When we first moved to southeast Iowa, we were told by
several people that we should expect to be considered outsiders for a long
time, especially in the smaller communities. Someone said that you’re not
considered a native unless your grandparents
were born here. I thought that was an exaggeration until I started hearing
about “newcomers” who had lived in the community for twenty or thirty years.
Then there were Memorial Day pictures in the paper of local children putting
flags by the graves of their great-grandparents. Clearly the descendants of those
pioneers had not moved far! The strangest experience I had was meeting a
retirement-age biologist at a local college. I expected the usual exchange of
educational pedigrees and research interests. Instead she told me where she
lived in the county, how long that property had been owned by her family, and
how many generations had farmed there. It was months before I finally figured
out that the most important thing to her was to tell me who her people were. Anything academic was
definitely secondary.
Who are your people? To whom do you belong? In a culture
where people move about often, where many marriages end in divorce and children
grow up in “blended” families, those seem like odd questions. In southeast
Iowa, and in other communities where people live and intermarry for
generations, they are the first questions that come up when two people meet.
Only after someone is placed in the relational constellation can the
conversation progress to other matters. It doesn’t take long for me. As soon as
I say that I’m not related to the Horns of New London, they know I’m an
outsider and we move on to something else.
Don’t get me wrong. The people we have gotten to know are
friendly and welcoming. But we haven’t gotten used to going to our local
farmers’ market or one of the restaurants and have everyone turn to scrutinize
us, trying to figure out who we are. I suppose that’s why we frequent the
places that are used to having visitors, so we can “blend in.”
The need to belong is a very human one. It is just as
human is to look askance, or even reject, those who belong to some other group.
At the time of the apostle Paul, Jews had nothing to do with non-Jews, and vice
versa. They did not eat together, they did not intermarry, and they did not do
anything beyond interacting to the extent necessary for people living in the
same town. The Jews had their own laws, their own diet, and the males even had
the physical mark of circumcision to differentiate them from all other peoples.
Into this absolute distinction stepped Jesus Christ, a
Jew who ate with Gentiles and sinners. His radical acceptance of all brought
him into conflict with both Jewish and Gentiles authorities, who eventually saw
to it that he was put to death. Paradoxically, that violent death and
subsequent resurrection created the groundwork for peace and reconciliation
among all who were strangers and aliens from one another. Jesus became the
cornerstone – or better yet, the keystone, the one stone at the top of an arch
that keeps the two opposing sides from collapsing.
Who are your people? To whom do you belong? For us, the
answer is clear: we are Christians. We belong to Jesus Christ. In him all
differences are taken up and reconciled. In him we stand as one, whoever we
are, whatever we look like, wherever our parents or our grandparents were born.
In Christ we are no longer strangers and aliens, but brothers and sisters,
mothers and fathers of one another. We are the household of God. And on Sundays
when we have a baptism, that is what we celebrate, welcoming one more person
into that household.
[Pentecost 8: 2 Samuel 7:1-14a; Psalm 89:20-37; Ephesians
2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56.]
Listen to this post as actually preached.
No comments:
Post a Comment