A sermon delivered on Sunday, November 24, 2019 at First United Methodist Church Seattle.
Listen to the audio:
Scriptures:
- Jonah 1:1-7, 11-12, 17
- Matthew 5:21-26
A Few Words of Introduction to Today’s Scripture
This morning’s Old Testament reading is the story of Jonah and the big fish. Nineveh was an ancient Assyrian city of Upper Mesopotamia, located on the outskirts of Mosul in what is today northern Iraq. God commanded Jonah to go to Nineveh to warn the people to change their ways or risk destruction. Jonah didn’t like the Ninevites. He saw them as idolatrous, proud, and ruthless, bent on world conquest. He actually wanted God to destroy them. So he tried to get as far from Nineveh as possible to avoid talking to people whom he didn’t like. Plus, he didn’t want to be anywhere nearby when the destruction came. As you can imagine, God had other plans for Jonah.
This morning’s New Testament reading is from Matthew chapter 5. This is the same chapter in which we find the Beatitudes. I considered using the Beatitudes for this morning’s scripture because they’re certainly relevant (for nearly anything), but I chose these particular verses because they make clear Jesus’ views on name-calling.
Please open your ears and your hearts as Craig and Shawn share today’s readings.
Stereotypes, Generations, and Labels in a Divisive Shaming Culture: An Elixir for Troubled Times
Someone from the 1950s suddenly shows up here in 2019. What do you tell them? Here’s one possibility: “I have in my pocket a device that allows me to access all the knowledge known to humanity. I use it for looking at cute animal videos and arguing with strangers.
Several years ago, a group of authors published a book called Generations at Work. They identified generations in the workplace based on the year of birth. The idea is that your year of birth and certain landmark events that took place during your formative years inform your view of the world. The specific birth years vary based on who’s writing, but here are some examples:
- Traditionalists—born before 1946
- Baby Boomers—born between 1946 and 1964
- Generation X—born between 1965 and 1976
- Millennials—born between 1977 and 1997
- Generation Z—born after 1997
Some examples of events and phenomena that the authors suggest influence generations include:
- The Depression
- World War II
- The assassination of President Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Junior
- The moon landing
- The invention of the birth control pill and the sexual revolution
- The Vietnam war
- The Nixon debacle
- Two working parents and latchkey kids
- The growth of the Internet
- The growth of social media
- The Great Recession
- Three Mile Island
- Exxon Valdez
- Fall of the Berlin Wall
- AIDS epidemic
- Challenger disaster
- 9/11
- Columbine
- Oklahoma City bombing
- War on terror
- Occupy Wall Street
- The decline of corporate loyalty to workers where a parent would lose a job just because a company made a decision to downsize
These are simply examples of seminal events and phenomena that, depending on your year of birth, may have shaped your view of the world and your decisions about how to interact with it. These are generalizations and stereotypes and may not apply to you.
One of the problems with writing a book or a sermon is that the book or sermon, instead of being the project itself, becomes your guide through the project. They seem to invariably take you to places you didn’t intend to go. Sometimes those places are uncomfortable or even alarming, especially as they reveal you to yourself. Sonya Davis’ commented a few weeks ago in this pulpit that sermons often speak to the preacher and the rest of us get to listen in. She was right.
My Gen X female friend on Facebook and her friend were going back and forth about the 2020 election:
My friend: Biden’s against marijuana legalization. He’s so out of touch. I’m just done with old white men.
Her friend: Yeah me too. I’m so done with old white men.
Me: I’m an old white man and I support the legalization of marijuana. Maybe can we stop with the stereotyping and name-calling and discuss issues instead?
My friend: Old white men have been in charge for thousands of years and look at how they’ve screwed things up. It’s past time for a woman, especially a woman of color.
Me: I agree, but can we stop with the name-calling and stereotyping?
Her friend: Spoken like an old white man.
My friend: Yeah, enough with old white men.
Me: I’m with you on the need for change. It’s just that it’s really difficult to have a productive conversation about important issues when there’s name-calling and stereotyping.
My friend: Spoken like an old white man, Don. You just don’t get it.
But, I am an old white man. I can’t pretend to be anything else. I can’t pretend to be a GenX woman, a gay Millennial man, a Native American woman, a trans-GenZ-er.
The idea for this reflection came from the 25-year-old New Zealand lawmaker Chloe Swarbrick. She was speaking about climate change when a baby boomer lawmaker made a comment about her age, totally missing the point of her remarks. She didn’t miss a beat and said “Okay Boomer” and continued on, effectively dismissing the other lawmaker.
The great poet Maya Angelou said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you say, they’ll forget what you do, but they will never forget how you make them feel.” When I first heard about OK Boomer, I was incensed that such a condescending comment toward a person of another generation would go viral, but then I realized that it’s in response to the perception of my generation’s indifference to issues that will profoundly affect today’s younger generation including Gen Xers, Millennials, Gen Zers, and whoever comes next. I realized that, by denying climate change, by denying the devastating impact of the war on drugs, by spending some six trillion dollars on wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere around the globe, the repeated failures of trickle-down economics, and the running up of our national debt in the process, it’s understandable that Millennials are frustrated with us.
So, to Millennials, please, please, please hear this: It’s not all boomers who act that way. Some of us have been protesting and working for change for years. Please don’t lump us all together.
To Boomers, Millennials are genuinely frustrated and rightfully scared about society’s lack of action and what the future holds, not only in terms of climate, but global security, and the global economy.
Meghan Daum, a GenXer, in her recently published book The Problem with Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars, comments that GenXers, are “the last cohort to have experienced both the analog and digital world as adults. Because of [that],…[they’re] also the first generation that younger generations don’t especially want or need to look up to. Any wisdom [they] might have is already obsolete.” That means, for GenXers, Boomers, and Traditionalists, we have to ensure that we shape our perspectives based on an understanding of contemporary technology, social norms, and cultural trends. To not do so is to risk becoming irrelevant. It doesn’t mean we have to like it or agree with it and we certainly shouldn’t try to act like someone in a different generation. In a nutshell, however, we need to erase the phrase “Back in my day” from our vocabulary.
To everyone, let’s stop with the name-calling and stereotyping and focus on ideas, evidence-based ideas to address the serious issues that are facing our world today.
The writer Anne Lamott observed that “Empathy, a moment’s compassion, seeing that everyone has equal value, even people who have behaved badly, is as magnetic a force as gratitude.” When I viewed Chloe Swarbrick’s “OK Boomer” comment through the lens of empathy, my heart was changed.
Recall the words of The Prayer of St. Francis: “O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be understood as to understand.”
Or, Habit number 5 of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People with the modern version of St. Francis’ words: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”
We’ve spoken only about boomers and millennials, but there are similar stories about Gen Xers, Gen Zers, and Traditionalists and, if history is any indication, stories like this will persist well into the future.
Here’s a quote: “The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.” What year do you think this is from?
It is actually a quote from a student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his Cambridge dissertation published in 1907
When I was 16, I held the door for an older man. Instead of saying thank you, he glared at me and muttered: “Get a haircut!”
Lee Abrams, the legendary radio station programming consultant said that each generation has to have a music that their parents can’t stand. Think of Elvis, the Beatles, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, Kanye West…well, you get the idea. Each generation has to have a music that makes their parents say, “You call that stuff music. That stuff hurts my ears!”
We work so hard to differentiate ourselves that we sometimes forget to leave bridges in place. In fact, we burn those bridges with name-calling and pigeon-holing. Names like Libtards, Right-wing nuts, Okay Boomer, entitled millennials, treehuggers, birther, basement dweller, deplorables, conspiratard, left-wing hack, right-wing hack, right-wing extremist, left-wing extremist.
It seems like it’s okay for us to make derogatory comments about people who disagree with us, but when one of them speaks condescendingly of us or people with whom we agree, we take great offense.
It’s similar to the way anyone who drives faster than I do is a maniac and anyone who drives slower than I do is a moron.
Look, when we start name-calling and stereotyping, we put each other in silos, we can’t share ideas, and we don’t make progress.
Maybe that’s what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 5 when he said, “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder,[a] and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister[b][c] will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’[d] is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.” I didn’t like it when I heard that. It made me a little nervous.
Or, maybe it’s what he was talking about in John 8, verse 7, in the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery, when he said: “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
CONGREGATIONAL INTERACTION #1:
You get to practice your listening skills. Find someone who is different from you, perhaps by age, race, culture, or anything else. Ask them to tell you one thing that they wish people who are different from them knew. No judgment, no discussion, just listening. Then, reverse roles. No judging, no arguing, just listening. Then, when you’re done, I’ll ask a couple of you to share what you learned with the congregation.
CONGREGATIONAL INTERACTION #2:
How diverse are your circles, your spheres of influence?
By a show of hands, how many of you have good friends in different generations, different age groups?
By a show of hands, how many of you have good friends from different ethnic groups?
By a show of hands, how many of you have good friends from different political parties?
Now, your assignment for this week is to broaden your circle and to practice listening, just listening, to people who act differently from you, who believe differently from you, who ARE different from you. Ask questions without judging. Just listen and learn.
Remember, it’s easy to hate a label, not so much a person. One of the great cures for divisiveness is to get past the group label and get to the living, breathing, thinking, feeling human individual.
Consider the World War One Christmas Truce in 1914 in which soldiers on opposing sides, in the week leading up to Christmas, exchanged food and cigarettes and even sang carols together. They saw each other as individual humans instead of enemies.
It’s also easy to infer generalizations from a single or just a few data points. In fact, Thomas Kida, in his wonderful book Don’t Believe Everything You Think, talks about our six basic flaws in thinking. One of them is that we prefer stories over statistics. In other words, if a model of car has been driven over 100 million miles collectively with almost no problems, but our neighbor had one that had problems, do we make a decision based on the data or the neighbor’s experience? Are we doing the same thing with people? Think about how atheists sometimes mock Christians, based on watching a televangelist scamming for money or some story about someone behaving poorly under the guise of religion. Even if millions of people who identify as Christians are working to lift the poor in spirit, to comfort those who mourn, to advocate for the meek, and to feed those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, others will only see the charlatans and they’ll paint all Christians with a broad brush of generalization. Do we do the same with people we dislike?
So, what’s the elixir for Stereotypes and Labels?
- Remember empathy. Meghan Daum, in her recently published book The Problem with Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars, comments that we need more empathy as a matter of course. “We need to recognize that to deny people their complications and contradictions is to deny them their humanity.” Use balance, no one is perfect. There is no perfect candidate, there’s no perfect friend.
- Assume good intent. You may not agree with another person’s point-of-view or their approach to a problem. Still, realize that they’re thinking and acting based on their experiences, some of which go back to their childhood. Most people don’t wake up in the morning thinking, “How can I be evil, nasty, and mean today.”
- Be patient. Not just with others, but also with yourself.
- Be civil. Even if (especially if) others are not.
- Always ask the question, What is the source? (Especially ask that of yourself.) Going back to Thomas Kida’s book Don’t Believe Everything You Think, he reminds us that another flaw in our thinking is confirmation bias, in which we notice only information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs and we conveniently ignore anything that challenges them.
- Study Professor Paul Grice’s Gricean Maxims for Cooperative Conversations.
- Stick to the facts.
- Don’t give advice unless you’re asked for it and even then be careful. Remember that you can often help another person make decisions by asking questions more than by telling them what to do.
- Ask yourself, “Is what I’m about to do or say helpful? Is it founded in love or is this my ego at work?” because if it’s not founded in love, it will all pass away.
- Focus on improving yourself, not others. I’ve never had much luck changing others. Those of you who are parents know what I’m talking about! Even with my own children, I tried to influence them, but what I came to realize is that they don’t do what I say, they do what I do. And that’s true with everyone around me. I must be the model for the behavior I want from others. I fear I fail miserably at that more often than I’d like, but I’m better at it today than I was yesterday. It’s an intentional process of continual self-improvement.
In his book, One Small Step Can Change Your Life, author Robert Mauer reminds us to focus each day on what we can do to be a little bit better today than we were yesterday. He doesn’t say anything about changing others!
Dear God, today I ask for wisdom, for I have only enough wisdom to know I need more. I ask for strength, for in what strength I have, I realize the depth of my weakness. I ask for patience, for you know how my fellow humans need my tolerance, and also how I must be patient with myself on this human journey. Stay beside us to guide us as we navigate the perilous waters of cross-generational, cross-cultural, cross-racial, cross-political, and cross-everything-else waters. Help us banish darkness and travel from light into light.
Thanks be to God, the Almighty.
Amen.