What Tribe Are You A Part Of?
A sermon for Renton UCC based on the passages:
Acts 11:1-18
John 13:31-35
Mark Fredericksen, MDiv, ND
Let me borrow, if you
will, the control of your imaginations and let me steer us back through
time. We’re going to go way back -- way
before the earliest Bible stories were being told around smoky campfires. Before humans inhabited the Middle East,
still living in Africa. Let’s go to
roughly 200,000 years ago. This is
approximately the period of time when Neanderthal humans were evolving into
Homo Sapiens –us! We were living in
small family bands. There were no
arrowheads or spears so you were surviving on mainly whatever vegetation was
edible, maybe some small game or fowl that could be snared – but fire has just
started to be domesticated by some – so maybe your band did not even have
that. As the food sources in your location got
consumed, you had no choice but to move on.
If your band ran the territory of another band there could be trouble
because food (and water) was a basic matter of survival. The other discovered
truth, however, is that more people provided more scavengers and so, the bands
negotiated and became tribes. Burying the hatchet so to speak for the good of
all. Those are our roots, our ancestors.
And point in fact, approximately 96% of our functional digestive system today
is still dependent on the genes we have inherited from them – so our food gets
digested the same as theirs did. And
this is a sermon, not a nutrition lecture, but there’s little wonder with all
the radical changes in our food chain over just the past 60-70 years that we
have trouble digesting the chemicals and processed food. Also the other prehistoric genetic reality
we’re a bit stuck with is we have a high amount of our sympathetic and
parasympathetic nervous systems that are what they are because of the eons that
humans spent in survival mode – fending off predators, reacting to scarcity, fighting
with competing tribes, facing famine and natural disasters. Humanity has been
stuck in dog-eat-dog life for a stinking long time. So out of near necessity our
human tribalism became hard-wired into our brains. Those with the violent
knee-jerk reactions survived and thrived while the less-so struggled. There was
then and there is now a cognitive component which can take over and choose other
kinds of reactions – but for many they haven’t practiced and learned to do that
part.
So
let’s move the clock up closer to us – about just 3 or 4000 years ago same
competitions going on only the human geography had expanded widely. There’s cities and empires and organized
armies to defend territory. Food-wise
cities could work together for sake of agriculture and animal husbandry.
Hunting and gathering took a back seat but the control of territory was still a
thing. Wars were still how things got settled. So many of the human beings’
worst traits were still being used for control and the measure of successful
cultures. The Bible gets established revealing all the mean rottenness that
could play out in human communities. There’s the story of the Flood where God
lost patience and wiped the slate clean to start over – but it didn’t really. The Jewish people have an endless parade of
different marauders trek through their lands – Assyrians, Persians,
Babylonians, Romans, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc.
To
survive, naturally, Jews become one more established population group with 12
tribes at one point and they fight off their neighbors (or don’t or
can’t). Then something remarkable
happens. God comes into the picture as a child wrapped
in swaddling clothes in a far-flung part of the Roman Empire called Bethlehem.
That single event changed world history – or perhaps a better way to say it put
a new choice in our laps – That single event drew a line in the sand and
supplied a powerful choice to humans to believe in the value of the good side
of our nature or continue the warring, violent, resource-snatching tribalism that,
until then, was all the world had known.
And that choice is still ours today: the Jesus Tribe or the Ugly
Tribe. The Jesus Tribe – the Christian
Way – has not been entirely clear of the messiness of the built-in on-going
traumas and reactions of past tribes, cities, nations, and continents. The Christian Way, as we read here in Acts had
two “tribes” facing down each other on who gets to call themselves
Christian. There’s the Jewish Christians
(Peter) saying that to be Christian you have to adopt and follow all the Judaic
laws and there’s the Gentile Christians (Paul) who aren’t too keen on all the
Jewish law. This splitting of
Christianity hasn’t really improved dramatically in 2000 years as we still have
– even worse now – denominations where each has its own set of ideas on who can
belong, with no shortage of bragging who is best or in the extreme – who is of
God and who is of well – you know whatever is worse. Peter’s Vision in Acts
caused him to see a new Light for the Way.
He saw a more inclusive way was the path Jesus expected. Paul had seen this light on the Road to
Damascus and was busy welcoming Gentiles all over the eastern end of the
Mediterranean Sea. And so here we are. What light do we follow?
What should be the purpose
of the Christian Way today? Do we want
to stay locked in the terrible, learned, defensive violent ways of the past
200,000 years? Can humans learn nothing
besides what the past has imprinted on our brains? Do we not have a healing remedial solution to
knee jerk violence and rage over the slightest slight? I think we do, but it’s going to take us
working together to overcome the panic
& domination reflex – where we see too easily everything as a threat
that needs to be eliminated – whether that be not enough money, not enough
people, not enough faith? Threats
trigger our fear, which brings out our smallness, our negative reactions. So where do we turn?
In
the Gospel Jesus says, “I’m going where you cannot go, but I give you this:
Love one another.” Sure loving one another is easy if we’re all alike – look
alike, think alike, hold the same grudges and biases against the others not
like us. And maybe Jesus was pipe
dreaming that we could, though I think he really saw a different side to
everyone he met – even the ones who crucified him. So therein is our challenge. I don’t think the Jesus we know through
scripture would leave us with something that was impossible, and we couldn’t
possibly do. I’m also sure that
retribution, revenge, grabbing everything you can for yourself is not the
Christian Way. There is no faith in Christ at all pursuing those goals. They cannot sustain your spirit, your soul, any
community, or the good of the planet as a whole. Those are the antithesis of
everything Christ-like.
The
healing we need for ourselves, our families, our communities and our world are
the virtues Christ lived. Cooperation
not competition. Inclusion not
domination. Sharing not possession. Forgiveness not grudge-holding. And most of all holding tightly to sacred
value, worth, and kindness for yourself AND for each one you meet. I could beat this point into the ground, and
Lord knows we all need to be hearing it daily in this toxic soup our politics have
plunged us into – but love is the Christian Way for the Jesus Tribe.
I’ll
close with a piece of writing by Hafez.
He was a Persian Poet and Sufi Master born in 1326. He says,
“We are not in pursuit
of formalities or fake religious laws.
For it is through the
stairway of existence that we have come to God’s door.
We are people who need
love, because Love is the soul’s life.
Love is simply creation’s
greatest joy.
Through the stairway of
existence, You have now come to the Beloved’s Door.”
Hafez was a Muslim, but I think he and Jesus would have been pals. Because in the height, and width, and depth and breadth of God, Love is our common denominator and is what keeps us beautifully human with a pinch of the Divine in every one of us. Always!
