I'm Inadequate; Youxre Inadequate

Based on the sermon series by Forrest Church, Chautauqua Institute, August 2003

By Pastor Marcia Sietstra

March 21, 2004

Ps. 32:1-7; Luke 15:11b-24; II Cor. 5:16-21

Last week I started a sermon series on fear, because fear is part of the human condition, inescapable, timeless. A parent who lays awake in the early morning hours wondering why their teenager isnxt home yet knows fear. Ixm told that even successful salesmen experience some fear before they make a call. Walk down any hospital hall and you will be reminded of fear. Wait for a biopsy to come back and know what fear is. I suppose the world has always been driven by fear, but since 9/11 it certainly is—we saw fear drive the election in Spain last week after the bombings there.

In Forrest Churchxs sermon series on fear, which I heard at Chautauqua last summer, he talked about the universality of fear even for those of us who havenxt screwed up our lives as badly as the prodigal son. He pointed to the classic nightmare that reveals deep inner feelings of inadequacy. Maybe youxve had this dream. It is the last week of school and you must go take a final exam. As you walk to campus, you realize you donxt know where the test is being given. This test is very, very important; in fact, graduation hinges on your passing it. You are so close to success but you are going to fail if you donxt find the classroom where you need to take this test. Rushing through a maze of buildings and hallways, you finally find the classroom and slide into a desk! But then you look around and realize you donxt know a single person there, because youxve never once attended this class! You look at the test and donxt know a thing on it, and then you remember that you havenxt read any of the material either, so you have no idea what the test is about. The panic gets more and more intense until you mercifully wake up!

Forrest said his nightmare took a vocational twist when he became a minister. In his nightmare it is Sunday morning and he forgot to write a sermon. No manuscript in hand, he is running up and down the halls of the church because he canxt find the door to the sanctuary, and when he finally gets into the pulpit, he canxt find his text in the bible. Then he gets tangled up in the microphone cords and looks up to see people leaving because the microphone system isnxt turned on, and by now church should be over! So he does what any minister does when they panic—he starts preaching, but as he steps out from behind the pulpit, everyone gasps. He looks down and realizes he has no pants on! I dreamed once that I was walking into the pulpit to do a funeral that I forgot to plan for. I had no manuscript, but worse yet, I didnxt know whose funeral it was!

Forrest suggested that most of us have our own versions of the inadequacy nightmare. xSuch feelings come with the human territory, and the handful of people who never feel inadequate tend not to be the sort of people one would wish actually to know. Most of us could afford a little less emotional doubt. Cringing from the imagined judgment of others, we forget that theyxre paying more attention to their own emotional wedgies than to anyone elsexs.x.

In our working lives, unfamiliar situations produce fears of inadequacy. Starting a new job can make us feel inadequate. Just walking into a roomful of strangers can be scary. Does it make your hands sweat? Forrest told about one of his parishioners who felt like her hands were growing larger whenever she walked into a roomful of strangers. His advice was: put your hands in your pockets, or clasp them in front of you or behind your back. Avoid eye contact, read a bulletin board, go to the bathroom for a brief break, but try not to flee. Commit to striking up a conversation with someone because to flee will likely make feelings of inadequacy worse. Fight or flight, two typical responses to feeling inadequate, are responses that are not helpful.

What can help us get over feelings of inadequacy? Two things that may help are: first, to remember we are not alone in these feelings, and second, to consciously choose to have an attitude of trust in life. Letxs look at the first one—to remember we arenxt alone.

People often experience this solution in good group therapy, where the participants discover that others are as frightened and self-conscious as they are. Forrest says this about group therapy: xWhen we recognize our own tears in the eyes of another, they no longer blind us. Instead they pool. Pooling tears is the way we suffer with one another.x

I like to think that church works in the same way—as we share our fears and concerns, we recognize them in others, and we know we are not alone in our inadequacy. Thatxs why I like what the apostle Paul says about the church being one body of many members. We are a part of, not apart from, this body of Christ, and never really alone in the world. Here the fears are far less intimidating because we have hands to hold—each otherxs and Godxs.

In addition to remembering that we are not alone in our fears, the second way we might help ourselves overcome feeling inadequate is by consciously choosing an attitude of trust and gratefulness toward life. Let me explain by illustrating. Brother David Steindl-Rast is a counselor and writer in the area of spirituality, and I frequently read his article. Recently he wrote an article about trying to feel grateful to God for all of life. A reader sent him the following letter:

Dear David,

Life has handed me some very trying times lately. I have just been laid off from my job, one of my children is having trouble in school, and my father is very sick and needs help. I know I should feel grateful for all that we do have—a roof over our heads, food, and support from friends and family—but what I really feel is anxiety, fear, and fatigue. What should I do so that I can feel grateful even in times that challenge me physically, emotionally, and spiritually?

The spiritual counselor answered: This is the kind of question I am slow in answering. What slows me down is respect for what you are going through. When I ask myself, would I feel grateful if I had just been laid off from my job—not to mention the other challenges you are facing—the answer is no. How could anyone in your position feel grateful? But gratefulness is not a feeling; gratefulness is an attitude. Even though we have a grateful attitude toward life, we may or may not feel grateful.

Our feelings are not under our control; only our attitude is.

With all that is weighing on your mind right now, this is not the best time for making fine distinctions between attitude and feelings. Still, you might want to think this through. It will at least take your mind off your problems for a moment, and it might do a lot more for you.

And then the counselor continued: What is gratefulness like, at those times when your feelings do agree with your attitude? You feel a trust in life that overcomes fear. This trust makes your heart feel wide open and free, the very opposite of those anxious feelings that make you clam up, feelings that squeeze your chest together until you can hardly breathe. When being grateful and feeling grateful are in harmony, it takes a lot to make you feel fatigued; your courageous trust invigorates your body, your mind, and your spirit.

Now, that deep trust in life is not a feeling but a stance that you deliberately take. It is the attitude we call courage; and courage is quite compatible with feeling afraid. In fact, courage presupposes fear; it is the attitude of one who goes ahead in spite of fear, anxiety, and fatigue. And isnxt this what you are doing, difficult though it is?x the counselor asked the writer who sent him the question. He continued: Your question suggests to me that in the midst of your difficulties, you still wish to be grateful. Your wish alone proves your openness, your courage. A grateful person trusts enough to give life another chance, to stay open to surprises. (End quote)

Quite a letter! Courage doesnxt mean we arenxt frightened; courage means we act bravely in spite of our fear, trusting God and being grateful for all of life. Even when we find it hard to feel grateful, we can decide to live gratefully, knowing our attitude will influence our feeling. By living the gratefulness and trust we donxt feel at the moment, we begin to feel the gratefulness and trust that we have decided to live.

Forest ended his sermon with this vignette of the liberated soulxs experience of life as a formal ball. He said, xYou are just one part of the body that is all the world; you are not a prince or princess. Imagine that life is a ball. If anyone asks what you wore to the ball you can say, xWe came as we were and simply enjoyed the party, not fretting such small things.x Your hands werenxt uncomfortable because you were remembering only the hand you were holding. The hours flew by, as they always do when one is not fretting onexs way through them, minute by minute. As for the ball itself, it passed like a dream, not a nightmare.

What an evening it was! How glad you are that you came. You danced and danced until morning. Unafraid of the darkness, you saw in the dawn!x Thanks be to God for this life. Amen.