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Sermon September 17, 2017
The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers, LSW
The Church of the Nativity and St. Stephen, Newport, PA
Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost Proper 19, Track 1 Year A
Latinx Heritage Month
Why do you pass judgement on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgement seat of God. Romans 14:10
Please be seated.
From 1981 – 1982, I was a single mother, attending Cornell University full time. Attending Cornell had been a lifelong dream of mine. My parents met there and Cornell was always a wonderful and treasured place in our family. As a senior in high school, I was placed on the wait list. Then life took other turns and seven years after high school graduation, I matriculated as a transfer student. And, as I said, a single parent of two children, one going into kindergarten and one into first grade.
We lived in what was then called “married student housing.” We had a two-bedroom, two-story apartment made of cinderblock with brick façade. There must have been at least 10 apartments or townhouses in each section. It was an amazing year. In our apartment complex, there were families from all over the world. The children’s public school was filled with children from many countries and languages.
One couple that had children close in age to my own, came from South Africa. It was lots of fun explaining Halloween to them. One of my son’s friends was from Chile and I learned that his mother, a PhD physics student, had been imprisoned by the totalitarian government of Augosto Pinochet. The worldwide physics community had rallied around her to get her freed from prison and Cornell had given her a home.
Right next door to us was a family with one daughter. We didn’t see them often. Years later while watching TV, I realized that our next door neighbor was Jimmy Smits! On the other side of the Smits family was Cristina and her daughter, who was the same age as my children. Cristina and I became fast friends. Cristina showed me a whole new world. She was of Puerto Rican background from New York City.
Cristina took me to the on-campus gatherings of the Latinx community. I saw different viewpoints. I saw the variety of people lumped together as “Hispanic;” people who often had significant differences in their histories and viewpoints.
Cristina also introduced me to a variety of foods and spices that I had never heard of…arroz con gondules, Goya seasoning and foods, Bustelo coffee, and guava paste on saltine crackers. How had I not known about something as simple as these various foods? Why had they not been staples in my growing up in Central PA? I mean, that’s something simple.
I was educated in other ways too, of course. I took a summer course in the politics of Central America, studying El Salvador and Nicaragua.
Yet, I think it was Cristina who influenced me the most. Who opened up a whole new world for me…a different way of living. It was our friendship that influenced me in the years after as I became involved with diverse groups of people, especially the Harrisburg School Board work.
In our Epistle today, Paul addresses the Christians in Rome. The community had become judgmental and maybe even rigid. They judged each other based upon what food they ate. Some fasted, while others did not. In other words, people of diverse backgrounds, practices and experiences were having trouble getting along. Instead of rejoicing in their differences and seeing that the difference came from a common place of praising God, they made judgments about what was good and bad or right and wrong.
The important thing is that they had a common love of God and love of following Jesus Christ to the best of their ability. That’s what bound them together. Within that common love, there was room for a variety of loving practices. There was room for the diversity with which God had created them. There was room to be God’s infinite image.
I heard a quote this week that while times have changed since Christ was here on earth with us, human nature has not changed all that much! We look all around us and see this amazing diverse world God has created and yet we are not always excited by diversity.
I recently learned, for instance, that a local business, Spiral Path Farms brought their workers in to the Weis store a couple of weeks ago. The farm has a van that everyone arrived in. Most of the workers are from Guatemala. When they came out of the store, the van was “keyed” with the words, “Go Home.” Sometimes if you’re in a place where others speak another language, you’ll hear someone say, “Speak English” to the group.
And while we have many opinions on immigration, I’m sure, I believe fear of diversity drives some of the opposition to immigration and stymies us in caring for our brothers and sisters.
So today, we change our service around just a little bit. We sing some unfamiliar songs. We publicly observe Latinx Heritage Month. Because Christ’s message, example and teachings have reached nearly the whole world. People from all over the world follow him, praise him, love him, and are his hands, heart, and feet in the world today. We may all have different practices or praise in different languages. And as Paul says, we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.
Amen
The Episcopal Church
Welcomes You
