From the Book of Genesis:
The angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said, “By myself I have sworn, says the Lord: Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies, and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.”
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Genesis 22:15-18 (NRSV) – February 5, 2014.)
During the Super Bowl broadcast last Sunday Coca-Cola offered an advertisement featuring several people of differing ethnicities singing in a variety of languages a rendition of the song America the Beautiful. Almost immediately, the twitterverse was flooded with tweets of outrage demanding that the Coca-Cola singers “speak American,” condemning the singing of “our national anthem” in any language other than English, and threatening a boycott of Coke. (As much as I might want to, I’m not going to address the ignorance of referring to the English language as “American” or of not knowing what the national anthem of the United States actually is.)
That little tempest in a tea pot came to mind when I read God’s promise to Abraham that “by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves.” This is the mission of God’s People. Isaiah prophesied that “in days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it.” (Isa. 2:2) Psalm 72 includes the prayer for the king of Israel, “May all nations be blessed in him” (v. 17) and Psalm 87 proclaims that God will say of all people from every nation that “this one was born” in Zion (v. 6). Ben Sira refers to the promise to Abraham when he writes, “To Isaac also he gave the same assurance for the sake of his father Abraham. The blessing of all people and the covenant he made to rest on the head of Jacob.” (Ecclus. 44:22-23)
As we were reminded on Sunday morning, this mission was inherited by Christ and his church, the new Israel (as St. Paul said). Old Simeon took the infant Jesus in his arms and proclaimed that he was to be “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” (Lk 2:32) As an adult rabbi, Jesus would instruct his disciples to “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Mt 5:16) having commissioned them to be “the light of the world,” and reminding them that “a city built on a hill cannot be hid.” (v. 14)
The Puritan preacher John Winthrop took up that image when, preaching to the Massachusetts Bay colonists aboard the vessel Arbella in 1630, he admonished them to set an example of righteousness to the world. Presidents Kennedy and Reagan made use of the “shining city on the hill” metaphor in their inaugural addresses.
So I am puzzled why people who claim to be conservative, Christian, free market Americans would be upset with a successful American corporation advertising its product in a commercial in which people from all over the world extol the beauty of America . . . . the only explanation is a misunderstanding of unity and a misapprehension that uniformity of language promotes that unity. And, indeed, that is the tenor of many conversations I’ve seen on Facebook and Twitter since the Super Bowl advertisement was aired. In many of those conversations, the old image of America as a “melting pot” has been invoked.
Although many of us may remember that image from grade school civics lessons, I remember a junior high school civics and history instructor who sought to disabuse us of the notion. Our society is not and never has been a melting pot, he told us. If we had been, there wouldn’t be barrios, black ghettos, Little Italies, Chinatowns, Levittowns, lace-curtain Irish neighborhoods, and all the other ethnic enclaves that have existed for decades and even centuries. We’re not a melting pot, said my civics teacher, we are a tossed salad. It is our diversity that makes us exciting and makes us strong, unity in diversity, not uniformity, which is what a melting pot creates, which is what an enforced uniformity of language would promote.
Ethnic diversity, in fact, is the biblical model. All the nations of the world receive a blessing through Abraham and his descendents, but they do not become Israel; they do not become Jews. Even as God enrolls the nations in Psalm 87 declaring their birth in Zion, they remain Rahab, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, Ethiopia, and all the other nations of the world. As immigrants come to be part of America, even as they may become naturalized citizens, they retain their histories and identities as Moroccan, Thai, Xosa, French, Maori, and all the rest, with cultural heritages to be honored, languages to be spoken and sung, and diversity to be celebrated. The shining city on the hill shines with diversity!
So, bravo, Coca-Cola, bravo!
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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
I’ve never quite understood the story of the tower of Babel. I get that it’s an etiological myth to explain the variety of languages spoken by human beings, but the picture of God that it paints is (shall we say?) less than positive. Might it have been better to cast someone else (say the Tempter?) as the “bad guy” who thwarts the plans of the tower builders?
I read those words and heard Bill Cosby’s voice. I’ll bet I’m not alone. More than 50 years ago (1963), Cosby’s debut comedy album Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow…Right! included a 3-1/2 minute skit he’d been doing on stage entitled Noah: Right! Ever since, it has colored the story of Noah and the ark for Americans; I know people who wouldn’t be born for another quarter century after that album’s release for whom Cosby’s skit is nonetheless an interpretive filter for the Noah story. Millions read the story and hear Noah asking, in Cosby’s voice, “Lord, what’s a cubit?”
Look up cherub in a secular dictionary and this is what you find: “a member of the second order of angels, often represented as a beautiful rosy-cheeked child with wings.” (Collins) I don’t know why, when, or how the fat little boys with aerodynamically inadequate wings came to be an artistic and now normative depiction of cherubs, but there it is! Technically, these little guys (and they are male) are known as putti — an Italian plural; the singular is putto. (Putto is occasionally used in modern Italian to mean a male toddler.)
I sometimes wonder to what extent Paul, as an educated Jewish citizen of a Greek-speaking empire, was schooled in the classical Greek philosophers. Had he read Plato’s Republic? Was he aware of the conversation portrayed in Book VII between Socrates and Glaucon in which the allegory of the cave is laid out?
Very recently in the church office mail there was this small envelope addressed to me personally — the address has been typed out on a separate sheet of paper, cut therefrom, and glued onto the envelope. There is no return address and the postmark is a Cleveland, OH, cancelation. Inside there was no personal note of any kind, just a page torn from the last quarter’s Forward Day by Day devotional. One side, as you can see, has been scribbled all over; clearly not the side I am supposed to read. The other is the meditation for October 30, 2013, which begins:
We are stepping out of the “common of time,” away from the progression of lessons assigned for the Sundays of Ordinary Time, and instead celebrating the Feast of Michaelmas, known variously as the Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel or as the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael, or as the Feast of the Archangels, or as the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels (the latter being the preferred Anglican name for this commemoration). The only reason we are doing so is a personal conceit of your rector; Michaelmas, the 29th of September, just happens to be my birthday. Today I am celebrating the 30th anniversary of my twenty-eleventh birthday. I’ll get back to that in a moment, but first . . . a word about Michaelmas.
What is a church building? It’s a holy place. It’s a place where people gather to worship. It’s a place where people encounter God. It’s a place where God’s people enjoy one another’s company. It’s a place where people get married, where babies are baptized, where funerals are held, where memories are made and lives remembered. It’s a place where the stories of faith are told and retold. It’s a place we teach and it’s a place where we learn.
I was told once that there is a difference between Yankee fairy tales and Northern fairy tales, and the difference is found in the way they begin. Yankee fairy tales start off, “Once upon a time . . . . ” Southern fairy tales begin, “Y’all ain’t gonna believe this!”
Which brings us to the second story, the “y’all ain’t gonna believe this” story of the first Christian Pentecost. The twelve (with the addition of Matthias a few days before) who would become known as the Apostles were again together in the Upper Room, perhaps together with several other disciples including all those women, Joanna, Suzanna, Mary the mother of James, Mary Magdalen, and the other Mary, those women who “used to follow him and provided for him when he was in Galilee.” (Mark 15:41) The first ECW! They were there in that room where they’d shared that last supper, that Passover meal with Jesus, that room where they had cowered in fear on the day of the crucifixion and the next day hiding from the Jewish authorities and the Roman police, that room where the risen Jesus had come to them not once but twice and had allowed Thomas to feel his wounds, that room where Jesus had told them to wait for “the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” (John 14:26) There they were, in that room, probably as confused and bewildered as all those people on the plain at Shinar when the Lord scattered them with confused speech.
