“Dare to Care!”
Leviticus 19: 1-2, 9-18; Matthew 5: 38-38
July 23, 1997
When was the last time you gossiped? I often recommend gossiping to parents of Children who are to be baptized. Now, lest you think I am crazy, let me tell you what the word “gossip” originally meant. “Gossip” was the conversation between parents and godparents over a child’s religious life.
Words have a way of changing meanings through the years. For example, the other day I was reading Christopher Wren’s biography. In it, the author tells how Sir Christopher, the greatest architect in English history, rebuilt London after the terrible fire in 1675. Saint Paul’s Cathedral was his finest building, and it took thirty-five years to build. When it was done, he waited breathlessly for the reaction of Her Majesty, Queen Anne. After being shown through the structure, Queen Anne summed up her feelings in three words. “It is awful, it is amusing, it is artificial.”
Imagine how you might feel if words like “awful,” “amusing,// and “artificial” were used to describe the greatest work of your life. Sir Christopher Wren’s biographer tells us that, upon hearing those words, he “heaved a sigh of relief and bowed gratefully before his sovereign.”
Are you surprised? The explanation is simple. In 1710,
the word “awful” meant “awe-inspiring.” The word “amusing” meant “amazing,” and the word “artificial” meant “artistic.” What to our ears sounds like devastating criticism, in those days were words of high praise.
That sort of thing happens all the time. Words have a life of their own and are forever changing – that’s why it’s so difficult to preach. A word that the preacher uses might have one meaning for him, and might trigger a whole raft of other meanings for you, the listener.
Take the word “care,” which is at the heart of this sermon. “Care” is one of the primary words of the Christian vocabulary, yet it has changed so much that I sometimes hesitate to use. it.
My friend, the late Henri Nouwen, points out how ambiguous the word “care” has become. When someone says, “I’II take care of him!,” it is most likely an announcement of an impending attack, rather than an expression of tender compassion. Or when someone says, “I don’t have a care in the world,” the word here seems to refer to problems, worries, and anxieties, and certainly one of the goals of our stressful culture is to learn to care less, or to become carefree.
But contrast all that to our morning’s readings. In Leviticus, the people of God are enjoined to care because they are the Lord’s people. And then, in Matthew we have the teaching of Jesus to care not as others do, but to go further, “for we are sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father.” Here is one of the central realities of the Christian faith. God is depicted again and again as one who cares for all of His creation; and since we are made in His image, caring – real caring – is essential to our makeup.
Returning, for a moment, to Henri Nouwen, he suggests, because of the ambiguity of the word, that we ought to go back to the original meaning of the word “care.” The old Gothic root of “to care” is the word “Kara.” “Kara” means to lament. The basic meaning of caring is to grieve, to experience sorrow, to stand with those who are crying.
How different this is from the common usage. The word “care” as we use it now means fixing things up, but it more closely means standing with a person in his misery_ it means sharing the pain, touching the wounds, walking in another’s shoes
Think, for a moment, about the people in your life who have cared. Are they necessarily the ones who have healed our wounds, given us advice, and added to our solutions? Aren’t they, rather, the ones who have sat with us in our silence, stood with us in moments of despair, loved us in our most unlovable times? Haven’t they been our parents, our spouses, our close friends? These, oftentimes, are the people who care.
I have a Confession this morning. I might as well admit that, of all the teachings of Jesus, this passage in Matthew has been by far the most difficult for me. To love your enemies, to pray for those who persecute you, is probably the most foreign, difficult, and hard to understand teaching in the Bible. It goes contrary to everything I have been taught. It seems like the worst kind of folly, completely lacking in reality. Yet there it is, the heart of Jesus’ teaching – loving the enemy, loving the dark side within people and within yourself. If we dare to care like our Heavenly Father, it means being present, loving both friends and enemies, for they are all part of your family. Remember, if love is the game, then caring for someone who is an enemy, who is different, who walks a different path, is essential to being part of a family. If love is the game, then caring is the precondition.
I would end this meditation with a story by Henri Nouwen, who died this past year. Several years ago, I was with Henri in San Francisco, and someone asked him to define Christian love. Henri said he could not define it, but he could tell a story that would illustrate it.
The story, he said, comes from ancient India, and it tells of an old man who sat by a stream day after day, meditating on the love of God. One day, he spied a scorpion going into a hole and becoming entangled by a tree root. The more the scorpion struggled, the more it became intertwined with the root.
The old man went over and stuck his hand down the hole to free the scorpion, but every time he did this, the scorpion reached up and stung him. This continued for quite a while, and the man was getting redder and redder, sicker and sicker, weaker and weaker, from the repeated stings. Yet he kept it up. Finally, another person approached and watched this little drama until he could stand it no longer. “You foolish old man, you silly person, can’t you realize the scorpion perceives you instinctively as the enemy?”
The old man looked up and said, “Don’t you see? Don’t you understand? it belongs to the nature of the scorpion to sting, but it belongs to my nature to care.”
Dare to care, for caring is from our Heavenly Father. And remember, remember, we are made in His image.
Amen