This sermon was preached for Sunday, July 9, 2023 at St. Mark's Episcopal Church. The texts for this sermon were: Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67 and Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30.
One of my wisest spiritual teachers, my son’s godmother, recommended the documentary My Octopus Teacher to me recently. It’s a captivating and relaxing 85 minutes about a filmmaker, Craig Foster, who observes a solitary octopus and her South African kelp forest for a year. When Foster first catches sight of the octopus, he notices her using a very strange method of defending herself. His immediate thought is, “There is something unusual here, there is something to learn.”
So he returns again and again to the same small piece of kelp forest to get to know this creature. He remarked that others seemed a bit baffled why he kept returning to the same shallow patch of the South African coastline when there was a whole ocean to explore. But he’s adamant - returning every day for a year allows Foster to dive deeper and deeper, literally and figuratively, into this one octopus’ world. He learns the tracks she leaves in the sand, watches her experiment with new methods of evading predators, catches her playing with fish, cheers her on as she regrows a tentacle, mates, and lays her eggs. Ultimately, Foster comes to see her as his teacher, "What she taught me was to feel... that you're part of this place, not a visitor. That's a huge difference." Foster is part of the story of the octopus, her kelp forest, and the wide interconnectedness of creation.
It struck me that this is very similar to our practice, too. We return to the same scripture, over and over, across a lifetime of sermons, daily prayer, and bible study. As Episcopalians, the lectionary - our three year cycle of readings - keeps us honest by bringing us in contact with the stickiest, the most puzzling pieces of scripture over and over. It keeps us saying, “There is something unusual here, there is something to learn.” Ultimately, with scripture and Jesus as our teacher, we learn we are part of the story, the story of God’s people and the wide interconnectedness of humanity and creation.
For our Christian practice is not just about studying text and tradition to know God, it’s about knowing God through people, too.
Rabbi David Wolpe wrote a love letter to ministry in the New York Times this past week, all about the profound gift it is to walk with individuals, families and communities through the most poignant moments in their lives. Rabbi Wolpe has seen how difficult it’s gotten to maintain community in an era of political division and extreme polarization. He recommends two key practices to keep people engaged with one another. The first is that he encourages people to become part of each other’s stories before entangling themselves in each other’s politics. “When you share the struggles of raising children and navigating life, when you attend meetings and pack lunches together, when you are on the same softball team and sit near each other in synagogue,” Rabbi Wolpe writes, “you don’t start each conversation with how the other party’s candidate is a scoundrel.”
The second practice is listening. He writes, “We, who do not know ourselves, believe we understand others. We must always be reminded that each person is a world, and that the caricatures we see of others on social media and in the news are just that — a small slice of the vastness within each human being.”
In other words, cultivating curiosity. Noticing when there is something unusual here, something to learn. Returning again and again, going deeper and deeper into the fascinating world that is another person. Their story becomes your story, becomes ours.
John the Baptist and his cousin Jesus were unusual. They did unusual things like live in the wilderness off of locusts and honey and make friends with lepers. Their disciples were drawn in, but their critics were quick to judge. Jesus observes the fickle nature of his critics: “John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’” The critics clearly noticed how John and Jesus’ behavior strays from the norm: Jesus and his disciples enjoy life too much and John’s far too little. Yet they think they understand right away, they conclude that there is nothing for them to learn from the two cousins. Quick, self-righteous judgment allows the critics to simply write the prophets off. It lets them avoid growth and change.
My friend who recommended My Octopus Teacher is the same friend who taught me to aspire to the phrase, “Turn to wonder.” When you feel yourself judging - whether yourself or others - choose to wonder instead. Someone cuts in front of you in line - wonder about what has them feeling so distracted or hurried. Someone says or does something odd - wonder about what’s behind it. Some emotion sneaks up on you - wonder why it arose and why it’s got such a hold on you. Turning to wonder is about taking a deliberate stance of curiosity. It presumes you’ve always got something to learn.
Curiosity is the first step toward authentic love. It is curiosity that motivates us to give space and time for the other to be fully themselves. Craig Foster made a habit of hanging a few meters back in the water day after day, week after week, holding room for the trust between himself and the octopus to blossom, letting her reveal her eccentricities to him bit by bit.
Curiosity is the millionth step in authentic love, too. Staying curious about yourself and others requires humility and gentleness, patience and generosity. There is a vastness to the world that is this other person, even the one I grew up with, even the one I work alongside, even the one I’m spending a lifetime married to, even my own self, there is something new to learn.
Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart.”
Learn from me. What happens when we yoke ourself to Jesus’ gentleness and humility? It becomes part of our hearts, too.
Gentleness and humility are not passivity. In the documentary, Foster’s primary mode of simple observation may seem like passivity. At one point, he even resists interfering when his beloved friend is attacked by a pajama shark. And yet outside the film, above water, Foster has also dedicated his life to activism on her behalf. He founded the Sea Change Project, an organization that uses storytelling to inspire the protection of the ocean and wild places.
A common octopus only lives for about one year. The last act of a female octopus is self-sacrificial - she gives all her life force away so that a tiny portion of her eggs might hatch and live on. Foster’s Sea Change Project work is in honor and gratitude of one creature and what she taught him. Yet it is necessarily about the larger work of protecting the flourishing of generations to come, not by saving each individual baby octopus, but by guarding the health of the kelp forest in which they live.
Action born out of gentleness and humility might be more cautious and considered than action that comes from righteous judgment, but its strength is rooted in authentic, enduring love. When you love something or someone or some people in that way, you’ll give your time, energy, and resources to protecting their environment, nurturing their development, and cultivating the conditions they need to thrive. Whether that’s a garden, a forest, a parish, a neighborhood, a school.
After watching the film, I pictured Jesus as a diver, hanging back suspended in the water, completely enraptured by how we are learning and exploring and living. I imagined God’s own deep curiosity about creation, God’s eagerness to see what we’ll try next, lovingly fascinated by the vastness of each of our worlds.
I thought of the prayer that often appears alongside Jesus’ sayings about yokes and rests and light burdens, in our compline service: “Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous, and all for your love’s sake.”
Did the octopus know how much she and her kelp forest was loved? Do we?
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