Mutual Recognition Within
Rev. JT Smiedendorf
July 20, 2025
Text: Luke 5:1-11
Third Sermon of Three on the Many and the One
CENTRAL FOCUS:
That mutual recognition of our humanity and human needs is the necessary prelude to just and healing relationship and community.
Once while Jesus[a] was standing beside the Lake of Gennesaret and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, 2 he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets. 3 He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.
4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” 5 Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”
6 When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to burst. 7 So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. 8 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’s knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”
9 For he and all who were with him were astounded at the catch of fish that they had taken, 10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” 11 When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.
May the words spoken and the words heard become your Living Word in us, among us, and beyond us.
AMEN
The last two Sundays, I have invited us to engage what it might take to have the many members of the body know and act out their oneness as a body while honoring each member. So important and timely for us because only with our diverse gifts and perspectives coming together can we meet the challenges of the nation, world, and church. Last week, I offered that mutual recognition was a core practice of bridging divides, of bringing the many into one. This week I am inviting us a little deeper into mutual recognition, to the inner path of mutual recognition.
In our Scripture story this morning, we are given an important clue to this path. Jesus invites those who would become his disciples to go deeper. Jesus tells these fishermen to cast their nets into the deep waters. Although they had caught no fish for hours, casting them into the deep results in a catch so big that they can hardly bring it into shore. There are many layers to this ancient story and potential messages, but the layer for our focus this morning is the call to depth.
This morning, I am suggesting that our call to connect the many members of our body of Christ, of our nation, of any group is to go deeper than we are used to, deeper than the patterns and stories that have led us to estrangement and polarization.
As the late black lesbian author, poet, and activist Audre Lorde thought about what it would take to make the social changes that lead to just community and liberation for all, she said this,
“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.”
The polarization that separates is the slave master’s game that serves an unjust and life-denying status quo. Lorde captures so elegantly the heart of the matter: positive change means changing the game, being and acting in a way that is different. And only this different deeper way of being and doing will bring about the reconciliation of the many into one.
Mutual recognition requires depth and depth requires going within.
The phrase within us, among us, and beyond us has been named in this church as a aspect to being a vital community of faith, a congregation of the Living Spirit. Within us, among us, and beyond us. Each of these dimensions is inextricably intertwined. How we relate within ourselves in our own parts is also how we relate to others as other parts of the whole body, be it the whole body of church or nation or world. Mutual recognition is also then between our inner parts. This is a profound call to doing our own psycho-spiritual work, to engaging in the many spiritual practices of prayer and reflection that lead to self-awareness and growth. We cannot serve well or love well our neighbors, our friends and family, or our fellow church members without loving well ourselves through mutual recognition within, having our inner parts see each other compassionately. Then we can see others in compassion.
There are a variety of practices and tools to do so. I want to share briefly the work of the late Dr. Marshall Rosenberg who taught something called Non-Violent Communication, sometimes called compassionate communication. In this way of communing, we begin with the sincere intention to know and share what’s alive in us and to know and hear what’s alive in someone else.
The genius here is to go deeper than and be free of our stories about things and people, especially stories of condemnation and diagnosis about ourselves and others. As human beings, we are indeed storytellers, and I love and value stories. They are essential, but when we are caught in one, when the story has us, fixes us and others into place, we lose a key part of our creativity, lose our vision for possibilities, lose our deeper awareness of the divine energy that is alive in us and others.
The goal is to be free especially from those stories that limit us to pointing fingers and speaking blame to ourselves and to others. This blame is a distancing from what’s really alive in us and what’s alive in others. That distance serves neither relationship nor truth, ultimately. One English translation of the medieval Sufi Mystic poet Rumi says,
“Out beyond ideas of right doing and wrongdoing there is a field: I will meet you there.”
Instead of getting caught in stories, especially stories of judgment and blame, about something or someone, we can go deeper to sense and name our feelings and the basic human needs that are in play, that are alive in us. We might say, “I feel uneasy and I have a need for more understanding of what’s happening.” Then we continue with a request: “Would you be willing to ….?” Feelings, needs, requests, all held within a spirit of compassion for self and other. It means going within to the depth that can name our authentic base feelings (mad, glad, sad, afraid, and all their variations) and to our basic human needs (like affirmation, inclusion, clarity, security, respect, dignity, etc). Most of the time we unconsciously speed right past the feelings and needs to get to a story about our situation, stories about ourselves or others.
So often the polarization and separation which leads to anger or anxiety or upset is rooted in unmet human needs; needs to be heard, to be respected, to be included, to be known, to understand or be understood, to be empowered, to be secure in something. Going deeper within to sense this in ourselves changes the game to mutual recognition. In this kind of moment, we can do what Rosenberg encouraged, to see if in our sensing and listening we have on our gentle giraffe ears or our predator jackal ears. Giraffe ears allow us to listen for feelings and needs with compassion. Jackal ears lead us to listen for an opening to judge and attack. Whether listening to ourselves, our own inner talk or inner storytelling, or listening to another, it matters what set of ears we have on. And if we can recognize in ourselves or another the deeper human feelings and needs, we can move toward mutual recognition and then toward healing and reconciliation within ourselves and with another.
To illustrate the challenge and depth of this path, Rosenberg shared a story of Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jewish author of the early half of the 20th century. Her confessional letters and diaries describe both her religious awakening and the persecutions of Jewish people in Amsterdam during the German occupation of World War II. She wrote in her diary,
“I am not easily frightened. Not because I am brave but because I know that I am dealing with human beings, and that I must try as hard as I can to understand everything that anyone ever does. And that was the real import of this morning: not that a young Gestapo officer yelled at me, but that I felt no indignation, rather a real compassion, and would have liked to ask, ‘Did you have a very unhappy childhood, has your girlfriend let you down?’ Yes, he looked harassed and driven, sullen and weak. I should have liked to start treating him there and then, for I know that pitiful young men like that are dangerous as soon as they are let loose on mankind.”
This is the depth of compassionate recognition to which we are called. Despite the grave threat of violence and even death, Etty Hillesum was able to see the humanity in her persecutor and, in so doing, preserved a kind of depth of her own humanity. Etty Hillesum for me is a kind of spiritual hero because of that.
What might have happened in the polarizing moments in our nation or in this church or in your life if the focus had been on listening with giraffe ears to the deep feelings and human needs within ourselves and in others?
What might happen now if we seek to recognize each other at this depth? What could happen if instead of telling stories of judgment and blame about others or ourselves, we follow the invitation of faith to cast our nets into the deeper waters of authentic feelings and human needs and met each other there?
We just might recognize each other, truly see each other and come together. Then our nets and souls will be full, then will we see and know the justice and joy of the Realm of God.
