Luke 10:25-37, Galatians 3:23-28
Oct.13, 2019
Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS
I’ve been waiting for the Franklin Gulls to return.
Since returning home to Kansas five years ago, they’ve become a touchstone for me. White bellies, black backs, swirling overhead. No matter what else is going on in my life or in the world, they arrive like a precious gift twice a year, marking the changing of the seasons. Seeing a big group of them move and dance across the sky is truly a spiritual experience for me. Better yet is when you manage to get caught up in a group of them as they are flying close to the ground.
Several years ago, I was playing with my kids at Anneberg Park and we found ourselves in the midst of a giant group of Franklin Gulls. They flew among us and around us, swooping and diving in between us. My kids began to giggle and run and flap their arms like birdies. Standing there, watching them, I was filled with the kind of joy that goes beyond words….pausing in a moment of wonder, giving thanks with every cell of your body for the gift of being alive.
But September came and went this year and the gulls didn’t come. I read an article online saying scientists are concerned because so many birds have disappeared in North America. So I looked up at the sky each day, while listening to news reports about climate change and impeachment inquiries and war….looking for the gulls. Waiting for their return.
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Last week our family drove to Winnipeg and as we traveled through the Dakotas, I finally saw them. Small but mighty groups of gulls, hanging out near the prairie marshes...heading South. I breathed a sigh of relief knowing they were on their way to Kansas after all.
As we drove across that vast and magnificent landscape, I found myself googling lots of things...place names, and species of plants that I’m not familiar with. Each time we drove through a Tribal Reservation, I looked it up - trying to learn more about language, history, culture.
Because there is SO MUCH I don’t know about the land we call home. So many things I never learned in school.
Like when my friend came to visit me last year from Ohio. While we were hanging out in Kansas City, she asked, “Why are there so many things here named Wyandotte? They’re from Ohio, not Kansas.” I had to Google. And read Wikipedia articles. And then I goto the library and check out books.
I learned that the Wyandotte were originally from the Great Lakes region, but had been forcibly removed further West after the Indian Removal Act of 1830. [1] Their story mirrors the stories of so many other Native people….being lied to by the U.S. government, holding out hope that they might finally have a safe place to call home, but being moved again and again. It turns out I grew up 30 miles away from a sacred site for the Wyandotte - a graveyard in downtown Kansas City, Kansas. Hundreds of Wyandotte are buried there….children and adults who died in the 1840s after they were forced to squat on low-lying land near the the Kansas and Missouri Rivers during a particularly rainy year. Victims of flooding and disease….victims, like so many others, of hateful government policies.
I never learned any of this in school. Just like I never learned much of anything about the tribes whose names graced the downtown streets in my hometown: Chocktaw, Cherokee, Delaware, Shawnee, Seneca, Miami, Osage, Potowatomi. In my childhood, they were addresses...not nations of people who had lived here for many thousands of years before my ancestors came to this place. I had a vague awareness that these names were native names, but I am embarrassed to admit that it never occurred to me to learn more about these nations.
I did not learn about the hundreds of complex societies that existed on this continent for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans. I did not know that literally millions of people called this land home before the settlers arrived. [2] I had no idea about the diversity of languages, cultures, technology, systems of governance, religion and more. I did not learn that the U.S. Constitution was crafted with many ideas about democracy borrowed from the Haudenosaunee. [3] I did not learn about the history of boarding schools, where children were forcibly separated from their parents and families, forbidden to speak their own languages, horrifically abused. The motto of the headmaster of the Carlisle School in Pennsylvania was “kill the Indian to save the man.” [4] When I think about someone taking away my young children, I am filled with so much pain and anger and terror...and yet this was done to so many families.
Of course, we can’t learn everything in school. The world is a vast place. But doesn’t it seem odd that I wasn’t taught the history of the land on which I grew up?
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I am so thankful that Debra Bolton, who is new to our congregation, approached me with the idea of sharing her gifts as a part of an Indigenous Peoples’ Sunday. Debra had been leading services each fall at her UCC church in Garden City and hoped she might be able to continue that ministry here. Unfortunately, family duties called her away unexpectedly this weekend so she is sorry she can’t be here...we were going to co-preach together this weekend, which means she and are aren’t getting to co-preach together like we had hoped. But I am grateful we had a chance to sit down and talk as we prepared the service together.
One of the things Debra talked about when we met is how vital it is to remember that the work of fostering inclusion cannot take place until we are wiling to take a hard look at how exclusion works. Understanding the complex and painful history of Native peoples in North America is not the only work that needs to be done, clearly. But it seems to me it is the starting place for anyone who seeks to walk in the way of Jesus.
Jesus, after all, was consistently about building relationships with everyone. How, then, did we eventually get to a Church that propped up dangerous theologies like the Doctrine of Discovery? Over and over again, Jesus looked to the margins of society, at those who had been pushed aside, labeled “less than,”...and Jesus consistently said, “You are beloved. You are made in God’s image.”
The story we heard from Luke today has this as a central theme. The hero of the story is a Samaritan - a person from an “outsider” ethnic group. The story is about neighborliness...our deep connections. When asked “who is my neighbor?”, Jesus is unequivocal: everyone. Jesus says, if we want to find aionios zoe - life without end, life beyond boundaries - the key is to love God with all that we have and to love our neighbor as ourselves. It’s as simple and difficult as that.
The Church has struggled with this. From the beginning, we wanted to know, “who’s in and who’s out?” The leaders of the Early Church had strong opinions about whether this newly-emerging religion could include Gentiles. That’s what Paul is talking about in the passage we heard today from Galatians. Paul was firmly on “Team Everyone” and advocated tirelessly for Gentiles to be welcomed into the fold. He sometimes went so far as to speak in a disrespectful way about the his own Jewish faith - which we also see in today’s passage - making it seem as if Jesus had come to overwrite centuries of Jewish tradition and law. This, unfortunately, led to centuries of anti-Semitism within Christianity. But Jesus is clear...it’s not either-or. Jesus insisted the ancient laws, like the one to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves, are an important component of a faithful life.
For Jesus, love was the ultimate foundation. Jesus lived in a society filled with all kinds of human beings...just like ours. And Jesus was always, always about finding ways to build relationships between people from all walks of life. We are still struggling to follow his lead.
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The gulls are back, by the way. I saw them while I was in yoga earlier this week….thousands of them flying gracefully overhead as I twisted and turned, falling out of poses to catch another glimpse of them. I drove out to Tuttle Creek the next morning, knowing I’d find them there. And as I sat along the water’s edge, suddenly they were on either side of me and overhead and all around me.
And for a brief moment, I was one with them. My heart soared along with them and my spirit was transported to other times, other places, with these beautiful creatures who travel the length of this great land mass with the change of each season. The gulls - like this land, these waters, theses skies, these prairies - were here long before I was born and will be here long after I’m gone. They were here when these prairies were walked by the Kaw people. They flew overhead when my ancestors arrived. They will be here long after we’re gone.
It is our calling to love as best we can during the short period of time that we are alive. And that calling to love goes far beyond just loving those who think, look, or act like us. It’s a calling to love. Full stop. To hear one another’s stories. To respect each other’s traditions and ways of being. To love this planet that is our home. And to allow God to love us completely, each and every day.
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The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address is an offering of greetings to the natural world….the waters, the fish, the plants, the birds, the four winds, and more. Each section ends with the same words...in the English translation, the refrain is “now our minds are one.”
“We put our minds together and thank all the Birds who move and fly about over our heads. The Creator gave them beautiful songs. Each day they remind us to enjoy and appreciate life. The Eagle was chosen to be their leader. To all the Birds - from the smallest to the largest - we send our joyful greetings and thanks. Now our minds are one.” [5]
SOURCES:
[1] https://www.wyandotte-nation.org/culture/history/published/trail-of-tears/
[2] I highly commend the book 1491
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