St. John’s United Church of Christ
May 18, 2008
A Sermon by the Rev. John Krueger
What a Diverse Family Tree! Genesis 1:1-2:4
The creation stories from Genesis, and there are two of them, the familiar one I read and the older one that follows, are foundational for faith people who are Jewish, and Muslim, and Christian. Each of these great world religions shares a common beginning, the man and the woman created in the image of God. From a common, singular beginning all of the people of this earth have come.
This is the magnificent story of creation, God’s amazing feat. When God saw all that God had created, God declared it very good, and rested, the rationale for our Sabbath Day.
Ever since that historic beginning the human family has been at odds with itself. In chapter four of Genesis, the brothers, Cain and Abel, quarrel, and Cain kills his brother. Scarcely have we begun the story and the family is at war. And the rest of the Bible records the episodes of discontent, strife, warfare, and acts of inhumanity, many with a veneer of religious justification.
Many anthropologists say our earliest human ancestors came from Africa, spreading from that common beginning to cover our world. In doing so, we took on distinctive characteristics, like facial features, skin color, customs and histories. Even though genetically we are an amazingly similar family, yet we have found numerous ways of dividing the family.
We are careful to divide the world into those like us and those we determine to be not like us. We often blindly defend those who are like us, our sub-group, and we often are harsh and judgmental about those others, those we think are not part of our family. Every war ever fought has been a family fight, brothers and sisters against brothers and sisters. We justify such aggression under the banner of nationalism or patriotism or self-survival or religious purity or self-interest. And this is the history of our world.
Today I would like to invite you into a continuing conversation about the human family, about race and culture and religion. We only begin today, only scratch the surface, but it is a start.
From 1991 to 1995 the various ethnic regions of what had been Yugoslavia contested with each other. Ethnic cleansing, it was called. It was making sure only Serbs lived with Serbs on Serbian land, only Albanians together, only Croatians, only Bosnians. Terrible atrocities were committed and the damage to buildings is still evident on our visit even as the human wounds are healing. It is not over, for Kosovo has declared its independence from Serbia and the beat goes on, waiting for the next shoe to fall.
We have some work to do here in this country, for racism is alive and well, this fracturing of the family. It is embarrassing to remember that the Ku Klux Klan was especially active in this part of Indiana, with cross burnings and lynchings. Most of the Klan members were the same people who showed up for church on a Sunday morning, Christians.
Almost daily we hear comments and jokes and slurs about other people, those people. The slurs may be anti-Catholic, or demeaning of Hispanics, or dismissive about African-Americans, or anger addressed to immigrants, or a put-down of women. Some of that is poisoning the political discourse these days as we are asked to consider a white male over the age of 70, susceptible to ageism, a white female, susceptible to sexism, and a male who is half African-American and half Kansan, susceptible to racism. Do you hear the comments that demean a person’s age, a person’s gender, or a person’s racial profile? I do.
So we begin a discussion, based on the theological premise from Genesis that we are all part of one family. What will win out – our theological oneness in the creation story, or the ideological distinctions that divide us into sub-groups and pit some against others? Listen carefully, and speak carefully, for God is wounded when God’s children are wounded.