Seeking the Beloved Community
Matt 15:21-2
February 21, 2010
The Rev. T. Richard Snyder
Today is the first Sunday in Lent, a time in which we acknowledge and repent of our sins. Thirty some years ago, the psychiatrist Karl Menniger asked the troubling question, “Whatever became of sin?” Certainly it is not something we hear much about nor is it a subject most of us seek out. We’re not much of a “sackcloth and ashes” people. But Lent invites us to look hard at ourselves and acknowledge where we have failed to be faithful to our high calling. If I were preaching a full Lenten series, there are any number of sins that would probably be worth our attention and were I to preach about them, I’m certain we could successfully reduce the number of persons attending by a significant number. But, lucky you, I have just today so I’d like to focus on what I consider to be one of the most tragic failures facing our world today, the sin of division.
We live in a world that is deeply divided. Tribal divisions have led to unimaginable genocides. Religious divisions have led to wars and terrorism. Economic divisions have resulted in abject poverty and death. Ideological divisions have left our nation mired in distrust and balkanization We are witnesses to a federal government that is paralyzed by political separation so severe that it has resulted in the failure to put the common good first. It is not a pretty picture.
February not only brings us Lent, it also brings us Black History Month. It is perhaps fitting that the two coincide, since we are reminded of the painful legacy of a nation divided by the sin of racism. Tragically, racism has been part of the warp and woof of our national fabric since our beginning and, despite significant gains, remains one of the most pressing issues confronting our nation today.
But it is not only the tragedy of racism that we acknowledge this month, it is also the courage and vision of those who have fought for equal justice for all--none more so that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. At the heart of his extraordinary courage and tenacity was a vision of what he called “the beloved community.” Despite the lynchings, the dogs, the fire hoses, the bombings, and the beatings, King’s vision was for a society in which all were treated with respect as kin to one another. In a book written near the end of his life, entitled, Chaos or Community: Where Do We Go From Here? he said, "all life is interrelated…We are inevitably our brother’s keeper because we are our brother’s brother. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly."
The sin of division calls forth the vision of a beloved community. But what would the beloved community look like?
Everyone needs community because we are social beings. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we often seek for community among those who are pretty much the same as we are.
Since the earliest days of our nation’s history, people have been separated by ethnicity, religion, race and class. One of the most egregious of these separations was that between whites and blacks for which there were laws prohibiting blacks from living where whites lived, from congregating where whites congregated, from attending schools where whites studied, from eating where whites ate. Then came the civil rights movement and the end to legal segregation.
Unfortunately, that did not end segregation. In the more than fifty years since Brown versus the Board of Education ended segregated schools, more children today attend segregated schools than ever before. The reason for this is that even though there is no legal segregation, the majority of whites have tended to live separate from blacks and other people of color.
The consequences of segregation for both blacks and whites have been devastating. For blacks, it has meant second class citizenship resulting in poverty, fragmented community and nihilism. For whites is has meant cultural deprivation leaving us with stereotypes, an unfounded sense of superiority, and fear.
In the shadow of that legacy, I’d like us to catch the vision of the beloved community. And rather focusing on the terrifying international divisions that confront us or the systemic racism that remains endemic to our society I’d like to bring us home here to Maine and the Midcoast region that we all have claimed as our community. How can we share in building the beloved community right here?
A year and a half ago Scott Stossel reported in the NY Times that during the last decade, 100 million Americans have moved—my wife and I as well as some of you are among that number. Interestingly, they point out, a significant number of those who move cluster in increasingly homogeneous communities. We moved from metropolitan New York, with its immense diversity to this whitest of states and to the mid-coast where we find ourselves among those who are similarly privileged economically, educationally and culturally. Unfortunately, this tendency toward homogeneity is a troubling development that is driving us farther away from the Beloved Community.
Jill Saxby put me on to a very interesting recent book that analyses this phenomenon. It’s entitled, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart. “We have built a country,” the authors write, “where everyone can choose the neighbors (and church and news shows) most compatible with his or her lifestyle and beliefs. And we are living with the consequences of this segregation by way of life: pockets of like-minded citizens that have become so ideologically inbred that we don’t know, can’t understand, and can barely conceive of ‘those people’ who live just a few miles away.”
The result of this separation, they say is that “Mixed company moderates; like-minded company polarizes. Heterogeneous communities restrain group excesses; homogeneous communities march toward the extremes.”
Clearly our current political scene underscores the dysfunctionality and dangers of this kind of separation.
But is the problem just “them”? Let me pose the question, Is this church part of the problem? Am I part of the problem? Are you part of the problem? Do we live with the same kind of myopia and closed minds that Bishop and Cushing describe in The Big Sort?
When I ask the question of myself, in all honesty I must admit that I am far more comfortable being with like-minded folks. I tend to watch MSNBC but not Fox News. I read the Nation but not the National Review.
But it goes further. I have sometimes demonized George W. Bush and Dick Cheney whom, ironically, I criticized for demonizing others. I have often reduced those who advocate for the free market to be simply greedy people who don’t care about the poor. I have found it difficult to find common ground with religious fundamentalists who believe many things I find inconceivable or even deleterious. I am infuriated by those who stand in the way of gay marriage, immigration reform and environmental protection and consider them to be out of touch with the pain of the oppressed. And in my rejection of those with whom I vehemently disagree I have often refused to even consider that they might have something to offer that is truthful or helpful for the common good. I could go on, but you get the point.
Do not misunderstand me. I am not a free market advocate, I don’t even care very much for the Democratic Party and consider myself more of a democratic socialist. I am not a fundamentalist but rather a rather free thinking seeker of truth within the broad Christian tradition. But that does not mean that I have all the truth or that I do not need those who disagree with me in the search for the common good, for the beloved community, for a world community of peace, justice and equality. I do need them. And they need me.
The problem is not just me, or us, of course. It takes two to tango and the barriers have been erected by those on the other side of the divide as well. But if we simply remain barricaded against the onslaughts of our adversaries and those with whom we strongly disagree, can there be any hope?
If we never listen to one another, never put ourselves at each other’s disposal, what hope is there?
That’s why I love the story we read this morning about Jesus and the Canaanite woman who came to him seeking healing for her daughter. The Jews and Canaanites were historic enemies. The stories of the exodus tradition in the Hebrew scripture portray Canaan as the land to be conquered by those who escaped bondage in Egypt and the Canaanites are portrayed as the mortal enemy of the Jews. So when Jesus is approached by a Canaanite woman to heal her son, he completely ignores her, as if she were invisible. His disciples want to go one step further, asking him to send her away, to openly reject her. Jesus then tells her that the reason he won’t help her is because he cares only about the Jews. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” When the woman persists, he insults her, telling her it isn’t fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs. To refer to her as a dog was a brutal insult. But her response turns Jesus around. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table. He then recants, acknowledges her faith, and heals her daughter.
If you look at the movement in this short story you see that Jesus begins as one caught up in the ideology of his culture—the Canaanites are our foes and we should not engage with them. But instead of remaining silent, he shares what he believes—I’m only to be concerned for Israel. This opens up the possibility of further dialogue from her as she pleads her case. His disappointing response is to insult her and deny the legitimacy of her request, but because they are at least talking, he is able to hear her more clearly and is moved by her further words. In the end, they come together in concern for the sick girl. Because they overcame their separation, healing could occur.
One of the more powerful films I’ve seen in a while Is Invictus, the story of Nelson Mandela’s strategic plan to unite the bitterly divided whites and people of color of South Africa by galvanizing the nation around the World Rugby championship. What is most clear throughout the story is the way in which Mandela was willing to listen to those who disagreed with him—indeed, even those who imprisoned him and killed his people. At the same time he forthrightly sharedd his own commitments even when others disagreed, and he did not give up when easy solutions did not emerge. It is a remarkable and unfinished story and I encourage all of you to see it, or better still, read the book on which it is based, entitled Playing the Enemy.
So let’s bring this home. How can we as a church break out of our safe haven and reach out to those with whom we are in disagreement? If Jesus can open himself to the Canaanite woman, if Martin Luther King can claim even those who revile him as his brother or sister, if Mandela can embrace the Africaners who oppressed his people for decades, can we find ways to reach out to those with whom we disagree?
Can we find ways to try to begin conversation with those churches that are against gay marriage without relegating them to hell? Can we find ways to work with those whose response to the economic crisis is to cut benefits? Can we reach out to those who support the Zionists or military expansionism?
The tradition of Judaism and Christianity tell us we ought to try. The book of Leviticus says that we are to love our neighbor as our self and Jesus says that all the law is summed up in two commandments, love the Lord your God with all you heart and your neighbor as yourself. What would it mean to love the neighbor we don’t know, or fear, or with whom we vehemently disagree?
Simone Weil said that “the love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, "What are you going through?" What if we were to make this our starting point with those with whom we disagree or of whom we are afraid? What if we tried to understand their heart, to understand why they feel and think as they do? What if, instead of “what’s the matter with you?” we asked, “what are you going through?”
To do so does not mean giving up what we believe and care about. But it does mean being open to listen, to learn, and possibly to change. As a radical activist in the sixties, the police were pigs to me, Castro could do nor wrong, the South was a land of unmitigated racists writ large, and all those who agreed with me were the good guys.
Perhaps one of the reasons why I responded so viscerally against Bush’s division of the world into good and evil was that it touched a chord within my own history.
This isn’t easy, of course. There are psychopaths. There are policies and ideologies that harm people. There are practices that must be stopped because they bring death. To love our neighbor does not mean tolerating evil. Nor does it mean not standing up for what we believe and hope for. But it does mean treating even those with whom we disagree as kin rather than as “other”. Most of us can imagine that were a spouse or parent or child were contemplating or involved in some horrible act we would be compelled to try to prevent them, perhaps to even call in law enforcement. That is precisely what the father of the man who attempted to blow up the airplane in Detroit at Christmas did. He warned of his son’s potential behavior. But that did not stop him from loving his son, from trying to understand his motives, or from seeking his healing. The admonition to love our neighbor as our self requires that we treat them with the same love and respect and care as we would a beloved relative.
So let’s come back to the Big Sort. Are we living in the Big Sort. Does this congregation welcome and even seek those who are not just like us? Do we know what is going on in the lives of the family in the run down trailer just a mile or two away? Do we know why our impoverished neighbor whom we just know would benefit from raising taxes, votes the other way? Do we know why some of our neighbors who are the most harmed by pollution are opposed to environmental protection? Do we know why some members of the church ignore us or treat us perfunctorily? Do we know why the people who swear at those protesting our war policies are so belligerent? Or do we just know that all these people are wrongheaded and we need to set them straight?
Let me repeat the words of Simone Weil.
The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, "What are you going through?" What if we were to make this our starting point with those in this congregation and those in the community with whom we disagree or of whom we are afraid?
What are you going through?
The goal of the beloved community begins with this small question.
First Congregational Church, U.C.C. 55 Elm Street, Camden, ME 04843
Phone: 207-236-4821 Fax: 207-236-4822 EMAIL: conchurch@verizon.net
Matt 15:21-2
February 21, 2010
The Rev. T. Richard Snyder
Today is the first Sunday in Lent, a time in which we acknowledge and repent of our sins. Thirty some years ago, the psychiatrist Karl Menniger asked the troubling question, “Whatever became of sin?” Certainly it is not something we hear much about nor is it a subject most of us seek out. We’re not much of a “sackcloth and ashes” people. But Lent invites us to look hard at ourselves and acknowledge where we have failed to be faithful to our high calling. If I were preaching a full Lenten series, there are any number of sins that would probably be worth our attention and were I to preach about them, I’m certain we could successfully reduce the number of persons attending by a significant number. But, lucky you, I have just today so I’d like to focus on what I consider to be one of the most tragic failures facing our world today, the sin of division.
We live in a world that is deeply divided. Tribal divisions have led to unimaginable genocides. Religious divisions have led to wars and terrorism. Economic divisions have resulted in abject poverty and death. Ideological divisions have left our nation mired in distrust and balkanization We are witnesses to a federal government that is paralyzed by political separation so severe that it has resulted in the failure to put the common good first. It is not a pretty picture.
February not only brings us Lent, it also brings us Black History Month. It is perhaps fitting that the two coincide, since we are reminded of the painful legacy of a nation divided by the sin of racism. Tragically, racism has been part of the warp and woof of our national fabric since our beginning and, despite significant gains, remains one of the most pressing issues confronting our nation today.
But it is not only the tragedy of racism that we acknowledge this month, it is also the courage and vision of those who have fought for equal justice for all--none more so that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. At the heart of his extraordinary courage and tenacity was a vision of what he called “the beloved community.” Despite the lynchings, the dogs, the fire hoses, the bombings, and the beatings, King’s vision was for a society in which all were treated with respect as kin to one another. In a book written near the end of his life, entitled, Chaos or Community: Where Do We Go From Here? he said, "all life is interrelated…We are inevitably our brother’s keeper because we are our brother’s brother. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly."
The sin of division calls forth the vision of a beloved community. But what would the beloved community look like?
Everyone needs community because we are social beings. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we often seek for community among those who are pretty much the same as we are.
Since the earliest days of our nation’s history, people have been separated by ethnicity, religion, race and class. One of the most egregious of these separations was that between whites and blacks for which there were laws prohibiting blacks from living where whites lived, from congregating where whites congregated, from attending schools where whites studied, from eating where whites ate. Then came the civil rights movement and the end to legal segregation.
Unfortunately, that did not end segregation. In the more than fifty years since Brown versus the Board of Education ended segregated schools, more children today attend segregated schools than ever before. The reason for this is that even though there is no legal segregation, the majority of whites have tended to live separate from blacks and other people of color.
The consequences of segregation for both blacks and whites have been devastating. For blacks, it has meant second class citizenship resulting in poverty, fragmented community and nihilism. For whites is has meant cultural deprivation leaving us with stereotypes, an unfounded sense of superiority, and fear.
In the shadow of that legacy, I’d like us to catch the vision of the beloved community. And rather focusing on the terrifying international divisions that confront us or the systemic racism that remains endemic to our society I’d like to bring us home here to Maine and the Midcoast region that we all have claimed as our community. How can we share in building the beloved community right here?
A year and a half ago Scott Stossel reported in the NY Times that during the last decade, 100 million Americans have moved—my wife and I as well as some of you are among that number. Interestingly, they point out, a significant number of those who move cluster in increasingly homogeneous communities. We moved from metropolitan New York, with its immense diversity to this whitest of states and to the mid-coast where we find ourselves among those who are similarly privileged economically, educationally and culturally. Unfortunately, this tendency toward homogeneity is a troubling development that is driving us farther away from the Beloved Community.
Jill Saxby put me on to a very interesting recent book that analyses this phenomenon. It’s entitled, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart. “We have built a country,” the authors write, “where everyone can choose the neighbors (and church and news shows) most compatible with his or her lifestyle and beliefs. And we are living with the consequences of this segregation by way of life: pockets of like-minded citizens that have become so ideologically inbred that we don’t know, can’t understand, and can barely conceive of ‘those people’ who live just a few miles away.”
The result of this separation, they say is that “Mixed company moderates; like-minded company polarizes. Heterogeneous communities restrain group excesses; homogeneous communities march toward the extremes.”
Clearly our current political scene underscores the dysfunctionality and dangers of this kind of separation.
But is the problem just “them”? Let me pose the question, Is this church part of the problem? Am I part of the problem? Are you part of the problem? Do we live with the same kind of myopia and closed minds that Bishop and Cushing describe in The Big Sort?
When I ask the question of myself, in all honesty I must admit that I am far more comfortable being with like-minded folks. I tend to watch MSNBC but not Fox News. I read the Nation but not the National Review.
But it goes further. I have sometimes demonized George W. Bush and Dick Cheney whom, ironically, I criticized for demonizing others. I have often reduced those who advocate for the free market to be simply greedy people who don’t care about the poor. I have found it difficult to find common ground with religious fundamentalists who believe many things I find inconceivable or even deleterious. I am infuriated by those who stand in the way of gay marriage, immigration reform and environmental protection and consider them to be out of touch with the pain of the oppressed. And in my rejection of those with whom I vehemently disagree I have often refused to even consider that they might have something to offer that is truthful or helpful for the common good. I could go on, but you get the point.
Do not misunderstand me. I am not a free market advocate, I don’t even care very much for the Democratic Party and consider myself more of a democratic socialist. I am not a fundamentalist but rather a rather free thinking seeker of truth within the broad Christian tradition. But that does not mean that I have all the truth or that I do not need those who disagree with me in the search for the common good, for the beloved community, for a world community of peace, justice and equality. I do need them. And they need me.
The problem is not just me, or us, of course. It takes two to tango and the barriers have been erected by those on the other side of the divide as well. But if we simply remain barricaded against the onslaughts of our adversaries and those with whom we strongly disagree, can there be any hope?
If we never listen to one another, never put ourselves at each other’s disposal, what hope is there?
That’s why I love the story we read this morning about Jesus and the Canaanite woman who came to him seeking healing for her daughter. The Jews and Canaanites were historic enemies. The stories of the exodus tradition in the Hebrew scripture portray Canaan as the land to be conquered by those who escaped bondage in Egypt and the Canaanites are portrayed as the mortal enemy of the Jews. So when Jesus is approached by a Canaanite woman to heal her son, he completely ignores her, as if she were invisible. His disciples want to go one step further, asking him to send her away, to openly reject her. Jesus then tells her that the reason he won’t help her is because he cares only about the Jews. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” When the woman persists, he insults her, telling her it isn’t fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs. To refer to her as a dog was a brutal insult. But her response turns Jesus around. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table. He then recants, acknowledges her faith, and heals her daughter.
If you look at the movement in this short story you see that Jesus begins as one caught up in the ideology of his culture—the Canaanites are our foes and we should not engage with them. But instead of remaining silent, he shares what he believes—I’m only to be concerned for Israel. This opens up the possibility of further dialogue from her as she pleads her case. His disappointing response is to insult her and deny the legitimacy of her request, but because they are at least talking, he is able to hear her more clearly and is moved by her further words. In the end, they come together in concern for the sick girl. Because they overcame their separation, healing could occur.
One of the more powerful films I’ve seen in a while Is Invictus, the story of Nelson Mandela’s strategic plan to unite the bitterly divided whites and people of color of South Africa by galvanizing the nation around the World Rugby championship. What is most clear throughout the story is the way in which Mandela was willing to listen to those who disagreed with him—indeed, even those who imprisoned him and killed his people. At the same time he forthrightly sharedd his own commitments even when others disagreed, and he did not give up when easy solutions did not emerge. It is a remarkable and unfinished story and I encourage all of you to see it, or better still, read the book on which it is based, entitled Playing the Enemy.
So let’s bring this home. How can we as a church break out of our safe haven and reach out to those with whom we are in disagreement? If Jesus can open himself to the Canaanite woman, if Martin Luther King can claim even those who revile him as his brother or sister, if Mandela can embrace the Africaners who oppressed his people for decades, can we find ways to reach out to those with whom we disagree?
Can we find ways to try to begin conversation with those churches that are against gay marriage without relegating them to hell? Can we find ways to work with those whose response to the economic crisis is to cut benefits? Can we reach out to those who support the Zionists or military expansionism?
The tradition of Judaism and Christianity tell us we ought to try. The book of Leviticus says that we are to love our neighbor as our self and Jesus says that all the law is summed up in two commandments, love the Lord your God with all you heart and your neighbor as yourself. What would it mean to love the neighbor we don’t know, or fear, or with whom we vehemently disagree?
Simone Weil said that “the love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, "What are you going through?" What if we were to make this our starting point with those with whom we disagree or of whom we are afraid? What if we tried to understand their heart, to understand why they feel and think as they do? What if, instead of “what’s the matter with you?” we asked, “what are you going through?”
To do so does not mean giving up what we believe and care about. But it does mean being open to listen, to learn, and possibly to change. As a radical activist in the sixties, the police were pigs to me, Castro could do nor wrong, the South was a land of unmitigated racists writ large, and all those who agreed with me were the good guys.
Perhaps one of the reasons why I responded so viscerally against Bush’s division of the world into good and evil was that it touched a chord within my own history.
This isn’t easy, of course. There are psychopaths. There are policies and ideologies that harm people. There are practices that must be stopped because they bring death. To love our neighbor does not mean tolerating evil. Nor does it mean not standing up for what we believe and hope for. But it does mean treating even those with whom we disagree as kin rather than as “other”. Most of us can imagine that were a spouse or parent or child were contemplating or involved in some horrible act we would be compelled to try to prevent them, perhaps to even call in law enforcement. That is precisely what the father of the man who attempted to blow up the airplane in Detroit at Christmas did. He warned of his son’s potential behavior. But that did not stop him from loving his son, from trying to understand his motives, or from seeking his healing. The admonition to love our neighbor as our self requires that we treat them with the same love and respect and care as we would a beloved relative.
So let’s come back to the Big Sort. Are we living in the Big Sort. Does this congregation welcome and even seek those who are not just like us? Do we know what is going on in the lives of the family in the run down trailer just a mile or two away? Do we know why our impoverished neighbor whom we just know would benefit from raising taxes, votes the other way? Do we know why some of our neighbors who are the most harmed by pollution are opposed to environmental protection? Do we know why some members of the church ignore us or treat us perfunctorily? Do we know why the people who swear at those protesting our war policies are so belligerent? Or do we just know that all these people are wrongheaded and we need to set them straight?
Let me repeat the words of Simone Weil.
The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, "What are you going through?" What if we were to make this our starting point with those in this congregation and those in the community with whom we disagree or of whom we are afraid?
What are you going through?
The goal of the beloved community begins with this small question.