Sermon for the 10 th Sunday after Trinity, August 16, 2009
“ Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. ”
E Pluribus Unum reads the motto on our dollar bill's mysterious back-side design, on a ribbon flying from the mouth of the eagle on the Great Seal. In its talons hang an olive branch and thirteen arrows. You don't mess with this bird. The flip side of the seal is the pyramid with the all-seeing eye and other oddities, but let's get back to the Latin. E Pluribus Unum means out of many one . It was the idea of the thirteen American colonies to unite into one mighty nation. Divided they knew they would fall, or in the words of Ben Franklin, “We must hang together, gentlemen, else we shall most assuredly hang separately.” Out of many one. The United States. It was a concept that would be tested, over and again, and a great Civil War fought as a terrible price to maintain our union.
The many peoples who have fled across oceans to take refuge here are of every race, creed and tongue. That creates certain problems of assimilation and reorientation from their cultures to our own that are both difficult and worthwhile. Were we merely a nation of former English subjects, ‘twould be a poorer one for want of African, French, German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and now Middle Eastern immigrants. What would America offer the world of music without its black members' contributions? How would our secret communications have gone in WWII without the wind talkers , Navajos simply speaking their native tongue to foil our enemies? Scientific genius has particularly blessed the Hungarian race, and the many talents and accomplishments of our Jewish citizens are impossible to deny. We are a richer nation for joining many races of people under a single flag, and a seal that reads E Pluribus Unum.
Thus, diversity is one of our strengths. I've noticed that feature in our Chico Police force. There have been some municipal or state police forces that aimed to create a type for their cops, men who look pretty much the same, talk alike, dress and act uniformly. That united impersonal front to law enforcement is seen in some regimes to be the imperturbable face of the state. Chico would seem the opposite. Men and women of various racial backgrounds, of very large to very slight build, married, single: a bag of mixed nuts , it seems to me. Each one brings special skills, a very distinct personality, a different approach to solving problems. And you know what? When the chips are down, they all have the same training and they pull those many skills together to stop the threat and bring in the bad guys. What seems like the squad room on Barney Miller gels into one effective law enforcement unit when called upon. Even the chaplains seem like part of the effort. And we're a bag of mixed nuts for sure.
Diversity is being taught in our schools along with concepts of multiculturalism, inclusivity, sensitivity, equity and justice . These are good words. Sometimes the theme presented behind these words is less good. America was once touted to be a melting pot, meaning many races and ethnicities coming together and amalgamated, unified like homogenation blends cream into milk. Diversity teaches that such blending does harm to the cream, to members of the various races, and that we need to allow them to keep their cultural identities, values, practices, languages and laws—while residing in our nation as equal members. This is a most difficult, if not impossible tightrope to walk. We've seen the tragedy of such separateness in the tribal reservation system of the American Indians. We watch with horror the violence of the breakup of the Balkan States. The melting pot may oversimplify our national unity, but multiculturalism would disunify us to an extent I'd hate to imagine. We need a common language , to begin with. A young person stuck with only Hmong or Spanish in Chico is disadvantaged. It's also been suggested that Moslem immigrants be allowed to retain Sharia law, the Koranic legal system they had in more severely administered Islamic nations . I would remind them that under such law, they kill sisters who convert to Christianity and may marry up to four wives. What puts one American in prison would be permissible for another from Iraq. But this hides a deeper problem.
Diversity teachings of today seek to eliminate any effective system of morality or ethics, particularly Judeo-Christian ethics. Several years ago some evil young men fire-bombed a Jewish center in Sacramento alleging white Christian supremacy. I joined pastors in Chico to present a letter to Temple Beth Israel here saluting them and assuring them that we, the Christians of this community, only extended love and friendship to them and would defend them at all cost. This helped create a friendship between me and the synagogue's first rabbi, Moshe. He was heading up a tolerance task force under the Interfaith Council, and sought to have me bring the tolerance concept to our Pastor's Prayer fellowship as well. I told Rabbi Moshe, “There will be a problem to overcome here, Moshe. Tolerance is a blank check. It's fine if we all know what we're tolerating, but when it's undefined, I doubt any pastor will sign his name to it—fearing it may tie him to underwriting lifestyles that his religion says are immoral. It will seem to them a compromise. In this way it's a step too far . In another way it's a step not far enough , because we are not commanded by Jesus to tolerate, but to love. We are commanded to love even our enemies.” Moshe was surprised. “Well,” he said, “we're not commanded to love our enemies, but to hate them.” I smiled. “You see, we may not wish to tolerate a person's sexual orientation, because it's called by God an abomination.” He was nodding agreement with me now. I went on, “But we have to love him anyway, seeking his cure and his turning away from sin.”
True godly diversity, therefore, is the product of our Creator. It makes room for wonderful variables of nature, wildly different species, colorful birds, crazy looking apes, the giraffe, hippo, gazelle, and tiger. It makes people tall or short, pinkish-white, black, and shades of brown, blond, redhead, brown or black haired, beardless or shaggy, gifted in nature-lore or cosmopolitan. We bring a lot to the table, but we must agree on a common cause. There will not be a Buddhist heaven, but Buddhists and Hindus and Moslems may come to Christ's home, if as His subjects they are redeemed the same way we are.
St. Paul wrote of diversity to the faithful in Corinth, seeking to unify believers when variations of spiritual gifts and claims were threatening the Church's unity. First : if a person calls Jesus Lord , they do so by the Holy Spirit and thus are under His influence. If they are, the various gifts and spiritual offerings that each one brings is of God, and do not divide them from those who may not exhibit the same signs. “ Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.” This is a very important statement. One Spirit unifies the Church, even if earthly eyes see only division. Some speak in tongues, others don't. Some prophesy, others delve the scriptures to prove their doctrines. Some worship liturgically as we do, others very informally with soft rock bands. (Some churches even allow guitars and electric basses!) Different administrations today are seen in national and international denominations with hierarchical order, to loosely associated churches with local control, to fiercely independent churches going it alone, and even house churches staying out of the confusion and the fray. Such house churches are the only way in countries ruled by oppressive governments. In any case, if Jesus is truly Lord in these variations , the Spirit presents the truth to them also, and in truth , they are one with every other . The same God works all in all.
St. Paul then says something very important, for this isn't toleration . We can't simply say everything done by people calling themselves Christian is okay with God . That's nonsense. St. Paul's phrase: the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal could be more clearly translated today, “within this diversity, the many and varied ways that the Spirit of God displays His rich abundant gifts in individual members is proven to be His by the fact that they bring benefit to all the members.” If an alleged gift is harmful to the Body of Christ, the Church has concluded for many centuries, that this is not of the Holy Spirit at all. It may be snake handling or baptizing the dead, cults of personality or stockpiling personal treasures, ordaining homosexuals or performing same sex rituals: all such have been shown to be destructive to the fabric of the whole Body. We conclude this is not the Spirit of God. Diversity has its outer boundaries, beyond which is error and disaster.
Jesus cried over Jerusalem. He knew it would be leveled to the ground in forty years, and only because when the Son of God entered in, they would not receive Him. And why? Were they too narrow, or too diverse? In a way they were both, and it would serve us to know what the trouble was. They were narrowed by the ways they had interpreted the prophecies of Messiah, and would not receive Jesus as fulfillment of their dreams because of their prior assumptions. But they were also in deep error and divergent practice , for they allowed what was almost a circus in the Temple, with a scam operation of selling certified sacrificial animals and a coin exchange that robbed believers to the enrichment of the priests. They were not too pure to recognize Messiah: they were too corrupt.
Look out upon the American landscape of people of foreign origin, even other religions—but not as a threat to our lifestyle. That was the attitude toward the Irish, Polish, Italian, Hispanic, Asian, African and even indigenous peoples who entered our society in the past. Who would want an America without these strains of our cultural wealth? But see the newcomers as a field white to harvest, once distant, now close by, to share with them the wonders of Jesus Christ and the glory of His kingdom, meant for them as surely as it is for you and me.
PFH+