How to Stay Calm When Others Panic

All right. Well, welcome. My name is Anthony. I get to serve as one of the pastors. Pastor Tonetta is on sabbatical this summer, so you're getting more of me than you bargained for, but we will all deal together. We are in a summer-long series called What Lies Beneath, and we've been exploring basically discipleship and spiritual formation, not just the top 10% of the iceberg of our lives that we see, but the 90% underneath the surface that we don't always see, our values and our beliefs, and the families and cultures that formed us.

This is part two of sort of a three-week series within the series that I'm doing, talking about a couple of my favorite topics, which are family systems theory and then trauma competency. Last week, we talked about Joseph in Genesis and all of the anxiety that got transmitted down through his family and landed on him. We're going to pick up that story, but also take a look at Jesus.

So if you have a Bible, I invite you to flip it open or turn it on and head to Mark chapter three, and then either put your thumb in there or close the screen for a bit because we're going to do some review before we get in that. We have a lot to cover. So I actually printed out, I haven't done this in like 10 years, like fill in the blank sermon guides. And unfortunately, these were like four pages and I condensed it down to one. So that gives you an idea of what we're going to do today. But if you need one, then we've got some folks who will hand those out to

you. Now, a little bit of background about this sermon. This sermon was actually part of last week's sermon, and I realized I could just cut this into two, and I've done most of my work already, which is, you know, convenient for me. But I still needed, like, some polish and to get my slides ready and all of that. So I was getting ready yesterday. We have some company in town. Hello, company in town. They are lovely. They are wonderful. And also they want to like do city things. And so we've gone to like Ocean City and we've gone to museums and we've done all these

things. And then Saturday, yesterday rolls along and I'm like, oh shoot, I have a sermon I need to finish. And so I was feeling stressed and my stress was turning into grumpiness and my grumpiness into anger, and I think Yoda says that leads to the dark side, and that's where I was heading in my sermon preparation, which is very appropriate because we're talking about stress and anxiety and the way that it affects everybody around you. I can convince myself I'm stressed, I'm grumpy, I'm angry. Nobody's going to know. How are they going to know? Turns out everybody knows, right?

And my stress and anger can then get my wife a little bit stressed and angry, which then passes on to the children and everybody. And that's what we're talking about. We're talking about the fact that my personal anxieties or stress or grumpiness affects others. And your anxieties can affect others. And we have to wake up to this idea that anxiety is transmissible. It's viral. It affects others. That all of us are part of interconnected systems. And that's what family systems theory is all about, okay? So the question that we're raising last week and this week is when conflict arises,

when there's anxiety because there's disagreement, there's trauma, there's hurt, there's pain, when conflict arises, do I become part of the problem or do I become part of the solution? And how do I stay connected without getting consumed by others' anxiety? Now that second question has an assumption built into it, that the desire of all of us is to stay connected. The easy solution is to try to disconnect. Well, if I'm tied to everybody else's anxiety and my anxiety is tied to everybody else's, well, the easy way out is just to disconnect. Just get as far away from people as I can.

But deep down, I think most of us recognize that we have some desire to stay connected with others. We have some desire to be in relationship, to be in community, to not be alone. So how do I stay reconnected without getting consumed by others' anxiety. So last week we talked about Abraham who passed on his anxiety to his son Isaac. You know, when you attempt to sacrifice your son, it tends to bring up some negative feelings, right? And then Isaac passes on his anxiety to Jacob and Esau

because he's got favorites. Jacob and Esau become enemies with each other. And then Jacob has his name changed to Israel. He's got two wives and two concubines and has 12 sons and a daughter. And then there's playing favorites in there where Jacob Israel gives his son Joseph, who is the first son of his deceased wife Rachel, this princess dress, this multi-colored robe that says that Joseph is the favorite. The brothers get jealous, send Joseph into slavery. Joseph then is maybe sort of kind of the hero of the story, but also kind of a jackass because he has the opportunity to forgive his

brothers, but he doesn't. Instead, he accumulates wealth and power. And because he was in this position of powerlessness, he now gets himself into a position where he will never be powerless again. And you can see the ways that anxiety works its way down through the system. So what we're going to do today is we're going to talk about some new concepts, non-anxious presence and differentiation. We'll define those in a moment. It's on your handout. We're going to talk about Jesus. We're going to talk about Joseph again. And then our favorite part, my favorite part,

we're going to talk about you and how this plays out in a congregation, all right? So last week, real quick review, what we learned about family systems. Next slide. Is that every family, and that can be a biological family, adopted family, churches, workplace, any sort of interconnected system of people is an emotional system. And what happens to one person affects everyone, and patterns can get passed down through generations. So like a mobile over a crib, when you yank on one side of it, all of it jingle jangles, okay? That's the basis of what we're talking about. Next slide. Anxiety, any sort of natural reaction to conflict, hurt, pain, trauma,

spreads like wildfire through systems and people try to relieve their anxiety by getting others to change and this creates reactive cycles instead of thoughtful responses so when I get anxious my instinct is say hey you stop that hey your problems your personality the way you're looking at me needs to change so I don't feel anxious and so this creates this reactive cycles I react I'm not responding. I'm just reacting to my anxiety trying to get you to change. So that creates triangles. Triangles are when two people have conflict and they pull in a third person to try

to solve the problem. And this creates drama. You could have the sparkle emojis around the word drama, okay? This creates drama instead of resolution. It keeps people from dealing directly with each other. Hey, Anthony, did you hear what so-and-so did to so-and-so? Hey, did you hear what so-and-so did to me. Hey, Anthony, can you solve this problem? Okay, parents deal with this with children, right? Hey, my brother hit me. Okay, why are you telling me? That's not my problem, okay?

You gotta work this out. And it's a way of like trying to get people on your side. We're flying through this because this is review. If you want to go more in depth, you can listen to last week's sermon. So we took a look at Joseph's story as a case study, which I reviewed very quickly already. You have the favoritism that creates sibling rivalry. The brothers triangulated their anger through betrayal. Joseph learns to survive, but also to manipulate. And we can see that survivors can perpetuate unhealthy patterns. Joseph's behavior, manipulating his brothers,

lying, deceiving them, accumulating wealth and power, becoming second in command of Egypt and establishing a slave system in Egypt, which eventually becomes the system which is used to oppress his own people generations later. Joseph's behavior is understandable, okay? And we talked about this a little bit last week of, I can have some empathy, I can have some mercy and grace for Joseph, because he is perpetuating the things that came before, and all the things that happened with his parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. His behavior is understandable.

It doesn't mean it's acceptable. So, I'm going to introduce a couple new concepts. We're going to see how this plays out in the life of Jesus. So new concept number one is the idea of a non-anxious presence. The idea of a non-anxious presence. So as we've talked about triangles, stress, anxiety, all of that, how do we solve these problems? How do we bring some resolution to them? And one of these concepts is this non-anxious presence, the ability to remain emotionally regulated and relationally connected in the midst of other people's anxiety, conflict, or crisis without absorbing their emotional state or requiring them to change in order for you to

feel okay. I'll read it again. A non-anxious presence is the ability to remain emotionally regulated, so calm, centered, and relationally connected in the midst of other people's anxiety, conflict, or crisis without absorbing their emotional state or requiring them to change in order for you to feel okay. Now, a couple things that it is not. A non-anxious presence is not toxic positivity. Everything's fine, okay? That's just being fake, and people can read fake very, very quickly and easily.

Non-anxious presence deals with reality as it is, does not try to create a fake reality, okay? It's not toxic positivity's bastard cousin spiritual bypassing, which is avoiding difficult emotions. Oh, you're going through this hard time?

Well, you know, God has a plan, right? Oh, you know, you lost your child because God needed another angel. no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay? That's one of my brother's favorite words, vomitous. It's something that causes you to vomit. It's not that. Okay?

It's not being passive, just letting people walk all over you. So, you know, a friend, a parent, a sibling, a co-worker, their anxiety, they decide to take that out on you. Okay? So they're being hurtful, harmful, abusive, and non-anxious presence. It's like, yeah, that's fine. I'm a carpet walk all over me. It's not that. And it's not being emotionally numb. Well, I'm not anxious because I can't feel anything. Okay? It's not that. So what is it instead? What it is, is emotional regulation that doesn't require others to change. It's cutting the sort of strings of your emotional

state from letting somebody else control them. Okay? To say, my ability to stay calm and connected and present in a moment is not dependent on someone else. It's clear boundaries without just emotional cutoffs. Cutoffs are relatively simple because it doesn't require much from them and much for you. If I just walk away from the situation, great, I'm regulated, maybe, but I'm not connected. It's responsive rather than reactive to anxiety around you. So again, it's not pretending like the anxiety doesn't exist. It's responding in a way that makes sense to it and not

just knee-jerk instinctual. And it's staying present in the relationship without absorbing others' anxiety. So recognizing someone's feelings, recognizing someone's hurt or crisis without becoming enmeshed or one with that feeling. So it still is within the realm of family systems, we're all interconnected, but it's basically growing emotional muscles so that when that anxiety starts to pull on the mobile above the crib, you have some ability to stay sturdy. It's resilience. It's grit. A non-anxious presence has the ability to stop the spread of anxiety.

You serve as a bit of a firewall. An anxious presence can spread anxiety and a non-anxious presence creates space for growth. It doesn't just try to reactively fix everybody's problems for you. Last week we talked about anxiety givers and anxiety takers. An anxiety taker can feel like trick themselves into thinking they're a non-anxious presence because they're just absorbing everybody else's anxiety and everybody else feels better and you feel awful inside. It's not that. Rather, it's creating space for other people to feel their anxiety and be able to grow from it.

And others get to choose their response instead of just reacting. Now, some of you particularly emotionally intelligent people in the room, which is most of you, you may be thinking about how does the, what's the relationship between a non-anxious presence and empathy? Because empathy means to literally feel, yes, I see the nod.

Empathy literally means to feel with someone. So am I saying that empathy is bad? No, no, no, no, no.

Empathy, yes, it means to feel with or feel alongside someone. but it doesn't mean that you get absorbed by someone else's emotions, okay? You're feeling with or feeling alongside. You're not letting their emotions overtake and become your emotions or to become fused with them. Empathy still assumes that you are your own distinct person with your own experiences. It's the ability to feel genuine compassion without being overwhelmed, to offer real help instead of just anxiety-driven fixes, to stay present with difficult emotions without either running away from them or taking charge, okay?

Those are my two default states with feelings of either just absconding, shutting down, or becoming the leader. I've had exactly one position in this school's PTA, and that was president, okay? That was it.

And then when our family was going through an overwhelming situation, Then my next step was to quit, okay? So those are my only experiences with the PTA, all right? A non-anxious presence with the ability to feel empathy would be like, what are other ways that I can participate healthily?

It's the ability to validate someone's experience without taking responsibility for changing it. I'll read that one again. Validate someone else's experience it without taking responsibility for changing that experience, okay?

Okay, new concept number two. differentiation. Let me hear you all say differentiation. Yeah, differentiation. Is that six syllables? Somewhere in there. The ability to maintain your own sense of self, your values, your emotions, your decisions, while staying emotionally connected to others without requiring them to change for you to feel okay, or changing yourself to make them feel better. Okay? So these two are connected, non-anxious presence and differentiation, but the emphasis I want to put

on here is you're not changing yourself to make somebody else feel better. The ability to maintain your own sense of self while staying emotionally connected without requiring them to change for you to feel okay, or changing yourself to make them feel better. Edwin Friedman wrote a couple sort of generation-defining books, one called Generation to Generation, one called Failure of Nerve back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. He was a rabbi and a psychotherapist. And he wrote sort of the standard text on these concepts. And so he said, for differentiation, it's the capacity to

take a stand in an intense emotional system. The ability to say I when everyone else is around you was saying we, okay? So the ability to be a distinct self in a system. It's knowing where you end and another person begins, so not getting enmeshed, and the ability to take responsibility for your own emotional being. So we talked a touch about this last week. There's a difference between differentiation and reactive rebellion, okay? We talked about my sort of reactive rebellion against my parents. I will be the opposite of my parents, which I can trick myself into thinking is

differentiation. What all that really is is just reactive anxiety. Oh, that my parents did that? Let me do the opposite. That's not differentiation. What a healthy alternative instead would be, I can be myself without needing my family to change or without cutting them off. And the test of what differentiation can look like is, can you hold your convictions without needing others to approve? Can you stay connected without needing to prove others wrong? I struggle

with that one. And can you be yourself without requiring others to be different? Okay, those are the test of differentiation. All right, so now open up your Bibles again. We're back. We're heading

to Mark chapter 3. And I just want to, Mark chapter 3 is like all of these sort of interesting interactions between Jesus and religious authorities and the way that he can deal with the challenges that they bring. So I want to give you just a couple. These each deserve a sermon on their own. We're not going to do that. I want to just give you a couple vignettes of how Jesus deals with conflict and anxiety and the ways that he responds to them. And again, like I said last week, we're using the lens of family systems theory. I am not saying this is what the author intended,

that the author is trying to get you to think about family systems theory when they were writing this. Instead, we're saying we're taking this theory, we're using it as a lens to understand these particular stories of Jesus, like we're going to do when we go back to Joseph as well. So here's Mark chapter 3, verses 1 through 6. This is a healing that happens on the Sabbath.

So Jesus returns to the synagogue, and a man with a withered hand was there, and wanting to bring charges against Jesus, they, being religious leaders or Pharisees, are watching Jesus closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. We'll pause right there for a second. Anybody of you hear the story about the woman who had a heart attack while taking the bar exam? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This sounds like the setup to a joke. It is not a joke. So this happened last month in July, there's about a thousand people in an auditorium taking the bar exam for the

New York, you know, become a lawyer in New York. She has a heart attack. A young woman in her 20s has a heart attack, is on the ground, and the group of students, like, or the bar exam takers around her are, like, trying to flag the proctors down, and they're telling them to shut up, be quiet, okay? Just be quiet. We're trying to take the bar. Six minutes later, seven minutes later, eventually someone comes and does CPR on the woman. She's okay. She survived. She did not pass the bar. Now, this is sort of like that high anxiety, high stress situation that we're in. You're in

a worship service. Jesus is there. Jesus is causing controversy. And there are proctors, the religious leaders, the Pharisees, are there watching Jesus's every move, okay? That's the high intensity that we're talking about. So Jesus says to the man with the withered hand, step up where people can see you. If anything, Jesus is cranking up the intensity. And he says to them, the religious leaders now, is it legal on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill? But they said nothing. Looking around them with anger, deeply grieved at their unyielding hearts. When Jesus gets angry. Something's good. Good is going to happen. He says to the man, stretch out your hand. So he did

and his hand was made healthy. At that, the Pharisees got together with the supporters of Herod to plan on how to destroy Jesus. So the Pharisees create this anxious, supervised environment on Jesus. Jesus maintains absolute clarity about his principles. No matter about who's watching, what the opposition is going to be. He doesn't need the religious leaders to even answer his question.

Jesus has his values, has his principles, and is able to move forward with them. He asks a penetrating question. He doesn't shirk from the conflict.

He doesn't ignore the conflict. He actually leans into the conflict because Jesus understands that conflict is not bad. Conflict is the natural thing when humans start interacting together.

And so Jesus actually leans into it, asks the penetrating question. and then he acts from his values even knowing that it's going to trigger opposition. He does the good thing knowing that it will make people upset. And anger, Jesus gets angry. So family systems theory, non-anxious presence, differentiation, all of that is not a way of saying, hey let's train you on how to ignore your emotions. It's not what we're saying. Jesus gets angry and it's anger

which actually fuels the healing. God's wrath often predates moments of great healing and revival in people and individuals in scripture. Okay? So Jesus uses his emotions to make a point and to make someone's life materially better. And this demonstrates Jesus's ability to take a stand in a really intense emotional system. Let's keep going. We're going to skip down to verse 22.

This is verse 22 in Mark chapter 3, where Jesus is getting some accusations about his authority. So legal experts came down from Jerusalem. Just quick note of context, Jerusalem was on a hill or a mountain, and so no matter where you were, north, south, east, or west, you always came down from Jerusalem. So you could come down to the north or any direction. So legal experts came down from Jerusalem, and over and over they charge, Jesus is possessed by Beelzebub, the Lord of the

spirits, the Lord of the demons. He throws out demons with the authority of the ruler of demons. So Jesus calls them together, note that, Jesus calls his accusers together, and he speaks to them in a parable. How can Satan, the accuser, throw the accuser out? A kingdom involved in civil war is going to collapse. And a house torn apart by divisions will collapse. If the accuser rebels against himself and is divided, then he can't endure. He's done for. No one gets into the house

of a strong person and steals anything without first tying up the strong person. Only then can the house be burglarized. I love that Jesus gives instructions on how to commit burglary. I assure you, put that on a bumper sticker, I assure you that human beings will be forgiven for everything. one of my favorite Bible verses, by the way, for all sins and insults of every kind, but whoever insults the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. I know you have questions about that passage. We

don't have time. Ask me later. That person is guilty of a sin with consequences that last forever. And he said this because the legal experts were saying he's possessed by an evil spirit. So the scribes, the religious leaders, the Pharisees, they accuse him of being the master of demons or being possessed by the master of demons, Beelzebub. And Jesus, he doesn't become reactive or particularly defensive. He calls a meeting, all right? He calls them together. So he doesn't go to the local

authority, hey, did you hear what those people are saying about me? He doesn't send, you know, Simon Peter to go like kick their butt or something. Simon Peter would be happy to. But Jesus calls the meeting and says, hey, I've heard what you've been saying. Let me ask you some questions. He has direct confrontation, no triangles involved. And he responds with a fairly calm logic. How can Satan cast out Satan? So he shows this ability to contain reactivity without being super hyper reactive himself. Next passage, family triangulation. So this is

verses 20 and 21 and then 31 forward. So in verse 20, Jesus enters a house. A crowd gathers again so that it was impossible for him and his followers even to eat. When his family heard what was happening, they came to take control of him. And they were saying, he's out of his mind. Skip ahead to verse 31. His mother and brothers arrived. They stood outside and sent word to him calling for him. The crowd was seated around him and those sent to him said, look,

Your mothers, brothers, and sisters are outside looking for you. And Jesus replies, Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?

My siblings. Looking around at those seated around him in a circle, he said, Look, here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does God's will is my brother, sister, and mother.

So his family tries to restrain Jesus because they think that he's gone crazy, which fairly understandable reaction if your son goes around and starts saying, you know, I'm the Messiah. But Jesus refuses to let their anxiety derail his mission. He asks the question, which is Jesus's sort of typical thing that he does, and he creates a new definition of family based on purpose, not emotional fusion. We see that Jesus is able to set boundaries without emotional cutoff. Because as you keep reading through the gospel, you'll see that Mary, the mother of Jesus, shows up from time to time.

She's still part of this newly defined family that Jesus is creating. The brothers, eventually James, become one of the leaders of the early church. And so Jesus creates a new definition of family sets the boundary without cutting off. Now, I'm sure there are other ways that we could read this story and poke some holes in what I'm saying here and ask some different questions. But again, with the particular lens that we're using, I want to suggest that Jesus is showing some ability to be his own person without family anxiety overriding him or making him sort of fly

off the handle. One more quick vignette from Mark. So going back up towards the top of the chapter in verse 7. Jesus left with his disciples and went to a lake. A large crowd followed him because they heard what he was doing. And they were from all these places, Galilee, Judea, etc. And Jesus told his disciples, verse 9, Jesus told his disciples to get a small boat ready for him so that the crowd wouldn't crush him. He'd healed so many people that everyone who was sick pushed forward so that they could touch him. Whenever the evil spirits saw him, they fell down at his feet and

shouted, you are God's son. But he strictly ordered them not to reveal who he was. So here we see Jesus sort of peak popularity. Crowds are pressing in. He's got people from all over coming to see him and to touch him. And what Jesus does is actually create some space. He arranges for a boat. So basically he's not going to get crushed. And he also has these spirits that are declaring his identity. You are God's son. The only time that Jesus's identity is revealed clearly in the gospel of Mark in particular is by the evil spirits and by the Roman centurion after Jesus's death.

Surely this must have been the Son of God. And Jesus hears these spirits saying that and tells them to shut their mouths, to not reveal his identity. And so here we have Jesus not being pressured by negativity, but a sort of anxious enthusiasm.

How can I get closer and closer and closer to this healer, this prophet, this teacher, this celebrity? And I think some of us in this room are watching We have versions of that that maybe we aspire to. Now, maybe this is just me.

I'll admit that. But wouldn't it be nice if we were at the top of our field or got that promotion or were a little bit well-known for the work that we did? And Jesus, when at the top of his game, leans back.

He doesn't allow the anxious enthusiasm to define who he's going to be.

All right. So, we've looked at non-anxious presence. We've looked at differentiation.

We've looked at some vignettes of Jesus. We're going to go back to Joseph now. So, again, if you have your Bibles, we're going to flip back to Genesis chapter 50.

Last week, we questioned the Joseph as hero, brothers as villains narrative. Both the brothers and Joseph have this inherited anxiety from generations of family anxiety. And we see them as the results of their family system.

Which again doesn't excuse their behavior, but it does explain it. It doesn't excuse it, but it does explain it. There's insiders and there's outsiders, usually created by parents.

There's jealousy amongst siblings. Joseph makes himself sure that he will never be a victim again. And instead he starts an empire based on slavery and exploitation and accumulation.

And when given the chance to forgive his brothers, it takes him years to do so. Again, completely understandable. So, Genesis chapter 50, verse 15.

Jacob, Israel, the patriarch, has died. And when Joseph's brothers realized that their father was now dead, they said, What if Joseph bears a grudge against us and wants to pay us back seriously for all of the terrible things we did to him? I'm so glad for the self-awareness in the brothers now.

So they approached Joseph and said, your father gave orders before he died. By the way, this is not in the narrative, okay? Jacob, Israel, did not give any orders to the brothers that we are told. It's possible it happened off the page, off scene. It's also possible that the brothers are concocting a story in order to wield the authority of their father against Joseph. We don't know. Your father gave orders before he died telling us, this is what you should say to Joseph.

please forgive your brother's sins and misdeeds, for they did terrible things to you. Now please forgive the sins of the servants of your father's God. Okay? Sounds a little convenient for the brothers to have this little story to make. That's what they say. So Joseph weeps when they spoke to him. The brothers weeped too, and they fell down in front of him and said, we're here as your slaves. Pause there for a second. So clearly this is not yet a healthy family system. Okay? Dad dies, and the brothers are like, oh no, our time has come. We're dead. Joseph was only showing us mercy

because dad was still alive, but now that dad is dead, dad is gone, surely it's time for Joseph to take his revenge. And so they have to pass on this story, that's my assumption, to Joseph in an attempt to get Joseph's mercy. Clearly, there's still lots of anxiety spread around. So we keep reading. But Joseph says to them, don't be afraid. Am I God? You planned something bad for me, but God produced something good from it in order to save the lives of many people, just as

he's doing today. Which, by the way, is an interesting way of looking at lots of what's going on in Genesis. Because as we've said, Joseph has created empire. He's created a system of slavery and oppression. He's accumulated wealth. And people's lives have been saved because of it. And this is the complex world that we live in. We live in a capitalistic system that creates lots of wealth and gives people lots of jobs and lots of money and also creates tons of poverty and

oppression at the same time. Both can be true. How do we live in that broken system? You planned something bad for me. God planned something good. Saved many people's lives. Now don't be afraid. I will take care of you and your children. So he put them at ease and spoke reassuringly to them. So we see some moves beyond control and manipulation. Joseph is finally being forward and up front with his brothers. He's moving towards genuine care. He speaks kindly to their brothers

and he provides for their families. But notice, honestly, I'm noticing this just now, that Joseph still maintains the position of caregiver, provider, ruler, being in charge. I will take care of you.

Now, many of us want our rich siblings to take care of us. If they had billions of dollars, I wouldn't mind. And also, Joseph is not seeing himself as equal, okay?

So he put them at ease and spoke reassuringly to them. Notice that the growth only happens after Jacob dies. There is years of opportunity for this to be settled, but it's only after dad dies that this conversation happens.

It required a removal of a family system pressure point in order for Joseph to show some differentiation, which is interesting. And something that I genuinely hope and pray doesn't have to be true of us, that it will require death in order for us to move towards health and differentiation. But notice the contrast with Jesus. Jesus stays differentiated within the system. It doesn't take some massive tragedy at that point in Mark 3 for Jesus to show himself differentiated with his family, with the religious leaders, with the crowds.

Jesus doesn't require others to change or to leave for him to be himself, which is always what's so fascinating about Jesus, is that Jesus does not make people change before he moves in. Jesus just moves in. And as the sturdy person that Jesus is, everything begins to change around him, which is what a non-anxious presence can do. As the non-anxious presence, when you engage in that, you may first begin by ticking other people off, and they may leave on their own accord.

But if you're sturdy enough, the system begins to get healthy as you remain sturdy. And Jesus creates new family while staying connected to the old family. So let's talk about some application

for this congregation. First thing I want to say is that we cannot create new triangles. If there is a dysfunction that I can recognize in this community. It is our very good ability to create lots of triangles where there is stress, anxiety, hurt, trauma, pain, and we draw someone else into it hoping that will fix the problem. We cannot do that. We have to talk directly to who's bothering us or what's bothering us. Pastors, we can't fix things for you. We can support, we can facilitate, we can advise, we can counsel, we can't resolve. We cannot fix problems on your behalf. And problems

tend to rise towards the top. And Tonetta and I and Heidi and any of our leaders have the ability to stay close to you, connected to you, and also say, okay, now what are you going to do? So how do we practice? We practice saying things like, I need to talk to you about, not, hey, did you hear what they did? All right. Next, is we have to grow in our ability to distinguish our pain from our reality. I think I told this in evening service last week, but I'll remind you of this story of a pastor that I knew, an acquaintance who was held up at gunpoint

at a convenience store. Survived, but it was a traumatic experience. And then later on as he was walking through the hallways of his church, he sees somebody walking towards him and they're carrying something in their hand and he ducks thinking it's a gun. But it wasn't a gun, it was the maintenance guy with a wrench, okay? Trauma has an ability to turn wrenches into guns. Our brain just does it on our behalf because it's trying to protect us. And so we have to grow in our ability to unconvert guns and turn them back into wrenches. So we have to be able to ask ourselves,

how has my pain bent my perception of this situation? I have to recognize that past wounds can make current conflicts feel like abuse. I have to be able to separate my triggered response from what's actually happening. Now, your response, your body's reaction, we're going to talk about trauma next week, okay, is valid. It hurts. It brings up the pain and makes it feel real. And I'm not trying to invalidate that. It's understandable. But then when we react based off of our body's initial traumatic perceptions, then we're only going to pass on more hurt and pain. We have to

grow in our ability to distinguish pain from reality. This is particularly tricky in a church like ours where a lot of pain is represented. We're not doing our job if we're not acknowledging all the pain represented in these chairs, watching online, part of our small groups and our affinity groups. That is our responsibility and our blessing to have so many people trust this community and our leadership and me and Tonetta and Heidi and everyone with the amount of pain that comes into this room on a weekly basis. But real healing only happens when we're able to not

only acknowledge that pain but begin to heal from it. Not just pick at the scabs but allow them to heal. When we're able, we know that real healing is happening when we're able to engage in conflict again. When we're able to have fights and we don't run away and hide or just try to hurt each other more. So we have to normalize conflict in community. Sarah Schulman wrote a book in 2020 called Conflict Is Not Abuse. And she distinguishes this. This is on your handout. That conflict is power with when both parties are participating in some sort of fight or conflict together. Abuse is power

over. When one person has more power than the other, then conflict isn't just conflict. It does require, it is abuse. And that may require separation. Okay? So again, I'm not saying that you should just lean in to every harmful situation and open yourself up to abuse. That is not what I'm saying.

But we do need to be able to distinguish the difference. And the problem is when we conflate abuse and conflict. Well, you're not just disagreeing with me, you're abusing me.

Okay? We have to be able to distinguish that. We have to normalize conflict in community because that's how we know that we're growing in health.

When we confuse this, the result is that we shun instead of engage in accountability, and we become victims instead of participants. We do this because it feels relieving to get out of conflict, but it just confirms our victimization instead of empowering us to take responsibility. But we are creating a new kind of family following in the footsteps of Jesus. And new kinds of families will require friction. It's just what happens when people get together. And the goal is healthy conflict that leads to growth, not to shunning. I want to have a reality check to say that LGBTQ people, people of color,

black, indigenous people, disabled, the poor, anyone who's on the margins, those folks are more likely to experience abuse. And so we don't want to minimize that real harm. And at the same time, we don't want to avoid necessary conflict. So we have to commit to creating safety without avoiding accountability. Final section before I close. All of this assumes that we have some ability

to engage in healthy self-care. That was our series during Lent. It's a theme that we're going to keep coming back to as we live through the times that we are living.

Self-care is the only way for us to have differentiation in a non-anxious presence because it is hard work to be sturdy in the midst of conflict. Now, I'm going to be a little bit provocative and I know I'm being provocative, but I'm going to try it anyway. Mark 12:30, Jesus is quoting the Hebrew Bible.

He says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And Paul in 1 Corinthians 6 says, you are the temple of the Holy Spirit. And so my sort of provocative wondering is if in order to love God fully, we have to love ourselves fully.

We have to love our own heart, soul, mind, and body in order to love God well. And that those two cannot be separated. That if we are hurting and abusing and allowing ourselves to be hurt and abused in our heart, soul, mind, and body, then we are going to fail at loving God fully as well.

Self-care is not selfish. It is sacred. It is our responsibility because we cannot give what we do not have.

And depleted people, people running on fumes, running on empty tanks and empty batteries are going to create more anxious systems because the work of non-anxious presence the work of differentiation of being yourself when everyone wants you to change to make them feel better it is exhausting it is hard it is difficult and if our goal is to create healthy communities neighborhoods cities worlds where we can each be who God created us to be then we have to be able to care for ourselves well and that is how we honor God

there are dimensions of self-care we talked about this in the spring our hearts are we able to regulate our emotions and process our feelings can we seek support our soul are we praying are we meditating? Are we looking towards scripture and worship and spiritual practices that ground us? Are we learning with our minds? Are we growing? Are we challenging assumptions? Are we getting perspective in our strength? Are we caring for our bodies? Are we resting? Are we giving our

bodies the nutrition that it needs? When we don't take care of ourselves, we become reactive instead of responsive. Our pain distorts our perception. We triangulate instead of dealing directly and we spread anxiety instead of calm.