This past week I had the honor and privilege of being
in community with sixty-eight young people and twenty other adults. Together we formed a community, beginning with our camp
orientation last Sunday afternoon, up to and including our Closing Celebration on Friday evening. But even though we were
only together the better part of six days, our sense of community and belonging to each other preceded our arrival at the
campground, and continues now that we have left it and are scattered all over the place. Even though we are only together
one week out of the year, we still have a sense of belonging to each other, a common purpose, common values and a shared history.
Yet, at the same time, we share a mutual respect for one another which allows for differences among us, diversity of being
and expression, and we nurture those qualities in each person which makes us each to be unique and distinct individuals.
It has been my experience that we as human beings have a tendency
to form our sense of community around our sameness, leaving little room for diversity and individuality. This is a sad way
of forming community, because it loses the enriching possibilities which come about by embracing diversity and individuality.
In today’s reading from Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, we hear him continuing to lay out the groundwork for building
a community which establishes a common purpose and yet embraces diversity.
One of the fascinating things about reading the Letters of Paul (or any of the other New Testament Epistles) is that
we are only able to see one side of what was no doubt a two-way correspondence. We have to read between the lines in order
to make sense of the words on the page and use deductive reasoning to establish the context in which the letter was written.
But in Galatians, we can deduce fairly easy what had been going on before Paul penned the words which we read today –
words which Paul wrote in large letters in his own hand, no doubt to drive home his point!
It would seem that after Paul had been in Galatia and had done some work with the church
there – perhaps even founding it – some other followers of Jesus had come to the Galatian Church, and had been
teaching them that in order to be a follower of Jesus, they had to first be circumcised and embrace the practices of Jewish
Law and ritual. This was, apparently, in direct opposition to what Paul had been teaching them. His message was that the Gentiles
– that is, those who were not born or raised with a Jewish identity – were to be included in the community of
faith, just as they were.
This was a radical message
for a Jewish rabbi to be spreading around. But Paul believed sincerely that this radical message of inclusivity which he preached
and wrote about was the same radical message which had been taught by Jesus of Nazareth. This radical message of all people
being called into the same community of faith was implied in today’s Gospel reading, in which Jesus sends out seventy
disciples to proclaim the kingdom of God. You see, the number of people sent reflects the ancient Greco-Roman understanding
of how many known countries there were at that point in human history. So the idea of there being seventy disciples sent to
proclaim the kingdom of God is tantamount to saying that this Good News is for all nations of the world, regardless of their
race, language, or culture.
Although this inclusive
view of the community of faith was one which was considered to be radical during the lifetimes of Jesus and Paul, it was by
no means a new concept. Throughout the Hebrew Bible, there are stories of the community of God’s faithful people both
welcoming and desiring people of all nations to be included. Today’s story from Second Kings, about Namaan from Aram,
is one such example. In it we read that this general of an enemy army – one which had defeated Israel in battle –
was offered healing by the God of Israel through the prophet Elisha. In fact, in the verses which follow this story, Namaan
declares himself to be a convert from the gods of his homeland to a follower of Yahweh, the God of Israel.
It is truly amazing that despite such vivid examples found in our Bible – and
in the sacred writings of other faith traditions – that we as human beings have such difficulty embracing diversity
into our understanding of community, particularly in terms of the community of faith. It is often said that the hour in which
worship takes place on a Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in any town, with people flocking to their house of worship
while simultaneously flocking to a community of sameness. This is not what the Good News is meant to be about.
This impoverished sense of community which is established through
a lack of diversity is also one with which we grapple as a nation. The neighborhoods of our towns and cities often reflect
racial and ethnic sameness; and those of us who are of predominantly European descent have a history of doing our best to
keep those of other racial, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds somewhere “over there” away from our neighborhoods.
And it is this false sense of community-building by means of sameness and exclusion which has brought us as a nation to where
we are on any number of immigration issues. We tend to forget that the only people who didn’t immigrate into the United
States were the peoples of the Native Nations who were here when our ancestors came and took the land from them. In a true
sense, we in this country are all immigrants from diverse origins, but we choose to forget that in order to form a false sense
of community which stands over and against diversity and inclusivity.
Our spiritual tradition, as articulated by Jesus and Paul, is to form community which is not only built up around
a common purpose, but which also embraces diversity and inclusion. And it is also part of our spiritual tradition to work
for the spread of those values into the context of our daily living and to advocate for diversity and inclusivity in our national
and political contexts as an issue of justice. And whenever or wherever we witness injustice, it is part of our spiritual
heritage and tradition to speak out against those systems whereby oppression is empowered to stand over and against diversity
and inclusivity.
Today is the Fourth of July, the
day which our nation calls Independence Day. And even though we are gathered here today to celebrate the Sixth Sunday after
Pentecost, and not our country’s birthday, today’s readings provide for us an opportunity to reflect on how we
form community – whether it be the community of faith, or the community of our nation. Are we embracing people who need
healing, regardless of where they are from? Are we open to diversity? Do we open our doors and our borders to everyone, or
do we build walls to keep certain people out? Are we willing to share the refuge we have found with others, or are we trying
to hoard it? These questions are for all of us to consider today – both as members of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church,
and as citizens of the United States. The truths which we hold to be self-evident in the spiritual realm – the truths
of inclusivity and hospitality – are the same truths which we hold to be self-evident in our nation: life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness for all people.
In his
letter to the Galatians, Paul reminded those early Christians of the ancient spiritual admonition that one reaps what one
sows. In a previous set of verses, he contrasted the life of the flesh with the life of the Spirit – contentiousness
versus love. In today’s passage he urges us to consider sowing and reaping in the Spirit by putting no barrier or obstacle
between ourselves and those who would like to join together with us – no matter who they are. Perhaps we could use this
as a lens to help us see our way toward a renewing of self-evident truths within our civic life as well.
In closing, I wish to offer a prayer which a friend shared with me from Sojourners magazine.
It speaks of our need to embrace a radical life of hospitality in both our spiritual and civic lives, and it challenges us
all to live into bringing about the kingdom of God, and to look for the Good News in all people. Let us pray.
God
of the sojourner, the immigrant, the foreigner, may we show your welcome to these weary travelers just as you welcomed us.
May we speak boldly against oppression of the immigrants among us, loving them as ourselves, for it is what you would have
us do. We pray for courage and conviction for ourselves as well as our political leaders. May we all stand firmly on the side
of those who are unjustly marginalized, repressed, and scapegoated, defending the image of God in every human being. Amen.
