New York, New York
Part Two
Cultural Diversity and Hopeful Waiting
Written by Dan McDonald
Diversity – “Be
together, not the same”. Taken in New
York City December 2014
I stayed at an apartment on West 48th
Street in the Hell’s Kitchen area of Manhattan; a few blocks west of Times
Square. Whenever I took walks in the area I would notice the diversity of the
population in Manhattan. A short walk would bring you into contact with people
coming to America from every continent and most every region of every continent
on the globe. They represented in their own persons nearly every shade of human
color, numerous faiths, and a number of differing life philosophies and
ideologies. I was raised in a rural region of the Midwest where diversity
tended to mean the difference between white Catholic and white Protestant. New
York City has one of the most diverse populations in the United States. If its
diversity is not yet representative of America, it may well be predictive of
the diversity reshaping America. If other locales are not as diverse as New
York, they are usually more diverse than thirty or forty years ago. New York is
close to being a microcosm of the world. It is a fitting city to act as the host
to the United Nations.
United
Nations Building, New York City
Photo
by Sean Pavone/Shutterstock.com
In writing this blog inspired by New York City’s diversity
it is my hope to encourage fellow Christians that fear America’s growing
diversity. There is a tendency among many Christians to fear our Christian
heritage will be drowned and lost in a sea of diversity. But for the Christian
our perception of reality should be characterized by hope, and we should strive
to be able to give a reason for our hope as others see it and wonder about it. The
great realities of the Christian life are faith, hope, and love. For that reason
the Christian can believe in what he does not see, hope for what will be, and genuinely
love those who are brought into his or her circle of life. Perhaps it is time
to turn off the media’s constant drivel of stories telling us why we need to be
anxious and fearful and worried. Perhaps it is time to remember why we are a people who are known by our hope as well as our love.
If America begins to be known more as
multi-cultural republic or empire, will that really alter how we Christians are
to live our lives, love our neighbors, or follow the teachings of Christ? I
cannot imagine how my life’s responsibilities and activities will be changed
one bit by the America I live in becoming a multi-cultural rather than
predominately culturally Christian nation.
I suppose one thing might change. I might be able to see
the world a little easier from the perspective in which the New Testament was
written. The writers of the New Testament did not live in a Christian nation.
They lived life within a Christian sub-culture in a multi-cultural empire where
Africans, Europeans, and Middle Easterners dwelt and lived and traveled in the
same empire. There were many religions, some that shocked the world with acts
of terrorism and attempted revolution. Our forefathers and foremothers in the
faith saw each of the persons and people groups in their world as neighbors to
be loved and as people whose lives and communities Christ wished to enter so as
to reside in their midst. My Christian heritage is more than a history of
Christianity’s place in America. It is a heritage that includes our having been
a despised sub-culture that ruling authorities found convenient to employ as
the scapegoat for the problems of an empire. Some of my Conservative friends
refuse to imagine that today, our nation might continue to make use of
scapegoats to blame our republic’s troubles upon. Today’s scapegoating may be
more carefully hidden beneath layers of political correctness but political
correctness has not altered human nature to the point of eliminating
distrusting those differing others. We may or may not be the next scapegoat of
a multi-cultural empire. But our heritage prepares us for that possibility and
in the meanwhile our heritage should provide us with an incentive to stand by
those whom we see as being scapegoated whether they are African-Americans,
Jewish or Muslims in our midst. We should be able to recognize scapegoating and
stand with the scapegoated in that moment.
I would also ask my brothers and sisters in Christ to
consider whether or not we have been guilty of trying to be king-makers of
behalf of Jesus? In the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel the multitude are
following Jesus, but Jesus withdraws from them because he perceived that they
wanted to force or compel him to become king. Jesus was not shy in telling his
disciples that he was bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth or to tell Pilate
that he was a king but not of an earthly kingdom. But he was not interested
when the multitude wanted to make him king. He walked the other way.
This story of Jesus walking away from the kingmakers
surely speaks volumes to us in America where emphasis has been placed on voting
the right way to try to insure that Christ rules over America. Have we in
essence become like the kingmakers from whom Jesus walked away? Kingmakers are
the people who invest time, money and energy to see to it that one king serving
the right agenda is in power ruling over those whom the kingmakers don’t want
in power. Kingmakers appoint kings for the purpose of influencing the king to
keep to their agenda. Jesus had no interest in wearing the king’s robe to satisfy
the expectations of kingmakers. He walked away.
His kingship began to be expressed with his entrance into
the world, in his birth in Bethlehem. It is a kingship for which we now wait to
come in its fullness upon his return. During this advent season we remember
that our entire lives are lives of waiting in faith and hope. We remember that
the kingship of Jesus was always meant to be different from that which would
have been inaugurated by the kingmakers. He was born into this world in a
makeshift residence to parents whose offering when Jesus was presented to God
in the temple was that of the ordinary and lower classes. He came to draw men
and women to obedience to his kingdom by entering their everyday lives and
serving them as a new kind of king who is a Servant-Lord. He came to assert his
kingly rights by washing our feet and dying for our sins. He came to become
king by taking his place at our sides as an elder brother, as a friend, as a
loving savior and as a faithful high priest. He did not come to serve an agenda
that puts one party into power and forces another party to serve those in
power. He came to enter the lives of others and in that way to gather his
kingdom by knocking on the door of our hearts and souls and winning a people
who would praise him and follow him as God gave to him all authority in heaven
and on earth.
Shutterstock.com photo: A child being christened in an
Orthodox Church with Madonna and Child icon in background
He came into the world to enter each of our lives
Jesus grew in stature with God and man as he grew up from
being the babe in Bethlehem. He wept over Jerusalem partly because it was the
great city of his earthly people. In his humanity his sorrow for Jerusalem was
to some degree similar to the sorrows of Israelis and
Palestinians saddened by the wounded city of their Jerusalem
in our day. He had fully entered a Jewish life and had a human and societal connection to the Jerusalem over which he wept. But as our Savior, who came as the Lamb of God to save us from our sins;
his weeping over Jerusalem is also a picture of his weeping over the
broken wounded lives of all humanity. It is for us an illustration of his work as intercessor between God and mankind; where he weeps over every residence and community of mankind from a humble farmhouse in a remote setting to the five boroughs of New York City to every dwelling on the earth.
It is
Jesus’ perception of diversity that I seek to have cultivated within me during
this advent season. I have not learned this perspective fully. But I am beginning to realize that my life is meant to be lived waiting for his kingdom; with a waiting characterized by faith, hope and love. In faith I believe in an unseen promise that cannot
be shaken by fears that my nation state might fall away like so many nations before it. In hope I pray “thy kingdom come
thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” In the Scriptures it is described how every family, nation, tribe, and tongue will be blessed. I cannot therefore accept diversity as a threat to the kingdom of God, when the diversity of the nations will characterize the kingdom of God. I know that the dreams of king-makers seeking to manipulate the affairs of mankind in the name of the gods or in the name of Christ
will be shattered by the prince of peace who has always consistently walked away from them. But
I am confident that he is taking his place alongside men and women of every tribe
and tongue so as to gather them into his eternal kingdom. Even this day multitudes of men and women still made a little lower than the angels are being brought seed form into his kingdom to one day shine in the perfection of what we were meant to be when we were created in the image of God. I am confident that he who created us to bear his image in praise and worship of the God who created us, has chosen also to fill this image with the perfection of the Divine Presence in Jesus Christ. So I wait not with fear, but in hope because the Servant-Lord of the earth is truly forevermore the King of Kings and Lord of Lords who declares peace and good will to men and women everywhere.
1 comment:
Wow! Amen!
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