September 20, 2026 - Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost: Compassion: Whatever is Honorable

September 20, 2026  Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Philippians 4:8-9, Psalm 8, First Corinthians 12:12-26
“Compassion: Whatever is Honorable”
Douglas T. King 

In sermons I have been known to quote esteemed philosophers and poets, theologians and scholars.  Today I am turning to an alternative music band.  Hey, you take inspiration from wherever it comes.  I know very little of their music.  If I am not listening to Broadway soundtracks and classical, I am more likely listening to Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones.  But this band, The New Radicals, has one song with an extremely catchy chorus that is always floating in the back of my head.  Do not worry, I will not sing it for you. I would ask David to sing it but he refuses to lower himself into pop culture.  The final line of the chorus is telling, “We only get what we give.”  In our interactions with others there is wisdom in that.  “We only get what we give.” When we speak about honor there is wisdom in that for us.  “We only get what we give.”  

Today is the second sermon in our series on compassion as we once again heard that remarkable text from Philippians and its call for us to think about, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise….”  We continue our journey to be a community of compassion today with whatever is honorable.  

Honorable, such an old-fashioned word.  Other than as a title for judges, I cannot say I hear it very much anymore.  I cannot recall the last time it came up in a personal conversation.  I certainly do not hear it in our political conversations.

So how do we live lives that are honorable?  Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth offers us a pathway.  Corinth was a diverse and energetic city dominated by a thriving trade industry.  This meant that any time you brought three people into a room there were likely four different opinions on any issue.  Paul’s letter makes reference to a variety of debates and disagreements in their community.  In response to that he  gives us this evocative text of bodily imagery.  Envisioning the community as a single body is powerful.  There can be no doubt of the inherent inter-relatedness and interdependence.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?  It is a much needed reminder in this time of increasing isolation in our culture.

But the text takes us a step beyond our interdependence.  It challenges us to reorient who and what we see as most valuable.  “…the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect…”  In Jesus’ day, this would have been the working class fisherman, women, Syrophoenicians, tax collectors, and prostitutes with whom he interacted.  In our day it would include a list of folk, some of whom we already honor and some of whom we do not, depending on our own personal perspectives.  

Who needs to be honored? The die-hard MAGA faithful and Democratic Socialists. Tradewives and Transgender activists.  Whoever makes you grind your teeth with resentment, clothe them with honor.  Blech.  For many of us we are about to start grinding our teeth down to nubs at the mere thought of this.  We are proud of ourselves for being polite at cocktail parties with those with whom we vehemently disagree. But honor?  The Oxford English Dictionary defines honor as, “to offer respect, to hold in esteem, to offer deference, to give credit to…”  Are we ready “to hold in esteem, to offer deference, to give credit to” those people who are ruining our country?  Sounds like a tall order to me.  

But if we keep two important ideas in mind it might start us on the journey to getting there. The first is this metaphor of the body we receive from Paul.  We are inherently interdependent.  It is an essential and intentional function of God’s creation.  Intense tribalism is ever a path to tragedy that dishonors the divine.  We ignore this at our own peril. We remember the catastrophic, humanitarian crises, in Bosnia, Croatia, Rwanda. God’s heart has been broken countless times, by tribalism run amok.  We need each other to survive, to thrive, and most importantly to live as God has called us to live.  To borrow an old bromide toxic division is cutting off our nose to spite our face.  

The second idea that will help us on this journey is found in our reading from the eighth Psalm.  The language soars as it alludes to the wonders of God’s created universe as a reflection of divine majesty and glory.  And then we hear about little old, you and me. We are told we are “A little lower than God…”  Really?  And we are “crowned with glory and honor.”  Have you met us?  The Jewish scholar, Konrad Schaefer speaks into this absurdity. “How small the human is when compared with divine greatness, yet how great by God’s favor!...In awe of one’s immense smallness in this grandiose spectacle, the gaze turns on the self as one becomes aware that the human, small and insignificant, a breath and a shadow, is a marvel of the universe.” (Schaeffer, pp. 23-24)

If God, the creator of the universe, can bestow honor upon very screwed-up me, how can I not bestow honor upon every last one of God’s children?  What level of titanic temerity would I need to possess to believe that God can honor me and yet another person is too far below me for me to honor them?  “We only get what we give.”  Or, acknowledging what God does for us, we are called to give what we get.

What I know about myself is that I would like to be thought of as honorable.  I would like to be honored by others.  And certainly our text from Philippians calls us to be just that. Here it is in a nutshell, honorable people honor all people.  Honorable people honor those with whom they disagree.  Honorable people honor those who annoy the heck out of them. Honorable people honor those who no one else chooses to honor for whatever reason. “We only get what we give.”

We would all like those who disagree with us to honor us. We would all like to be honored, even when we are disagreeable and/annoying.  We would all like to be considered honorable.  “We only get what we give.”  That nineties pop song announces it is sung to an angsty fourteen-year-old.  And I can appreciate that.  Some days I feel like an angsty fourteen-year-old.  The song speaks to a variety of ways it can feel like the world is falling apart on both a personal and global scale.  It says, “But when the night is falling, you cannot find the light…But when the night is falling, you cannot find a friend, you feel your tree is breaking, just bend, you’ve got the music in you…”

In our current climate we can all feel like that tree on the verge of breaking.  In response to all of the discord we can feel ourselves becoming rigid, brittle, in our worldview; in our heart; in our attitude toward others.  We can feel like taking our toys and going home.  In the midst of all of the divisive headwinds, how do we find a way to bend; how do we keep our hearts open to faithfully engaging with the world and all who cross our paths?

I would change one word in this song, instead of, “you’ve got the music in you…”  I would say, “you’ve got the Spirit in you.”  God’s Holy Spirit will remind us that the divine has placed honor upon us, one and all.  God’s Holy Spirit will remind us that we are all intentionally created to be dependent upon one another, one and all.  God’s Holy Spirit will remind us that whomever we believe deserves less honor, God has called us to offer greater honor.  The only way for us to live in honorable community together, is to offer honor to all.  “We only get what we give.”  Indeed.  

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Schaefer, Konrad, Berit Olam:Psalms, The Liturgical Press,
 Minnesota, 2001.