IT’S A HOT TIME IN THE OLD TOWN

I was in a gathering the other day where someone commented that these times seem to be hot times in terms of people being in disagreement. It reminded me of that old ragtime song which says:

"Come along get you ready, wear your bran, bran new gown,
For dere's gwine to be a meeting in that good, good old town,
Where you knowed ev'ry body, and they all knowed you,
And you've got a rabbits foot to keep away the hoodoo;
Where you hear that the preaching does begin,
Bend down low for to drive away your sin
And when you gets religion, you want to shout and sing
There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight!"

I’m a little hesitant to publish the dialect, but it does raise a point that whether you are talking about President Obama’s speech on health care on September 9, or about global warming, or about the Lutheran Church’s decision to welcome gay and lesbian persons in same-gender relationships to be pastors and lay leaders in the church – it is a hot time!

There certainly is a lot of shouting, maybe not so much singing. I’m not sure how many have got religion over any of these disagreements, though I suspect that some have.

I have been following the health care debate and have been chagrined over some of the town hall meetings where the acrimony has really gotten out of hand and statements have been made which are really false. I was also frustrated to hear South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson’s outburst, "You lie," to President Obama’s statement that illegal immigrants will not get health care in his plan. Wilson’s shout was an example of the heat that is being raised in our country without as much light as we need to have on a host of subjects.

All of this brought me to look up one of Aesop’s Fables. Aesop, you may remember lived in Greece in the period around 600 B.C.E. and is said to have been a slave, interestingly enough. His fables are little moral tales and one of them fits our situation to a T:

The Bundle of Sticks - Aesop

'An old man on the point of death summoned his sons around him to give them some parting advice. He ordered his servants to bring in a bundle of sticks, and said to his eldest son: "Break it." The son strained and strained, but with all his efforts was unable to break the Bundle. The other sons also tried, but none of them was successful. "Untie the bundle," said the father, "and each of you take a stick." When they had done so, he called out to them: "Now, break," and each stick was easily broken. "You see my meaning," said their father.
THE MORAL: Union gives strength.'

As we look at our world, our planet earth, as we look at all the people and creations (animals, insects, vegetables, flowers, soil, air, rocks and trees and all the rest) on our planet, as we look the varieties of opinions amongst the human species, beliefs and thoughts, and the vast array of them, and wonder who cares for the non-human creations on earth – I wonder how we can find unity - a union, as Aesop suggested we need for strength in this universe.

Of course, as one who is still living in the joy, for some, sadness for some, anger for some of the decision of the Lutheran church to affirm gay and lesbian persons as citizens, as Christian people, and now as church leaders it raises the question of whether we can come together and determine that we will each find a way to declare God’s love and all-embracing care for everyone.

Paul, who was a leading first century Christian in the Greco-Roman world, wrote a lot of letters and in one that he wrote to the church in Corinth, Greece, he said:

'Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15If the foot would say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16And if the ear would say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? 18But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many members, yet one body. 21The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." 22On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; 24whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, 25that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. 26If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.'
(1 Corinthians 12:14-26)

What this fellow was saying is that each person is an important, yes, even indispensable part of the body – whatever body you are talking about – the body of people on earth, the body of citizens of the United States, or the body of people in any religious group, including Christianity – we all need each other and we all need to listen to each other, for if we do not, out disagreements may bring us all down.

I am not naive enough to think that everyone can come to a point of agreement on any given subject. But we can agree to disagree, to honor the positions which other people hold, even to examine ourselves to see if we might, in some way, be wrong.

That is incredibly difficult. For me, as one who has advocated for the full-inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) persons in the church and in all of society, it is close to impossible for me to think that I may be wrong and that GLBT persons are bad, awful, damned people. I cannot go there in any way.

I also have a hard time wondering how some people can use the Bible as a launching pad against GLBT people. They usually talk about the same 5 or 6 passages which, for me, represent sexual behavior (gang rape, violence, man-boy sex [pederasty] and the like which I also declare to be abominable. Those who wrote the Bible 200 to 3000+ years ago had no concept of a sexual orientation given at birth. My experience with countless GLBT people in relationships is that many of them are in as loving and caring, committed relationships as I could find anywhere.

I want to say that many people who hold a radically different position from mine do so out of their heartfelt beliefs. But, the bottom line is that we have to find ways to live together in spite of our differences. There is a part of me that says that differentness in our universe is a terrific gift of God – whether our difference be race, color, sex, religion, culture, education, age, or sexual orientation.

If the hot time that we are having in the old town of our society these days is going to destroy the human race or destroy this earth, that must not be allowed to happen. Sometimes we can look to religious groups and leaders to find ways out of this. I think of Mahatma Gandhi, or the Dalai Lama, or Mother Teresa, or Jesus, or Mohammed, or Abraham and Sarah, and I say – let’s listen to how they would go after this. Let’s be committed to live together - in spite of our differences, and declare that we will not leave the body - whatever the body we are in to which we are committed.
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