced Bouquet rather than Bucket and her regular references to Royal Doulton china, which she mispronounces as Royal Doolton, never fails to amuse. Indeed, to be sure, her efforts and the situations she finds herself in attempting to keep up appearances are funny, and often hilarious. Yet behind these efforts and situations and the laughter they engender, there’s tension, a certain sadness fused with both hope and frustration. And one finds oneself thinking, “Hyacinth, you don’t need to try so hard. Give yourself a break”
Jesus, cranky Jesus, is essentially saying the same thing to us.
Behind his notable exasperation with our attempts to keep up appearances is far a more compassionate exhortation,“Stop working so hard to appear good and instead just be kind.”
“Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things.” writes the poet Naomi Shihab Nye.
And what we must first lose is any illusions about our own purity, moral superiority, and indeed any perceived immunity from anything human.
Nye’s poem, “Kindness”, our second reading this morning, reminds us kindness, which is essential for justice, does not descend from the lofty heights of detached observation. It is not a matter of knowing as a point of fact, that somewhere, as Nye writes,
“The Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.”
But knowing within,
“this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.”
Nye reminds us kindness emerges from our own experience, including the painful experience of its absence,
“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,” Nye tells us,
“you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.”
This deep engagement with our humanity is the cleansing of the inside of our cup, the dishes, if you will, Jesus calls us to do.
Now, for those who appreciate a more concrete, “how to” guide to this “doing dishes” thing, you need not look any further than last week’s service led by our children, the central message of which began with, “Raise your hand if you like chocolate!” I imagine a lot of hands went up. And as I heard about, read, then reflected on that service, I realized the children had given us a lesson in kindness.
Chocolate has been on the children’s mind all church year, and not only because they like to eat it, but because they also know chocolate production is mired in environmental and human rights abuses including child labor, even slavery.
Now, they could have gone on and on with great self-righteous indignation about the abuses of chocolate production, labeled the companies that produce chocolate and even the consumers who eat it evil, immoral, etc. and implored or attempted to shame us all into giving up chocolate. And let’s be honest, that would have made some of us feel really good for a while, to see such passion in calling out injustice. But would any one of us have given up chocolate? I’m guessing no.
Instead the children outlined the issues of chocolate production without objectifying either the perpetrators or victims of its abuses. They shared how they understand modern chocolate production to conflict with our UU principles. And they offered ideas on how to address these issues.
Then, in a remarkable expression of honest self-reflection, said, “We think it is not realistic that we’ll stop eating chocolate entirely, but perhaps we could eat less of the conventionally produced chocolate.”
And with these words, they stood not apart as distant observers, judging the actions of mere mortals from behind the pristine facade of self-righteousness meticulously maintained by a detached mind. Instead, they stood with us, as very human beings, engaged in all the complexity and nuance that accompanies immersion in the messiness of life on the ground. The messiness from which kindness emerges. Kindness that stands to advance the reality of just chocolate production and consumption more than any display of indignant moralism ever will.
Indeed, the children remind us, clean the inside and you need not worry about the outside, for as Jesus taught and Nye observes, once we clean the inside of the cup,
“Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore…
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.”
A shadow or friend whose presence confirms our arrival in heaven, here and now.
May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
May 1, 2022
Rev. Craig M. Nowak
As spring advances toward summer, and the daytime temperature reaches ever more agreeable heights in this part of the world, more and more people are venturing outdoors to do whatever it is they want or need to do. For my mother and I that means making the first of our semi-annual trips to the cemetery to visit “the gang” as my mother calls our deceased relatives buried there, which includes her parents, a number of aunts and uncles, and two sisters she never knew who died in infancy.
After placing flowers beside the headstone, we pulled back the encroaching lawn from some of the foot stones, curious to confirm or refresh our memories of just how long some of them have been gone, physically, anyway. As we turned and left the protective shade of the massive tree standing watch over the graves and walked across the sunlit lawn toward my the car, my mother expressed what I can only describe as wonder tinted with subtle hues of melancholy at the belief some hold that they will one day be reunited with their families and pets in heaven. A belief neither my mother nor I share, though she concedes it must be a comforting thought to those who believe it.
Whether comforting or not, the idea of heaven as a place you go…hopefully…after death has become so firmly ingrained in the Western imagination as to become practically synonymous with religion and religious belief itself. Indeed, if/when in conversation people outside of UU circles learn that I am a minister, they often seem to assume I believe in a heaven with a street address, that is, a physical reality in which one resides postmortem. An assumption just as likely to be accompanied by either eager embrace or scornful dismissal afterwards of anything else I might have to say regardless of topic of conversation.
Now, if you happen to believe in heaven as a place people go after death, I’m not going to tell you otherwise. The truth of the matter is, I and no one else, for that matter, can speak with certainty about what, if anything, follows death. Instead, I want to offer you not just the possibility but the certainty that heaven does exist this side of the grave, at least.
I kid you not.
Now, I confess, I can’t claim credit for this idea. That belongs to Jesus. No, not the sweet saccharine Jesus many of us grew up with or hear about still from time to time, but cranky Jesus, from our first reading. The guy running around flinging insults at the Pharisees, and not some garden variety insults, but the supreme insult. Remember, he calls them, “hypocrites!” In other words, Frauds, Fakes, Phonies.
What could be worse, right?
And of course it’s not that hard to understand why Jesus is so cranky and biting in his criticism. We know the feeling.
I mean, think of that smug you know who, who makes a spectacle of his alleged love of country while working behind the scenes to undermine democracy at every turn. I bet you can think of more than a few such people, in fact.
Or the CEO’s of such and such corporation who make big ta-doos about giving away enormous sums of money, which is then directed to help fix problems caused by their companies in the first place.
You know who I’m talking about. The kind of people who turn reading the news into a daily opportunity to get your blood boiling.
So maybe we shut off the news. Oh, but then there’s that neighbor or co-worker, you know, the one you never really liked, who’s always ready with a snide comment about what the person in front of them at the checkout was buying with an EBT (electronic benefit transfer) card but keeps their mouth shut when the cashier gives them back too much in change.
We get where Jesus is coming from. It’s like we’re surrounded by hypocrites. Woe to them!
God, self-righteousness feels good!
Actually, it doesn’t. Not really. I mean, not for long.
The thing is, cranky Jesus isn’t promising heaven to those able to identify and sneer at the hypocrites around them. He’s calling us to identify our own hypocrisy within. This is what Jesus calls, cleaning the inside of our cup. He’s reminding us the keys the kingdom, if you will, are fashioned not from aloof, moral superiority, but from deep, penetrating humility.
Heaven, this side of the grave, then, is accessed not with money, power, influence, or perceived moral superiority of any kind, but by simply doing dishes.
Not surprisingly we have tough time with this.
No one likes to be called, let alone think of themselves as a hypocrite. Resistance is all but assured, at first, especially when we remain focused on the most obvious, worse examples of hypocrisy in others. We protest, I’ve never professed to loving this country in one breath then actively supported it’s weakening or demise in another.
No, but have you ever celebrated Independence Day in July and sat out an election perhaps in November?
And sure, we may not be billionaires throwing money at problems we’re created and calling it charity, but haven’t we all, at times, supported a cause with one hand that works against the effects of something we consume with the other?
And can we really claim we’ve never judged another based on unexamined assumptions of “who” they are or found ways to justify benefiting from something we didn’t honestly earn or deserve?
Now, it is easy to conclude that because the Gospels present Jesus in a rather foul mood when as he rants on about hypocrisy that the point of all of this is to shame, to induce guilt, or even to excuse all hypocrisy and hubris because, well, everyone’s implicated to some degree. But that’s not what’s going on here.
Some years back I stumbled upon a British television sitcom some of you may know called “Keeping Up Appearances.” It chronicled the antics of Hyacinth Bucket, a middle class British home-maker desperately trying to be seen as upper class.
To fans of the show her efforts, such as insisting her last name is pronounced Bouquet rather than Bucket and her regular references to Royal Doulton china, which she mispronounces as Royal Doolton, never fails to amuse. Indeed, to be sure, her efforts and the situations she finds herself in attempting to keep up appearances are funny, and often hilarious. Yet behind these efforts and situations and the laughter they engender, there’s tension, a certain sadness fused with both hope and frustration. And one finds oneself thinking, “Hyacinth, you don’t need to try so hard. Give yourself a break”
Jesus, cranky Jesus, is essentially saying the same thing to us.
Behind his notable exasperation with our attempts to keep up appearances is far a more compassionate exhortation,“Stop working so hard to appear good and instead just be kind.”
“Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things.” writes the poet Naomi Shihab Nye.
And what we must first lose is any illusions about our own purity, moral superiority, and indeed any perceived immunity from anything human.
Nye’s poem, “Kindness”, our second reading this morning, reminds us kindness, which is essential for justice, does not descend from the lofty heights of detached observation. It is not a matter of knowing as a point of fact, that somewhere, as Nye writes,
“The Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.”
But knowing within,
“this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.”
Nye reminds us kindness emerges from our own experience, including the painful experience of its absence,
“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,” Nye tells us,
“you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.”
This deep engagement with our humanity is the cleansing of the inside of our cup, the dishes, if you will, Jesus calls us to do.
Now, for those who appreciate a more concrete, “how to” guide to this “doing dishes” thing, you need not look any further than last week’s service led by our children, the central message of which began with, “Raise your hand if you like chocolate!” I imagine a lot of hands went up. And as I heard about, read, then reflected on that service, I realized the children had given us a lesson in kindness.
Chocolate has been on the children’s mind all church year, and not only because they like to eat it, but because they also know chocolate production is mired in environmental and human rights abuses including child labor, even slavery.
Now, they could have gone on and on with great self-righteous indignation about the abuses of chocolate production, labeled the companies that produce chocolate and even the consumers who eat it evil, immoral, etc. and implored or attempted to shame us all into giving up chocolate. And let’s be honest, that would have made some of us feel really good for a while, to see such passion in calling out injustice. But would any one of us have given up chocolate? I’m guessing no.
Instead the children outlined the issues of chocolate production without objectifying either the perpetrators or victims of its abuses. They shared how they understand modern chocolate production to conflict with our UU principles. And they offered ideas on how to address these issues.
Then, in a remarkable expression of honest self-reflection, said, “We think it is not realistic that we’ll stop eating chocolate entirely, but perhaps we could eat less of the conventionally produced chocolate.”
And with these words, they stood not apart as distant observers, judging the actions of mere mortals from behind the pristine facade of self-righteousness meticulously maintained by a detached mind. Instead, they stood with us, as very human beings, engaged in all the complexity and nuance that accompanies immersion in the messiness of life on the ground. The messiness from which kindness emerges. Kindness that stands to advance the reality of just chocolate production and consumption more than any display of indignant moralism ever will.
Indeed, the children remind us, clean the inside and you need not worry about the outside, for as Jesus taught and Nye observes, once we clean the inside of the cup,
“Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore…
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.”
A shadow or friend whose presence confirms our arrival in heaven, here and now.
May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be