Tenderness, Compassion, and Solidarity

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December 3, 2017
First Sunday of Advent
Leif Kehrwald

​​​Imagine you lived in a time long, long ago, in a place far, far away where life and sustenance were simple. Not easy, but much simpler than today. Imagine that you have one cup from which to drink, and one bowl from which to eat. Day in, day out, every single day you drink from your cup and eat from your bowl. Those earthen vessels sustain you. And everyone in your village has their own cup and bowl.
 
And imagine, if by tragic accident, your cup or bowl gets broken. You would not eat or drink until the potter of your village can make you a new one. So, you’re very careful and protective of your cup and bowl.

And, as you can surmise, the village potter has an extraordinarily important role . . . literally keeping the villagers alive!
 
And so imagine, in this time and place, these words of a great prophet come to your village:
O God, you are our father;
we are the clay and you the potter:
we are all the work of your hands.
 
Surely, you’ve notice that when you pick up a piece of pottery and turn it over, often you’ll see the name or symbol of the artist who made it.
This bowl says Takacs – made by local physician friend of Rene’s.
This cup has an obscure symbol on the bottom.
 
“O God . . . we are the clay and you the potter.” If this is so, how is the name “God” inscribed on your heart? And, in light of our Gospel passage today, what do you do to stay spiritually alert and awake so that you are always ‘the work of God’s hands’?
 
I’d like to propose three disciplines for this Advent and the coming year. Keeping with our pottery imagery, I invite each of us to be:

• a cup of tenderness
• a bowl of compassion
• a cup of solidarity

 
These are cups of tenderness. Rene and I gave these cups to each other as a wedding gift nearly forty years ago. They adorned our table in our first apartment. We drank wine or amaretto from them. Made us feel grown up and romantic.
 
They are cups of tenderness because what I learned in our early years of marriage is that while we may survive and get along for awhile on politeness, if our love is to truly thrive it calls for genuine expressions of tender care.
 
Pope Francis has some thoughts on tenderness. He writes,
 
“And what is tenderness? It is the love that comes close and becomes real. It is a movement that starts from our heart and reaches the eyes, the ears and the hands. Tenderness means to use our eyes to see the other, our ears to hear the other, to listen to the children, the poor, those who are afraid of the future.”
 
We’ll go deeper into the Revolution of Tenderness at our GIFT session on Sunday.
 
We are the clay and you the potter, O God.
We are all the work of your hands.
 
This is a bowl of compassion.
 
This is the bowl in which we toss and dress our green salad that we share for our evening meal once or twice a week. I love fresh green salad. Just picking up this bowl brings the taste to my mouth; the wonderful mix of greens, oil, vinegar, spices, lemon or lime juice, all tossed and mixed together that yield a zest and passion that cannot be found in any one of those ingredients.
 
It’s a bowl of compassion because it holds an extraordinary mix of feelings, hopes, dreams, struggles, challenges, and whims of those who choose to be in relationship around the bowl.
 
Compassion literally means “with heart.” This year, as we explore the theme of compassion, just remember that it’s all about heart. Without heart, it is just a bowl of ‘nice’, and when asked about it – how was that salad? “Ummm, nice.” How is that parish? “Ummm, nice, I guess.”
 
In our call to be in relationship with one another, a bowl of ‘nice’ goes only so far. Yes, of course we need to be nice to one another, but put some real heart into it. That’s compassion. That’s how we’ll grow deeper in love and in faith together.
 
We are the clay and you the potter, O God:
We are all the work of your hands.
 
This is a cup of solidarity.
 
At my house, whenever we host a holiday meal or a family gathering, it falls to me to make the coffee to go with dessert. I make it in a large French press carafe and, even if we’ve used our good china for the dinner, I’ll pour the coffee into an array mugs and cups, none of which match. The most popular of which is this one.
 
It’s a unique pottery design because it is misshapen with dents and folds. Looks like it’s been beaten up and kicked around. But, as I said, it’s the most popular.
 
(For the record, this mug was a gift from my son to me, so I think I’ll claim it next time.)
 
It’s a cup of solidarity because it looks like it’s been beaten up and kicked around. And I think that’s what’s involved with true solidarity. This year, as we explore this theme, along with compassion, I think we’ll discover the difference between solidarity and alliance.
 
Alliance means we cut a deal, we enter a relationship that holds mutual benefits for us both, and we’re counting on that. Whereas solidarity means we’re all in for the sake of the other, and we’ll likely pay a price and get beaten up a bit for that commitment. No matter what, we’ve got your back.
 
This Advent, and this year, here’s our homework, personally and as a whole community:

• First, drink from the cups of tenderness. Move beyond politeness, take a small risk to share a bit of heart with one another.
• Then, eat from the bowl of compassion. Move beyond ‘nice’ and ‘fine’, and literally give heart to those who have lost heart.
• Then, drink from the cup of solidarity. Move beyond alliances, and risk getting dented and misshapen for the sake of others.

 
O God, we are the clay and you the potter:
We are all the work of your hands.