Weight of the World
I am guessing we all know a person.
A person who has amazing abilities – amazing skills. And folks just keep asking them for more and more. They put on a brave face, they share themselves with everyone who asks. But maybe what we don’t know is that on the inside, they are really unsure – really concerned that they may fail, that they may not be as skilled as everyone thinks.
Maybe it’s you.
Or maybe you know this person – the person who once again can do amazing things. And because of the amazing things they do, folks around them know that they will be a doctor or a lawyer or a famous artist. But others probably don’t know that what they really want to do is bake the best bread. Or teach. Or be an amazing barista at a she-she coffee shop.
We know a person like that, right?
Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s you.
Let’s back up and remember the basics of the story we find ourselves in during this series on the Disney movie Encanto – every member of the Madrigal family has an exceptional gift revealed to the community as they come of age – everyone that is except Mirabel.
As the story begins, the charmed house occupied by the family Madrigal is beginning to literally crack open and apart. There is an awareness and a denial that we see in the characters privately – perhaps because the family is afraid that it means they are the ones falling apart.
Mirabel has two sisters - Luisa (whose gift is exceptional strength) and Isabela (whose gift is the ability to conjure beautiful things with just a touch).
Maybe if you have siblings you can pause for just a moment to think about the tension that sometimes exists – the competition among siblings. I know that as a mom, I continue to work hard (much like the girls’ mother Julieta [hoo le EH ta]) to assure each of my kids that they ALL have unique gifts and they are ALL great gifts that the world needs…and still competition and uncertainty among siblings remains. Am I right? It is a sibling thing.
Add to all of that sibling tension the story behind Mirabel NOT receiving a gift – all of that is important to the story.
Luisa, with her amazing physical strength, is called on by the entire community to move roads, fix buildings, carry livestock and she keeps showing up and bearing (literally) all of the weighty things for her community.
Isabela, who presents as the perfect beauty herself even as she creates perfect beauty, is headed toward a marriage proposal from Mariano, who has grown up in the Encanto community. Like Isabela, he’s kind of dreamily perfect looking…and it is clear that the family and community at large are cheering for this perfectly beautiful couple.
(If you have watched the movie, I draw your attention to a detail lost to some – Isabela and Mariano look a LOT like Abuela Alma and Abuelo Pedro when they were very young and in love in the flashbacks…think about how that visual representation might create pressure for Isabela in the story!)
Both sisters have taken on the weight of the expectations of their family and community and through conversations with Mirabel, both of them reveal their discomfort with the pressure.
In a time when it seems something might be falling apart, they feel grave responsibility to be beacons of strength, which they understand as their unique gift within the family lore.
Can you imagine that?
The weight of expectations about how you will use one particular gift? To the extent that maybe you lose sight of who you are as a whole person, beyond the giftedness others see and know and expect?
It is as Luisa sings, “Under the surface, I'm pretty sure I'm worthless if I can't be of service.”
Or as Isabela sings, “What could I do if I just knew it didn't need to be perfect? It just needed to be? And they'd let me be?”
So often, the world in which we operate, the world of families and jobs and school and service, rewards us and recognizes us for specific things – most specifically for the gifts we have honed or that have been noticed, for what we produce that pleases others or meets their needs. Often we are recognized for the gifts by which we have earned a living. The HR person, the finance person, the communicator, the teacher. And those gifts are important, but they are one aspect of who we are.
And as pastor, I chair the nominations committee, and I’ll confess some guilt I have for honing in on those gifts each of you has, sometimes blind to all the other richness of who you are.
In the movie, Luisa and Isabela both have an opportunity to reveal their anxieties to Mirabel privately. In doing so, each is beginning to see that they NEED to live from more than just their gift.
I wonder where that inner knowing, that inner nudge or longing to be their fullest selves comes from?
Yesterday, I was listening to Brene Brown, a vulnerability researcher, and Fr. Richard, who you know I quote often. Fr. Richard was talking about how organized religion has made the image of God into a gatekeeper or dictator who tells us how to be have and then monitors our behavior.
If that is who God is, then we are what we produce. Somehow God creates us and then monitors our production.
But is that who God is? If that were true, would we each have so many incredible nooks and crannies and unique abilities and gifts?
I feel like I am at the brink of understanding God in a very different way and I wonder if you might join me on this step of the journey where I understand God as love. Love which is full and embraces each person with God’s wonder and delight at the uniqueness of creation.
Now this kind of understanding can be hard to take in. The world around us rewards people for specific things – for kinds of productivity, for ways of being in the world. And people seek out the comfort of being assured that they must be right and good and others must be wrong and bad.
Last week I told you that I was going to try to let the Spirit lead me through exploring this movie alongside texts in the lectionary and alongside the ways life is unfolding every day. So let’s pivot to scripture.
If you read ALL of this week’s gospel lesson, it begins with the Luke version of Jesus teaching the disciples to pray. You heard today the part which is Jesus’ encouragement to ask, search, knock – to take things to God, to listen for what God is saying, to show up to God.
One of the reminders to me in this gospel passage is the call to be in conversation with God – in relationship with God, asking for what I need, seeking understanding.
Because if you ask God for bread, God loves us so much (more than a parent, the text suggests) that God is going to show up with a feast and not a snack, and definitely not a stone instead of bread.
And if God is love and loves us that much, then as God’s creation, aren’t we are called to bear God’s love throughout our lives?
And if we are bearers of love, then at our most authentic selves, doesn’t God’s love shine through all of the various parts and pieces of our whole selves? Even the parts that maybe the world doesn’t reward or recognize?
Doesn’t Encanto the community need Luisa and Isabela to be their fullest selves and not just their gifts in order to survive and thrive?
I have been thinking about what this need to be our fullest selves means to us – as Faith Church – as we claim to be a community of belonging.
It seems we probably have work to do to invite folks to be their fullest selves and not just what we think we need them to be.
It seems we probably have work to do to check in about our own gifts, and to be willing to share all of ourselves with the community – which may mean surprising folks by saying “no” to one thing but then sharing something unexpected.
In today’s psalm, it is written,
The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.
This week, my prayer is that we will individually and collectively talk to God – giving thanks for the fullness of who we are and seeking the courage to share all of ourselves, opening ourselves up beyond what the world expects. Because I think that is what the world needs to be whole – our fullest, beloved selves.
May it be so.
Amen.
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