August 20, 2017 Psalm 139:13 16 Galatians 3:23 29 Sermon: Banner Series: Embrace Diversity So, I will be completely honest with you. I had written a completely different sermon for today s topic. And, like always, I read it to Alan and he gave it a thumbs up. So I was already to preach it, that other sermon on Embracing Diversity. But then, I had a dream. Now, I don t dream a lot or I probably should say I don t remember dreams a lot but this week, I had a dream that was calling me to a completely different sermon. Now, this was not just one night. I dreamed about this alternative sermon 3 nights in a row. So, after waking up yesterday morning, after the third time dreaming about this sermon, I decided I would try to write the sermon of the dream and see whether it was any good or not. I mean, how do you know if God s still small voice is speaking to you? So, here goes I think it was the reading from Paul s letter to the Galatians that got me started down this alternative path. Because in it Paul says, For in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And I think it s just as important to know WHO is writing this as are the words themselves, because it s Paul who is writing this. 1
And here s why I believe that s so important. Paul was a Jew, an educated member of the elite. He was a Pharisee. Now in the time of Jesus, there were four kinds of Jews the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes and the Fourth Philosophy. And Paul was a card-carrying member of the Pharisees. They were Jews who were very concerned with the Law that is, all the laws set down in Hebrew scriptures the first five books of our bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. And they were not very tolerant of others who did not agree with their way of understanding God and the world in which they lived. The Pharisees were an intolerant bunch of folks and Paul was at the top of the pile of intolerance. Not only did he not approve of other ways of understanding God and God s hopes for creation, Paul set himself up as a judge of others who did not ascribe to his way of seeing things. So basically, Paul was a Pharisse supremacist. I made up that word of course, but you know what I mean. Folks who believed that the Pharisees were not only right, everyone else was wrong but that the Pharisees were better than everyone else. And It was up to Paul to take care of what he viewed as blasphemy. Paul was a bigot who did not shy away from taking steps against others who were not likewise minded. So, Paul was there when a group of Jews, perhaps Pharisees themselves we don t know, scripture does not help us with that point, but it was a group of Jews who stoned Stephen to death, the first Christian martyr. Paul was there, giving his approval of this act of domestic terrorism. Stephen was one of the very early Christians who were preaching about Jesus his death and resurrection and all the things that Jesus had taught during his ministry. And Stephan was killed because he had the nerve 2
to suggest that Jesus, was the Messiah that the Jews had been waiting for. Paul viewed this as blasphemy and he saw no problem with stoning Stephen to death, even though the Law that he was so keen on, clearly stated, Thou shalt not kill. But then, Paul has a literal Come to Jesus moment. He was travelling to Damascus, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord we are told in the book of Acts. He was going to another city where a congregation of Christians was preaching about Jesus and Paul couldn t let them do that. So he set out for this other city, where he did not live, to persecute some more Christians there. But then he was struck down by a vision of the risen Christ. He experienced a real born again moment as Jesus himself asks him, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Well, you know what happens. Paul is so changed by his vision of the Risen Christ that he completely changes his life. He is moved to dedicate the rest of his life to converting people, any people, all people to the Good News of Jesus Christ. His notions about the supremacy of the Pharisees goes out the window. And what we have left of his ministry, are the letters that he wrote to the churches that he established all around the middle east. Which brings me to the passage we heard read from Paul s letter to the Galatians, once again. In it, we hear Paul say that There is no longer Jew or Greek. That is a profound statement. Because in Paul s world, there were only Jews and Gentiles whom he refers to as Greeks. And he is telling the people of the church in Galacia to stop discriminating against the Gentile members of the congregation. Embrace diversity. Greek lives matter. You are all ONE in Christ Jesus. This is Paul s message to that church and this is Paul s message to us today. 3
Embrace diversity. So, here we are today, part of a church that takes the injunction to Embrace Diversity as one of the statements that defines how we should BE THE CHURCH. It seems so obvious to me in light of what we know about Paul and his born again moment. Paul went from being a Pharisitic supremacist to being a champion for diversity. And that should have been it. Embracing of all of God s people should have become the standard practice of all churches who follow Jesus and read Paul. But we all know that over the centuries that the church has been the church, embracing diversity has not always been among the top ten things that the church would use to describe itself. Wars have been fought over who is or is not a part of this church or that. But, we have more than just Paul s word about diversity. We have God s creation to provide us with the understanding that we should embrace diversity. We know that in God s creation, diversity abounds. We know that difference is much more the norm in nature than identicalness is. That in the creation of DNA, God has provided a way for our world to be the ever-changing, mind-blowingly diverse place it is all the time. And that s not just diversity of all the different species of animals and plants. We know that creation is diverse within those species. It reminds me of the fish tank at Smilow Cancer Hospital. Most of you know that my husband, Alan, has been battling lung cancer for a couple of years now and we ve been spending every other Friday at Smilow Cancer Hospital for him to get his treatments. And, on the eighth floor, there is a fishtank. There is one fish in the tank that I take a picture of every time we re there. I then text it to my children 4
and give them an update on their Dad s condition. We ve named this fish Bucky, because of his buck teeth. But Bucky is only one of many fish in the tank and while they are all fish, they are a very diverse collection of fish. You can t get much more diverse than these guys. I think that if we spend time looking around God s creation, we see so many more instances where creation embraces diversity. No two snowflakes are alike. No two fingerprints are alike. No two leaves are alike. God s creation, that God declared to be GOOD, is naturally diverse and its diversity makes for a much more interesting, dynamic creation. We can see it all around us every day. And it seems to me, that when we humans insist on sameness, we are working against the very way that God created our world to be. In Paul s letter to the church in Galatia, we see that Paul was trying to help that early group of Christians to understand that they were no longer to separate themselves according to the man-made labels that society created. 27 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 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. But, you know, while we usually think of the diversity of people when we hear a statement like, Embrace Diversity, I think that in our UCC, part of being the church has to do with other ways in which we are diverse, other ways in which we embrace diversity. I really appreciate the way the UCC encourages us to embrace a diversity of belief. We are not all required to raise our right hands and state that we believe this or that. We come together as fellow travelers on the journey of faith, 5
each with our own understanding of what we believe. I think that as a group, we, most of us, believe in a creator God, who created all this I think that most of us understand Jesus to be the Son of God whatever that phrase might mean to you. And I think the most of us understand that God s Holy Spirit is with us still, working in our lives for good. Beyond that, I think our beliefs may vary quite a bit and that s okay. I think that over the course of a lifetime, as we learn and grow and experience life, our beliefs will change. And because we are part of this denomination that embraces a diversity of belief, we don t have to leave and find somewhere else to go. As your pastor, I have definite ideas about what it is I believe and I preach and pray and sing and worship out of those beliefs, but you don t have to accept what I say. You are free to read scripture, engage God in whatever way you do, and come to your own conclusions. We don t have creeds that we are all required to believe. In fact, the UCC accepts the Nicene Creed and the Apostles Creed as testimonies of faith, rather than as tests of faith. I had a woman in my congregation a few of churches ago, who told me that there were parts of the Nicene Creed that she did not agree with, but that she recited them along with everyone else in the sanctuary on those days when that was part of the service because, she said, as a part of the entire cloud of witnesses, standing together and making that statement, she was sure that someone in the sanctuary believed the things that she did not, and she figured that she believed some stuff that others in the group didn t and yet, they could all embrace the whole thing together. And I thought, Wow! that really is understanding oneself truly as a member of the Body of Christ, the diverse, dynamic, powerfully together Body of Christ. I believe that when we Embrace Diversity, we embrace all of God s creation, we embrace one another and understand ourselves to be members of Christ s Body, 6
living, loving and serving in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. 7