“Treasure the People You Are With”
Matthew 6:19-21
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
September 6, 2015
I’ve been thinking a lot about treasures this summer. What prompted my reflections was a book our church book group read– The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo, a Japanese de-cluttering specialist. The author’s style, we all agreed, is eccentric, and at times her approach seems extreme, with detailed instructions on how to fold socks correctly. Still, the book caught my attention because of her unique approach to discarding objects. Don’t ask yourself whether an object is practical or necessary. She continues. Don’t base your decision-making on whether you have used something recently. Instead, she instructs us to hold the object in our hands and ask whether it sparks joy in us. If it does, she says, keep it. If not, thank it for the role it has played in your life and let it go.
Inspired and hopeful that maybe this strange method would work for me, I started going through my clothing. I filled several carloads with clothes to donate and found lots more hidden in the back of my closet, some of which did spark joy. It was surprisingly easy.
The book suggests starting with clothing because it is the easiest. More challenging, the author admits, is deciding what to do with the treasures we accumulate–a souvenir from a trip, a gift from an old friend, a childhood drawing, a family heirloom. She points out that hoarding treasures by piling boxes up in the basement or the attic doesn’t actually honor the person who gave them to us or the memory of the trip they came from. If something is valuable to you, it if really does spark joy, then take it out of the box and use it, she says.
Marie Kondo is right; letting go of the treasures I have accumulated is much harder than parting with old clothes. I haven’t made much progress. Her insights, though, have led me to look at the many treasures in our house in a slightly different way. What makes something a treasure is the pleasure it gives, the story behind it, the memories it evokes. And so, the other night, when we had friends over for dinner, we served the appetizer in a bowl we’d received as a wedding present. As we spooned out the main course, we uncovered the beautiful bird paintings on the platter my sister gave Fran for her birthday. And the cookies I made for dessert were offered on a ceramic plate we’d bought on our trip to the Holy Land.
Each time I passed the chips or the rice or the cookies, I felt that “spark of joy” Kondo wrote about. I thought about the people who’d given us the dish; I thought about how my sister had made a point to find a gift that honored our love of birding; I thought about the little shop in Galilee where we found the ceramic plate. I served the meal with a little bit more care, honoring the platters, the food, and the company–all of them treasures.
This sermon, of course, isn’t about physical treasures. It’s about the final of the three “sabbath intentions” that help me frame my vacation or sabbath times: “Treasure the people I am with.” This third intention comes out of my awareness of two traps I can easily fall into. The first is the trap of familiarity. On vacation or on a day off, I am often with people I love, people I know so well I take them for granted. I don’t notice a small kindness, or I don’t say thank you for a cup of tea, or I don’t ask about their day or really listen to the story I think I have already heard.
The second trap is the trap of judgment, and it has more to do with strangers I encounter on a vacation or a day off–maybe the people at the bike shop, or other tourists in a tour group. Some of these folks I might really like; some of them I think are a little strange; some I wish would go away.
This sabbath intention is about disentangling myself from those traps. It’s an invitation to move from taking someone for granted to treasuring the gifts they bring to my life. It’s an opportunity to shift away from that inclination to wish someone I encounter was different and instead to treasure them for who they are.
As with my first intention, “absorb beauty,” it took me a while to find the right verb for this one. “Appreciate the people I’m with,” “enjoy the people I’m with”–both of these are fine, but they don’t go far enough. When I happened upon the word “treasure” I knew it was the right one.
So what do I mean by “treasure?” My reflections this summer on the physical treasures in our house helps me clarify what it means to treasure the people I am with.
To treasure an object is not to possess it, or to hide it away in a box where it will be protected and secure for my perpetual ownership. Instead, to treasure an object is to share it, to serve dinner with it, to allow other people to experience its beauty and uniqueness. To treasure a person is to recognize that we cannot possess them or control who they are or how they act. To treasure a person is to broaden the circle of conversation, to share the joy of knowing them with other people as well.
On our sabbatical this spring, Fran and I attended a Road Scholars photography program at Yellowstone National Park. On the first evening, we walked to dinner with the group of 13 participants. I struck up a conversation with a woman who had just retired from being a Methodist pastor in Texas. She had also been a chaplain, and in her retirement was thinking about new ways to live out her calling. “You have to meet Fran,” I said. “She’s a chaplain, and she’s working on developing new models for chaplaincy.”
In the meantime, Fran was talking with a woman from North Carolina who was a quilter. “You have to meet Debbie,” she said. “She’d love to see the photos of your quilts.” And so began a rich web of connections, a treasuring of the gifts each of us brought to an evolving community.
To treasure an object is to value the story behind it–the occasion on which it was received, the way it was made, the person who gave it to us, the memories it evokes. To treasure a person is to value their story–to be curious about them, to listen to how they make sense of their lives, to trust that the story of their lives can enrich our own.
A few days into our photography trip, I stopped to take pictures of the mountains on our way to breakfast. When I got to the restaurant, the only chair left was at a table with the two men I had dismissed as curmudgeonly. I sat down. Since I was stuck there anyway, I asked them about their lives. The two men were both retired teachers who had gone to college together. They lived in different parts of the country. Joe knew that his friend Ed’s health was failing, and offered to go on this trip with him. No longer were they curmudgeons to me; now they were examples of loyal friends. Hearing their stories changed everything.
Perhaps most importantly, to treasure an object is to open ourselves to the joy it can spark in us. And to treasure a person is to trust that he or she can light a spark of joy in our lives.
That’s what it means to treasure the people I am with–to recognize I cannot possess or control them, to value their stories, and to trust that they have the potential to spark joy in my life. This intention, of course, is just an intention, which I sometimes live out well and sometimes forget to practice. When I remember, it is amazing what a difference it makes in my life.
In our gospel lesson, Jesus reminds us that when we make a choice to treasure something–an object or a person–our hearts follow our choice. When we treasure the people we are with, our hearts expand beyond ourselves to embrace them and the world around us.
These are my three sabbath intentions, my three touchstones for how to live on vacation or a day off: Absorb beauty. Enjoy being present in my body. Treasure the people I am with. All three are about making a choice to experience life as a gift. The beauty around us is a gift to be absorbed. Our bodies are gifts to be enjoyed. The people we encounter are gifts to be treasured. Life is a gift from God. When we receive the gift with gratitude, our lives are enriched and our joy is multiplied.
It is ironic that I am completing my summer sermon series on sabbath intentions on Labor Day weekend, when we celebrate work and when we acknowledge a shift from the slower pace of summer to the busyness of fall. It’s a good reminder that these intentions are not just for when life is spacious. Sabbath time, vacation, sabbatical, days off–these offer us the opportunity to practice a way of being that can enrich our lives all year long. No matter how busy we are, we are never too busy to absorb and enjoy and treasure the gifts God has given us.
Absorb beauty. Enjoy being present in your body. Treasure the people you are with. Which of these intentions rings true for you? Which challenges you to shift your perspective? What other intentions can guide you as you seek to receive all of life as a gift from God? Amen.