Psalm 139 and the Whole Person

A Homily for a Quarterly Memorial Service

I preached this homily yesterday at the quarterly memorial service held at the hospital where I currently serve as a Chaplain.

In 2012, a movie came out called “Wreck-It Ralph.” It’s an animated comedy, one of those kids’ movies that also has a lot for the adults who watch it with the kids. If we were in person, I’d ask for a show of hands to ask who’s seen it. Wreck-It Ralph is part of an arcade video game which has 8-bit graphics, a throwback to 1980s video games with cameos by Sonic the Hedgehog and Pacman and Q*Bert. Ralph is the bad guy in his game, though, and he’s tired of being the bad guy.

The good guy is Fix-It Felix, Jr, which is the name of the game, and when he fixes things, he gets freshly baked pies and a medal at the end of the game, whereas Ralph gets thrown off the roof into a mud pit. Ralph doesn’t mind that, though, because it’s part of the game. What he minds is that even when the arcade is closed and there’s no game going, the other characters in his game still ostracize him and treat him as the bad guy. They can’t see him as anything else. When they throw a party for the 30th anniversary of their game, they don’t even invite Ralph. Fix-It Felix is the hero, even though Felix would have nothing to fix if Ralph didn’t wreck things in the first place. The storyline of the movie is how Ralph learns to be more than just a bad guy, and how the other characters of his game learn that there’s more to him than just wrecking things.

I served as a pastor before becoming a chaplain, and I once officiated at a memorial service for a member of the community who was not a church member. His family was honest about who he was and that he wasn’t a great guy in some ways; he was an alcoholic. Yet his family also stressed to me how generous and giving he was, that when someone asked him for something, he’d give it to them, right down to the shirt off his back. They told me a story about one time when he literally gave away the coat he was wearing. This individual wasn’t perfect, he didn’t have it all together; and he was super generous. Viewing this person that way, using the word “and,” he didn’t have it all together and he was incredibly giving, is a way to see him as a whole person. The alcoholism was not the whole story on his life. The generosity was not the whole story on his life. They were both two parts of it; the good and the bad. And we, and our loved ones, all have that in each of us. We all have things we do well, we all have parts that we get right. And we all have parts that we struggle with. We have strengths and we have growing edges, and all of that together makes up who we are.

You see, who we are in our worst moments is not all of who we are. Who we are in our best moments is not all of who we are, either. Any snapshot of you, or of your loved one, is not going to tell the whole story, and that’s important to remember. Any title or role we have is not the whole story. We are more than the sum of all of these parts. We are not only a teacher or a parent or a caregiver or a driver or a Veteran. Our psalm this afternoon said that, “You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You were intricately woven together in the depths of the earth. And you are known better than you know yourself.” You can’t just look at one part of a life and say that’s who that person is, that’s what defines them. There’s more to each of us than that.

One of the nicknames for the era we live in now is the Age of Anxiety, that we are so caught up and anxious about looking perfect, acting perfect, showing only the perfect sides of ourselves on social media. We set the bar way up here, and guess what? We all fall short. It is unattainable because that is never the whole picture. The holiday card with everyone smiling doesn’t tell the whole story of all the shots when not everyone was smiling, when not everyone was looking at the camera, what it cost each person just to get to the photo shoot. One time I got a holiday card from a friend that showed that she and her husband had just given up on trying to get the perfect picture. They have three children and one child was posed and smiling. A second child was fidgeting with her hands and the third child, the youngest, had a bare foot stepping towards the edge of the frame. It was the most realistic photo card I’ve ever received. Yet I’m sure it cost my friend some anxiety to not send out the “perfect” family picture. On that flip side, when we’re anxious over not having everything together, when we feel in the pit of despair, that’s not the whole picture, either.

In an essay about the anxiety of perfectionism,[1] the author wrote, “We’re tempted to believe there is no cause for hope. We’re tempted to believe that at stake in every relationship is the possibility of finding our soulmate. We’re tempted to believe that the dissolution of [every] relationship means cruel rejection of our identity rather than deliverance from a potentially unhealthy connection. The clock ticks, and we name each tick a curse rather than thanking God for the gift of time. We fail to see the world the way it really is.”

The author continues, “Beloved child, set your eyes on the truth about the world and determine to live in that world, and not in the false world in which despair is possible. That’s not the real world. None of the stories we tell ourselves in our despair are truthful descriptions of the world. The truth about the world is that you do not have to become because you already are. God has already declared you worthy. You don’t need to achieve that. You simply need to embrace it. Luxuriate in it. And allow yourself the time and space to learn what it means to live as one already declared precious by God.”

To be declared precious is not to be declared fragile and easily breakable, although it may feel that way sometimes. Rather this is a precious that means you are valuable, you are worthy, you are enough. Cherishing ourselves and our loved ones, treating each of us as precious and valuable, gives us strength and builds our resilience more than anxiety or being hard on ourselves or anyone else does.[2] The poem (We Remember Them by Sylvan Kamens and Rabbi Jack Riemer) that we read says, “When we are weary and in need of strength, we remember them. When we are lost and sick at heart, we remember them.” Treating ourselves and our loved ones as precious and cherished and worthy of love gives us strength to get through.

In geology, stones are rated on what is called the Mohs scale, a number 1 through 10 to determine their degree of scratch resistance. These stones include precious stones, and some gems, like opals and turquoise, are soft stones that scratch and chip easily. Other precious jewels are hard stones, the hardest of which is a diamond. Diamonds are pieces of carbon that crystallized when they were exposed to external pressure and heat. There is no need to add internal pressure. Grief is often complex and complicated as you sort through your memories, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Cherish yourself and your loved one. You, and they, are worthy of love and cherishing.

We are not perfect, we all have a lot of external pressure going on, and we’re not going to grieve perfectly. We’re not going to respond to each loss in our lives the same way. To say so is to lie. Yet to give up hope and despair is also a lie. We are not who we may think we are at our worst moments. There’s more to us than that. Thinking of our loved ones as they were the last time we talked with them, the last time we saw them does not tell the whole story about them, either. They are more than that last conversation. They are more than that last hospital stay or how the treatment altered their mood. They are a whole person, strengths, growing edges, warts, and all. Let’s remember them that way and honor them and cherish them that way.  

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[1] http://livingchurch.org/covenant/2015/02/11/an-open-letter-to-twenty-somethings/

[2] Adapted from The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron, 25^th Anniversary Edition, p. 126