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Lonely Part 2
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Please listen to me here. Your story is sacred, and it does not belong to the dogs who have not earned the right to hear it. Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad you're here, and we hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.
Speaker 1:Welcome today. If we haven't had a chance to meet yet, I am called Jeremy, and I am one of the people who hang out around here at Commons. I also get the privilege of helping to teach and lead along with our team here. So thanks for being here, especially if you're new. We really appreciate your time.
Speaker 1:Now, I'm just gonna get this out of the way because a lot of people have already asked me this morning. Yes. Tomorrow is my birthday. And yes, I will be turning 40. And no, I will not be getting a grown up haircut this week.
Speaker 1:So sorry. I'm hanging on as long as I can. Pearl Jam forever. Greatest band in the history of rock and roll even if I don't have holes in my jeans anymore. Right?
Speaker 1:Oh, there we go. Now today, we are continuing our lonely series. And today, we're talking about the problem of vulnerability and the difference with oversharing. And so we're gonna need to talk about shame, and embarrassment, and guilt, and humiliation, and all of the things that get in the way of being vulnerable. And last week, I joked about how people want light and breezy, and now everyone is thinking about slowly backing out of the room, but I promise it won't be that bad.
Speaker 1:So first, let's look back at last week. Because seven days ago, we started this conversation talking about the difference between alone and lonely. And I think one of the things that we have to keep in mind in a three week sermon series like this is that this is not therapy. My goal in a series like this is simply to give you some handles and some language and some questions to ask yourself as you experience loneliness. So for example, last week, it was, am I lonely right now or am I just alone?
Speaker 1:Sometimes that's different. However, sometimes those questions are enough to help us reorient and move forward on our own. Sometimes, those questions are what enable us to realize that we need some help to do that. And, that's where it may be that you need more than a sermon. It may be a very open, raw, honest conversation with a friend.
Speaker 1:That's part of what we wanna talk about today. It may be a professional that can help you process what is happening inside of you. But understand that for some of us, a series like this is intended as a starting point, not a destination. And so if you come from a particular religious tradition that has told you that needing help, in particular professional help, is a sign of weakness or a lack of faith, I want you to know that that is nonsense. One of the strongest, most faithful things that you can do is affirm that God wants you to be healthy, and that God is present to you in a thousand different ways helping you move toward wholeness.
Speaker 1:And so, to be vulnerable in the appropriate setting with the right person, this is a defiant act of profound faith. Now, last week, we talked about the difference between alone and lonely, and there are a lot of different ways that we can parse that. But one of the ways is to think of alone as a function of our social circumstance. K. I'm alone right now.
Speaker 1:Is that good? Is it bad? Is it helping? Is it hurting? Is there something that I need to learn in this alone space right now?
Speaker 1:Or am I lonely? And that is often a function of our sense of social value. Do I deserve connection? Am I worth belonging? Am I the problem, or do I need to hide or change or minimize something about myself to fit in?
Speaker 1:That is not a healthy set of questions to be wrestling with. And so we talked about the value of being alone. We talked about the problem with a scarcity mindset when it comes to feeling lonely. And then we talked about the balance between self care and self forgetfulness in our relationships and how important that is. And all of that came from this really neat little moment in Jesus' life where we see him deal with a personal crisis.
Speaker 1:And this series is a little different for us. I'll say that from the outset. At Commons, we usually tend to start with a scripture and work our way through it. In a series like this, we are gonna start with our shared experience as humans and move our way toward the scriptures. And that's a bit of a different rhythm, but sometimes that helpful, especially when we're talking about the interior work that we need to do.
Speaker 1:So that was last week, alone and lonely. Today, it's the difference between vulnerability and oversharing. First, let's pray. Lord of perfect communion, who gave up the infinite dance of gift and reception in order to move near to us and to experience our loneliness and pain, Would you remind us that you are nearer than we can possibly imagine? That your presence in and through and around us, even now in this moment, is welcoming us toward wholeness.
Speaker 1:Might we recognize in your grand story the extravagant value you place on each of us, on our health and our wellness, on our wholeness and everything it means to be fully alive as human beings. At the same time, might we recognize that to be alive means deep dependence on each other in all the ways that you have designed us for community. And so where we have been hurt after being vulnerable, would you bring healing into those wounds? And where we have been vulnerable in the wrong spaces, would you bring wisdom into our future? But most of all, God, would you invite us even when we're scared to try again.
Speaker 1:In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Okay. On the agenda today, this childhood stories armoring up sympathy versus empathy and the problem with putting pearls before swine. But first, we need to talk about vulnerability.
Speaker 1:Because before we can talk about the difference with oversharing, we need to know what we're talking about. Last week, I used this phrase several times, that loneliness is overcome by showing up and being seen. And we need some more conversation to flesh that out, but at its core, that's really what vulnerability is about. The willingness to one, show up, and two, allow ourselves to be truly seen. And both of those are important, and we'll talk about why, but first, Brene Brown tells a story.
Speaker 1:And I'm actually not going to tell you a Brene Brown story right now. I just wanted to do another shout out to her amazing work because she is great, and we are using a lot of her material in this series. I am, however, going to tell you a story about myself. And for those of you who know me personally, this will not come as a surprise, but vulnerability is a really tough thing for me. Now tough is possibly not the right word for it, at least not at this point in my journey, because I have actually worked really hard on developing developing and investing in appropriate avenues to be vulnerable.
Speaker 1:But vulnerability is not something that comes naturally to me. I'm a firstborn, and that is not always indicative of our personality traits, but for me, performing, perfecting, pleasing, that is my life mantra. And notice here, pleasing, as in people pleasing, that does not always mean that you are agreeable. Some of you will know that I have lots of opinions, sometimes more than one about every situation, and I am rarely shy about sharing them even when that's uncomfortable. So for me, pleasing is really about impressing.
Speaker 1:Like, I want you to like me, but if that's not gonna happen, then by gosh, you are gonna be impressed with me. Yeah. That's a little awkward and vulnerable to talk about that in public. But a lot of this goes back to family of origin. I am a firstborn after all.
Speaker 1:However, probably like a lot of us, I can trace some of this back to formative moments early in my life. I was in elementary school at the time, grade three, and I was living in Saskatchewan, a very short period of my childhood. I'll tell you that story sometime, but for now, just know that I will not wear a Rough Riders jersey. And if you weren't here last week, then you don't get that joke, and is okay. However, I was in class one day, miss Mitchell's class, I remember that, and we were talking about seeds.
Speaker 1:And somehow, I had seen or heard or read or watched something about pineapples. And the thing about pineapples is, first, they are delicious. I mean, whenever you get a fruit platter, it is always the strawberries and the pineapples that go first. Nobody wants melons. Like, honeydew, give me a break.
Speaker 1:That's a trash fruit. People want pineapples is what they want. The other thing about pineapples is they are generally not actually grown from seeds. See, we have bred them to be so full of fruit that the seeds are basically non existent at this point. And so what happens is that almost exclusively, pineapples are grown by planting the sucker, which is basically a shoot off the plant that gets cut off and cultivated and planted.
Speaker 1:Now if you're interested, the technical reason for this is that the angiosperm of a pineapple is self incompatible, which means that when the pollen of a similar genotype reaches the stigma, embryo fertilization stops and no seeds are produced in the plant. Basically, pineapples really like genetic diversity, which makes them really hard to cultivate in close proximity to each other. Now, I could not explain all of that in grade three, but I did know that when you want pineapples to grow together, you have to take matters into your own hands because seeds don't happen. And so wanting to impress, I shot up my hand. And I told this to my teacher who immediately laughed it off and said, well, that's ridiculous.
Speaker 1:Now, to be fair, she was teaching grade three, not advanced horticulture. It's hard to blame her on this one. Regardless, I insisted, and so she agreed to look it up. And she went and she opened an encyclopedia. Remember those?
Speaker 1:Listen, I'm turning 40. There was not Wikipedia in grade three. Okay? And she finds the answer, comes back to the class, she says, okay, who thinks Jeremy was right? Nobody puts up their hand, including me.
Speaker 1:Then she says, okay, who thinks I was right? And the pineapples, of course, like all plants, obvious have seeds. Everyone puts up their hand, including mine. Then she says, Jeremy, you're right. And to this day, those are the sweetest words I have ever heard feed it to me.
Speaker 1:Actually, from that day until now, I've never second guessed myself again. That's what I learned. That's a joke, sort of. However, what I did take away from this, for better or for worse, was one, profound sense of confidence in myself, and two, a promise to always be able to articulate my convictions in the things that I've learned. Okay.
Speaker 1:Now, that's a really nice way to say it. I could also say that I came away with a sense of shame about not being sure of myself, and I came away with a need to always be prepared to defend myself. And all of that is true either way you want to word it. When I'm healthy, it's more like the first. When I'm not, it's more like the second.
Speaker 1:But all of that is part of me. Now, back to a question of vulnerability. Here's why it's important. Because if vulnerability is the willingness to show up and really be seen, what's the problem with being driven to be confident and prepared all the time? Well, I'm not always confident, and I'm not always prepared, and I really don't like it when people see those things in me.
Speaker 1:I talk about this periodically because it's important, but we all need to remember that this right here is not me. Like, this is me prepared. I have worked all week with a sermon outline I put together months ago based on a teaching schedule I started building a year ago. So this right now is not really a particularly vulnerable place for me, and that's okay. You can't go through life being continuously vulnerable.
Speaker 1:It's not safe, and it's not healthy, and even if you could, it's just not emotionally sustainable for you. But what happens when I go from being proud of the work that I do to prepare for the speaking I do? And I start rehearsing every conversation with my wife Rachel before I have it. Or I start avoiding one on one encounters because I can't control them the way I want to. Or I step back from allowing anyone to get in behind the confidence I try to project.
Speaker 1:Well, a couple things happen. I get lonely, and I start to lose the capacity for empathy. And that's not just me. That's what happens to us when we don't cultivate appropriate avenues to show up and be seen. To be seen sans confidence, and without preparation and stripped of whatever it is you use to protect and keep yourself safe.
Speaker 1:And this is a real problem for a lot of us Because we all have different armor that we put on to get through the day. Maybe you need to survive your workplace, or the guys that you play hockey with, or maybe it's your mother-in-law, not you Joan, you're fantastic. That's okay. Protecting yourself is important, but the problem is sometimes it takes so much effort to armor up that we tend to forget how to take it off. And that is disastrous.
Speaker 1:In the letter that we call James in our New Testament, it says, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you might be made well. And often, when we read that, we think of that in terms of some kind of supernatural healing, and that is part of it. But the language that's used here is far more expansive than that. Confessing and praying and speaking and showing up in vulnerable ways with each other, this makes us well. And it makes us well in all kinds of surprising ways.
Speaker 1:Now, one of the ways that I can tell how well I am is how comfortable I am with being seen as being silly. And I'm not talking about being funny. I mean, I love telling jokes, and I love when you laugh at them, so keep that coming. Because if not, I'm just gonna be crying by myself in my office after the sermon. But for someone who wants to be perceived as confident and prepared all the time, looking silly or goofy is kind of hard for me.
Speaker 1:And having a kid living in my house is kind of pushing up against that in a really healthy way for me. Can I get excited about playing Captain America one more time? Can I dance like a fool in the kitchen with the whole family? And listen, those are good times. If you ever get to see one of our family dance parties, you are in for a treat because no one in the Duncan household has any rhythm.
Speaker 1:It's awful, but it's fun. Will I get frustrated when our skating lesson ends after five minutes and I have to flop in the snow beside my son in front of all the other dads and just say, my kid can't skate and I'm okay with that. Brene Brown actually tells a section of one of her books about how wholehearted people, that's her language, waste a lot of their time looking foolish. And technically, a chapter is called rest and play, but conversationally, she just calls it fooling around. And she says that this kept coming up in her research over and over again that healthy people are okay with this.
Speaker 1:And first, she had no idea what to do with it, so she just wrote down healthy people waste a lot of their time looking foolish. Now later, what she realized was that this is actually part of vulnerability. Especially in a culture like ours, letting people see you be unproductive. This is good, it's healthy, and it's vulnerable. Now it's no different than hiding your pain.
Speaker 1:When you hide your goofiness or your intellect or your hurt and wounds or the fact that you love Pearl Jam, if there is no one that sees that part of you, it makes you lonely no matter how many people see the rest of you. And what that does is it begins to slowly eat away at our capacity for empathy. And this is really the area where Brene down Brown has done some remarkable work. If you've seen her video from the TED talk where she talks about the difference between sympathy and empathy, you will know what I'm talking about here. If you haven't, then write this down in your journal and look it up after church.
Speaker 1:You can thank me later. But the Reader's Digest version is this, sympathy is seeing someone in pain and noticing their pain. Empathy is joining them in their pain. So here's a really low stakes example of this. I have a really good friend who does this for a living.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that I will do from time to time is to call and say, listen, it's Saturday night, and my sermon for tomorrow is so mediocre, I just want to quit. And my friend were to get on the other line and say, what are you talking about? You are the greatest preacher maybe ever. I've heard your sermons. Listen, honestly, I just watch you take notes and then repeat whatever you say a week later to my congregation and it's amazing.
Speaker 1:Would that be helpful or empathic? No. Because it would be silly and transparently false. But also because empathy requires us to feel along with the person that we're talking to. That requires us to open something of our story in a vulnerable way.
Speaker 1:So when my friend says to me, yeah, I know exactly what you mean. This week, I feel really good, but last week, man, I stared for hours at that blinking cursor on my screen. Is there a part of the sermon that you're struggling with? Do you wanna bounce some ideas off me? That is an empathic response.
Speaker 1:And again, the stakes are very low in that example, but it's an important distinction for us to understand. Now, empathy doesn't necessarily mean you've been through the same experience. Sometimes you haven't. What it means is that you are willing to expose equally vulnerable parts of your story to demonstrate that you are willing to go through this story with this person. Of course, the problem is if you don't know what armor you put on to protect yourself in the morning Or if you don't understand how to take that off when you need to, empathy slowly gets harder and harder for you.
Speaker 1:And that has contributed to a very real empathy deficit in our culture. So there's a virtuous cycle here. Loneliness is overcome by showing up and being seen, but that requires vulnerability on our part, which is then what enables us to be empathic to others, which is what invites them to step forward and be seen by us. But when chronically as a culture, we lose sight of the difference between vulnerability and oversharing in inappropriate spaces. What happens is that we get hurt, we break that cycle, and we spiral back down into isolation.
Speaker 1:Now, this is the part of the sermon where I'm supposed to talk about the evils of social media. And I'm supposed to tell you to throw all your phones away, but that's silly, isn't it? There is a real problem with the way that social media can hijack our limbic system to substitute for connection. But so does heroin, so does alcohol, so do video games, so do sports, so do books, so does newspapers, so does food, so does sex. And I built that list in that way on purpose to demonstrate that everything from obviously terrible addictions like heroin, all the way down to clearly positive experiences like books and food and sex can be problematic.
Speaker 1:Look, Facebook lets me keep in contact with this community as it grows. It helps me stay in touch with my family that lives on the other side of the country. It has become a platform for me to have very real friendships and pastoral conversations almost daily. At the same time, I made a choice a long time ago to turn off all the notifications on my phone because I get a little too excited about the attention. So keep Facebook if it's working for you.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna be there. But periodically, do an audit to see if all of these different channels are helping or hurting your relationships and then adjust them accordingly. The issue isn't Facebook, it's discerning what an appropriate avenue for vulnerability is. And this is where it gets really important. So I wanna show you something from Jesus here because just like last week, this is a guy who really seems to get a lot of the things that we're wrestling with today.
Speaker 1:So in the book of Matthew, there is this odd and therefore often overlooked line from Jesus in his sermon on the mount. And he's been talking about the problem with judging each other and being critical all the time. And he's got this great line about looking after the splinter or the log in your own eye before you worry about the speck of dust in your own. And that's maybe for another conversation, but I will say this. It could be that sometimes when you're lonely, it's because the people around you are sick of being called out on their speck.
Speaker 1:Self awareness is really critical element in all of our relationships, And Jesus nails it for us here. But then he throws out this odd line where he says, do not give to dogs what is sacred. Do not throw your pearls to swine. If you do, they may trample them under their feet and turn and tear you to pieces. Now, that's Matthew seven six.
Speaker 1:And we go here from a metaphor about judgment to being eaten by pigs, and it all seems a little bit jarring. But there's a lot going on here. And it's actually in the connection between these two sections where it comes alive. You see pearls in Hebrew literature are a very common metaphor for wisdom. Is actually part of where we get the idea of pearls of wisdom from.
Speaker 1:And in the previous section, Jesus has just said, don't be overly critical of each other. Worry about the splinter in your own eye before you focus on the speck in your neighbors. And once you deal with your own situation and you get that looked after, then you can go and help them deal with theirs. Now what's key here is that there does come a time to help your neighbor with their speck. And so when Jesus follows that up by saying, don't throw pearls to pigs lest they turn and attack you, his point isn't so much being critical of the pigs.
Speaker 1:Remember, they actually may need your help. His point is don't put your stuff, even your wisdom, where it doesn't belong. Before you speak, you have to earn the right to do so. But that works both ways. So please listen to me here.
Speaker 1:Your story is sacred, and it does not belong to the dogs who have not earned the right to hear it. You see, there are people who will not treat your vulnerability with the dignity and respect it deserves. And you do not need to give them what is sacred to you. You need to be vulnerable. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:But the people who have not earned the right to hear that do not deserve to be invited into that very delicate space. Now, I've talked about my struggle with vulnerability, but when I get up here, I try to be pretty raw and open with you. There are stories that are meant for this stage, but I also know that there are stories that are not. And sometimes, that's because there are stories that you really don't want to know about me. But more importantly, that's because some of my stories are only for my wife, Rachel.
Speaker 1:Some of them are only for my family or only for my counselor. There are stories that are only meant for a very select group of close friends that have earned the right to hear them from me. And that is not less vulnerable. That is more vulnerable. Because when I overshare and I put everything online or I tell everything to everyone, when I give what is sacred to dogs, what happens is that I actually cut myself off from the holy experience of allowing a select group of human beings who have demonstrated their love and care for me into a very intimate part of my story.
Speaker 1:You need to be vulnerable. But vulnerability is not just what you share, it is how and when and where you choose to share it. And sometimes, some of us have a habit of putting everything out there far too soon. And we do that as a way of substituting attention for vulnerability, but I promise you that will not get you to where you need to go. Because what your soul is searching for is not just eyes on your hurt.
Speaker 1:What it's searching for is someone who will come alongside you and empathize with you and open a part of their story to you and say, yeah, me too. That's what you're looking for. There's an old saying that comes from the wisdom of the Hebrew tradition. And my guess is that this is actually part of what Jesus has in mind when he speaks in Matthew. But it says in Proverbs 27 that the wounds of a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.
Speaker 1:Now, that's a little abstract for us because our social customs are different, but I really like how the GNT translates this. Friends mean well even when they hurt you, but an enemy, when they put their arm around your shoulder, watch out. Now what's funny here is that the word translated enemy is the word in Hebrew, and it's actually a personified form of the word for hate. So this is literally hater in Hebrew. No idea if they have an equivalent for playa.
Speaker 1:But what's important here is to understand that vulnerability is much about who you choose to share with as it is what you choose to share. And that means that loneliness is as much about the health of the relationships we invest in as it is the volume of people we engage. And so my prayer for you today is that you may come to know what it means to be broadly open and vulnerable about everything in a uniquely narrow set of relationships in your life. Because there is a difference between vulnerability and oversharing. Let's pray.
Speaker 1:God, as we continue this conversation, we ask that you would be present to us by your spirit, helping us to know and acknowledge the fact that we are lonely at times. No matter how much attention we have, no matter how many people are around us, there are parts of our lives that we wall off and we armor up and we keep protected. And that can be good because we need to keep ourselves safe, but there comes a time where those walls have to come down, and we have to share that with someone. And, God, if we're not ready, then we ask that you would be present to us in this moment So that we might know we are not alone in our hurt, and that instead you are with us, healing us, helping us, preparing us for the time when we will be ready to step out. Encourage and vulnerability to share something with someone who has earned the right to be in that space.
Speaker 1:But, God, would you help each of us to ask those questions? Are we seeking attention? Are we oversharing? Are we finding ways to keep people at a distance by putting too much on the line too quickly? Or are we building and investing and drawing people in who care deeply about us?
Speaker 1:And when the time comes, might you grant us the courage to be truly seen by those who love us. Thank you for your grace and love extended to us. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen.