The Wisdom of God: Pour on Praise June 13, 2021 Dr. Thomas Pace Song of Solomon 4:1-4 O God, open us up. Open our eyes that we might see and our ears that we might hear. Open our hearts that we might feel. And then, O Lord, open our hands that we might serve. Amen. Two experiences, both of which were related to a memorial service, spoke to me over the last few weeks. And I was thinking about them as I was planning this message. One was at a family meeting to plan a memorial service. The daughter-in-law of the person who was deceased said, "You know he wrote me a letter after my mother died and he told me that he was proud of me. I'm not sure if anyone else has ever said that to me." I was kind of stunned but I thought, "What an impact that one thing had made on her. That he said, "I’m proud of you." In the other case it was when we were actually in the memorial service and various family members were sharing a witness. It was an informal service and various family members were sharing a witness about the person who had passed away. One woman said, "You know, every time I saw him, he told me how awesome I was. He was my uncle and every time I saw him, he told me how awesome I was." Wow - I thought a lot about that! We're in a series in the writings of Solomon - that's the Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs. And we're talking about what it means to be wise and how to live a wise life - how to make wise pragmatic decisions. And how to spend our energy and our time in wise ways. Last week we talked about living a life of passion and passionately pursuing the people that we love and the God that we love. But we said we had t be really careful with living this kind of passionate life because we're messing with God's stuff. It's dangerous and complicated. It's nuanced, the wisdom there is challenging. But today's message is really simple. Today's message is not always easy but it's really simple. A wise person pours on praise. To let the people and the God that you love know how much you love them, how you're proud of them. Pour it on. Don't ever assume that they already know. Just pour on praise. Two things I want to tell you today. One is that wise people make a habit of praising others. I'm sure you remember reading when you were high school or middle school The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. And I'm sure that you remember what happened in chapter 17 when Tom and Huck have disappeared, and everyone thinks they're dead. They have a funeral for them, and Tom and Huck go to their own funeral. The only reason is they want to listen to everyone speak about how wonderful they are. That everybody ought to have the chance of hearing everyone say just how wonderful they are. It's a wonderful scene and it's great when they walk back in, and everyone sees them. There's actually a place in South Korea called the Hyowon Healing Center that over the last years has developed this model of having mock funerals for people. I'll talk more about it when we get to the sermon about Ecclesiastes, but it's a picture of experiencing your own funeral to make you aware of the preciousness of life. But part of it is to hear what people speak about you. It's a remarkable thing. I've come to believe that there is an epidemic in our country of feeling unappreciated. Of unvalued, of people not believing that they matter. And when we speak words of praise, when we pour on the praise we speak into that soft spot in their hearts and in their lives. We fill that empty place within them. It's true in marriage. This passage as we learned last week - the whole Song of Songs is erotic love poetry between a man and a woman, between a groom and a bride. Just to learn from this groom the language he uses profusely to pour out praise upon the bride to be. Listen again, "How beautiful you are my love, how very beautiful your eyes are doves, behind your veil your hair like a flock of goats moving down the slopes of Gilead." It goes on: "Your lips are a crimson thread; your mouth is lovely." Just the other day I looked at Dee and I said, "Your hair is like a flock of goats coming down the Mount of Gilead." It didn't go well. I said, "Your neck is like a tower of David with the shields of so many warriors buckled on." Okay, maybe we need to update the language and the imagery just a little bit. But that bit of effusively pouring out praise on the people we love, letting them know they are beautiful to us, that they’re valued, that they’re awesome. Now obviously external beauty is part of it, but internal beauty is really what matters. To talk about character, to recognize the beautiful parts of the people we love, and to lift those out and to speak them aloud.

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When we talk about difficulties in marriage, we often find ourselves focusing on the negative like, "Here's the problem. Here's the thing that people don't do well or do wrong." When the truth is that if we focus on the things we do right, if we continue pour on praise about all those things the other things find their perspective. Our perspective on those other things changes. You know, what happens is so much of the time the people that we love the most we feel most secure around. We trust them. So we don't feel like we have to invest the energy in reminding them that we love them, and we care for them. Because we feel secure in them. But there's a really short walk from feeling secure in a relationship to taking it for granted. To just begin to allow that relationship to be taken for granted. And not to water the grass, not to pour on the praise. Friends, it's not a difficult, or a complicated practice, or habit. Pour on the praise. It's not just true in a marriage; it's also true in our relationship with our friends and our co-workers as well. As we were planning for this sermon this week, I had a conversation with a group of our staff. I said, "Okay, I need to know the rules around work. Is it appropriate to say to someone else at work, 'You look really nice today'? Is it appropriate to make comments about what they look like or what they're wearing?” It started a rather lively conversation about what is appropriate and not appropriate in the workplace. There were varying opinions and what struck me was that we have to be really careful. Because what we say is not always interpreted the way we intend for it to be. So we tread lightly. So what we need to focus on is not what someone looks like, but we should focus on who they are, what their gifts and strengths are. Jim Ozier came to work with our staff ten years ago I think it was. He and his friend Fiona had been trainers and worked with Southwest Airlines, training them in hospitality and great customer service. One of the techniques he taught I thought was so wonderful. He said, “When you introduce someone to someone else, you want to lift up what is awesome, what is great, what are the spiritual gifts of the person you're introducing." So I'd say, "I want you to meet Rob Landes, our organist. He is the most amazing organist anywhere. He can play anything completely by ear. An incredible organist. "Now if Rob is hearing me make that introduction what does that say to Rob? Or I might say, "I want you to meet Cliff Ritter our Pastor of Congregational Care. He's the most compassionate person I think I've ever met." What that says to both the person that is receiving the introduction and the person you're introducing - what an impact. And what if you just texted your friend and said, "You know what's amazing about you

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is that no matter what the situation is, you always take the time to listen to me." To pour on the praise. It matters to the people who serve us. To those people who are First Responders and frontline workers. I don't know if you remember how in March of last year when the pandemic had just broken out and was going crazy, New Yorkers at 7:00 every night would come out on their roofs or open their windows and clap and bang pots together. It was all aimed at the shift change of workers as a way of saying how much they appreciated them. They praised those hospital workers and First Responders and wait staff and grocery store workers. And all of those people who were willing to serve in that time. The social media campaign statement was "Clap because we care" Hashtag "Clap because we care." It was an awesome thing to see almost the whole country pouring on praise. What a difference that made! On May 17 of this year the Harvard Business Review published this article. It said, "Over the course of the pandemic, the outward, active support and gratitude for health care providers has waned and, in many cases, been replaced by distrust and increasing aggression. Refusals to wear masks, frustration with visitation policies, and racial profiling feel amplified in these times of crisis. Frontline staff, including nurses, doctors, residents, security guards, orderlies and cleaning staff have been feeling the effects." (Harvard Business Review, May 14, 2021). The stress levels are high and all the more reason that we need to pour on the praise. To just keep telling people that they are appreciated. It changes them and makes a difference. Now here's the second thing about it - it changes us. When we choose to pour on praise, it changes us. It begins to help us focus our eyes on good things around us instead of not good things around us. Sometimes I listen; I stop and listen for a while to my internal talk. That internal conversation that goes on in my head as I'm looking at the world around me. And I see this sort of hypercritical language or thread that runs through my mind. And I think to myself, "That's just awful." Do you know what it feels like? This is a graphic image but I'm going to share it anyway. I feel like I'm sort of swimming in sewage. It's just this negative critical thinking about other people and those around us. And you know, I feel awful. It may make no difference to them, but I feel awful.

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Here's what I want you to think about doing. Whenever you begin to find yourself in that place, looking around you full of criticism of others, write three notes, letters, text messages or something of praise to somebody else. Just write a note saying, "Man, thank you so much for doing this. You're doing such a great job." Then what will happen is that you'll find something inside you is changing. Marcia Berger is a psychologist. Most of her work is in marriage counseling. Here's what she says, "When it comes to giving compliments, make it rain. If you get in the habit of giving compliments frequently, you'll get in the habit of noticing what's going on, well, frequently, too. You will see the world differently and it will be a better place for you. And that will be better for everybody." Pouring on praise is good for the person you're praising. It's good for you and here's the thing. It makes hard conversations better. It makes them more effective. You say, "Pastor, does that mean you just ignore all the negative stuff? That all you do is focus on the positive stuff and praise and praise and ignore all the negative? Is that what we're called on to do?" Well, let me begin by saying, "Maybe." Maybe there are sometimes when there's the attitude of "Who died and made you God? Who made you to decide that it was your job to fix everybody else?" But on the other hand I have learned from experience that there are times when you have to have hard conversations. That we are to speak the truth, but we're to do it in love. And we are to be in the business of creating accountability for others because that's what it means to be in community is to have accountability to one another. So those hard conversations are real. But what happens is that if those hard conversations are not put into a context, in which praise is common, in which praise is the prevailing spirit of the relationship, then people just don’t listen. They're not effective at all because they assume is that the criticism that you're offering is about you and not about them. They say, "This person just doesn't like me. This person just doesn't see any good in me so what difference does it make? I'm not going to listen." But if in fact we take these conversations, these negative conversations, these hard conversations that we have to do in love - if they're put in a context of praise, they can be so much more effective. When we praise others it makes a difference, a huge difference. Here are some great Bible memory verses you might take hold of. From 1 Thessalonians 4:11: "...therefore, encourage one another and build one another up, just indeed you are doing." Or from Ephesians, he says, "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but

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only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs." (Ephesians 4:29). Pour on the praise. Or from Philippians 4:8: "Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." Make that your focus, let that be what takes hold of you. Pour on praise for others. That's really just the first thing - here's the second thing I want to say. Pour on your praise of God. Pour out your heart of praise to God. C.S. Lewis wrote a little manuscript in the year of my birth - 1958 - called Reflections on the Psalms. One of the chapters is entitled "A Word about Praising." And in it he talks about how when he first became a Christian it made no sense to him that God would command us to praise him. That that seemed like an egotistical kind of God. Here's what he says, "Well, we all despise the man who demands continued assurance of his own virtue." We don't want a God that needs to be built up by us. But then he comes to understand the reason why praise is so important. He goes on: "The most obvious fact about praise, whether of God or anything, strangely escaped me. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise...The world rings with praise - lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game - praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment. It is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete until it is expressed." (C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms.) Our praise is our way of experiencing, fully experiencing the joy of God. "Joyful, joyful, we adore you, God of Glory, Lord of Love." It is our way of enjoying the presence of God. I am a Methodist, not a Presbyterian. Some of you may be Presbyterians, and that's okay. I think it's the same Jesus, there are some differences in theology, but the same Jesus. But Presbyterians are part of what we call the Reformed Tradition, and in that in the 1600s they created something called "The Westminster Shorter Catechism." It was used to teach children and other converts the faith. It was done in a question/answer format where a question would be

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asked, and the children or students would be invited to respond. My favorite part is really simple where it asks, "What is the chief end of man?" The answer is: "The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever." (Westminster Shorter Catechism). To enjoy the presence of God. Now sometimes this praising is hard for us. Our lives don't feel like they're full of praise. C.S. Lewis has a great image for that, too. He said, "It's like digging a trench in a dry land to connect to the river that flows." That praising is that discipline of opening the portal to the refreshing rivers of God. And as we praise it flows into our hearts. That we build that connection, that incredible relationship with God as we praise. As I said as we began today, this is not a complicated message. It's really very simple. Pour on the praise. The God that we love and the people we love, pour on our praise. In the words of James Taylor: "Shower the people you love with love, show them the way that you feel." Let it rain - don't ever let anything go unsaid. Don't assume that the people you love know it. Tell them. Pour on the praise. Let's pray together. God, we confess that sometimes we take for granted people we love. We confess that sometimes we take for granted our relationship with you. Forgive us, God. Awaken us to that sense, that realization of how awesome you are and how awesome the people around us are. And give us the discipline to make that habit of praising you and the people we love. Amen.

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