Speaker: Bethany Davey
Text: Proverbs 25:11-15; Galatians 5:22-23

What is it to be gentle? What is it to pursue, to practice, gentleness? These questions followed me around for the weeks leading up to this sermon. As with the other fruits of the Spirit, there are ways for us to understand these words and traits, but often their practice is more nuanced and complex than a simple, singular definition allows. 

I would not describe myself as a gentle person. I grew up as the Ursula to my sister’s Ariel, a thundering boom of energy, big hair and even bigger feelings. I am often the (literal) guffaw in the midst of giggles, the hollered cheer among polite golf claps. For those of us who have been told we are “too much”—too big, too loud, too bold, too brazen—is gentleness even within our realm of possibilities? 

And, for those who are the quiet gigglers among guffawers, the golf clappers surrounded by rowdy cheers, those who may have been told you are too quiet, too small, too reserved: are you perceived as solely gentle? Constrained by a very specific understanding of gentleness itself?

A simple definition of gentleness is hard to come by. The first definition provided by Miriam-Webster is a negative one, defining gentleness by what it is not, rather than by what it is: “free from harshness, sternness or violence.” While this definition points us away from certain tendencies, it does not make clear what gentleness might point us toward. 

More disheartening to me are the first definitions of gentle in its verb form: “to make (an animal) tame and docile…to mollify, placate.” I am disheartened by such a definition, not because it doesn’t fit, but because non-human animals, women and other oppressed peoples and even the Earth have been expected to demonstrate such a gentleness: one of timidity, one that appeases, one that bends to those in power, one that makes the self smaller, quieter, unassuming, shrunken, at the mercy of another’s desire. 

It is precisely this definition of the word “gentle” that I find myself rejecting. I do not want to embody gentleness if it is this sort of gentleness, and I certainly do not want to embody this gentleness simply because of the gendered expectation that I should as a woman. 

Perhaps you feel a similar discomfort with gentleness in your body. Maybe it arises from being told your body should be gentle…or, perhaps you have been told that your body should not be gentle. When gentleness is portrayed as a trait that only women and femmes, people of color, people with disabilities, people living in poverty, the very old and the very young should possess, these assumptions harm us all. These assumptions inhibit a fullness of self and community, even for those for whom there is no expectation of this gentleness. 

As Katie Graber invited us to consider during the July 13 Hymn Sing service, these assumptions also impact our understandings of God. When we call God “Father,” but prescribe traits such as gentleness only to mothers, do we then assume that a Fathering God is not gentle? And if our understanding of God is fatherly, male and therefore not gentle, what message might that send to human parents about who ought to embody gentleness and who ought not to?

A limited gentleness—limited to some and certain bodies—stifles a shared, mutual understanding of what gentleness is and who might embody it. 

A more complex understanding of gentleness is needed for us all. 

Paul’s text prescribes the fruits of the Spirit for all in the Galatian community. This fledgling, divided, vulnerable people faith are called to collectively practice “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal 5:22-23). The preceding verses warn the community against specific behaviors, pleading with them to avoid that which may threaten their shared well-being and communal work. But in verses 22-23, the Galatians are advised in what to do, in what to practice, in which traits to enhance among themselves for the sake of the whole: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. 

What is such a gentleness, to which the entire community is called? What is such a gentleness, not defined by what it is not, but by what it is and may be? 

Today’s text from Proverbs hints at a gentleness that is not timid, but one that is strong and powerful, in its own right: “Through patience a ruler can be persuaded, and a gentle tongue can break a bone” (Proverbs 25:11). Considered a book of wisdom, this text is associated with Solomon, son of King David. How interesting that this use of “gentle” is found within the context of persuasion, particularly the persuasion of those in power. In this phrase, it is not a weapon that breaks the bone, initiates the change, conveys the message, but “a gentle tongue.” 

I find both of these texts particularly compelling when considered today, within our communities and our local and global realities. We find ourselves divided across political aisles, dinner tables, family relationships. We find ourselves confronting those in power—sometimes patiently, yet more often urgently—desperate to be heard. It is difficult to imagine a gentle response to ICE raids, cuts to basic human supports and services, transphobia, starvation in Gaza. 

And yet. A gentle response is not a timid one. Nor is it small, shrunken, appeasing, meek. 

And if it is not these things, then what is it?

This question takes me back to the ocean. Our family traveled to North Carolina late last month and enjoyed a week on the shore of the Atlantic, with the ocean right outside our windows, the beach just steps away. The ocean has long been my “happy place,” the setting in which my entire self feels regulated, balanced, nourished, at ease. I feel gentle in this place. As I wade deeper, I can feel the tender interconnection of all that is as I look out into the seemingly endless body of salty water. I feel the gentleness of the sea as I float peacefully on my back, face toward the sun, body softly rolling along with each wave. Yet, even as I relax into the soft crest of each new swell, the gentleness of the ocean in that particular moment, at that particular location and depth is not reflected at the shore, where waves crash mightily. We don’t use the word “gentle” to describe the crashing waves, the frigid depths of the water, or the suction of the tide. 

Yes, the ocean is gentle, but its gentleness is complex, shifting, impossible to singularly define. The same ferocious ocean that pushes and pulls, crashes and floods is the very same ocean in which I float, completely at ease, tenderly held and steadied in the midst of constant movement. It is the very same ocean that so generously provides Earth with so much of its oxygen. It is the very same ocean that teems with plant and animal life—known and unknown. This nourishing, sustaining, steady body to which we are connected and reliant: this body is both powerful and gentle. Powerful in its gentleness, gentle in its power. Neither solely powerful, nor solely gentle, the ocean provides a powerful gentleness that steadies and sustains. 

A gentle tongue that can break a bone is both profoundly powerful in its capacity to inspire change and yet, gentle. 

A new community of faith, trying to navigate a complicated group identity is tasked with being gentle with one another, even in the particularity of their belief, the strength of their opinions, the pull of their conflict.

We are gentle when we hold one another and Earth with the most tender of care. We are gentle when we offer our presence: our steady, sustaining, nourishing presence. 

Even as we seek to practice gentleness, we live in its absence in many ways. Each day, humans are decidedly ungentle with ourselves, with one another, with the Earth. We are ungentle in large scale ways, and also in small, our daily lives rife with the violences we experience, and also those we enact, perpetuate and cause. We need not arrive at a singular understanding of gentleness to acknowledge that ungentleness abounds, and something is needed in response. 

One such something needed is gentleness, indeed. Not the Miriam-Webster version, that simply prescribes what isn’t, or assumes that gentleness belongs in some and certain bodies only. 

Rather, what we need is the tender, steady, life-giving, held-ness of the rolling ocean: a gentleness that nourishes. A gentleness that responds and shifts, ebbs and flows, lives, breathes. 

A tender held-ness can sustain a sprouting Galatian faith community, and can sustain communities such as ours. 

A tender held-ness steadies in turmoil, grounds in the face uncertainty, nurtures even in trauma. 

Gentleness as such is powerful enough to persuade a ruler, to inspire a change, to refuse the injustice of what is and to believe in the Divine imagination of what can be in God’s kin-dom. 

The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. A gentleness for all bodies, all communities and desperately needed within, among and beyond us all today. 

May we go forth gently. 

In the words of David Bates, so graciously shared earlier in the service:

“Speak gently! — ‘t is a little thing

        Dropped in the heart’s deep well;

   The good, the joy, which it may bring

        Eternity shall tell.”