Feel Better

2 Corinthians 3:12-18, Taught by Pastor Tom Lacey at Church on the Hill, October 22, 2023

What we feel isn’t just a feeling. It’s a guide. It’s connected to what we think about something, and it dictates choices and possibilities. Handling our emotions well permits us to live well. Not doing it well tanks us. When scripture tells us to be nicer, better, kinder, it’s important to listen and build your life on this message. Ephesians 4:31-32 says, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” That’s the direction you want to go. We want to feel better.

I know this isn’t an easy message in today’s world of tough guys, loudmouth Karens, harsh and extremist politics, high anxiety, hyper reactiveness, and more. You’re not supposed to let anyone take advantage of you. Vulnerability is stupid. Getting respect, demanding respect is what it’s all about. Being disrespected is the worst and must be dealt with harshly. Some people are choosing different emotions and because of that going in a different direction. But what I find so strange is to see people consume massive amounts of negativity in all forms and think this junk mood diet doesn’t matter, that somehow, it’s not going to be bad for them. Anger is being angry. Greed is being a greedy person. Hatred is having hate in you. We don’t just feel this stuff; we feed on this stuff.

It’s important to choose emotions we’re going to follow, which mood, which outlook we accept as ours. Of course, this isn’t how we think of this. We believe that we don’t choose our emotional responses. What we feel is given to us. It’s who we are, we believe, and so we follow it as if it’s law, a mandate, not to be overturned or rejected. But that first reaction, that initial mood often isn’t what’s best. How easily we turn on someone else or ourselves in that next moment. We think harsh, negative thoughts of all kinds about others or ourselves. If life is getting tough, we tell ourselves, “I’m doomed.” If we need something good to happen now, but it doesn’t look like probably, we tell ourselves, "It’s never going to happen.” We blame, dismiss, judge others, no longer trusting. And while we’re doing it, we believe none of this garbage is in our control.   

But it’s not true. We can move to the tune of a different drumbeat. We have something to say about what we have to say. We can change our response. We can set ourselves free. You may have seen a bunch of people do the wrong things and say the wrong stuff, but we don’t need to follow that path. As Proverbs 28:14 says, “A tenderhearted person lives a blessed life; a hardhearted person lives a hard life.” Don’t imitate what God can’t bless. Making God’s life appear in your life starts with letting God do something with your life. Let the Lord bless and keep you.

 God is still in charge. The Lord still has something to say. Don’t go negative because God does things positive. God can’t lift someone who refuses to stand. The Lord can’t direct someone who refuses to walk forward. If you’re harsh, life is harsh. We can be blessed if we’re in a blessable state. The Lord can lead us in our right path when we’re listening to our best feelings.

Paul was known in the Christian world to be hard to comprehend. He was a deep thinker, and we can see that this morning. Our reading tells us religion should be about freedom and not laws. Paul’s mentioning of “veils” is a reference to the effect that Paul believed Moses’ law, the Torah, had on Jewish people. They couldn’t see the true glory of God because they were blinded by the veil of trying to follow rules and regulations. The Christian faith should be viewed in terms of the Spirit, who is the Lord, and who gives Christians direct access to God’s goodness and will, he says.

Now, what’s strange is that so many people who talk up how Christian they are and how important the Bible is when deciding what’s right and what’s wrong, who’s right and who’s wrong, forget this whole part. The truth is, the New Testament has almost no rules in it that we’re to follow. Yet, that’s exactly what so many Christian churches teach, preach, and tell the world about Christianity. Of course, the New Testament has a strong ethical and moral cast to it. But it isn’t a moralistic, legalistic rule book that so many claim it is and that we must obey at penalty of holding a false faith or worse, receiving God’s eternal condemnation.

As we read, “…but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Being free and needing to follow rules are opposites. Paul chose the side of freedom and the Spirit. He believed there was more to us than just blindly following rules and laws. We could get closer to God if we freed ourselves from ruts of our own making.

But how often we resist such a life. We keep wearing veils. We see our religion in terms of rules. We judge others in terms of whether they’re obedient to what we want them to do. Instead of love, we regulate. Instead of freedom, we slavishly follow our initial reactions. Don’t limit the Spirit’s power to transform you. There is a joyful freedom that comes from the Lord.  

As we all know, there are radio and TV shows where the audience gets the opportunity to hear about someone else’s emotional dilemma. The troubled guest will talk about how something in his or her life is a mess. Listeners will often find themselves incredulous that the person is having a tough time deciding what to do: “My boyfriend is an alcoholic, can't keep a job, beats me, and I suspect has other girlfriends—but I love him and I want to marry him.” It’s so obvious to the rest of us, and yet…. It’s hard not to believe this person is an actor portraying a fictional character to keep TV or radio ratings high. But they’re probably not. What seems so obvious to everyone else still isn’t to them. They’re not alone.

The thing is it’s not easy to get a handle on what’s handling us. We’ve all heard it said that a feeling like anger is only an emotion, and emotions are basically neither right nor wrong because they just are. Or emotions are like clouds rolling across the landscape of our minds and hearts. This isn’t true. They’re not neutral. We need to be wiser toward what we’re thinking and feeling than this.

 The problem with the whole cloud comparison is that it leads us astray. In truth clouds come from the ground. They rise first as condensation or evaporation from land or sea. We may only see clouds when they float across the sky, but they start invisibly from the ground. If we were to use this comparison, then we’ve got something we can build on. Emotions like clouds don’t just pop up out of anywhere. They rise out of us, from how we’re inclined to think and feel about something. They don’t have a life of their own that we have to listen to and obey. We manufacture our feelings. They’re not neutral. Those clouds are precipitated by us and our condensed views of ourselves, others, and the world.

We respond to what’s going on around us, to what someone has said, to what we’re looking at, to what someone does in an organized, habitual pattern. We keep delivering ourselves to ourselves. If there’s nothing new under the sun, as Ecclesiastes said, it’s because there’s often nothing new in our responses and emotions. We’re on emotional automatic. That’s a problem for us when what we think and feel is the problem.

Here’s the thing: If our habitual pattern is healthy, then our feelings arising from some experience will be healthy. But if our customary interpretation or response to someone or something is not healthy, you can bet the emotion arising from it won’t be either. Emotionally speaking then, good clouds arise from good ground while stormy clouds arise from stormy seas.

We don’t need to be victims of our emotions however. You don’t need to be captive to what they’re telling you. Doubt whether you need to be angry at someone, or envious of someone else. Distrust your feelings of lust as normal, and your sense of greed as expected. We no longer need to follow our habitual response to others. We can get out of our rut. We can let the Spirit transform our lives a little at a time.

It doesn’t matter how old or young we are. We can find a new us. There’s a story about an old farmer and his wife who always went to the county fair. Every year they saw the same pilot offering to take people up for a spin in his airplane for $20 a ride. Every year, the old farmer asked his wife to give him $20 so he could go up. Every year, the wife responded by saying twenty dollars was twenty dollars and they couldn’t afford to be so frivolous with what little money they had.

This time, however, he told her that he was now 80 years old and if he didn’t go up this year, he never would. She repeated her line that twenty dollars was twenty dollars. They started arguing. The pilot overheard them and offered to make them a deal. He would take them both for free provided he didn’t hear one word the entire trip. If either said anything, they would have to pay $20. They agreed. The pilot put them in, took off and during the next fifteen minutes put that plane through every maneuver known to bird and humankind, including flips, rolls, and nosedives. Not a word was said by the old man and woman.

When they landed, he congratulated the farmer on not making any noise, and asked how come they never said anything during all the maneuvers. The farmer said, “Well, I was going to say something when my wife fell out, but like she always told me, “Twenty dollars is twenty dollars!"

Well, apparently there is a time when it’s too late to change.

We’re created for freedom, love, creativity, inspiration, kindness, and peace that passes understanding. We do a lot that looks nothing like that however. We spend so much time obeying rules, loathing others, going from one routine to another, uninspired, staying tough or worse growing tougher, and fighting to survive. Let’s move beyond that. Find the source of freedom within. It’s where we meet the Spirit, and the Spirit of God leads us.

Can the church say Amen?