Pimento Cheese Sandwiches And The Problem With Good Intentions

A single line from a movie sticks with us: “What if empathy is an evolutionary advantage?” That question turns into a faith question fast, because so many of us have been trained to think empathy makes us soft, exposed, or easy to take advantage of. We push back on that assumption and explore how compassion can be real strength, the kind that steadies a community and makes room for people who are struggling. 

From there we move into Romans 15 and the blunt clarity of the call: strength is for service, not status. We talk about what it looks like to “lend a hand,” to stop choosing what is merely convenient, and to measure maturity by how we carry the burdens around us. Then Romans 16 widens the lens even more, as Paul names women in leadership and points the church toward a radical welcome that includes Gentiles, meaning outsiders, neighbors, and basically everybody. Inclusion is not a modern buzzword here; it’s a long, hard spiritual practice the church has wrestled with from the start. 

We also get honest about why sharing faith can feel awkward. It’s often easier to recommend a movie than to explain why church matters, even when faith gives us meaning, resilience, and a way to practice love in public. A story about pimento cheese sandwiches lands the point: good intentions can still miss people if we don’t learn what they actually need. If you care about Christian inclusion, United Methodist identity, women in church leadership, thoughtful evangelism, and building a welcoming church, you’ll find plenty to chew on here. Subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find the conversation.

Transcript

Movie Review And A Big Question

Pastor Darren 0:00

So I start with a movie review. Have you seen Disclosure Day yet? I heard a couple of yeses out there. All right. I won't spoil it too much, but I will give a thumbs up. I did enjoy it. Steven Spielberg knows how to tell a tale as well as anybody in the film industry. It was an interesting story. He's back into the alien world again and dealing with that kind of stuff. And again, I don't want to ruin it for you, but there was one statement that was made that I really appreciated. What are you guys laughing at? Am I tingy? What am I doing?

unknown 0:47

Don't spoil it.

Pastor Darren 0:51

That's impossible. She's all don't sweat it. I'm in front of a bunch of people.

unknown 0:57

Don't spoil it.

Pastor Darren 0:58

Oh, don't spoil it. I will not. I will not. I get you now. Yeah, you're plugging your. I will not spoil. But there was one statement that I really appreciated. I'm not spoiling the story. I told you. I am being honest. I'm not going to spoil the story. But there was a poignant statement made in it. And the statement was, what if empathy is an evolutionary advantage? What if empathy was an evolutionary advantage? Isn't that a curious thing to say? Because it goes counterintuitive to what we think. Empathy is the thing. Oh, that opens me up to vulnerability, right? That get makes me weaker or that makes me uh more uh uh able of being conquered. And so to flip it, it was really, really interesting. So, bottom line, without spoiling, I enjoyed it. I would send you to disclosure day as not only a good story, uh uh, but some interesting thoughts going

Empathy As An Advantage

Pastor Darren 2:09

around. Uh now, Romans 15. Did you all read it before you got here? Oh, come on now. You're not doing any homework? Good glory. All right, I'm gonna sum it up for you really quickly here. Uh, the bottom line of Romans 15, 1 to 7, Jesus came for others. Shouldn't we? Shouldn't we be here for others? Isn't that sort of the point? What's modeled by Jesus? Listen to the way Eugene Peterson says it. He is a pastor uh who did an interpretation of Scripture uh as opposed to a translation, so he took a little more liberties in the way that he uh um interpreted what was going on, but I really like the way he says it. Those of us who are strong and able in the faith need to step in and lend a hand to those who falter, and not just do what is most convenient for us. Strength is for service, not status. Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, how can I help? That's exactly what Jesus did. He didn't make it easy for himself by avoiding people's troubles, but waited right in and helped out. I took on the troubles of the troubled, is the way Scripture puts it. Isn't that a nice way to restate that scripture? I really, really appreciate it. Uh you know, when you talk about interpretations of Scripture, and you have to be a little more careful scholarly because they're taking more liberties. Uh, but sometimes you find an interpretation you really like, and it says it like you would reread it, and uh all the more better. I really like that one. It really encapsulates that idea of, hey, this is what Jesus was here for. Why aren't we just doing

Strength Is For Service

Pastor Darren 4:06

it? And here in Romans 16, Paul does another interesting thing. He invites everyone in this letter to this church in Rome to welcome the women in leadership. He even mentions three specific women into leadership. Now, Paul often gets accused of being not quite as uh uh affirming of women and and uh um uh not uh being a little bit misogynistic in that way, uh, but we sometimes fail to recognize the context for that. He lives in a time where there was clear hierarchy between the genders, and for him to say this was really quite provocative, very provocative to say you should listen to these women and let them run some things, let them run the church. So all of this gives way to an overall invitation from Paul for us to be welcoming to all Gentiles. And for those of you who don't know, Gentiles are non-Jews. So basically everybody. Right? There's this obvious implication, the larger call is inclusion of others, not just neighbors, like he said in Romans 15, and not just women, like he says in Romans 16, but all. Now,

Women In Leadership And Welcome

Pastor Darren 5:44

here's where it gets a little interesting too. Paul's language for these passages uh for this inclusion, the language he uses is circumcision. Right? That is the language that he uses. Now, the first five books of our Old Testament, they are full of laws that were to be followed. And if you were living out the faith, that's what it meant to follow, to live out the faith, was to follow these rules. But for some reason, Paul picks out the one law and uses that to encompass all that it means to follow Judaism, circumcision. If you know men, you probably know why Paul picks that one out to be the thing he sums it all up in. You know he's got in his ear a bunch of guys going, hey, is that part, you know, really necessary? Do we really need to, you know, so he's got to reinforce that a lot. Yes, yes. Oh, I shouldn't have done that move. We gotta reinforce. We got to reinforce that the importance of that, right? Now, if you are a woman, I'm assuming you know any man at all in this world. And so you understand why Paul picked circumcision as the way to define Judaism as well, because that's the one that's making us guys go, oh, okay, that's the big test that's going on here. Um anyway, I'm having a little bit of fun. Uh, but that was the way Paul would often describe being a non-Jew, and he was inviting us, encouraging us, feeling like God was commanding us to include people who were not Jewish, meaning the circumcised, right? For him, though, it was symbolic language. And it was referring to or making the argument that we're supposed to include Jews, but also Gentiles, but also Christians. Remember, Paul's right at the beginning of this Christian movement. He's trying to help shape everything, and we've got people who have lived the Jewish faith, who have followed all that law, including the big law we just talked about. But then you've got other people who didn't have to go through that door to get in. And so there was bickering and dickering, I'm sure, about whether or not that was important. But the result was he's talking about everybody, those who are Jews, those who are not Jews. In other words, a message of inclusion, including everybody.

Inclusion Then And Now

Pastor Darren 8:48

This is from Paul 2,000 years ago. We still wrestle with inclusion, right? It's still a challenge, especially for people of faith, because we feel like, well, all right, so there's a certain understanding of what the faith is, and I'm trying to do this, and if people aren't doing it, am I supposed to welcome in? And other people saying, well, wait a minute, where are we making these rules? Jesus himself said there are higher rules, love God, love neighbor, but we so we wrestle with that. Our denomination just recently, somewhat recently, wrestled with inclusion over the LGTBQ issue. We had a conflict and it resulted in 25% of our churches and people left the United Methodist denomination. We're still wrestling with that. This particular congregation might be almost an exact model for what happened with the rest of the denomination. 25%, we lost some folks as well. You know, we still wrestle with inclusion, and I'm not even gonna enter into our wrestling with the immigration issues and the challenges around immigration and what we feel like we owe folks. But that's coming in August. Social concerns is gonna be putting it in front of us, and we're gonna be learning a little bit about that. But this idea of inclusion is something that was important to Paul. He's trying to grow the church, and yet we still wrestle with it, all being all. Sometimes I think we struggle even with the simplest inclusions, just the idea of being willing to share our faith with somebody else. Anybody get a little bit nervous with that term evangelism? Are all y'all comfortable talking about your faith with other people?

Why Sharing Faith Feels Awkward

Pastor Darren 11:05

All right, I want some confidence out here and some honesty. If I told you to go be uh evangelical, would you let that roll off your back? Raise your hands. Confession time. Oh, okay, I got two honest people in the room. The rest of you oh, oh boy. It feels a little weird, potentially because of the way it's been done in our society, people being a little bit more oppressive and making it feel like it was some sort of imperative. And yet, talking about our faith, were any of you oppressed by my movie review I started with? Anybody feel uncomfortable or or put in a weird spot? No, we're we're usually pretty comfortable with that. Isn't it weird that I can do a movie review and talk about how I really like this movie? But if I talk about my faith, hmm, that's a little more weird. Cactus patch there, briar patch. Why is it that we are more comfortable talking about things like that, and yet faith is something that uh something that enriches our lives, and yet we're hesitant to be comfortable sharing it. You know, it might be a pastor thing, but I believe that our vibrancy in our individual faith and our communal faith comes from sharing it. I think that is a key part of living the life of faith. That's why the United Methodist Denomination added that last one little bit, right? Uh promised to support with my prayers, my presence, my gifts, my service, and all right, me and Nancy are the only Methodists in this room. Prayers, presence, gifts, service, witness, okay. Some of you are all right. Witness that was added later. What is it, 20 years ago? Pastor Lanny, when they add that 20-ish, right? That we said, you know what, it's important for us to share it too, to witness to our faith, right? Uh uh and I tell you what, I think vibrancy comes from that, not just because we're engaging with our faith and thinking about it, but it sharpens our understanding of our own faith. When you have to craft why it is that you come here and put it into words that might make sense to somebody else, that's a real sharpening of your own faith. You might shape that conversation. It shouldn't be imperative, it shouldn't be judgmental. You wouldn't want to leave somebody thinking you were fearing for their soul. Not good evangelism, at least not Methodist evangelism. We're not sharing that sort of understanding. We're sharing something that's uh a little more meaningful, at least in the way we understand it. What we're sharing is that we uh realize that we have found a way of living that enriches our life. We found a guideline for helping us make meaning in our life, not just through like loving relationships, but also an opportunity to be in service to other people, to be able to show God's love to other people. Not only that, but we also get a context for understanding the more difficult parts of living in this world. Right? Our tough times, they become a little bit more manageable because we can more easily see the love that is all around us because we've practiced at it. We've trained ourselves through regular uh uh gatherings here where we look for that love and think about that love and understand how that love comes. And having that understanding, having difficulties be more manageable, it's a little easier to work our way through it. That conversation about your faith doesn't have to be much more difficult than that. And isn't it awesome to think about the way faith and church might bless others? To know what that might do in their life. And not only that, but isn't it kind of nice and cool to think about the way the church might be blessed by those people you invite? What gifts are they bringing? What has God put inside of them that's gonna add some fruit to our journey? Yeah, that's my encouragement coming from Paul to go share that faith. You know, one more thing I'll say about sharing.

The Pimento Cheese Sandwich Lesson

Pastor Darren 16:27

I think sometimes our difficulties about being inclusive are not always about our intent. There are times when we want to be inclusive, we just don't know how. Have we done things and we put it together exactly the way it was done for us? What brought us into the faith or made us feel like we were most comfortable? And others didn't seem to be into it? A couple of churches ago there was a uh a woman in the church, and I tell you what, she was a pillar for this church. And one of the things that she would do for all the special events was a pimento cheese sandwich. Pimento cheese sandwiches. Now, I know y'all don't like to raise your hands very much, but we'll see if this one you have the confidence. Tell me how many of y'all like a good pimento cheese sandwich? Okay, okay. Whoa. We only got Tom over here. The rest of you are like, oh, who pimento, oh Maria, pimento cheese sandwich. Nancy is what, right, right? All right, y'all with your hands up, you're not gonna like anything I'm gonna say now. Just letting you know early on, I think there was a time where pimento cheese sandwich was a new thing. And it was like, oh my goodness, this is great and so flavorful and oh, and so easily cut into the triangles, right? And they're out there at all the big events, and oh, it's so special. And so my friend would make these pimento cheese sandwiches, and they were known traditionally in this church as being the thing that came out at the special events. And you know what? If you were 40 and younger, you had no desire to eat a pimento cheese sandwich. Squeeze cheese with something red in it. Is that the pimento? That's all they would see, right? And well, squeeze cheese, it's not the healthiest for you. I don't know. I don't want to step on any toes. Sorry, I told you you weren't gonna like me after I talk about a pimento cheese sandwich. What I'm getting at is that there was this miss that was going on. There was this culture of church and this woman who's had her heart in exactly the right place making these pimento cheese sandwiches. And the people that she kind of wanted to reach the most were these young families to build up the church. Well, that pimento cheese sandwich didn't mean to them what it meant to her and to the rest of that church. Oh, that's uh kind of a processed thing that comes on the white bread. Do you know what they do with white bread? Oh right? You can you see the miss that was happening? A room full of good intentions that just didn't happen. I think sometimes some of our sharing, our inclusiveness, gets stopped just because we don't a hundred percent know how to best share our faith. We haven't figured out how to put it together in a way that somebody else might go, ooh. You know, I like to think that uh um our best step to show people uh the love of God is to figure out some sort of need that they have and to fill it. And to fill it without any requests back, just to fill it because you love them and you want them to know a greater way. You want them to know that there's a God of love and it's coming through me, and I want to share it with you. And it takes sometimes us doing the work to figure out what that need is and then to fill it in the best way we can.

Who Is Missing From Our Table

Pastor Darren 20:51

I'm gonna round third here because we're getting close to the end. I want you to know I'll be the first to admit as we talk about inclusion and we talk about inviting people to our faith, our church is not for everyone. We wouldn't want to set ourselves up in that way, that any invitation that doesn't come through means we have failed in some big way. No, we are a church here on the corner of Hampshire slash Agoura and Westlake Boulevard who has specific gifts from God that we can share with the world, but they're not all the gifts, and so we need to find the people who would identify with our particular journey. So we might not be for everybody, but you cannot convince me that there aren't people in this community who wouldn't be blessed by a journey with this community of people in this room. We found a directory from 1976 this week. 1976. You may not know this, but the world was black and white in 76. We were just figuring out how to give color to it. It's 1976. You would be shocked how many of those people are still here. Shall we do it? We'll let you there are a lot in the prayer group, so I brought it to them. Go ahead, raise your hands if you were here in 1976. There we go. All right, this is officially the 1976 section on Polly. You're gonna have to move next week. All right. Hey, if we're talking about has this church blessed anybody, talk to the people who have been here for 50 years because they've been blessed. They wouldn't have stayed that long otherwise. They've been blessed, and there are others who would be blessed. So let's not be afraid to ask the question: who is missing from our table here? Who is it that needs what we have to offer? Our special form and shape of the love of God that is ready to touch their hearts and enhance their lives. And let's make sure to invite them. Amen.