Genesis 1:1-5, 31-2:4a
Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
First Congregational UCC, Manhattan, KS
September 19, 2021
“In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth….” begins our sacred story. And we are invited into wonder.
We wonder: why are there two creation stories, anyway? In Genesis 1, God creates the heaven and the earth in a litany of seven days. And then in Genesis 2, we start all over again with another origin story. This time in a garden. Two stories. Hmmm.
We wonder: if there was NOTHING when it all began, then what, exactly are “the face of the deep” and “the waters”? Hmmm.
We wonder: so God creates a great dome and separates water from waters - creating the sky and the waters below. And THEN! God gathers together the water below even further and dry land appears. But the text says nothing of God creating the land. It was already there? Just waiting to be uncovered? Perhaps from the beginning, God is in partnership with creation, calling it forth to co-create with God. What a wonder-full realization.
We wonder: when God creates humans, God says, “Let us make humankind in our own image.” Us? Our? Instead of me, my? Hmmm.
And when the light and dark and sky and sea and land and sun and moon and stars and creeping things and bugs and birds and plants and trees and humans are created (whew!) God tells humans that we have dominion over it all. And, boy, as humans continue to rampantly abuse and degrade creation, we wonder - surely, God did not intend for us to exercise our dominion like THIS, right? Hmmm.
We could go on and on. Our creation stories invite us into wonder.
We are invited into wonder today, not only by our sacred stories but also by Valarie Kaur as we begin our fall series on her book See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love.
Kaur’s origin story begins in Clovis, California where she grew up on forty acres where “the land stretched on all sides of us like an open palm.” [1] Her family had farmed the land for almost 100 years. Her description of her childhood, exploring the fields and ditches, drinking from a water pump, would probably resonate with many of us who also grew up in rural areas. She says, simply: “We belonged to the land.”
Kaur also belongs to the Sikh faith. And she grew up learning her faith’s stories and values from a whole community, including her grandfather. Of all of Papa Ji’s stories, her favorite was their origin story: the story of Guru Nanak, the first Sikh teacher.
Kaur tells the story:
Five centuries ago, the story goes, halfway around the world in a village in Punjab...there lived a young man named Nanak. He was deeply troubled by the violence around him, Hindus and Muslims in turmoil. One day, he disappeared on the bank of a river for three days. People thought he was dead, drowned. But Nanak emerged on the third day with a vision of Oneness: Ik Onkar, the Oneness of humanity and of the world. This vision threw him into a state of ecstatic wonder - vismaad - and he began singing songs of devotion called shabads, praising the divine within him and around him. In other words, he was in love. Love made him see with new eyes: Everyone around him was a part of him that he did not yet know. “I see no stranger,” said Guru Nanak, “I see no enemy.” [2]
Two origin stories. Two different faiths, born centuries apart. And yet both are inviting us into wonder. And both are inviting us to see and feel the ways we are all connected. And to see that separateness is only an illusion.
This invitation to wonder and see that we are all One is not unique to Christianity or Sikhism, of course. Kaur points out that it exists in many faiths. “Buddha [called us] to practice unending compassion, Abraham to open our tent to all, Jesus to love our neighbors, Muhammad to take in the orphan, Mirabai to love without limit. They all expanded the circle of who counts as one of us, and therefore who is worthy of our care and concern.” [3]
This invitation to wonder may seem insignificant, but it is actually so very life-altering. Kaur says that wonder isn’t secondary, it’s fundamental. Because wonder is the building block for love. [4]
It comes quite naturally to us as children. We wonder about everything. We stare up at birds flying high in the sky and wonder. We look down at a caterpillar slowly crossing the sidewalk and wonder. And we wonder about the people around us. We find that we are curious about what’s going on inside of them, what motivates them, why they do the things they do and on and on.
Kaur says that when we wonder about others in this way, we honor them because we recognize their full humanity. We realize that they are as complex as we are. Entire universes to be explored - just like us. Full, messy, wonderful humans - just like us. And, in our faith tradition as Christians, this all seems quite natural because flows from our own origin story. In the beginning, we are created in God’s image - children of the One who is vast, infinite, unknowable, complex, messy, complicated, wonderful….no wonder we humans are how we are. It is our birthright.
Too often, though, we forget that we were born for wonder. And we turn away from the invitation to Oneness. We begin to see others as strangers - different, other, not worthy of our curiosity. Kaur has a story about this and it’s an important one for the Church to hear.
When Kaur was in the 8th grade, she was working on a project in the library with her best friend, Lisa. Out of the blue, Lisa said, “Valarie, I can’t wait until Judgment Day. Just think, it will only be you and me and all the good people.”
After some careful probing, Kaur discovered that Lisa hadn’t actually realized that Sikhism was a different religion than Christianity. And when Lisa learned that Valarie wasn’t Christian, she was heartbroken because she had been taught there was no hope for people like Valarie. And Kaur was heartbroken because she lost her best friend. They couldn’t find their way through this divide.
Kaur reflects, “As long as Lisa believed I was going to hell, she could not love me as before. Wonder is an admission you don’t know everything about another. Lisa had stopped wondering about me. She had decided she knew my fate and had no more to learn.” [5]
We, as Christians, need to sit with this heartbreaking story for a moment. To bear witness to the violence done to Kaur and so very many others. To confess the sin of how our faith has been wrongly used to condemn others. Kaur reminds us that in the U.S. white supremacy is bound up with Christian supremacy. And that “any theology that teaches that God will torture people in the afterlife creates the imaginative space for you to do so yourself on earth.” [6]
Kyrie eleison, Christ have mercy. Forgive us for the ways we have used your life of love to prop up hate.
(pause)
Kaur wonders: “what if first contact in the Americas had been marked not by violence but by wonder? If the first Europeans who arrived here had looked into the faces of the indigenous people they met and thought not savage but sister and brother.” [7] She invites us to imagine what our nation might be like today if those already here had been seen as equals. What if our institutions were built upon a basic respect for the equality of all rather than white supremacy, Christian supremacy?
We are left wondering. And dreaming. And trying to figure out how to build a future together where we see each and every person and all of creation with that same sense of wonder we felt as young children when we watched an ant scurry through blades of grass. The world that Guru Nanak saw when he emerged with that vision of Oneness - a world where there is no separation from one another. A world where every person we encounter is a part of us that we simply don’t know yet. A world that God invites us to co-create even now. A world that God looks at and calls good, very good.
I want to invite you into a simple practice this week. Simple, but I can’t promise it will be easy.
Kaur teaches, when we encounter others, we should say to ourselves, “Sister. Brother. Sibling. Aunt. Uncle. Cousin.” Start to see them as a part of us rather than them. We say to ourselves “You are a part of me I don’t yet know.” Kaura says we can orient ourselves to the world around us with wonder and in this way we prepare ourselves for the possibility of connection. [8]
We can do this with nature, as well. My sense is that it’s actually easier to do with a tree than, some humans. It’s certainly much easier to do with friends, family, and people who seem to be “like us.” If you really want to level-up (and I hope you will) try this: try saying to yourself “Sister. Brother. Sibling. Aunt. Uncle. Cousin.” when you encounter other humans on Facebook or Twitter. Before judging, before assuming, before rushing to tippity-tappity-type your response or re-posting in outrage - pause in wonder. See if you can say to yourself, “You’re a part of me that I don’t yet know.”
Let’s say it together now to practice, “You’re a part of me that I don’t yet know.”
“You’re a part of me that I don’t yet know.”
Approach in wonder.
As it was in the beginning: wonder.
Is now and ever shall be: wonder.
Love without end. Amen and amen.
NOTES:
[1] See No Stranger by Valarie Kaur. p. 7
[2] Ibid., p. 8-9
[3] Ibid., p. 11
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRVMvY7e5mo
[5] Ibid., p. 18-19
[6] Ibid., p. 22
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
No comments:
Post a Comment