Learn Jesus’ way of offering friendship to others. To encourage us as a community of faith to be aware of and to embrace difference. Although to some extent like will attract like, as we grow there will be increasing diversity and this is something to celebrate and encourage. There will be people firmly within this community as well as those nowhere near us who present themselves differently to us, some may suffer from a mental health issue for a long time. I want to encourage us to live our lives in a way that reflects that we follow Jesus and the way he would live with others – learning to accept and embrace those differences.
Read John 4:4-29
Over the years I have had to get used to being identified in terms of my relationship to other people: I remember one day about 15 years ago when living in London I met someone one Friday evening at a party who identified me as my brother’s brother from a group photo, which included my brother Simon, which she had on her kitchen wall. Apparently I was loitering at the back of the photo.
The next morning I went to a conference (Docklands – Paul Cain). As I walked through some swing doors with 000’s of other people someone stopped me and said, “Aren’t you Michael Flowers’ son?”
A little later on I used a payphone (yes really) to call our babysitter to check on Josh. When the phone was answered and I had identified myself I heard the person shouting to someone, “It’s Josh’s dad!”
In 24 hours - I was Simon’s brother, Michael’s son, Josh’s dad.
To others I am the guy they played rugby with or went to college with or worked with or the adviser they did business with. To many I am Alison’s husband. In truth my best attribute.
Who am I really? Who are you really? And how are you, really? We know each other only in part don’t we? Sometimes we hardly know ourselves it seems.
Have you ever found yourself saying, "Why did I do that?", "Why did I say that?"
Sometimes we feel different from everyone else. Only I am like this. Only I feel this way. No one would understand this. Everyone else seems OK. They all seem to know what to do. They all seem to know everyone. What are they laughing at? Am I meant to like this? Seems rubbish to me – but what do I know.
Have you ever walked into a room of people and felt different? Not knowing quite what to do or to say?
I remember living with a family in France many years ago in a desperate attempt to improve my language skills in time for A levels. One evening they took me along to a prayer meeting at their church. They were a great bunch, really friendly, but they were French and did things in a French sort of way. Have you ever met a French person? They do things strangely don’t you think?
Some of you were a lot more advanced than I was, but at the time of that stay in France, as an immature 16 year old, I hadn’t done a great deal of kissing (Alison was introducing me to the pleasure but it was a newish experience). I certainly hadn’t kissed in public, certainly not lots of different people and certainly not men! But the French, they are into this kissing thing.
When we arrived at the meeting there were about 5 or 6 people already there and my host went to the first person, a middle aged woman, and they did the kissing thing, “Bonjour ma cherie! Ca va?”. “Oui, ca va bien, gloire a Dieu” etc. I was introduced to her and it became rapidly clear that I was meant to do the same. Not just the saying hullo in French. Awkward it was.
But it got worse, whilst I was negotiating left and right cheeks and trying to ensure I didn’t accidentally brush lips – Oh God forbid!!! – I noticed out of the corner of my eye that my host had moved to the next person; a Frenchman, with a beard, and he was repeating the exercise. Surely not! But yes, I was expected to bury my face in this French beard too – both sides of the face.
And so it went on until we got to the end of the 6 people sitting around the side of the room. Shaking and sweating with embarrassment and feeling very English I sank into the next chair and took some deep breaths. And then it dawned on me; we weren’t the last people to arrive. Each person who came subsequently also started with the 1st person by the door and moved round and, inevitably, dreadfully, excruciatingly, reached me and expected the repeated sharing of unnecessary intimacies. After 20 or so people I have to say that I was not in much of a state to do the praying, bible study thing.
It got worse the next day when I was taken to a friend’s school and found myself facing a line of French students each offering a personal and cosy welcome. I could have died and ended up hating every minute of the French experience for quite some time.
I felt alone and odd and different. In some ways of course I was (I am English), in other ways I wasn’t. Although I don’t suffer from a diagnosed mental health issue I have felt “different” or excluded from time to time for other reasons.
In a less extreme way than having to adopt strange Gallic rituals it is the same for us here and every day. There are times when we feel alone and odd and different. We present an outer layer or two to each other most of the time which gets us by. But there are many layers of me and you only get to see some of them. I don’t know them all myself.
We all go through periods of uncertainty, not sure of ourselves – especially those of us who look a bit more confident on the outside.
Does my bum look big in this? Is it fashionable or will I look out of place?
Why don’t people laugh at my jokes?
Why can’t I find the right thing to say at the right time?
Why do I get offended so easily?
If only they know how much money I don’t have!
One of my concerns is whether or not the way we live our lives and the way we live together as a community of faith helps or hinders at these times of uncertainty and feeling different. In fact are we the sort of place which makes people feel even more awkward? How do we relate to people who are different and particularly to people who may appear the same but are different under the top layer or two.
One of the growing challenges we face in the 21c is living with, having good conversation with, doing life with, those who suffer from mental health issues of one sort of another. We will look at this in more detail next week but suffice to say for now - every one of us is structured differently, mentally, from one another. Any of you who have done psychometric tests will be aware of the many and varied personality types we can categorise each other with.
We can’t always tell what is going on in someone’s mind.
A mental health issue can range from someone feeling a little down because their football team lost or they have had an argument with someone through to seeing the world through distorted lens because of a chemical imbalance in the brain’s workings.
Very often you simply can’t tell from seeing someone walk through the door. The layer you see is presented in familiar ways. If they hobbled into the room on crutches you would know straightaway that something had happened.
But people are different from us in many ways and our natural defensiveness is to push difference away from us but embrace likeness. People who behave differently, for whatever reason, can often be isolated and friendless. If you are struggling with a mental health issue and the result of trying to join in is that you feel shunned (deliberately or not) you are not going to get better very easily.
So, just as we adjust our expectations of the person on crutches (they are going to struggle to load the van or stack chairs), we need to adjust our expectations of those who are struggling with different issues.
In the story of the woman at the well Jesus crosses five distinct boundaries to have a conversation with the woman: