SERMONS 

The Tyranny of Sameness

Scripture – Gen. 11:1-9
The Tower of Babel

First of all, let me say a word of thanks to Pastor Fuzz for inviting me to offer a message today. I am humbled and honored to stand in this pulpit where so many prophets and leaders have stood before me. And thank you to this church, and especially the Corinthian choir, which has once again received us with warmth and grace. I am so grateful that we have this opportunity to worship together, to renew the bonds of connection that have been established as a result of this church’s very brave, and somewhat risky invitation so many years ago.

Yes, invitation can be risky. You never know who will accept! A couple of years back Pastor Fuzz and I were preparing to give a workshop together on worship across the racial divide. We were talking about how this service came to be, and I asked him, “Why us?” And he said, “We invited everyone else we knew, but you’re the only ones who showed up. And you just kept coming back.” See – be careful when you make an invitation!

I love what we do here today. I love this celebration, even though it makes for a long, long day of church. And I love that each year there are more and more stories we can share about this relationship, about this celebration, that demonstrate the bond that is being formed by the risky invitation this church made so many years ago. Do you know what I mean? I’m talking about folks getting together and saying, “Do you remember the time…”

I love those stories. Do you remember the time – I think it was my first year as choir director at our church – when our choir came here and sang “O Freedom”? It was going just fine until our choir, which was, well, white, sang the line “and before I’ll be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave.” My, my. Risky. To this church’s credit, I only remember seeing three or four eyebrows raised.

And do you remember a few years back – Pastor Fuzz called me up the Thursday before this service was scheduled to happen and said, “We’ve got a problem. The Titans game is scheduled for the same time as our service. You think anyone’s gonna come?” And our churches got together and watched the game with tables full of soul food and a halftime rendition of the “I have a dream” speech. Reverend Gleason Rogers wasn’t even a teenager when he did that. Risky.

And I remember when we were getting ready to leave the restaurant after the Titans had won the game, and I said to Pastor Fuzz, “You know, I’d really like for our choirs to sing together this year.” He agreed, but what would we sing? Pastor Fuzz asked me to write a song for our choirs, and he said, “Make it challenging.” And we did get together, and we’ve been singing that challenging song ever since. Risky.

And do remember the time Pastor Fuzz invited our former minister, the Reverend Mary Katherine Morn, to preach from this pulpit? A white, Unitarian Universalist woman preaching from this pulpit? Some pastors might have had a revolution on their hands. Risky.

And do you remember the time Pastor Fuzz came over to our church to preach for this service and brought what must have been a 50-foot step ladder with him? He’s up there, jumping up and down preaching about Jacob’s ladder, folks from his church are falling out of the pews, and folks from our church are looking around asking, “Are we insured for this?” Risky.

And do you remember the time our churches, so fired up about we’re doing here right now, decided to make Dr. King’s dream a reality by working together to end poverty and homelessness in this city? No? But we talk about doing it every year, don’t we? Every year I hear folks saying, “This can’t just be a once a year thing. We need to do more together.” But something keeps it from happening. Maybe it’s just too risky.

My message this morning is entitled “The Tyranny of Sameness.” For all the talk of celebrating diversity that I hear on Martin Luther King weekend, I see in our culture an overwhelming drive to make everybody the same. You remember being in Junior High school, don’t you? Some of you are there right now. You remember peer pressure? You know, the cool kids all wearing the same brand of jeans, or maybe their shirts had the label on it. Back in my day it was the little alligator. Now it’s got something to do with Tommy somebody. “Come on, mom. I’ve got to have this pair of shoes. I know they cost more, but they’re what the cool kids are wearing, and if I don’t have them I won’t fit in.”

We’ve all felt that pressure. The pressure that tells us that being different is just not acceptable. And I’m here to tell you this afternoon that it didn’t just end after Junior High, either. No, that pressure is alive and well now matter what your age, or skin color, or beliefs. It tells us that there’s only one way to be a person of faith. Or that there’s only one way to be of whatever ethnic heritage you may be. Or that there’s only one way to be in love or to raise a family. Or that there’s only one way to be a liberal or a conservative, a Democrat or a Republican, a blue state or a red state. Or that there’s only one way - only one way to be an American.

Well I don’t think it’s quite that easy. And I think that the culture we live in is doing serious harm by promoting the idea that people can be put into little boxes where we think we know everything we need to know about them. Oh, you’re in that blue box? Well, then I don’t need to listen to you. Oh, you’re a conservative? Well, then, you must be a fool.

Do you remember the time just before this war in Iraq started? The president had something like a 90% approval rating, and I was going out of my mind. How can this be? Who are these people in the 90%? I certainly didn’t know any of them! Well, that’s what I told myself. But it wasn’t true. I knew plenty of people who were in the 90%. I just never talked to them about it. They were in a box that I had put away so that I only had to deal with people who saw things the way I saw them.

That’s the world we live in today. A world where people try very hard to spend all of their time around only those folks who agree with them. Listen to talk radio sometime – conservative talk radio tends to be focused on scaring people into submission, and liberal talk radio tends to use satire to make fun of people who aren’t enlightened enough to share their views. And what happens when someone from the other side dares to call in and share their perspective?

I submit to you that there’s something dangerous about a world where people in power think they are all the same. There’s something dangerous about a world where assumptions about people who are different go unchallenged. Something dangerous about a world where leaders of nations and of churches require blind loyalty, where those who see things differently are drummed out of the conversation.

In our scripture this afternoon, we heard that originally everyone spoke the same language, that the world was all the same. Imagine that. Everybody in the whole world being just alike. Everybody wearing the same thing – little alligators on their shirts, saggy jeans and Tommy underwear showing. And not just the teenagers – imagine me and Pastor Fuzz, just walking around together, sagging. Wouldn’t that be a sight?

So, everyone’s all the same. And you’d think they could do something special, you know? You’d think that if they were all the same page they could really do something great for the world. Maybe they could figure out how to cure cancer, or how to end poverty. Maybe they could figure out how to provide health care for all people, or how to make education accessible for everybody. But they didn’t. What did they do? They built a tower, a monument so that they could “make a name for themselves.” They had the potential of the whole world working together, and they chose to build something to remind themselves of just how great they were.

And God says oh no. God says that if they can do this, what’s going to stop them from doing whatever they want? What will stop them from thinking that they’re me?

So what does God do? God makes them different, and scatters them all over the earth.

This story reminds us of what we already know, and what we see everyday in our world. People working together can do great things. But instead of doing great things, our tendency is to do things that show everyone else just how great we are. The need to show the world how great we are is something Dr. King called the Drum Major Instinct. It is what prompted James and John to ask Jesus to seat them at his right and his left. The need to be first, the need to be right, the need to have everyone in the room and say, “he’s somebody,” or, “she’s the one in charge here.” James and John wanted to make a name for themselves, but they didn’t go out and build a tower. They went right up to Jesus and asked him to give it to them.

Now in the first story, it says that God confuses the minds of the people, and God scatters them over the face of the earth. And I’d imagine that in the other story Jesus confused a few minds, too. He didn’t tell James and John that being first was a bad thing, or that sitting in a place of prominence was the wrong thing to do. But he did say that it wasn’t his to give – they were going to have to do it the old fashioned way: they had to earn it.

And how were the disciples told to earn their place? By serving others. As Dr. King said:

Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness.

And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.

The society we are living in right now tells that those little boxes we put each other in are important. It tells us that we should all be the same, and that those who are different should be cast out. But for people of faith, those boxes hold matters of little consequence. The poor and hungry just outside our doors don’t care whether we’re black or white. They don’t care if we’re red or blue. They want to know if our hearts are full of grace, if we’re here to serve. Those boxes keep us separated; keep us from fulfilling the dream of a world where justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

There are a few people with a tremendous amount of power who have convinced a lot of folks that being like them is the way to go. And they use our differences to divide us. They tell us to be afraid of people who don’t look like you. Be afraid of people who don’t worship like you. Be afraid of people who don’t speak your language. Be afraid of people who are red or blue, who listen to Rush Limbaugh or NPR, who put those bumper stickers on their cars, who listen to that weird music, who read too many books, or who wear saggy pants. They’re different – be afraid! This is the tyranny of sameness – the idea that we should fear and ridicule those who are different from us, different from what we perceive as the norm.

And so what do we do? We wall ourselves off from each other. We gather in groups of people who are just like us, except when they’re not. But we don’t talk about that, do we? We come here today and celebrate our unity, but we don’t talk about the fact that this gathering is mostly made of up folks from two churches that are very, very different in just about every way. They look different, they sound different, they use different languages to talk about what is most important. They abide by different cultural norms and have different ways of thinking about what church is supposed to be. We are different in so many ways: mostly black and mostly white, gathering in neighborhoods that might as well be in different cities, each of us sure that the way we do church is somehow the right way to do it.

And yet here we are, together, Trinitarian and Unitarian, honoring the life and legacy of a man whose dream it was that we would one day be able to do what we are doing right now. A man who knew that there was, in fact, something important about which we really are the same. Dr. King saw in every people of faith a common impulse – the call to serve. He brought together people of many faith traditions, people of many colors and cultures who shared a desire to make the world a better place. While always grounded in his own faith, he never used religion to exclude anybody. Marching alongside him in Selma were Christians and Jews, Muslims and Buddhists. In Birmingham there were Catholics and Baptists, and in Memphis there were Unitarians and Presbyterians all marching together. Each of them there because deep down inside they felt a common calling to feed the hungry, to refresh the thirsty, and to welcome the stranger. No matter what name they used for God, whether Jehovah or Allah, the Source of All Being or no name at all, they felt a common calling to comfort the sick, to clothe the naked, to set captives free, to work for justice for all people, even when justice seemed a distant and unattainable goal.

There is an ancient Chinese proverb that expresses what I’m really trying to say here this afternoon. It says that:

Where there is light in the soul, there is beauty in the person.
Where there is beauty in the person, there is harmony in the home.
Where there is harmony in the home, there is honor in the nation.
Where there is honor in the nation, there is peace in the world.

The book of Genesis tells us that in the beginning God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. And God saw that it was good, and from that light everything else came into being. You, me, the many peoples and cultures of this earth – all come from that one light. Presidents and beggars, doctors and garbage men, preachers and drug dealers – all come from that one light. Dr. King, you may recall, was assassinated in Memphis while he was there fighting for the rights of sanitation workers. Garbage men, King would say, come from the same light as the politicians who fought so bitterly to deny their rights.

There is light in every soul, and when we can see it, we see that every person is beautiful. I want you to turn to your neighbor and tell them, “There’s light in your soul, and you’re beautiful.” Look them in the eye when you do it. “There’s light in your soul, and you’re beautiful.” Now for some folks here that might have been uncomfortable. Maybe it would have been easier if you were sitting next to someone else – I don’t know. But we have to learn to see the light within one another, despite all of the differences we see. Because justice and peace aren’t just ideals that happen out there somewhere. They are goals which are realized when each person comes to see what Dr. King called “the inherent worth and dignity of every human personality.” We will not have justice unless we see the light in each other. We will not have peace if we refuse to acknowledge the light in each other. We will not fulfill our calling as people of faith unless we can see it in people whose faith is not our own.

Brothers and sisters, as I come to my conclusion let me say that we have a long way to go before Dr. King’s dream is realized. And I say to you this afternoon that we will never get there if we let our differences keep us apart. It is hard, risky work. When we open the doors of invitation to do the work of justice, we can’t control who will be standing there to join us. And we must not be afraid to be changed by the relationships forged as a result of doing this work we are all called to do. I know that I have been changed by being in relationship with the people of faith who call this church home. I know that we may not always remember each other’s names, but that there is a genuine care and concern for each other here among us that transcends our differences and allows us to be companions on our journeys of faith. And I know that I don’t just love this service or the ‘remember when’ stories that have come from our worshipping together – I have come to see that I love you. I love who we are together. And I know that when we agree in love, no differences can stop us from making our dreams come true.

And yes, loving each other is just one step, and there are many more steps ahead of us. But maybe, just maybe, by learning to see the light in each other here in this place we might find opportunities to do more. Together we might be able to serve this community in ways none of us could ever do alone. We might find ourselves one day saying, “Do you remember the time when Corinthian Baptist and First Unitarian Universalist got together and ended poverty and homelessness in Nashville? Do you remember when they put their differences aside and showed this city a new way to love each other? Do you remember when they stopped dreaming and came up with a plan?” My my – now that’s risky.

Let me finish with one last story. I remember the first time our choirs mixed together in the chancel behind me, and as we finished that first rehearsal the question arose as to what we should wear for the service the next afternoon. Now, our choir doesn’t wear choir robes, and the Corinthian choir does, so we thought we should just wear black pants and white shirts so that we looked like a uniform group. Once the decision was made, a young man from this church, who’s not quite so young anymore, asked, “but how will they tell us apart?”

That young man didn’t see boxes. He didn’t see liberal or conservative, black or white, Trinitarian or Unitarian. He saw only light. I pray that as our relationship deepens over the years, we may all have the gift to see in each other only what we truly need to see. Light, beauty, honor – and may what we see in each other bring peace into our world. Amen.