“WHAT GOD LOVES”
June 9, 2013
Pray
Here, in this space where we gather,
My hope is that each is touched by the Sacred — Not by my words,
But through the compassion shared.
May the Light of Life be yours.
FIRST READING: – Genesis 11: 1-9
(from The Message by Eugene Peterson)
At one time, the whole Earth spoke the same language. It so happened that as they moved out of the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled down. They said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and fire them well.” They used brick for stone and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower that reaches Heaven. Let’s make ourselves famous so we won’t be scattered here and there across the Earth.” God came down to look over the city and the tower those people had built. God took one look and said, “One people, one language; why this is only a first step. No telling what they’ll come up with next – they’ll stop at nothing! Come, we’ll go down and garble their speech so they won’t understand each other.” Then God scattered them from there all over the world. And they had to quit building the city. That’s how it came to be called Babel, because God had turned their language into babble. From there God scattered them all over the world.
SECOND READING –
from Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe?
Difference is part of God’s creative plan for the world. And if, as progressive Christians believe, God is present throughout the creation, then we must honor each form of life, each culture, each religion, with the understanding that each is a way that humans have exercised their obligation to order life, it is their way of naming their worlds. This very diversity, however, reminds us that no one viewpoint, no way of life, no culture, no religion is perfect.
—
I don’t know when I first became aware of the word diversity, but I do know when I became aware of different. Until I was seven, my family lived on the Northwest side of Chicago in a predominantly Polish Catholic and Jewish neighborhood. I went to first and second grade at the Mozart School — forty-eight students to a class, six rows of eight, desks bolted to the floor. Now some days, all the Catholic kids were absent — it seems there were a lot of Holy Days in the 1950’s. On other days, all the Jewish kids were absent for Rosh Hashanah, or Yom Kippur, or Hanukkah. I was raised Presbyterian so I only got Good Friday, but then, so did everyone else. I perceived that I was different.
Summering here in Door County, my friends were either Catholic or Lutheran. They’d never heard of a Presbyterian so I was still different and being from Illinois didn’t help. I became aware that there were three national backgrounds common in Door County — German, Belgian, and Scandinavian with some friendly teasing between the Norwegians and the Swedes. At least my Danish surname was some consolation.
In 1967 I became a VISTA Volunteer in the remote arctic village of Selawik, Alaska; population 420 Eskimo people, 550 sled dogs, no electricity or running water except for the river. There were seven white people or Nalowme as the natives called us. My first week in the village I overheard a native woman admonish her child to “Be quiet or the Nalowme will get you.” I learned what it was like to live as a minority.
As a public school teacher in suburban Chicago, I had children whose parents had come from more than twenty different countries from Japan to Iran and Poland to Thailand. One of my Canadian friends tells me that there are children from 140 different language backgrounds in the Toronto public schools. As my awareness of other cultures and ethnicities grew, so did that of our nation as a whole. Through various foreign encounters we learned of Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Laos; Bosnia, Serbia, and Kosovo; Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan; Rwanda, Darfur, and Somalia. Many of us watched 204 nations participate in the 2012 Summer Olympics.
As our world has become a much smaller place, our country has become incredibly more diverse. Today there are more Buddhists in the U.S. than either Episcopalians or Presbyterians. There are more Muslims than Episcopalians and Presbyterians combined. There are more Hindus than members of the United Church of Christ.
So where did this all begin? Earlier in the service we heard the story of the tower of Babel. As a child, I was entranced by the picture in my Sunday school book of multitudes of people building a tower that disappeared into the clouds. Taken as a myth, the story explains why there are so many languages, three to six thousand depending on how one defines language. There are forty languages that have more than thirty million speakers each. On another level, the tower of Babel story seems to show God’s displeasure with the arrogance of mankind. We’re still arrogant. We continually twist the phrase from Genesis that says man was made in the image of God to one where God is made in the image of man.
Delwin Brown, in his book What Progressive Christians Believe suggests another, more profound theological explanation, — simply that God loves diversity. “With different language groups, we have different cultures, different ways of life, different ways of thinking, and different religions.”
Our universe is defined by diversity. We live on one planet orbiting a rather ordinary star, one of 200 billion in the Milky Way Galaxy. There are 170 billion more galaxies in the observable universe, some much larger than our own. Such numbers defy human comprehension. But coming back down to earth, there are at least 900 thousand species of insects. There are well over 300 thousand species of plants, thirty thousand kinds of fish, ten thousand varieties of birds, and 5700 different mammals, one of which is us. The web of life is bewildering in its complexity. Ecological science gives proof to what the Genesis stories imply — that there is “a massive interconnectedness of things.” The Genesis stories also make it clear that “each segment of creation is judged by God to be of intrinsic worth…but each part also has worth for the rest of creation.” The central part of our being human is our responsibility to the rest of the earth.
Yes, the content of creation is diversity, but when it comes to human diversity, some of us are apprehensive about it. We think of tribalism as something confined to Africa or the Middle East where it’s caused such conflict. But, we’re tribal, too. Our tribes are not defined solely by place of birth, but by socioeconomic status, color, country of origin, sexual identity and preference, political affiliation and, of course, religion.
Gone are the days when diversity was relegated the pages of National Geographic or a documentary on Public Television. Engaged diversity is right here, right now. Some of us have become uncomfortable with that. Some of us become more than uncomfortable. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks such things, there are thirty-six organized hate groups right here in Wisconsin ranging from racist skinheads to neo-Nazis. There are more than a 2400 in the U.S. as a whole. Some of them are so called “Christian Identity” groups. That’s scary!
Speaking before the United Nations, South African Archbishop Desmund Tutu said, “Religion, which should foster sisterhood and brotherhood, which should encourage tolerance, respect, compassion, peace, reconciliation, caring and sharing, has far to frequently done the opposite…Some of the ghastliest atrocities have happened and are happening in the name of religion. It need not be so if we can learn the obvious: that no religion can hope to have a monopoly on God, on goodness, and virtue and truth…There is room for every culture, race, language, and point of view.” Martin Luther King stated the alternative, “If we don’t learn to live as brothers, we will die together as fools.“
Some years ago, a young black woman from California visited our church several times. When sharing joys, she said we were the “nicest homogeneous congregation” she had ever visited. I don’t think that was a backhanded compliment. Angela was sincere in her affection for this church. But, looking around, we’re not exactly a rainbow of color. That will change as Door County is changing. I’ve always liked the bumper sticker that appears from time to time on a car in our parking lot that says, “I’m straight, not narrow.” We’re not narrow. Our message of openness continues to attract people to Hope. A few winters back, a homeless man came to our doors and asked if he could clean up a bit before attending our service. Of course he could, and did. When the time came for sharing joys, he thanked us and mentioned that another church in this very town had turned him away. Shame! One member here at Hope says this is the only church she knows where you can state your beliefs, and no one will tell you you’re wrong. Our church culture honors divergence of thought and belief which brings me back to the Tower of Babel and the diversity it symbolizes.
That diversity is not only healthy in our churches and communities, it is a safeguard against human arrogance. In a diverse world there is no one right answer, no one right way to live, no one right way to think, no one right way to worship or believe. Diversity is part and parcel of the natural world around us; indeed, it could not exist without it. Neither can we.
Blessings to you all. Amen
