Readings: Genesis 2:20-23 and Revelation 7:9-10

Ask any Year 8 class what our Genesis scripture today tells us about Adam and Eve – without hesitation they will state it means they are the same, that men and women are equals, made of the same substance.

Of course, this is exactly what it does teach, but if we are all equal why then do these same children go on to question the very participation of others in our mutual rights as human beings?

What we know in our hearts and yet experience as reality in the world can be very different. In part this conflict is drawn from what we have grown up to consider normal. That which we know, whatever we have become used to is comforting. We don’t have to think about it, it just is. And every time we continue to participate in the same way with what is, we support it, hold it up and perpetuate it. Our identity becomes rooted in the familiar, in what is seen. All is well if all that is, remains the same.

This desire for sameness, leads us often to demand conformity. We think harmony is to be outwardly comparable. This leads us to treat one another as objects perceived in the mind, rather than as human beings seen and felt deeply within our hearts.

God created the diversity we see about us. But in the beginning we perceived each other through the tenderness of our hearts – we did not fix our gaze on outward appearances. Consequences of the fall were, a tearing apart of flesh – a fragmentation of what had been made to live as one, and a veil covered the eyes and ears of our hearts.

In seeing our nakedness, we became rooted in externals – rooted in what divides us rather than what unites. The goal of our reconciliation is not simply one of compliance with what is before us – but is the embracing of difference, and participation in the works of Love.

Jesus challenges conformity throughout His ministry. In opening His arms to extend what it means to be family, He is challenging our rootedness in sameness, telling us anyone who participates in the works of God is to be called our brother, our sister, our mother…

Jesus calls the strong and the weak to belong together, that is for us as moral creatures to transcend the tendencies of an unconscious bias towards survival of the fittest. For us to align ourselves not with the visible signs of power, but with the poor and the weak. In the beginning, we not only see a male and a female belonging to each other, but from the one who was first came the last. For whatever lives is present, whatever is present now, is also last – for tomorrow is promised to no one. You could say we exist like a wildfire at the edge of time, what is past was first, and what is now is last. 

Jesus tells us He is ‘the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.’ He came into the world with power, to serve not to be served, with miracles and with vulnerability. Jesus is all of us, in one. No one is excluded – for His Kingdom is not an earthly Kingdom, it does not belong to one group or another, but to all. In Christ there is no longer Jew or Gentile, male or female.

On the cross the veil over our hearts was torn, allowing, once again, the light of God to penetrate the inward eyes and ears of our hearts. Original sin was taken away from all who believe in Him, so that they should not perish but have eternal life.

On the cross a great multitude from every nation, tribe, people and language are united in Him. Because Jesus was not the sacrifice of an individual to a whole. Instead, Jesus took on the whole into Himself. Jesus did not lose His identity in giving Himself to us. His body is broken as the bread is broken on the altar, not the Spirit. The Spirit is One as we all become one in Him, and the image and likeness of God is restored.

Jesus’ death on the cross was the opposite of loss, it was gain. He gained all of us into Himself, the vessel through which He descended into Hell, carrying original sin, carrying every act of separation, every mistake we’ve made in the past or continue with now. The vessel through which we rise and are carried to the resurrected life with Him in Heaven.

How much joy is there is in belonging to God, in being chosen, and forgiven of our sins! And yet so much suffering remains in the world about us – we must ask ourselves why are we staying so comfortable?

Mahatma Gandhi said, ‘where there is love there is life.’

In a world that is becoming increasingly atomised, and mental health is failing, where the increasing number of children in care have managers not parents, a world where the talented are racially abused, where billions of people continue to suffer from poor access to water, sanitation and hygiene. We can only conclude that there remains a deep poverty in our hearts. That there remains an absence of love for one another.

Our wholeness is found in the love we have for God, self and other. This is the greatest commandment to love the Lord our God, with all our heart, soul and mind, and to love our neighbour as ourselves.

We can answer the question ‘who is my neighbour’ without any difficulty, but the new question for our time is ‘do we know them?’

I’m not so sure we do. I have heard Christians disown what they ‘see’ in the toppling of statues, rather than weeping with the cries of distressed hearts that are calling out ‘enough!’

Amid the Black Lives Matter protest former president Barack Obama shared an article written by James Baldwin. It didn’t take long to realise that there is no possibility of empathising with something that lies beyond our experience. Life experiences so different that unless we can say that we too have suffered discrimination and oppression, generation after generation, we cannot say we understand. Neither can we give the shame back to our ancestors, for this is not yet past. Though evidence of humankind can be dated back some 300,000 years – in my lifetime, in my short life, in my own memory, segregation was still considered acceptable. In the memory of those older, but still living, segregation, degradation and oppression of black people was acceptable in a United States of America, considered the world’s sole superpower, the third most populous country in the world.

When we dismiss the cries of the poor, the marginalised, the oppressed – we are missing the cries of Jesus Himself, who said whatever you do for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you do for me.

James Baldwin said, “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”

I suggest, it is the avoidance of pain, which includes a failure to take responsibility for our actions – like Adam and Eve, we are passing on the blame to someone else, or hiding from it. But if now is not the time to deal with this, and grieve this pain, then when? Just as corruption from those exercising power brings righteous anger, so does hopelessness in the face of oppression. When Jesus overturned the tables in the temple driving out the money changers, He was not advocating violence but the immediacy of action. Pharaoh, asked when he wanted the plague of frogs to disappear said ‘tomorrow’, but when he freed the people from slavery, God commanded them not to wait – but to eat unleavened bread – to move with haste, to make the time for change now. There will be no more delay!

We may think that whatever does the greatest good has done the highest good. But I say not, because if each life is precious and of infinite value, then as Jesus points out in the parable of the lost sheep, the one and the ninety-nine are equal in value. Can anything be greater than infinity?

Yes, every life matters, but we must open our eyes to embrace a wider family than the one we were born into. Only by claiming each other as family will we be able to find ways of healing the wounds of the past.

Our God who reigns Almighty reaches from on high, from the very tops of the mountain peaks all the way down into the depths of the earth. Penetrating all in all. Yet, Jesus did not align Himself with worldly power – He aligned Himself with the poor, the homeless, the marginalised, the oppressed.

The people the world thought were weeds, He looked them in the eyes and loved them, He healed them, a healing that was a foretaste of the Kingdom of God come on earth as it is in Heaven. We, who may consider ourselves only to be tiny flowers growing among thorns – we start by doing the little that we can – not worrying about what we cannot.

Amen.