Diversity: Making Community
Diversity: Making Community
October 23, 2022
Last week we talked about Pastor John. This week I’m going to tell you a little more about me. My undergraduate degree was the result of a dual major in biology and psychology. I LOVE science, and I have no problem reconciling science and faith. My faith is rooted in the creation story. Fairly soon you will all start to notice how often I refer to this ancient story or poem. God’s affinity for diversity is revealed right in the first chapter of the Bible.
We begin on day 1 with light and darkness and then there is morning and evening. But wait, what about all the levels of light and dark and the various times of day and night – daybreak, dawn, dusk, high noon, night including those moments that are pitch black and those that are filled with dim light or an orange glow?
Don’t even get me started when we get to gathering the waters, dry land, and plant life appearing! The Bible says there will be plants bearing seeds and some bearing fruit with seeds inside. Sure. OK. But what about flowers, bulbs, rhizomes like Iris or Hosta? How about legume, lichen, and fungi? I told you I love science. I was a biology major who took that Plant Life class w/ Dr. Mickle at LaSalle University. Diversity abounds in creation!
Not to mention, have you walked or looked outside recently? There’s a meme about Fall that says. “The trees are about to teach us how lovely it is to let things go.” Yes, leaves fall, but before they fall, they show us some of the beautiful diversity built into God’s creation. I noticed a row of trees the other day that had intense green leaves turning to intense red leaves – no yellow, orange, or brown. It made me appreciate that those trees must be different than those I am used to seeing in my neighborhood and on my weekly travels.
Then I was driving around Lancaster and noticed the amazing different varieties of color. I don’t mean red, yellow, orange, green, and brown. I mean the amazing shades of just yellow and the varieties of orange. Think about the trees and think about how many different colors of green the trees and plant life show us all the time. Ah… diversity!
Back to the creation story. Next, we hear about 2 great lights, one for day and one for night. We presume these are the sun and the moon, only now we know the sun is a star which is a source of energy and light, and we also know the moon isn’t a light at all. It simply reflects the sun’s light back to us. And of course, there are plenty of stars in that dome of the sky and planets that don’t even get a mention in the biblical text, planets including Pluto that sometimes has been categorized as a planet and sometimes not (a dwarf planet, really? What is that?)
Then we get waters that swarm with living things and birds that fly. What about birds that don’t fly? Penguins? Emu? Ostrich? And then we come to the Earth producing living things, livestock, crawling things, and wildlife. Last night our campground celebrated Halloween with lots of families Trick-or-Treating. The girl in the site next to us went as an Axolotl. Can anyone tell me what an Axolotl is? RESPONSE
It’s like a large salamander. It’s an Amphibian which means it crawls on land and swims in the water. It’s also a very odd creature with gills on the outside of its head. I wonder if Amphibians are so wonderfully diverse, part water creature and part land animal, that maybe they took two days to create instead of just one?
Diversity abounds within humanity as well. Let’s do some shout outs with ways diversity is often discussed regarding humans. How do you experience diversity among people?
· Ethnic, social, cultural, religious (including within and outside of Christianity, and now related to Christianity we have “dones” and “nones”), political, theological, skin color, sexual preferences, gender identities, NON-BINARY = diversity! None of these categories represent a true binary, black or white, a choice between just two things. Human beings are complex and beautiful combinations of so many attributes, characteristics, experiences, and environments.
At the end of that creation story in Genesis 1, God pronounces all that diversity “very good.”
There is plenty of diversity even within Christianity itself. Diana Butler Bass, in Christianity for the Rest of Us tells us about a pastor, Steve Jacobsen, and his church in Santa Barbara, California, Goleta Presbyterian. She writes,
“Of the five members of Steve’s leadership team, only one was born into a Presbyterian home. One was raised Catholic (but left that tradition for Buddhism as a young man), another was reared as Methodist (and became a charismatic), and the other two were brought up in nonreligious homes. Of the five, three underwent extended periods of spiritual searching. “If you were in a conversation with this group,” Steve comments, “you’d find that they have different views of how to interpret scripture and the significance of other faiths. They have different political views and opinions about key social issues…
But despite their differences, they have two things in common: they have come to the door of this particular church and stayed, and, if you listen to them tell their stories as I have, you would be persuaded that God’s Spirit has been leading them and forming them for a very long time.” (p. 144-155)
Bass continues to share about how this congregation handles Bible study. They believe that everyone has a piece of the puzzle, and when they come to the end of their study or conversation, everyone is blessed by the encounter. Then the author shares their beautiful, renewed vision, “Goleta Presbyterian Church is a place where people of many backgrounds and ages encounter a God that is alive, personal, powerful, and full of love for all people.” The congregation commits itself, among other things, to active participation in God’s work in the world and “the creation of a healthy, multicultural community.” (p. 147) Anyone else besides me want to attend a church like that?
Throughout scripture, God is a God who delights in diversity. Not only did God create plants and animals of every kind, God also creates human beings in God’s own diverse image. What seems like a simple binary, male and female, is not quite so simple. At a conference last weekend, I heard someone refer to God as the original He/She/They. Jesus’ physical body was male, and the Spirit is referred to as female in both Hebrew and Greek. Then God is also One and Three – at the same time, so one could say “They”. God is singular or wholeness and yet also relationship or community all rolled into One. That is the point the author is trying to make; it takes diversity or difference to make community.
Let’s look at some more diversity in scripture. Israel is made up of 12 tribes, not just 1 or 2, and these tribes are commanded to bless all the earth’s people. The father of Israel, Abraham, receives 3 promises – people (many descendants), land, and that this great nation that will come from him will be blessed to be a blessing. Abraham is told that all nations will be blessed through him and his descendants that number the stars of the sky or the grains of sand, depending on which chapter and verses of scripture you are reading. Even the Bible is diverse in how it tells a single story, sometimes with multiple versions of the same story written by different authors, at different times, to different audiences, and so with different purposes.
Jesus embodied the love of God for all people. He welcomed children, sinners, tax collectors, fishermen, women, thieves, traitors, Roman soldiers, faithful Jews, lepers, those who were deaf and blind, the poor and the outcast. (p. 149) Jesus never called people to “Come and become just like the rest of us.” He did have people follow him through their attraction to his promise of healing, transformation, and love. He promised to show people “the way of life.” He did not say that we would be alike; but that rather despite our differences, we would all be changed by love. Jesus invites us all to come and live inside that life-changing love. John 15:9 reminds us “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.” (NRSV) Love is what opens the way for people – and makes it possible for us to model the dream of God’s shalom.
Paul also speaks of diversity that somehow comes together and works together. In Galatians, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (3:28). In 1 Corinthians Paul speaks of varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit, varieties of services, but the same Lord; varieties of activities, but the same God who activates them all in everyone (12:4-6) and reminds us, the body does not consist of one member but of many parts and God intends that there is no dissension within the body, but that the members care for one another (12:14 and 25)
What are Christians to do with all this diversity? Our humanness wants sameness and as we get older often this desire becomes stronger. Do you notice yourself longing for things to be the way they once were or to just stay the same?
But nothing stays the same. Things continue to evolve, change, mature, die and be renewed. We are called to do more than simply observe diversity. We are called to intentionally include, love, and serve all, especially those who are different than us because this is what God does. God loves the other - us! We are the other in that relationship. We are not God!
Building community based on inclusion, love, and service changes the world. Difference breeds hatred and then someone allows us to mistreat others, those not like us. As Christians we cannot tolerate hurt and harm. That means we must continually learn about the hurt & harm we cannot see that we are blind to. That will take lots of listening. Listening to one another and treating each other with respect. It looks like people with different experiences and differing points of view speaking up and being given the time and space to have their voices heard.
Arguing, conflict, and disagreeing can be productive when we are committed to conversation and discussion. Tod Bolsinger at our Next Level training this Thursday told us we need to be committed to the same purpose. I look forward to all of us at Mt Salem moving in the same direction, together. I hope we can agree that following Jesus is not about us, that when we gave our life to Christ, the church stopped being about us and started being about that promise made to Abraham, about how God uses every one of our lives to bless others.
Talking with each other, being in community, is about more than winning. We don’t get extra heavenly points for inclusion or a bigger room in the heavenly mansion because we have one friend who is a person of color. Diversity and community may be how we get each other through the losses we will inevitably face as things change because change is loss.
Diversity is not just a matter of tolerating or accepting difference; it’s appreciating differences, receiving the blessings that difference brings. Tolerating & accepting equals simply acknowledging people, things, situations exist. This does not mean you are making room for those differences and welcoming them into your community and more importantly your life. Let ask ourselves this week how we can expand our welcome of and engagement with difference.
Here's how diversity shows up in our scripture reading this morning. The prophet Joel shares a vision of diversity that involves sons and daughters, old men and young men, male and female, and not only free people, but those who are slaves as well. Beautiful diversity, even in the OT. In our NT scripture we have a story about a Pharisee and a tax collector, two very different people with different lifestyles. This parable reminds us that sometimes the person we think is the upstanding member of society is not the most upstanding person in God’s realm. Diversity helps us practice the non-judgmental stance this text is encouraging. The beautiful thing diversity allows us to see through this text is that both the Pharisee and the tax collector are both IN the temple. Neither is excluded, told he should not be there or that he should not come back. God’s kingdom includes both the Pharisee and the tax collector, the sinner and those who think we are saints. We are all welcome in this loving relationship.
Difference and diversity certainly make life more interesting. Diversity allows us to bless more people because you have gifts that I don’t have. Diversity is definitely more fun! Diversity is part of God’s plan, always has been and it’s the way things will always be. Diversity in the here and now allows us to practice loving all that God has created and when we open ourselves up to the blessing of diversity, we get a foretaste of heaven.
In Revelation we hear “There was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages… they fell on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, singing, ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever!” (Rev 7:9, 11-12)
May it be so! Amen.