Galatians 3:27-29
“There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” These are familiar words; we often use them at baptisms. They offer a beautiful, though unclear, vision of unity. Was Paul saying that once a slave became part of the Christian community in Galatia, they were set free? Was he proclaiming that an individual’s identity as Jew or Gentile was wiped out in Christ, or was he pointing to a deeper oneness beneath very real differences? We don’t know what Paul meant; his lack of clarity is a gift to us, for it invites us to ask what we mean when we talk about oneness and diversity.
When I chose this text for today, I intended to include a larger selection from Paul’s letter to the Galatians. As I read the surrounding passages, I gave up on that idea, remembering why we usually take this passage out of context. This is Paul’s angriest letter. He was frustrated that the early church community in Galatia had fallen prey to false teachers, who were arguing that for Gentiles to become part of this new Jesus movement, they must first become Jewish. Paul’s complicated, sometimes convoluted, theological arguments pointed to a central struggle of the early church: how to bring together two distinct groups—with their customs and cultures and deep-rooted sensitivities—to become one community. The struggle reflected how the two groups—Jews and Gentiles—had oppressed or excluded each other over centuries. It reflected the ways individual and group identity was shaped by practices around food and worship.
Almost every book in the Christian testament shows signs of this struggle. Sometimes it is clear that the communities for whom the gospel or letter was written were rife with conflict and misunderstanding. Occasionally the authors celebrated moments when these early Christian communities succeeded in breaking down barriers and learning to trust across difference.
The challenge of creating unity in the face of diversity is as old—actually older—than our sacred scriptures. Many faith traditions lift up unity as a value and a vision. Perhaps that is because we human beings need so much help to get beyond the things that divide us.
In recent years, through Open Spirit’s Multi-Faith Collaborative, I have come to know members of the Baha’i Community in Framingham. I have learned that the unity of humankind is at the heart of their faith. The founding prophet, Baha’u’llah, who lived in Iran in the late 19th century, wrote these words: “Be ye as the fingers of one hand, the members of one body,” and “Ye are all the leaves of one tree and the drops of one ocean.”
In the United States, Baha’i communities have sought to live out this central tenet of their faith with a core mission of seeking understanding and justice among races and cultures. Dr. William “Smitty” Smith, an African-American educator and filmmaker from Sudbury, founded the National Center for Race Amity. The center highlights the history and transformative potential of friendship and collaboration among people of different races. The film kicking off our Virtual Film Night Series, Race Amity and the Other Tradition, lifts up the center’s vision. I had the opportunity to preview it last week.
The movie opens with an acknowledgement of the painful history of racial injustice in our nation. “Our history haunts us to this day,” the narrator, Loralei McClure begins, “giving us the pervasive belief that racial conflict and inequality will forever be a part of the American landscape and that we will forever be captive to the racism that is such a tradition in our national culture.”
The movie points out that this haunting history is not the whole story. McClure continues: “There has always been a parallel moral counterweight to the tradition of racism, fomented at first in small and intimate acts of resistance, this ever-present pushback has grown into movements involving hundreds of thousands of Americans who believe an integrated, multi-racial society is possible. Close association, friendship and amity have always been at the heart of these movements. The binding glue of amity supported vision, courage and grit to take on what at times seemed insurmountable.”
The film tells four stories of race amity—friendship– from four centuries. In the 1640’s, only a few decades after the first Africans were kidnapped and brought to Jamestown as slaves, the town of Northampton, Virginia developed a multi-racial middle class. People of African descent and people of European descent bought, sold and leased property from each other, engaged in commerce, formed friendships, fell in love and married. It only lasted a generation; the government of Virginia ultimately forced free black people to leave the colony. Still, almost four hundred years ago, it existed.
In the 18th century, Charles Thompson, who would ultimately be part of the first Continental Congress, became friends with Teedyuscung, leader of the Delaware nation. Thompson was adopted as a member of the Delaware nation; he stood up for his new family, intervening with the governor when he learned colonial treaty negotiators were intending to deceive the native people.
In the 19th century, a friendship formed between 70-year-old Daniel O’Connell, an Irish statesman and orator who fought for the rights of Catholics in Ireland, and 30-year-old Frederick Douglass, self-emancipated former slave who was a central figure in the US abolitionist movement. Their friendship led both of them to broaden their sense of mission. O’Connell inspired 60,000 Irish citizens to sign a letter to their Irish-American counterparts, urging them to support the abolitionist movement. Douglass became an advocate for women’s suffrage and spoke out on behalf of Irish people who were starving during the potato famine.
In the 20th century, a friendship developed between Fred Ross, a white community organizer, Delores Huerta, a leader in the Chicana Rights movement, and Cesar Chavez, a young man from a farm worker family. Their collaboration led to the Farm Workers Movement, which fought for basic human rights and improved working conditions for all kinds of farm workers in our nation.
The movie concludes with words from African-American scholar Cornell West. He begins by affirming the premise of the movie: there is a long history of multi-racial resistance to injustice in our nation, upon which we can build. “Through courage,” he says, “we can form a connection at the human level, which cuts across pigmentation and skin color.” He then asks a question and poses a challenge: “How do we make contact with that human base to shatter those kinds of fears, anxieties and insecurities and be vulnerable enough to make the human connection? That’s what love is: it is a vulnerability, it is taking a risk, it is embarking on an adventure. And there’s some good stuff waiting for you if you’re willing to step out on that nothing and land on something, and that something you land on is precisely that transformation of yourself.”
I needed this movie, especially on this very strange 4th of July weekend. This year, the tension between the principles we celebrate on Independence Day and the complex realities of our history feels especially acute. It is tempting to resolve that tension either with defensiveness or despair.
This movie helps me reframe that tension so it can energize me. We are rightly challenged to face the painful parts of our history—the ways our nation’s economic prosperity was built on slave labor, the deep-rooted institutions that perpetuate inequality, the generations of distrust that make genuine friendship and collaboration hard to cultivate.
This painful history is huge. The movie reminds me that it is not monolithic.
I find myself thinking of the words from Isaiah in our sentences of praise. God speaks to a despairing people, “I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Our painful history of racism, accompanied by its call to work for justice and healing, feels like a vast desert. Perhaps the other history celebrated in the movie—the history of people who overcame the weight of distrust and pain to build friendships and work together—is God’s promised river in the desert. Sometimes it is an underground stream, so deep we see no sign that it is there. Sometimes it is just below the surface, and we know of its presence by wildflowers growing as though out of nowhere. Sometimes it bursts forth into an oasis of healing, justice, and transformation.
If we trust the river is there, we can dare to set out on this long journey in the desert. We can face the parched pain because we know there is a spring that will break through and quench our thirst. We can reach out to build friendships, knowing we will make mistakes, trusting in a fountain of grace. As we learn more about the life-giving stream of history beneath the surface, we can find the right places to stop and dig a well.
We can plant trees around that well—metaphorical trees of showing up for our neighbors, writing our elected officials to work for policy changes, learning from one another, speaking up in a crowd to interrupt racist behavior. We know that if you plant and nurture enough of trees in the desert, they eventually create a new microclimate, which can expand to transform the desert. If we are wise in what trees we plant and where we plant them, if we work together to transform hearts and practices and policies, we can be part of creating a climate of trust and hope and opportunity; we can be part of transforming the desert of injustice and despair.
The journey through this desert is a long one. There is no quick fix, no promised land just over the horizon. There is a river of hope, a river of friendship and courage and grace, that can guide our way and inspire our work.
May we search for signs of life-giving water. May we dig wells and plant trees of friendship and justice. May we trust that Christ is with us on the journey. Amen.