October 11, 2026 - Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost: Compassion: Whatever is Pleasing

October 11, 2026  Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Philippians 4:8-9  First Samuel 16:1-13
“Compassion: Whatever is Pleasing”
Douglas T. King

The congregation I served during the nineties in Buffalo, New York was the downtown church of influence and it had its share of movers and shakers.  It also had a wide variety of all kinds of folks.  We had a member named Doris.  Every Sunday, regardless of the weather, nine degrees or ninety degrees, Doris would come to church in a mink coat that had seen better days.  When I say it had seen better days, it was threadbare to the point that one wondered if another animal had spent some time vociferously chewing on it.  I never saw her without it on.  But what was most distinctive about Doris was her makeup. She always wore fire-engine-red lipstick.  And it was not applied with a delicate subtlety. The bright flash of red often traveled well beyond the boundaries of her lips.
 
When Doris died, her sister, who was not a church member, decided to have the service at a funeral home, with an open casket.  Doris was laid out in a demure ivory dress, no ratty mink coat in sight.  And, on top of that, she was sans fire engine red lipstick.  Her lips were painted with a whisper hint of pink hue.  I was heartbroken.  What made Doris beautiful and pleasing, what made Doris, Doris, had been taken from her.  

In cartoon characterizations of what awaits us after death we often get a set of pearly gates and Saint Peter, clipboard in hand, standing there checking people in.  I do not envision that being anywhere close to the metaphysical reality.  But to continue that cartoon image, if Doris showed up before Saint Peter in the manner she was laid out that day, I am not sure he would have recognized her.  And if he did, his heart would have been broken as well.

There is a tale about an eighteenth-century much beloved and well-respected Hasidic Rabbi named Zusya.  I often think about this story.  I have likely shared it with you before but it is worth another hearing.  We are told that Zusya was close to dying.  When his students came to his bedside they found him weeping.  They were confused.  If anyone could die with confidence that they had done right by the divine it was their deeply faithful teacher Zusya.  He had lived as exemplary a life as any of the great figures of the Torah, as faithful as Abraham or Moses.  Did he worry he had not lived up to their example?  Zusya’s response was that he was not worried God would ask him why he was not more like Moses or Abraham.  Zusya was worried God would ask him why he was not more like Zusya.

Our journey to greater faithfulness is ever an effort to grow into being our true selves.  God has not fashioned each of us to be something other than who we are, but to be exactly who we are.  Most of us will not get there on this side of life but we will all be led there in the end, enveloped by God’s transforming grace.  The first stanza of the middle hymn we just sang speaks to that call.  “In the bulb there is a flower; in the seed, an apple tree; in cocoons, a hidden promise: butterflies will soon be free!  In the cold and snow of winter there’s a spring that waits to be, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.”

Today is the fifth sermon in our series on compassion as we continue to hear those compelling words from the book of Philippians.  Today’s word is pleasing.  In our reading from the first book of Samuel we are told of the anointing of David, who God finds pleasing, to become the next king of Israel.  

Samuel assumes he is looking for someone who is a carbon copy of the current king, Saul.  His eyes are peeled for a tall, strapping man who looks the part of a warrior king. When he sees the eldest son he believes the next king stands tall before him.  “But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him, for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”  “…the Lord does not see as others see…”  The runt of the litter, the eighth son, the biblical number for imperfection by the way, young David is the king the Lord seeks.  As we know, he will indeed be a warrior, but of an entirely different kind.  When he faces the giant, Goliath, he will not use his fists or a mighty sword, David will overcome his foe with a sling shot, a meagre shepherd’s weapon, and a simple, small stone faithfully flung.  He will be a warrior king of an entirely different flavor, unique to who he truly is.  God could see something in David that others could not.  David was not called to be Saul.  David called to be David.

When God looks upon us we are being seen for whom we were created to be, in all our unique glory.  When we look at one another we often have an entirely different set of criteria by which we see each other.  We might choose to negatively evaluate others by who we think they should be.  Sometimes we believe we have a better understanding of how someone should live their lives than they do.  We might choose to negatively evaluate others unknowingly by how much they remind us of ourselves.  Sometimes the people that frustrate us the most share the exact character faults we possess.  We often choose to negatively evaluate others on how different they are than us.  Sometimes we inherently assume those who are different than us are somehow automatically rejecting who we are and how we live, and thus we reject them.  But what we almost always do is see and evaluate people solely for who they are now, not for who they will become when God’s grace has completed them; their true selves, in all of their singular glory.

A simple glance at the divine creation reveals to us that God clearly revels in a vast variety of diversity.  From the arctic tundra to the Saraha desert, from the flat plains of Kansas to the mountains of Colorado…our world is inhabited by as many as two million different species, the divine creation is an exploding cornucopia of difference.

While we often celebrate the vast variety we find in nature, we are not always as good at offering the same appreciation for the vast variety found in who we all are as humans.  We can be fascinated by a duck billed platypus as a creation so distinctly different. But we are not always so intrigued by those people who are significantly different than us in the ways they see the world and live their lives. We can find it challenging to see them the way in which God sees them; to recognize, that imperfections and all, they are on their way to becoming the child of God they were created to be.

When we look upon each other, we need to learn to put on our God’s grace goggles.  To be reminded of the opening line to our middle hymn in terms of all those who cross our paths, those we find easy to love and value, and those who we find difficult to love and value, “In the bulb there is a flower…”  

Then perhaps we will recognize the beauty in ratty mink coats and sloppy lipstick; the value of those who are different than us in political persuasion, sexual orientation, national identity, vision of the world; the beloved-ness of those who annoy the heck out of us.  

God sees us, one and all, as pleasing, as the people we were created to be and who we will become when God’s grace is finally done working on us.  In God’s eyes, every last child of God is pleasing in God’s sight, in all of their remarkable particularity, even those of us, like myself, that have a long way to go before we come close to being who we were created to be.

Let us recognize the bulb in each other, what is pleasing, that will become a flower in each other.
 
Thanks be to God.  Amen.