"Why
Hope"
The Rev. Tom Davis, pastor of Hanover Street
Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Delaware, has shared a recent
sermon with us, as offering a helpful perspective on "the present
acrimony in the PCUSA." He draws lessons in healthy and healing
communication from the work of Martha Fugate, the Executive Director
of Project YES ("Youth Empowerment and Support"), which is
in Miami, Florida. This organization works toward the healthy
development of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth, by
collaborating with parents, schools, and religious and community
organizations, in order to promote dialogue, provide information, and
establish support systems for these youth.
[5-8-02]
"Why Hope"
A Sermon Preached at Hanover Street
Presbyterian Church
On May 5, 2002
By the Rev. Thomas C. Davis, III, Ph.D.
Texts:
Acts 17: 22-31
1 Peter 3: 8-17
.........................................
I heard that a survey was taken to find out what
people fear the most. Can you guess what people's number one fear was?
Public speaking. Next to that was death. This means that at your average
funeral, people would rather be the one in the casket than the one
delivering the eulogy. Last weekend Alice and I attending a workshop on
public speaking, and not just public speaking in general, which is scary
enough, but public speaking to audiences that are resistant to one's
message, or perhaps even hostile. The workshop was conducted by Alice's
former boss, Martha Fugate, the Executive Director of Project YES, which
stands for "Youth Empowerment and Support." Project YES,
located in Miami, Florida, works toward the healthy development of gay,
lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth, by collaborating with parents,
schools, and religious and community organizations, in order to promote
dialogue, provide information, and establish support systems for these
youth.
Did you know that gay and lesbian kids account for one
third of all teen age suicides, one fourth of all homeless and
"throwaway" kids (that is, kids whom their parents have
disowned and cast out of the house), and 28 percent of high school
dropouts? Martha Fugate wanted to decrease those miserable numbers in
the greater Miami area, so she established Project YES, literally to
save children's lives.
As you might guess, however, it's hard to talk to
people about gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender youth. There are
very strong feelings about homosexuality in America, which makes public
speaking about the subject touchy at best, and one might even say, a
public speaking nightmare. But Martha doesn't mind. In fact, she
welcomes the opportunity to be with people, to listen to their often
very strong feelings, and to find ways to work together to promote the
safety and health of all children, but with particular concern for those
who are gender different.
Project YES has worked some minor miracles in the
Greater Miami area. It trains priests, teachers, and counselors in the
Catholic Archdiocese there. It educates teachers and parents in the
county and state PTA. It trains police officers who deal with runaway
and throwaway children. It has established a foster care and
family-reunification program to help rejected children regain a stable,
loving environment . Project YES is even collaborating with the Boy
Scouts, an organization known for its exclusion of gay leaders, in order
to reduce the youth suicide rate.
How have Martha and her colleagues achieved this
remarkable track record? How have they managed to work with (instead of
against) individuals and organizations who don't see eye to eye with
them? The Presbyterian Church USA could use a good dose of whatever
makes Project YES tick. Presbyterians are spending an enormous amount of
energy these days opposing each other, trying to prove themselves right
and their theological or ideological adversaries wrong, instead of
concentrating on common goals and working together to accomplish them.
What, pray tell, does make Project YES tick?
Martha would say that there are no magic techniques.
It's all about your authenticity, and your genuine concern for others,
she says. When you communicate with others, you have to be with them,
really be with them, she says, which means that you have to have a
compassionate, unconditional respect for them. If you think that
communicating with others is about out-arguing them, persuading them by
the sheer force of your logic, or else, using psychologically clever
ways to put your ideas into their heads, then you will not make much
progress toward common goals. But, if you can listen with compassion to
the beliefs and feelings of people who, at least on some matters, think
and feel very differently than you do, if you can allow them to be them,
and at the same time, have the courage to stand up for your own thoughts
and feelings with humility and self-respect, then a way toward
collaboration begins to open up. If you or I can give up the natural
desire always to be right, if we can really be with that so-and-so who
seems to thwart us at every turn, then we will be much less likely to
spend our time resisting each other. By learning to be authentically
with others, we can lay the groundwork for collaboration, which will
bring rewards for all.
Sounds too simple and too good to be true, right? If
it's really that simple, why don't we see more examples of working so
positively together? Why? Because it's so hard to give up wanting to be
right, that's why. Being right is so deliciously satisfying! You
remember, in last week's sermon, I talked about arguing. I said that
arguing isn't necessarily disagreeable, for if arguing doesn't become
mean spirited, as Socrates demonstrated, it can be an exhilarating means
for finding the truth together. All too often, though, arguing isn't
about searching for the truth together. It's about being right. It's
about attempting to put your ideas and values into another person's
head; or, if you can't manage that, at least making him or her look bad,
so that, in the opinion of those listening to your conversation, your
ideas and values score truer, better. Consequently, you win. Your
opponent loses. Wrong! In such a conversation you both lose, because you
could have been working toward collaboration, but instead both of you
have been spinning your wheels trying to be right.
Martha says she isn't religious. But what she says and
does sure looks and sounds to me like gospel communication. In this
morning's reading from Acts, Paul listens to the seekers, the Greek
philosophers, in Athens. Does he want to communicate the good news of
Jesus to them? Of course! But how does he go about it? Not by trying to
out-argue them. Rather, he starts by showing unconditional regard for
who they are. He respectfully acknowledges their ideas about divinity
which they have already come to on their own. What Paul does in this
instance is similar to what Martha calls "recreating" someone.
When you "recreate" someone, you let them know that you have
heard them, and understand them. "Recreating" doesn't require
that you agree with that person's ideas, nor that you feel the same way
he or she does. "Recreating" is not about establishing common
ideological or affectional ground. It's about letting people know that
you have a channel open, that you aren't filtering out certain parts of
what they say just because you don't agree with them. Recreating someone
is about letting that partner in conversation know that you are
listening unconditionally, and that you have heard him or her
accurately. "Recreating" someone is a necessary first step in
choosing not to engage in the deliciously satisfying, but seldom
productive game of being right.
I have been talking this morning about effective and
productive communication, but the title of my sermon concerns hope.
What's the connection? As I have observed Martha and her trainees
interacting with suspicious, resistant, and sometimes even hostile
audiences, I have become more and more convinced that what is most
important about their way of communicating is not the three steps which
it teaches: 1) being authentically yourself and unconditionally with
others, 2) recreating your partners in conversation to let them know
that they have been accurately understood, and 3) being kind and
generous to them by supporting not necessarily their ideas, but them as
people. Although these three steps of communicating do go a long way
toward explaining Project YES's remarkable track record for getting
disparate people to work together in astonishing ways, I say that they
are not the major factor underlying the success. Rather, I'd say that
identifying common hope is the most important factor.
Martha and her colleagues are able to work with ideological adversaries
especially because they have identified a common hope, namely, that
children will stop killing themselves, stop being rejected by their
families and churches, and grow into healthy adults. Who wouldn't hope
for that? Identifying common hope helps us to establish common purposes;
and thus, eventually even adversaries are able to work together toward
common goals. If it weren't for the track record of Project YES, I would
probably say that the hope of working with adversaries instead of
against them is just plain foolishness. But I have seen it work. And I
believe it can work in the Presbyterian Church USA . That is one hope of
mine.
Reading the passage from Peter's letter, I am struck
by some similarity between his time and ours. People were coming under
pressure then, too. Their beliefs were becoming unpopular, and they were
coming under suspicion and pressure to conform. Let me quote from that
scripture:
Never pay back one wrong with another, or an angry
word with another one; instead, pay back with a blessing. That is what
you are called to do, so that you inherit a blessing yourself. . .Anyone
who wants to have a happy life and enjoy prosperity [i.e., get positive
results] must banish malice from his tongue, deceitful conversation from
his lips; he must never yield to evil but must practice good; he must
seek peace and pursue it. . . There is no need to be afraid or to worry
about [your adversaries]. Simply reverence the Lord Christ in your
hearts, and always have your answer ready for people who ask you the
reason for the hope that you all have.""
It was the last sentence in particular which grabbed
me as I prepared for this morning's sermon: Always have your answer
ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you all have.
Now, Peter obviously meant: be ready to explain your hope in the saving
power of Jesus Christ. Be ready to address non-believers, not so much to
defend your faith by offering a detailed and logical argument for why
you think and feel the way you do. (Few people are accomplished in that
argumentative discipline which the church calls
"apologetics".) No, just be ready to share your hope, says
Peter, the hope that you all have. Now, here's a puzzle: Did he mean all
of the brothers and sisters within the church? Or, did he mean that the
in-group and the out-group in fact have some common hopes; and
therefore, that the way to pursue peace is to share one's own hope in
order to invite the other to do likewise, that together we may then
explore common ground for collaboration? Is this too much to hope for:
that our adversaries can and indeed do hope for some of the same things
we do, so that we have some common ground after all, despite our mutual
dislikes? If that is too much to hope for, then how is a lasting peace,
a peace without coercion ever to be achieved? I
don't think it's too much to hope for, because I have seen Project YES
identify common hopes and make them blossom into astounding win-win
results.
My sermon title is "Why Hope." Why
hope -- hope for a just and lasting peace, that is, in our church or in
the Middle East or Central Africa, or Northern Ireland, or wherever? Not
because the in-group believes its cause is just and shall prevail
because it is God's cause; not because the presumed "goodies"
hope to conquer or dominate or even utterly persuade "the
baddies". No, we can hope for a just and lasting peace because God
is present even in the enemy, and plants in him and her common hope for
a better life, hope which, with the proper fertilizing and watering and
cultivation can indeed bear good fruit.
Regarding our own challenges of peacemaking, fellow
Presbyterians, we are not doomed forever to spin our wheels in useless
bickering. But the way to a just and lasting peace will not be by
out-maneuvering or converting our adversaries. Rather it will be by
identifying our common hopes, then, common objectives and goals. We can
do this. It has been done before, and with God's help, can be done
again. This is my hope.
