Luke 10:1-11
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
October 23, 2022
“In the Navy, we call it grit.” Deb Roy and I were chatting in her kitchen before a Facilities Assessment Planning Team meeting. I was telling her about our idea for the Resilience in Community Project. I commented that one of the challenges was figuring out what we mean by resilience. That’s when she told me about her Navy definition: grit. The other team members arrived, and I didn’t get to ask more about it.
All throughout the project, her words stuck with me, an intriguing counterbalance to the language I tend to use in church and Open Spirit circles. “Be gentle with yourself,” I say. “Give yourself a break. Ask for help.” For me, the word “grit” has a very different feeling. I think of gritting my teeth and making myself do something I really don’t want to do. I also think of gritty surfaces that give us traction to move forward. There’s certainly a role for being gentle with ourselves as we face challenging situations. What is the role of gritting our teeth and just doing what needs to be done?
With that brief conversation in the back of my mind, I sat down one summer day eager to listen to Mike Ellis’ interview with Deb. As she talked about resilience, she added complexity and nuance to her initial definition.
Resilience, she said, involves the “ability to grapple with whatever’s happening.” She added, “Critical to resilience is a strong sense of self and self-love.” Then she brought together her military wisdom and her church-member perspective. “In the military, it’s the ability to get the mission done without getting in the way of yourself. Here, [as in here, back in Framingham and at Edwards Church] resilience involves self-awareness. The ability to handle some stress and move through it, either independently or more likely with resources. And you have access to those resources.”
Grit… and so much more. Resilience as the ability to get out of your own way. Resilience based on self-love and self-awareness. Resilience as choosing to access the resources available to you—in other words, asking for help. In a few sentences, Deb highlighted the paradoxical nature of resilience: gritty and loving, mission-focused and self-aware, grappling and admitting that we can’t do it on our own.
I’m intrigued by Deb’s comment about resilience as the capacity to get out of our own way. It rings true. There are plenty of external obstacles we face in our lives; often the obstacles that trip us up are the ones of our own making. Chuck Greenslit drew upon his experience as an athlete and coach as he defined resilience: “When bad things happen, you’re able to collect yourself and take a deep breath and move on. Basically it’s having the confidence in yourself that you can either fix it or move on from it and not get stuck on it. In sports, in bridge, in tennis, you’ve got to get over it. You can’t dwell on it.”
His words brought me back about 45 years, to high school tennis matches–playing my arch-rival Sheri Beck for the number one spot on the team. Sometimes a single careless mistake would shake my confidence early on and throw me off for the rest of the match. Occasionally, after one of those inevitable mistakes, I’d be able to figure out what went wrong, take a deep breath, shake it off and trust that I really did know how to play the game.
I don’t know if he would use these words, but it strikes me that Chuck, like Deb, is talking about self-awareness and self-love. When we get in our own way—in tennis, on a ship or in everyday life—it is often because we define ourselves by our mistakes or failures. We conclude we aren’t good enough and don’t even try. We get paralyzed by fear that we’ll make another mistake. Or we deny our failures and keep repeating them, beating our heads against a wall while pretending there is no wall there.
To get out of our way requires self-awareness: the capacity to see the obstacles and realize which ones we have put there ourselves. It requires self-love: choosing to recognize that we are so much more than our failures. For me, it means trusting in God’s love: I am defined not by my mistakes but by God’s unconditional love for me.
This summer I interviewed a college student about her experience of the pandemic. She described how hard the first year was and how much she was struggling. For her, resilience came in finally seeking help. I asked, “What enabled you to take that step?” She answered immediately: “I had to decide I was worth it.” A choice to love herself. In the face of loneliness, dislocation and uncertainty, what does it mean for us to decide we are worth it? What does it mean for you to decide you are worth it?
Grit. Grappling. Accomplishing the mission. Getting out of your own way. Seeking help. Self-awareness. Self-love. Deciding you are worth it. As I re-read my notes from these interviews, I found myself thinking about our gospel reading. Jesus sends 70 followers out to heal the sick and proclaim the coming of the kin-dom of God. The instructions he gives them resonate with the wisdom that has emerged from our interviews.
Jesus sends the disciples out two-by-two. Everyone needs companions, support, help. Resilience is not about doing it on your own. Resilience is about being part of a team, sometimes leading, sometimes following, sometimes walking side-by-side.
Jesus tells them not to bring a purse or bag or even an extra pair of shoes with them. Without baggage to give them a false sense of security, they are challenged to trust at a deep level. They have to trust themselves. They have to trust each other. They have to trust the goodness and generosity of the people they encounter. They have to trust that God is with them. They are challenged to become more self-aware, able to draw upon their own inner resources. They are also challenged to become more aware of the people around them, especially their potential for compassion and generosity.
When they enter a house that offers them hospitality, Jesus tells them to stay. Accept the hospitality. Eat and drink. “The labourer deserves to be paid,” he says. You deserve it. You are worth it. Love yourself and let others express their love for you.
Being open to receiving other people’s help is crucial to the purpose of the disciples’ trip. Their mission is to proclaim the coming of God’s kin-dom, the realm of God’s love breaking through in their midst. God’s kin-dom is a place of hospitality, a place where people give and receive freely, where abundance emerges out of generosity. When the disciples open themselves to receiving the gifts their hosts offer, they live out their spoken message: the kin-dom of God is breaking in, right here and now.
And sometimes it doesn’t seem to be anywhere nearby. Jesus prepares the disciples for disappointment and what they will likely perceive as failure. Sometimes they will go to a town, pour out their hearts in passionate speeches, and not be well-received. When that happens, Jesus says, shake off the dust and move on.
We often hear Jesus’ words as a condemnation of the town. I wonder, though, if the real point of his instruction is to help the disciples get out of their own way. When it feels as though you have failed, he says, acknowledge it and move on. Don’t even take the dust with you. You—and your mission—are not defined by your failures. You are defined by the message you proclaim, the message that is also meant for you: You are God’s beloved.
The month of October has turned into resilience month on our campus this year. Yesterday’s Day of Spirit began with reflections from Danielle and me on our resilience project. My Tuesday morning yoga class each week has centered on an image or insight from one of the interviews. A few weeks ago, as I invited the class to stand up for our warrior series, I found myself thinking back to Deb’s reflections on resiliency.
We stepped back with one leg and lifted our arms in the strong, forward-looking posture of Warrior 1, claiming our capacity for grit and our determination to face hard things head-on. We bent over to touch the earth in humble warrior, honoring our humanity. We are creatures of the earth, with limited knowledge and abilities, needing help from God and from each other. We stood back up into Warrior I and transitioned into Warrior 2, focusing our gaze, looking ahead, refusing to be distracted. As we twisted into side-angle, a position that requires us to stretch, we acknowledged that resilience is about stretching and growing, changing as we gain new perspective. Then we leaned back into reverse warrior, recognizing when it is time to pause, to be patient, to let someone else be the leader. We came back into Warrior 2, and then we stepped forward into our mountain pose, standing still with our hands in prayer pose, receiving the gift of God’s love, opening to self-love.
I chose “Gritty Self-Love” as my sermon title to remind myself that grit and self-love belong together. To be resilient is to know when it is time to grit your teeth and when it is time to take a break and be gentle with yourself. To be resilient is to recognize that sometimes gritting your teeth and doing what’s hard is a profound expression of self-love—and sometimes it is not. To be resilient is to honor that we are human and can’t do it alone, to celebrate that we are beloved and don’t have to do it alone, to rejoice that life is richer when we are together.
Thanks be to God. Amen.