One With Each Other... (thoughts on Marie Kondo & the UMC)
Preached at Decatur First UMC (Decatur, GA) February, 2019
Genesis 45: 3 Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?” But his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence.
4 Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. 5 And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. 6 For the famine has been in the land these two years; and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. 7 God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. 8 So it was not you who sent me here, but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. 9 Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me, do not delay. 10 You shall settle in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children, as well as your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. 11 I will provide for you there—since there are five more years of famine to come—so that you and your household, and all that you have, will not come to poverty.’ 15 And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him. (NRSV)
Luke 6: 27 “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29 If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.
32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. 35 But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.” (NRSV)
I’m a sentimental person living in a small house, so I’m in a constant battle for space. I have a hard time letting go of stuff that reminds me of my kids when they were little, or my loved ones who have passed away, or things from a previous season of my life. And yet, the house that I can afford, in the city we choose to live in, limits how much stuff I can keep. For this reason, I’m a new fan of Marie Kondo and her fascinating process for tidying up. If you haven’t heard about this phenomenon, I’ll quickly fill you in. Marie Kondo is a lifestyle consultant whose focus is on helping people organize their homes in such a way that they have more joyful lives. She wrote a book a few years ago that I never got around to reading, but around New Years Day, her new Netflix series dropped - eight episodes of real life people trying to get their lives in order by getting their stuff in order.
Marie tells us that when we are tidying up, we are to gather our belongings up into a pile, consider each item that we own individually and ask ourselves, “Does this spark joy?” We only want to keep the things that spark joy for us, whether it’s books, or dishes, or tools, or clothes. If it doesn’t spark joy, then you thank the item for being a help to you, and then you get it out of your house. You could sell it or give it away, or if it’s not going to be any use to anyone, you throw it away or recycle it.
I watched the first episode, and immediately felt both blessed and convicted. I turned off the tv, and cleaned out all of my drawers. I felt almost intoxicated by how tidy my clothes looked neatly folded in my drawers. I wanted to do more. So I did my kids’ clothes. Marie says that each adult is supposed to do this for themselves, and I respect the process so I didn’t do it for Andy, but I did pile all of his clothes on top of the bed for him, so that he could do it himself.
While I enjoyed all of this tidying up, it was not easy. The hardest part that day was my underwear drawers. For the first 25 years of my life, all of my underwear was supplied by my maternal grandmother, Jinnie. I mean all of it. I literally didn’t even know where or how to buy my own underwear, because for every birthday and Christmas Jinnie gave me enough underwear to stock my drawer for the year. In December of 1999, when I turned 25, I got my last set of undies from Jinnie. She died in 2000 after a long battle with cancer. And when I opened my drawer last month, inspired by Marie Kondo to keep only those things that spark joy for me, they were still there.
I started by telling you that I’m a sentimental person, and now you’re seeing what that looks like in real life. I’ve moved houses 10 times in those 19 years, and I moved my last pairs of Jinny underwear with me every single time. But when I asked myself Marie’s question, “Do these spark joy for me?” The answer is no. I actually feel sad when I see them, because they were the last ones.
What’s weird is that remembering my grandmother in general doesn’t make me sad. I think of her every day and those are warm memories. I have some of her jewelry that I love to wear. Our daughter shares her name, and I love that connection. So I let the underwear go. It went to the curb with the other things that couldn’t be donated. And I can report that my connection to my grandmother is still strong. In fact, she wasn’t all that sentimental, so I think she has probably been cheering me on.
So, you can see why I’m a fan of this system. As a sentimental person, it’s very freeing. In talking about Marie Kondo’s philosophy with friends, we’ve wondered how far you can take the idea that if something doesn’t spark joy, you can thank it and let it go. For example, can you apply some Kondo logic to your job? If you are currently employed in such a way that you don’t feel joy when you think about it, can you kondo that out of your life and quit? Or maybe just Kondo the parts of your job that you don’t like, and stop doing those? Likewise, can you Kondo a person out of your life if they don’t spark joy. I’ve been thinking about this a lot.
In a sense, that’s exactly what Joseph’s brothers tried to do to him, although Marie would not at all approve of their methods. If you’ve never read the story of Joseph for yourself, you should read it. When Joseph was younger, he was a real pain. Joseph was his father’s favorite, and he made no secret of that. Joseph received lavish gifts from his dad and was considered too precious to work, while his brothers worked hard on the family land and did not receive their dad’s favor. So, the brothers decided to get rid of Joseph. They sold him to slave traders who took him to Egypt, and the brothers told their father that Joseph was dead.
But people are not like underwear. You can acknowledge that they don’t spark joy and try to cut them out of your life, but there’s no guarantee that they will stay out. Due to circumstances far beyond their control, the brothers end up seeking out Joseph’s help without realizing it was him, and the result is the scene we heard this morning. The person that they had cut out of their life was standing before them, desperately happy to see them, and offering to save them from famine.
Can you Kondo a person? I think Marie would say that you can. I think there are circumstances where, for our own mental health and sometimes our own physical health, we have to declare that a relationship is over. Sometimes deciding to end a relationship is the kindest and most gracious thing that we can do for each other. We should be careful not to read Joseph’s story, or Jesus’s instructions to turn the other cheek, as a command to stay in an abusive relationship. That does not sound like Jesus.
But would God want us to Kondo someone simply because we don’t like them, I think not. We have four gospels that give us insight into Jesus - his words and his actions. He never said, “like other people,” and he never said that our feelings about other people should determine our relationship with them. He seems actually to be uninterested in how we feel about other people. Our Gospel reading from this morning is specifically geared toward how we treat people who do not spark joy for us.
And the Gospel of Luke helps us understand that Jesus knows all about people who do not spark joy. Matthew’s gospel sends wise-men to visit young Jesus - fancy scholars bearing gifts. Luke’s version doesn’t mention them at all. Instead, Luke sends the shepherds - stinky and empty handed when they arrive at the manger.
In the fourth chapter of Luke we meet a man with an unclean spirit who screams at Jesus in the temple, harassing Jesus until he gets his attention. In the fifth chapter Jesus begins to encounter people who are covered with skin sores, which makes them unclean by religious standards. He soon encounters Levi the tax collector, who was loathed and hated by everyone.
And he met up with the religious leaders, who pretty much dared him to heal a man on the sabbath, and so Jesus did it. Then the text tells us “they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.”
So by the time we get to chapter 6, verse 27, Jesus isn’t coming home from a day at the spa. He knows exactly what he’s asking his disciples to do, because he’s very familiar with undesirable people pushing his buttons, harassing him, threatening him, and seeking him out for help.
I hope you have some people in your life who are easy to love, but if that’s all you’ve got then you may have Kondo-ed your life too carefully. I’m not sure you can actually follow Jesus if you don’t have any people that you don’t like in your life, because so much of what Jesus calls us to do, and to be, is about how we respond to people who are hard for us to love. That is a critical piece of how we practice our faith.
Let me own that I’m not great at this. I would like to gather up the people I don’t like, or who make life difficult for me, and leave them on the curb with the rest of the things that don’t spark joy for me.
I would like for my life to be as tidy as my chest of drawers. But while I feel like Jesus can get on board with loosening my attachments to the stuff in my house, the readings this morning remind me that my life is not intended to be that tidy, and neither is the church. God never asked us to consider whether or not anyone else belongs in the family of God, in fact he told us very specifically not to do that. And thank God for that, because some of us spark joy on our good days, and we spark other stuff on other days.
My reading of scripture is that we all spark joy for God. I think the reason Jesus didn’t limit his mission to one group or another is that he loved them all. I think the reason he tells his followers to treat those they dislike with dignity and respect, is because he loves those people too. I don’t have any reason to think that the people I disagree with are not the apple of God’s eye, just like I am. There’s not a single person in all of history that God would Kondo to the curb. In fact, the curb is Jesus’ favorite place to hang out. Jesus is looking for who has been left out, and says to bring them in. Jesus is looking for who has been rejected, and says, “That one belongs to me.”
This is why the conversation that is happening this week in St. Louis, where the United Methodist Church is convening to discern a way forward on human sexuality, is pretty stupid. I mean, it’s important, but it’s also stupid.
The church doesn’t get to decide who sparks joy for God. When we try to do that, and we’ve done it before, we end up looking like fools. We also do a great deal of harm. When I watch what’s unfolding, the fact that we are even having this conversation about who is in and who is out, I cannot help but feel that we have simply failed to love as Jesus asked us to.
Our sermon series this month has been based on our prayer during communion that goes like this, “By your Spirit make us one with Christ, one with each other, and one in ministry to all the world until Christ comes in final victory and we feast at his heavenly banquet.”
People are not underwear, and the church is not a chest of drawers. When Jesus comes back, and invites us to the heavenly banquet, he’s not going to find the ways that we have divided ourselves interesting or helpful. There won’t be any special seating for those who cleaned out their church or their lives to remove those who are difficult to love. There will not be one banquet for conservatives, and another banquet for liberals, and yet a third banquet for moderates. There’s just going to be the one banquet, and if anyone has been left on the curb, Jesus is going to give that person or group of people the place of honor.
The good news, if we have ears to hear it, is that we don’t have to change how we think or feel. Honestly, that’s the Holy Spirit’s job, we just have to be open to it. When Christ comes in final victory we’ll be accountable for how we acted, not how we felt. We are to treat all people, ALL people, all of the people, like children of God, because that’s what we are. Amen.
