Recently I had the chance to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time: I got to give the message during chapel service at my old seminary.  And it wasn’t just any old chapel service.  It was the back-to-school chapel service!  So, of course, since it was back to school, I had to buy myself some new school shoes.  I got these red sneakers.   They remind me of shoes I had in elementary school–slip on so I don’t have to struggle to tie them!  And I got myself this new backpack, which I’m planning on using in Rwanda next month.  At chapel, I told everyone how I took this backpack with me in late August when Pastor Karen and I did the pulpit swap.  It was “blessing of the backpack” day at Conshohocken, and Pastor Karen had purchased silicone bracelets because every new backpack needs a new decoration!  There were probably ten different colors of bracelets, each with a unique message about kindness.  I was initially drawn to this one because it’s blue, but when I saw that it reads, “Be kind to yourself,” I knew immediately this was the bracelet for me.  Boy if there’s one important life lesson I never learned in school, it’s the idea of bringing out the best in myself by being nice to myself.

That is, until I went to seminary.  Now don’t get me wrong—none of my seminary professors ever said, “Gee, you didn’t turn your paper in on time because you decided to get some extra sleep?  Good for you for being kind to yourself!”  No, I never heard that.  But it was in seminary that I first learned about the idea of gentleness—of bringing out the best in myself by doing right by myself.

We encounter the word “gentleness” in Paul’s list of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5.  Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  The Greek word used in Galatians 5 that we usually translate of gentleness is “praotes”, which has to do with the use of power.  It’s being able to use just the right amount of pressure or force to get the job done.  The word gentleness is often used to capture this idea, that godly people never use more force than absolutely necessary.  Spiritual mature people use the light touch as often as possible as they work bring God’s kingdom to earth just as it is in heaven.

We also saw this word in our scripture lesson last week, in Philippians 4.  Paul says, “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I saw rejoice.  Let your gentleness be evident to all.  The Lord is near.  Do not be anxious about anything.”  (Philippians 4:4-6a)  What an interesting connection of ideas.  Rejoice in the Lord aways.  Let your gentleness be evident to all.  The Lord is near.  Do not be anxious.  If I were to paraphrase Paul, I might say, “Rejoice, lighten up, God’s got this!”  Stop pressing so hard.  Stop pushing so hard.  Don’t be hard on yourself or on others.  Lighten up and let God do the heavy lifting!

Of course, no one has authorized me to produce my own paraphrased version of the Bible.  So let’s move on to our scripture lesson for this week.  We find the word “praotes” in Paul’s list of godly qualities we are to put on as God’s chosen and holy people.  We are to clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.  These are the qualities we want people to see in us.  Which means not only should we treat others with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience, we should treat ourselves that way, too!

Treating ourselves with compassion, kindness, gentleness, patience.  Somehow along the way I absorbed the idea that, although it’s important to be compassionate and patient with others, is optional to do that for myself.  Maybe even frowned upon!  I wonder if you’ve absorbed that idea, too.  Are you as kind, gentle, patient and compassionate with yourself as you strive to be with other people?  I wonder what it would look like if we clothed ourselves with compassion, kindness, gentleness and patience.  I wonder how we can learn to do right by ourselves, just as we try to do right by others.

 

To illustrate, let me tell you the story of four wallets.  First, several months ago, Phil and I were walking in downtown Media, when we found a wallet on the sidewalk.  We had noticed a young family wrangling their kids and trying to get everyone into their mini-van, and a few minutes later, we found a woman’s wallet right near that parking space.  We opened it up to find the address, put that into our GPS, and as fast as we could, drove the wallet to the people’s house in Springfield.  They were very surprised to see us on their front porch.  They were just getting the kids ready for bed, and the mom hadn’t even noticed yet that she dropped her wallet.  They were so thankful! We were thankful, too.  We remember how difficult it is when you have little kids to keep track of everyone and everything.  My only thought was of appreciation that we were in the right time and place to be of help.

But my compassion was in short supply when, last week, I found out I lost my wallet.  I was so upset with myself!  Which is ironic, because I had just preached at Palmer Seminary on being as compassionate to ourselves as we are with others…Talk about serendipity!  Talk about timing!  See, after I left the chapel service at Palmer, I stopped at Wawa on my way home to redeem my free coffee reward.  If you have the Wawa app on your phone, you get free things from time to time.  But once in a while, I have trouble getting the app to load, so I took my wallet into the store just in case I had trouble claiming my coffee reward.  I pulled my wallet and phone out of my new backpack, went inside the Wawa, fixed my coffee, and this time, the app worked perfectly!  So perfectly that I didn’t realize I had set my wallet down on the bar where the coffee creamers and stirrers and lids are.

The next morning, a stranger called and said he found my wallet and was mailing it back.  I was obviously VERY thankful for his kindness and his honesty.  But I was so embarrassed!  I was so angry at myself.  How could I be that careless?  And how could I not even realize my wallet was missing?  That’s the thing about walking to work.  Most days, I don’t even pick up my purse.  It could have been several days before I even realized my wallet was gone.  So thank you, Lord, and thank you, kind person who found my wallet at the Wawa.  I am so appreciative.  But side by side with my gratitude was a deep well of shame.  I was not able to extend to myself the compassion and grace I extended so easily to the lady in Springfield when we found her wallet.  I had a lot of mean thoughts about myself going through my head!

So you know what I did?  I found a pre-school teacher and told her what happened.  And she was of course extremely kind to me!  Her kindness helped me be kind to myself.  I have said it before and I will say it again, preschool teachers have such an important ministry!  They not only teach letters and colors and shapes, they teach us how to love ourselves and each other.  What a blessing to have a preschool at our church!

But let me get back to the wallets.  Four wallet stories—first the wallet we found in Media and took back to the lady in Springfield, second was my wallet, and then third is Phil’s.  You might have heard me mention that last week we went to the Phillies and I got my Peppermint Patty Bobblehead?  I never take my wallet to baseball games, I just let Phil pay for everything like we’re on a proper date!  As we were leaving the house for that game, I reminded him that I didn’t have my wallet, and he said no problem…but when we pulled into the Phillies parking lot, guess who had forgotten their wallet!  He had worked from home that day and never put his wallet in his pocket, and just didn’t think about it until he needed a credit card to get into the parking lot.  After a moment of panic, “Oh no, we didn’t pre-pay our parking, how are we going to get in and get my bobblehead?”, I remembered I put a credit card on my phone with Apple Pay.  We were very happy to learn that you can use Apple Pay not only for the parking at the Phillies, but also for concessions!

Whew!  That was a close call!  But notice where my thoughts went.  I was understanding (on this occasion—rest assured, I am not always the perfect wife!).  I was solution oriented, not blame oriented.  I felt no judgment toward Phil.  I was gentle!  So good job me on that one.  But two days earlier I was not gentle to Dorry. I was not kind. Inside my own head, I was hammering away at myself for my wallet woes.  At least I’m not alone in doing that.  I learned this week that approximately 85% of Americans report that they are more compassionate with other people than they are themselves.  This is a common problem.  But it is a real problem for us a people of faith!  God wants us to love ourselves AS WELL as we love others!

Fourth wallet story, and I can’t help but notice the serendipity of three wallet things happening in one week.  Two days after the Phillies game, on Sunday morning, Phil was helping me get set up for communion for the 8:30 service, and guess what he found lying on the pew in the very front of the sanctuary, up near the sacristy?  A man’s wallet!  We looked inside to figure out who it belonged to, I called him right away, and I was so glad to be able to deliver the good news that this wallet was found.  Apparently a few days prior, he had been doing some volunteer work in the church and had no idea that he had lost his wallet here.  I don’t know if he was able to be kind and compassionate to himself.  But I hope he was.  I found myself really moved by this idea, of hoping he was gentle with himself, because he is God’s beloved and precious child.  I wanted him to do right by himself because he deserves to be treated right—by others, and by himself.  The thought a person I care about possibly hurting himself with self-criticism made me wince.

And that is a reaction we have to pay attention to.  C. S. Lewis said, “Pain is God’s megaphone.”  I felt like God is trying to inspire us to think about being more gentle with ourselves.  Because we are God’s beloved and precious children.  Three wallet issues in one week, what are the odds of that?  I think compassion, kindness, gentleness toward ourselves—these are lessons God really wants us to learn!

In the chapel service at Palmer Seminary, I told everyone that twenty years ago, when I was a seminarian, one of my professors said, “Dorry, why don’t you try bringing out the best in yourself by being nice to yourself?”, I had no idea what he was talking about.  The only way I knew how to navigate life was to be hard on myself, to push harder, to demand more.  The only tool I had was a hammer, so every mistake and shortcoming was a nail.  I was much more critical of myself than I would ever be with someone else.  Do you know what I’m talking about?

Statistics say the vast majority of you do.  So let’s look again at this scripture.  “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.”  These are the qualities God wants us to embody.  I am especially drawn to this idea of gentleness, treating myself with a light touch as often as possible, not being hard on myself, of not adding injury to the world with my heavy-handedness.  Although we may at times carry heavy loads, rarely if ever should we be heavy handed with ourselves.  There’s this wonderful, under-appreciated word in our Christian vocabulary:  gentleness.  Using only as much force as necessary to get the job done, using a light touch as often as possible.  Gentleness isn’t an excuse for not doing all we need to do.  Rather, gentleness is the path to more energy, more love, and more of God’s power as we go about daily living.

I like my new shoes and my new backpack. But the new things I really want to wear don’t come from a store.  May we clothe ourselves with the very things that feel so good when we offer them to others: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.  Let’s learn to love ourselves as good as we love others.  Amen!