Readings, http://lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Pentecost/CProp15_RCL.html
Who I am and who I belong to was drilled into
me as a child. Born and raised on Maui, keiki o ka aina, a child of the lan. Granddaughter
of “Billy O”, looking like a Medeiros, a descendent of missionaries on one
side, migrants on the other.
English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, French,
Portuguese, Japanese…the litany of ethnicities and ancestry was a formidable
one.
My mother being the storyteller, the story of
my family, was slanted towards the missionary side. My grandfather who’d
campaigned for statehood, the great grandfather who had been Queen
Liliokalani’s friend as well as one of the overthrowers of the Hawaiian
monarchy (not to be shared at school), the great-great grandfather who’d been a
missionary doctor. My grandmother, my Tutu, would hold court at the 4th
of July parade and I would enjoy the attention of family friends and
acquaintances who would know me as “Sallie Mae’s oldest girl” or “Billy O’s
granddaughter”.
I knew who I was and located myself by my
lineage.
But, this knowledge of self was conditional.
Far removed from any missionary wealth or inheritance, my mother’s histories
detailed stories of mental illness, betrayal, and loss. The haves had had, and
no longer were what once they knew.
And, so I learned that it was the Smith side
who married the Baldwins. The Baldwins who inherited the money, to whom I
should be nice. I knew who the major shareholders were, and who we were not,
for it was my mother whose ancestors had owned the dairy who then married a man
whose ancestors had worked for the dairy. And, so Smith became Caires who once
were Freitas who had married a Medeiros who had left Sao Miguel for Brazil and
married a man from Japan…resulting in children who tanned easily and whose eye
color varied from blue to black and who knew where they belonged.
Where they belonged, on an island in the
middle of an ocean, where the who of our being was as complicated as the
history of the land.
Class, culture, race, ethnicity, history,
culture, and context. As long as I stayed on the land, I knew who I was. As
long as I stayed located in my family of origin, I knew to whom I belonged.
Lineage, allegiances, the genetic roulette of skin tone and eye color…all of
which made sense in the middle of the Pacific, all of which ceased to matter
when I could no longer meet the conditions of my birth.
And, hence, unmoored from the original who
and to whom…I began to look for connections that could not be severed by time,
distance, or even my own disobedience.
Which is where I found the church.
The church. Where, as an angsty teen,
disaffected from her family of origin and searching for safe harbor, I found a
place that could hold me when the familial structures had failed me.
And, in this, I can hear the good news of the
Gospel we heard proclaimed today. Good news, for anyone who has been failed by
the structures of secular society and the organizing principles therof. Good
news for anyone whose life has been limited by systemic injustice. Good news.
Good news when what the world needs is for
systemic injustice to be overturned by a new way of being in the world. A way
in which those who have been rejected, lost, or left behind, are claimed by an
all-embracing God.
This is the who and this is the whom. In the
love of God we find ourselves—beloved child of God, of the God who has made us
all.
All…not some. And in this we are liberated
from the familial or cultural structures that would define us as
anything--anything apart from the love of God.
Division from that which holds us captive is,
in fact, liberation.
But, to be clear, this does not come without
cost. Because, when we are separated from those structures that have given us
meaning, there is pain to be had. This is what makes this particular Gospel
passage read as apocalyptic—because, for those of us whose identity, status,
power and privilege is maintained through familial lines and identity, the
severing of those lines means loss. Loss of power, of privilege, loss of
identity, loss of honor, and loss of wealth.
Yes, wealth. The inheritance of wealth, of
land, of honor, of property, of stocks—in this case livestock—was, quite
fundamentally, the why of tracking ancestry. Maintaining wealth across
generations, and the attendant power and privilege, has been a driver for the
maintenance of traditional family structures for millennial. This is not to discount the interconnection of
family, the deep love, care and support we may find there, or to attack the
pride we may find in knowing our personal stories. Knowledge of our past and
those whose lives have led to our own can be life-giving and help us to locate
ourselves as individuals in the world. And yet, here we are…
With a Gospel that is uncompromising in its
assertion that unity for the sake of wealth, honor, and privilege is to our
shame—while unity for the sake of the good news of God in Christ is our honor.
When someone is baptized in the church, they
are presented by their sponsors with their full given name. You will note that
as the baptismal liturgy continues, it is only the first (and perhaps middle)
name that is used in the liturgy. Baby Archie Harrison
Mountbatten-Windsor, as storied as his name may be, was christened Archie. By
doing so, it is made clear that his legacy is not in his name, but in the vast
communion of saints of which he is now part.
He is part of the household of God, just as I
am. Connected by virtue of our baptism, not the conditions of our birth. And,
whilst the world may insist otherwise—ranking our lives and our worth by our
forebears—the teachings of our faith and the truth of God’s love have given us
another claim.
Each of us, principally and most importantly,
a beloved child of God.
Imagine. Imagine what living into that truth,
in its entirety could be like. Imagine…
[Pause]
No name, no rank, no allegiances, other than
that of the beloved. The beloved of God.
How would we be? How would our interactions
individually and collectively be transformed if we were to live this truth?
Imagine…
[Pause]
That imagining is fundamental to how the
early church understood itself. Part of the threat the early Christian church
presented to the empire was its insistence upon the full personhood of every
baptized member. No longer slave nor free, male nor female. The cultural
constructs of race, class, family, and inherited hierarchy, are set aside in
favor of a new ideal.
A new ideal…
The ideal of belovedness by virtue of birth,
inheritance by virtue of baptism, and honor by virtue of the shame that was no
shame upon the cross.
No shame in our birth, no shame in our
lineage, no shame in our inheritance…
No shame.
No shame…
because we are made one, by virtue of the
love of God which knows the truth of our suffering and the joy of our being.
The joy of our being when we know who we are
and to whom we belong,
As beloved children of God.
Amen.
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