One of our mightiest practitioners of gentleness.
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“Let your gentleness be known to everyone.”
I vividly remember something said in a class at Seattle University, back in about 2010. The professor was Dr. Jeanette Rodriguez, a member of the religion faculty who specializes in U.S. Hispanic theology, liberation theology, and women’s spirituality. Dr. Rodriguez said that persons of color in this country are angry, they have every right to be, and people with white privilege just need to understand that fact, and accept it.
I am about to offer a reflection on the spiritual practice of gentleness, but I want to begin here, with Dr. Rodriguez, and her good words. “Gentleness” as we understand it — “gentleness” as healthy Christian communities understand it — “gentleness” is not about protecting white fragility, or what people from my home state call “Minnesota Nice.” It’s not about everyone being sweet, brushing off disagreement, and delaying justice so that we all just get along. It’s most definitely not about oppressed persons grinning and bearing it. “Gentleness” is not passive; it is not reticent. Gentleness makes no peace with evil.
If gentleness has any value in our faith community, it may be tender, but it is also fierce, sober, and faithful. Christian gentleness is grounded in a prophetic vision of who God is forming us to be, and what God is sending us to do. Gentleness in our faith community requires a strong heart. Gentleness in our faith community demands courage.
Now, having said all that, gentleness can often feel tender. But even then, we are being gentle because we fiercely appreciate how important someone is. Two examples stand out: we practice tender gentleness when we are holding a tiny infant, and we practice tender gentleness when we draw alongside someone’s deathbed. We are gentle because these human beings are priceless, they are profoundly vulnerable, and they possess immense dignity, simply by existing. We do not want to hurt people with carelessness or negligence, or just plain klutziness. We are careful; we take care. And we just instinctively know that both holding a newborn and holding the hand of the dying are gentle actions that demand us to be brave.
There are other examples of tender gentleness, but again, don’t mistake the tenderness for weakness or frailty. We practice tender gentleness when breaking bad news, and we sometimes practice tender gentleness when we say a gentle but firm “No,” carefully setting a healthy boundary.
But whether it feels tender or not, our gentleness is fierce as we pray and work here, in all the corners and along all the edges of this mission base. Our gentleness is fierce when we approach someone we have harmed, seeking reconciliation. We approach them gently in our desire to avoid doing further harm, but we direct our fierce attention inward: we brace ourselves, bravely, to hold ourselves accountable.
We practice fierce gentleness, in turn, when we work hard to forgive those who have harmed us, and we practice fierce gentleness when we decline to forgive. Yes, you heard that right: Christians are not automatically required to forgive, no matter the circumstances. Our fiercely gentle community makes room for the complexities of wrongdoing and reconciliation. Are you not ready to forgive someone? Well, that probably makes good sense. Take some time. Pray alongside us. Discern your next steps. All of this labor requires fierce gentleness, toward others (including the person who hurt you), and toward yourself.
So: we practice gentleness both tender and fierce. But I have two more ideas about gentleness on offer today: our gentleness is sober, and it is faithful. (And of course, whether it’s tender, fierce, sober, or faithful, all the ways we practice this great spiritual gift overlap one another and flow into one another, so I encourage you not to worry too much about a detailed outline. Let this reflection flow over you.)
But onward to sober gentleness. Sober gentleness is clear-headed, conscious, and self-aware. We try to be gentle in a sober way whenever we make a careful assessment of someone, particularly someone who upsets us. We re-engage our neocortexes, using reason as our guide, to level out and inform our powerful feelings. Somebody opens our common fridge, let’s say, and eats my sandwich. I identify the culprit, but rather than berate them, I encourage myself to wonder how hungry they are.
I actually have one more example from my time at Seattle University, this time to illustrate sober gentleness. A classmate arrived one day and told us that someone stole his bicycle. Everyone expressed the requisite outrage: “Oh no! That’s terrible!”. I remember feeling a vicarious desire for revenge on my friend’s behalf. I wanted him to find the thief and exact retribution. But he just smiled and said this: “Oh, it’s okay. I really think whoever it is must have really needed it.” At first blush this seemed absurd, even disingenuous. What a goody-goody nerd, this guy! But this classmate proved to be the real thing: he authentically made a judgment about the bicycle thief that began with compassion. Whatever the actual nature of the anonymous thief, and whatever their motives, my friend released himself from the prison of bitter resentment. He did this by practicing sober gentleness.
But sometimes we have more information about another person, information that tells us that the person truly did behave badly, or behaved in a way that disappoints or discourages us. Sober gentleness helps in this situation, too. Think back to a recent time when you felt disappointed by someone you care about. Notice how your heart might be soothed, and your mind eased, if you notice that disappointment, validate it, and then carefully release it. Someone may disappoint us, but the past can’t be changed, and this is not the end of our story together. Sober gentleness.
And finally we consider faithful gentleness, which I think is what Saint Paul was truly talking about when he told the church in Philippi to “let your gentleness be known to everyone.” The gentleness we receive and cultivate when we are together in Christ is faithful. That is, it forms us in faith, it directs us toward one another in faith, it builds up this community of faith.
At our best, we practice faithful gentleness whenever we enter this parish, seeking peace but also justice in all that we say and do here. But we also practice faithful gentleness when we leave this community. And surely we are all aware that each and every one of us will, at some point, take our leave of St. Paul’s, in one way or another. We remember only a few dozen names of many hundreds of persons who launched and sustained this congregation over thirteen decades; most of them have now died, or moved on. But I believe we can feel in our bones the deep peace and courageous fellowship they gave us, by living here and then dying here, by entering and then leaving, by their sustained record of gentle mission and ministry in this place.
And in the fleeting few years we all are here, we practice faithful gentleness whenever we correct or challenge this community. Like any human organization, our parish needs continual correction and challenge, but we strive to do this work carefully, gently, faithfully. Our curate, Father Phillip, was talking with me this week, and said something striking: he said that he appreciates how, at St. Paul’s, we work on praying together without demanding agreement. This is faithful gentleness, and it’s a particular gift of most Episcopal and Anglican congregations: we pray together without demanding agreement. Often we fail at this (myself most certainly included), but this is our faithful ambition.
And of course we must practice faithful gentleness when we are working on a tough conflict. You know the classic movie scene when our hero puts their gun down, knowing that this brave action could lead to their own death. They put their gun down because they want to resolve their differences without violence. And that requires immense courage. “Put your sword back into its sheath!” gentle Jesus sharply says to Peter, in John’s telling of the arrest in Gethsemane. We rejoice in the Lord – we are all held in the peace of Christ – and so we bravely choose something much harder and scarier than grabbing a weapon: we practice faithful gentleness.
I have used this example before, but it bears repeating: in a favorite film of mine, an angry, inebriated mother is in a heated argument with her adult daughter. She finally gets at the hard truth between them. The mother cries out: “Go ahead and say it: you think I’m an alcoholic.” The daughter pauses. Then she says, with firm tenderness and fierce gentleness, “Okay. I think you’re an alcoholic.” Faithful gentleness.
But then we don’t need Hollywood to teach us about faithful gentleness. We have that rough, surprising teacher of gentleness, John the Baptizer, to lead us by example. Now, in today’s Good News, he begins by calling everyone a “brood of vipers,” a vat of snakes. That’s not … really all that gentle! But he says this in a bracing way, in a way that leads to a strong and constructive conversation about what the people must do to prepare for the dawning of justice and peace. Once again, Father Phillip raised an insight for my instruction. He noticed that soldiers – agents of empire whose profession is inherently violent – asked John what they must do, and John said nothing at all about taking up weapons or beating the bad guys. He cautioned them against extortion, against abusing their power. Faithful gentleness.
And in all of this, in this work but also this great privilege of practicing tender, fierce, sober, and faithful gentleness, in all of this we rejoice in the Lord, no matter what happens to us. We don’t just celebrate when everything is swimming along, and then despair when everything is falling apart; no, we cultivate a gentle practice of rejoicing always, in all the changes and chances of this life.
Finally, a bittersweet note: this week, our companion Nancy Finley, child of God, died in the peace of Christ. Nancy leaves a legacy of tender, fierce, sober, and faithful gentleness. But in Nancy’s hands, this gentleness takes on a delightful intellectual grace: “She had an inquiring mind,” said our companion Mark Taylor, reflecting thoughtfully on her death. Nancy asked questions, she explored multiple faith traditions, she laughed and loved. She practiced a warm but sharp, a challenging but encouraging form of Christian gentleness. And finally, like so many countless souls, Nancy left St. Paul’s with that same gentleness, witnessing to the nearness of Christ not only in our lives and our bright beginnings, but in our deaths and our solemn endings.
With our sister Nancy and all the saints, I bid you: Rejoice always. Again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.
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Preached on the Third Sunday of Advent (Year C), December 15, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.
Zephaniah 3:14-20
Canticle 9 (Isaiah 12:2-6)
Philippians 4:4-7
Luke 3:7-18