The Thing Our World Needs

Welcome and Prayer: Jim Calhoun

Come Lord, join us here today
Make us one
A body
A family
A community
That holds each other up
Carrying each other through
Pushing each other along
Protecting
Encouraging
Strengthening
Loving
Celebrating.
Thank you Lord for this community
Amen

Morning Talk: Jim Calhoun

Last time I spoke we talked about deep stories and how attending to them can help us address the rising conflict in our country
• We talked about how these deep stories are more emotional than rational
• That they feel true, and important, and essential
• My deep story, no matter how important, is no more accurate or rational than another person’s.
• It speaks of my need as much as it does of my values.
• Learning about deep stories is not an opportunity to pick apart another person
• It isn’t a tool so I can be “one up” or push another person down
• It is an opportunity to create more understanding and common ground
• Also it is a way that I can further examine my own faith and perspective.
• Ultimately, the question isn’t how well I live up to a particular political perspective.
• The question for me is “How well am I imagining the kingdom of heaven?”
“How well am I living in the kingdom of heaven?”
• This is the work we are doing together

I was so happy with Sean’s talk last week because we were able to watch someone thoughtfully examine their own deep story.
We saw something of how changes came for him and the thoughtful way he was working with his deep story

Let me introduce you to Martha Ann Lillard
• Martha was born in 1948 in Shawnee, Oklahoma
• fifteen years later Brad Pitt was born in that same town
• Jim Thorpe called Shawnee his home town
• On her fifth birthday Martha woke up with tremendous pain in her neck and she was unable to lift her head from the pillow
• She was rushed to doctors who determined that she had contracted polio
• that year in America, 35,000 other children were diagnosed with polio
• About half were paralyzed by it
• This was the great fear of parents at that time, and still two years before the polio vaccine was developed.
• Martha was paralyzed
• After six months in the hospital she was sent home with an iron lung
• Mostly children fought the iron lung, but Martha was so happy to breathe she welcomed it.
• At first she spent 23 hours a day in her iron lung and one hour each day was devoted to rehabilitating and building strength in her body.
• Eventually she taught herself to walk again
• Her right arm remained paralyzed through her life but in her healthiest years she only went inside the iron lung to sleep, about 9 hours a night
• Her grandfather fitted the iron lung with a motor that allowed Martha to open and seal the iron lung on her own.
• so from the time she was at teenager, Martha was able to get in and out of the iron lung on her
• She tried all sorts of more modern respirators but none were strong enough for her and her one working lung
• The iron lung was her home within her home
• During an ice storm one year, her emergency generator failed and she was trapped in the iron lung as temperatures dropped.
• She said it was like being buried alive and so cold
• Another time, in 2025 her emergency generator failed when a tornado was in the area.
• Her husband gave her mouth to mouth for forty-five minutes while waiting for help to arrive
• By that time, the iron lung was getting old.
• Parts were getting hard to find
• People who knew how to work on them were even more rare.
• This caused Martha and her family a lot of worry

• She was a good student though her high school wasn’t able to accommodate her needs well enough to graduate her
• Martha never went to the prom
• She never had children
• She never held a regular job
• She never left Shawnee
• She did fall in love, however — twice
• She was a member of her local Episcopal Church
• She wrote music
• She wrote poems
• She painted
• She helped rescue dogs (mostly beagles)
• She volunteered at her local humane society
• She volunteered at a local daycare center
• She coordinated the local crisis phone lines

• During COVID she isolated and only saw her family in the evenings
• Still, she caught COVID twice
• The second time was Long COVID
• She was also beginning to experience post polio syndrome which includes increased weakness in muscles and joints
• She returned to the iron lung full time
• She died of complications of Long COVID-19 on June 26, 2026, at the age of 78
• She was the last American in an iron lung

• I don’t know any more about Martha Ann Lillard
• But I think of her as a minor saint I guess
• She persevered
• She seemed full of gratitude
• She gave back, she contributed, she played her part.

Now we turn our attention to the New Testament letter of James
“Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace” James 3:13-17

Do you remember that two weeks ago we touched on Romans 12 and the notion of renewing your mind?
“Don’t be conformed to this world,” Paul said, “but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”
• In other words, don’t let the pressures of worldly standard operation of procedures, or conventional expectations, or old habits, or anything else force you into a conformity, a compliance, or any sort of subjugation to this world.
• There is a better path available to us
• It will take a new way of thinking
–imagining and thinking about the better way–
• And developing an ongoing practice that makes this possible.

When James asks, “Who is wise and understanding among you?” he is asking who has done the work?
• Who has imagined a better way in Christ?
• Who has practiced that better way!
• Who are those that, in body and soul, have offered themselves for this?
• Then he heads straight into the conditions for traveling the better path
• He doesn’t ask for a show of hands
• He doesn’t ask for a testimony
• He doesn’t ask for a speech
• Instead, he demonstrates how they will be known by their good works and avoidance of worldly standards
I think we have the hardest time with this in our current age.
• That is, to stop talking about the thing and become the thing.
• And to do that, we also need to know what is not the thing
“But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth”
• Bitter here is just how we think of it
• Jealousy seems to me to be more like zeal or even energy
• There is, also, an element of envy involved.
• Imbedded in the phrase “selfish ambition” is the notion of factions, rivalries, party-making
• This is the “us versus them” perspective
• Seeking advantage over others, and building barriers as we do so
• So if you have bitter, negative energy or envy and you’re seeking power over others, in your heart, you aren’t yet “the thing” — as James understands it
• Your mind isn’t renewed
• You don’t have wisdom or understanding yet
• You still have work to do.
• This faction building, envy orientated perspective is a sort of wisdom to be sure.
• It is the wisdom of the everyday hustle and bustle.
• It is the way things get done, food is put on the plate,
• It is the way the world goes round, and we all know it.
• This wisdom is earthly, natural, and demonic — meaning that it is destructive
“For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice“
• There will be disorder, fighting
• Every vile practice
• Some translations say “evil”
• Petty might be a better word
“But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere”
• Let me read that again and just let it soak in.
“But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere”
Imagine it. How would that be?
• This is “the thing”
• The phrase in this sentence that catches me most is full of mercy
• Isn’t that the absolute opposite of bitter jealousy and selfish ambition?
• Isn’t it the absolute opposite of being petty?
“And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace“
• Last time at the end I was surprised that I got emotional. I teared up a little and my voice broke.
• But this is so deeply important to me and at the same time so profoundly needed
• And we get to take part
• Little old us
• We get to contribute to making the world whole, repairing lives, our own and the lives of those around us.
• In our given situation, we can help to harvest righteousness; that is, right relationships.
• But we have to become “the thing”
• We need to have transformed minds
• Moving away from bitter envy, driven energy, and wanting to exercise our power over others
• We need to become “the thing”
• We need to become full of mercy

(Jim concluded his talk this morning with a Loving Kindness Meditation that brought the essence of his message into a lived experience of Jesus’ interaction with someone we love, someone on the periphery of our lives, and then his interaction with ourselves. In this way we had the opportunity to allow the Lord to make tangible to us his love, kindness, and compassionate guidance of our lives.