Episodes
Sunday Jun 16, 2013
Capture the Moment
Sunday Jun 16, 2013
Sunday Jun 16, 2013
Rev. Dean Snyder 2 Timothy 4:1-8
We are in a series right now on pit stops – Practical Advice for Life’s Journey, and the theme this morning is Capture the Moment. We are focusing on the Apostle Paul’s advice to young Timothy to “be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable. Capture every opportunity on the journey of life. Be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable.
I want to try to get at what I think the Apostle Paul is saying by talking about the idea of culture.
Culture is the unconscious assumptions and oughts[i] that shape our lives … the unconscious assumptions about the way the world is and about how we ought to behave that shape the ways we think and act.
All of us grow up in a culture. Matter of fact, we grow up in a sort of galaxy of cultures that interact with each other to form our personal culture.
I grew up in a specific family- the David and Mildred Snyder family that had a particular culture. We had unspoken assumptions and oughts – so part of the David and Mildred Snyder culture was life is hard but we will be rewarded in the life to come (assumptions about the way the world is) so we ought to be good, work hard, and not be crybabies / not complain (assumptions about the way we ought to live).
There were a lot of good things about the David and Mildred Snyder culture –being good is good unless you never have any fun; working hard is good unless you make yourself ill doing it, etc.
An interesting exercise is for each of us to think about the essential character of the family culture that we grew up in. What were the unconscious assumptions and oughts of your family culture? How much do those assumptions and oughts still shape your life … either because you are driven by them or in rebellion against them or some combination of the two?
Can everyone think of an unconscious assumption about the world or ought that was part of your culture growing up?
The David and Mildred Snyder culture was in large part shaped by the larger Snyder family culture – my thirteen aunts and uncles and grandparents.
That culture was in large part shaped by the Pennsylvania Dutch/German culture we were part of and the Methodist, pietist, religious culture we was part of and the European-American culture.
All these cultures have assumptions and oughts that we pick up unconsciously from the day we are born.
Families have cultures. Work places have cultures. Professions have cultures. Communities have cultures. Regions have cultures. Countries have cultures. Language groups have cultures. And they all help shape our personal cultures.
Humanity itself has a culture, which is buried so deeply within us that probably none of us are even consciously aware of what it is. We call it human nature. Human nature is actually the unspoken assumptions and oughts that we are taught at a deep level as normative for human beings.
Cultures evolve and change. They change as a result of changes in the environment. They change as a result of exposure to other cultures. They change as a result of intentional leadership.
One of the organizations that has helped us understand culture better is Southwest Airlines. Herb Kelleher, the founder of Southwest Airlines, understood that all organizations have cultures, which usually just emerge and evolves unconsciously and unintentionally. He decided that he wanted to intentional shape the culture of his company. So he selected three values to use to shape and evaluate everything his business did and the values were humor, altruism, and "luv" (spelled l-u-v).
Everyone at Southwest airlines was hired because they believed in humor, altruism and l-u-v love. They were rewarded for exhibiting those qualities. They were always thinking about how to avoid the culture of Southwest airlines from drifting into the more normal airline industry – a sort of culture of somberness, selfishness or at least classism, and whatever the opposite of l-u-v love is.
Southwest created a department of culture whose work was to continually monitor, evaluate and sustain the culture. Is everything we do promoting humor, altruism and l-u-v?
It is interesting to think about the culture of the different businesses and organizations that we relate to. What is the culture of your cell phone provider? What is the culture of your TV cable company? What is the culture of the supermarket you shop at? What is the culture of your bank? What is the culture of the church you go to? What is the culture of the larger religious group you are part of? What is the culture of your political party?
The deepest spiritual work that goes on in our personal lives and in the spiritual lives of the organizations and groups we are part of happens in the realm of culture.
I pray for the businesses I frequent because the businesses I frequent have cultures and cultures are spiritual assumptions and oughts that guide the lives of that organization. I pray for Harris Teeters. Harris Teeters has a culture … So when I go to Harris Teeters I pray: Help Harris Teeter care about the healthiness of the products they sell and the welfare of their customers and the welfare of their employees.
I pray for Bank of America. Bank of America has a culture. And I pray for it all of the time. I am now so deeply enmeshed with Bank of America in so many ways that I really pray for its culture.
Spirituality –spiritual work-- is becoming aware of our own cultures, (our unconscious assumptions and oughts), our family cultures, the cultures of the organizations and institutions we are part of and asking whether they are healthy and good and in tune with God’s culture.
Spirituality is becoming aware of our unconscious assumptions and oughts and seeking to be in tune with God’s assumptions and oughts.
One of the pit stops in the journey of life is to become attuned to God’s culture and then to seek to grow into it in every opportunity that life offers us … in season and out of season . . . in good times and bad times … here or these … no matter where we are or what our circumstance. Capture the moment.
Christianity teaches that Jesus was an intervention in human history to evolve humanity’s culture.
The old culture of humanity might be articulated this way – love your friends and hate your enemies. Love the people who are like you and hate those who are different from you.
The unconscious assumption is that the world can be broken down into friends and enemies, the ought is to only trust and hang out only with people who are like you and to be defensive toward people who are different.
The Christian gospel says that God sent Jesus into the world to show us that love your friends/hate your enemies is a destructive culture … it is not God’s culture.
God’s culture is to love your enemy, to tear down walls that separate people, and to build a new community in which people who are not like each other become friends.
It is a radical cultural shift and it does not happen easily. In fact, it takes thousands upon thousands of years to change humanity’s culture.
The ongoing demonstration project for this evolution of cultures was to be the church … a community trying to live on the assumption that no one is an enemy …. no one is foreign … no one is outcast … no one is lesser or greater.
The ought of the church was to tear down the walls that divide us … nationality, class, education, religion, physical condition, mental condition, gender, sexual identity, age … you name it.
Since Jesus (and I believe the same intervention happened in other religions), humanity is on a journey to evolve its unconscious assumption and oughts. Communities are on a journey. Nations are on a journey. You and I and every individual on the face of the earth are on a journey to evolve our unconscious assumptions and oughts. From a world of enemies to a world of friends. From a world of defensives to a world of hospitality. From a world of hate to a world of l-o-v-e love.
Cultures do not change easily, especially the culture we call human nature. God is about the business of changing human nature and the followers of Jesus are apostles of this spiritual evolution.
So the older Paul whose life is almost over writes to the younger Timothy – Proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage with the utmost patience …. Because the time is coming when people are going to get itchy ears and want to return to the old nature and to teach divisiveness and hostility and hate again.
Changing a culture requires persistence. Capture every moment … every opportunity to model and teach a new culture.
The old culture is always trying to drag us back into divisiveness, enemy mentalities and hate. So we need to take every opportunity in every circumstance and season to figure out how to model hospitality, community and love; to advance the new culture.
I don’t know how you feel about Southwest Airlines. Jane doesn’t like them because they serve peanuts, which as someone who is allergic, she does not consider to be a very l-u-v-ing thing to do. Yet other than the peanuts, I think Southwest is a noble experiment within the airline industry. It is a noble attempt to model a different culture in an industry with a deeply engrained culture. Southwest tries to model no classes, no assigned seats, no pomposity, humor, l-u-v, in an industry fixated on classes, assigned places, isolation, somberness, and whatever the opposite of l-u-v is.
But maintaining its culture is hard work at Southwest airlines. The old culture keeps trying to pull them back into an emphasis on maximizing profit and grumpiness. This is why they need an entire department of culture whose work 24/7 is to try to figure out how to sustain humor, altruism, l-u-v.
The church of Jesus –you and I—are called to be the Southwest Airlines of humanity. To model friendship, hospitality and love in a world of defensiveness, enemies and hate. It is 24/7 work.
The old culture we call human nature is always trying to pull us back.
Our work is to capture every moment to model and teach the culture of God as we’ve seen it demonstrated by Jesus.
[i] Ought – verb: Used to indicate duty or correctness, typically when criticizing someone's actions: "they ought to respect the law". Used to indicate a desirable or expected state: "he ought to be able to take the initiative". Synonyms: must – need.
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