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No Longer Strangers by Rev. Manuel de la Fuente Scripture Text: Ephesians 2:12-22 |
Good Morning. I greet you on behalf of the Asian American Baptist Caucus which I represent in this Biennial. I bring you good news from the Caucus. For this past two years our Caucus conferences have been very well attended. In September of last year in Oakland, California, we had more than 130 participants. It was the first time that we have said no to some folks who still wanted to register as we have reached the maximum of what the venue can accommodate. During this Biennial, the business session of our convocation was packed with around seventy Asian American Baptists. The dinner that evening was sold out to approximately 100 members, friends, and guests of the Caucus.
We have a growing constituency and we are planning to hold our first Asian American Baptist Convention in 2006. We are inspired, our hearts are filled with joy, and we want to share this good news, these blessings with you, we might focus on the miraculous events the Lord is doing in our midst. It is not often ethnic minorities have the chance to speak, so I thank the Ministers Council and Kate Harvey, its Executive Director, for this invitation to speak on God’s behalf.
Let us pray: Have mercy upon us, O Lord, and help us. Speak to us and give us a message. Remind and inspire us once more of the truth which is in Christ. Amen.
After pastoring Calvary Baptist Church for three and a half years, we held our first membership class, a series of four sessions, with about ten to twelve people attending. Two decided to be baptized and two others who were already baptized asked to be given the Right Hand of Fellowship. There was a spirit of excitement leading to the day of baptism as it has been years since the last baptism. Two Sundays ago, we celebrated that joyous event. A Jamaican woman and a young Yugoslavian/Serbian kid were baptized. We also gave the Right Hand of Fellowship to two Haitian women - one from Canada, the other, from France.
This was going to be my first baptism so I did not really know what to expect. As I immersed the first candidate in the water and when he came out of that water symbolizing the new life in Jesus Christ, the multicultural congregation of Calvary spontaneously rose to their feet and gave a thunderous applause and a joyful affirmation. The same thing occurred with the second candidate. As we gave the Right Hand of Fellowship to the two women standing side by side with the newly baptized members, there was a joyous and celebrative spirit in the air.
There was a joyful spirit in the hearts of everyone as we went to Coffee Hour – which after three years had evolved into a weekly potluck buffet luncheon. Some of our Anglo-American members came up to me during the luncheon and said, “Pastor, this is wonderful - this spirit of joy and celebration being expressed in baptism.” She continued, “But I just wanted to share with you that all of baptisms in the past – it was different. We were as quiet as could be, since that was our understanding as how it should be.” Call it cultural difference. Call it a difference in emphasis between solemnity and celebration. But this is Calvary Baptist Church of Clifton, New Jersey, now.
What was once a basically Euro or Anglo-American church, and a mono-generation church, has become an international, multicultural church, and a multigenerational church, as well. Members and friends of Calvary come from a variety of races, ethnicity, nationalities and culture. We are Yugoslavians, Jamaicans, Haitians, Filipinos, African Americans, a variety of Hispanics from Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic and others, and several other mixtures of races or ethnicities.
The worship service is a blend of traditional and contemporary music and style, and formal and casual structure. The participants are intergenerational: senior citizens, adults, young adults, youth, children. The children have brought so much life to the church. Their laughter, music and their mere presence have been so much of a blessing. There is something for everyone.
Every year at Pentecost, we celebrate International Sunday. We invite many visitors as we celebrate our unity in Christ in the midst of diversity of culture, race and ethnicity. We come with our respective ethnic or cultural attires, and the worship service reflects the variety and richness of our cultures. The Scripture readings and musical numbers are presented in different languages.
An international buffet luncheon, where one can taste in a very concrete and palatable way the “international-ness” or “multi-cultural-ness” of the church, follows the worship service. After the sumptuous meal comes the cultural program: songs, dances, readings, narrative and other creative cultural presentations. Every year there is always a surprise group. Last year, it was the Jamaicans as they came in with their colorful national colors of green, yellow and black. This year, it was the Anglo-Americans. For the first time since we started this more than three and a half years ago, they had a cultural presentation. They showcased American heritage through literary reading and a narrative dialogue of rural Alabama - of what it was decades ago – of what it was like growing up in rural Alabama.
After all those activities, fellowship, and food, it could be exhausting and you would think we’ve had enough. Oh no, not yet! - especially the Yugoslavians – for there is still a soccer/football match to be played. When the weather is excellent, playing soccer could be a weekly thing. That’s okay, but the problem is the Yugoslavians always ask me to play with them.
Playing soccer has served as a form of koinonia, a deep fellowship event between me and the Yugoslavians, between everyone who plays and even those who linger on: men, women and children who watch the game and those who do their own thing or play their own games. When I first played with them, there was automatic bonding. I was very careful and cautious not to hit them. Later, I started playing more aggressively - nudging, pushing, and shoving. At one point, I must have decked their Yugoslavian/Serbian pastor not only once, but two or three times! At half-time, I knew they were talking about me as they gave me those odd glances. I thought to myself, “Oh no, this is not good.” Finally, one of them came up to me and said, “Pastor, everyone was saying you have changed. Before you were so careful not to hit us, but now you’re good, you are now like one of us!” And then he gave me a big sideways hug.
Before the Yugoslavians joined the church, they had been renting a room in the building for ten years. Finally I asked them, “Why be content with just a room when you can have the whole place? Let us be one.” They had insecurities: the English language, losing their culture, etc. And finally, their bottom line argument: “Pastor, you don’t understand, we’re not from this country.” I did not even have to answer that one. In my silence and by my facial expression, they knew I was not from this country, either. I exactly knew how they felt - their insecurities and their desire to belong and have a home. I reached out to them and before long we have become one. We are really like a family now. Praise the Lord!
Koinonia – That wonderful and beautiful fellowship which is made possible by Jesus Christ, who binds us together as a family – a bigger family. In the midst of a divided and even polarized American society, in the midst of a variety of divisions and people at war. When a local church not only proclaims the Gospel but lives that Gospel, that good news of reconciliation, doesn’t that tell us something very significant? It tells us that since the Lord Jesus Christ can unite the diverse people in a local church like Calvary Baptist, he can unite people anywhere else in the United States and anywhere else in the world, for that matter. Jesus is our hope – and Jesus is also where we must start.
We even had a Muslim family from Turkey who worshipped and fellowshipped with us for about a year before they returned back to Turkey. They told me that they love the Christian message and that the fellowship is warm and genuine. One of the things they valued at Calvary was the fact they could worship together as a family - that they need not be separated as is the case when they go to a mosque. We did have a good and promising dialogue before they left.
In the passage we read earlier, the characters involved - the Jews and Gentiles being
reconciled and made as one - were not just different in the sense of classification, they were divided by years and years of enmity – of deep seated hostility. There was mutual prejudice. They avoided each other in as much as they could. The Jews considered themselves superior and showed contempt for and arrogance towards the Gentiles. Commentaries and bible reference books say that during biblical times, whenever Jews traveled from Jerusalem to Galilee, they avoided going through Samaria – a Gentile Province – by taking a boat to cross to the other side of the river, then walking up and crossing back over upon reaching the boundary of Galilee. It is a longer route and took more time – but the Jews would rather do that than walk through Samaria.
To illustrate this - this is like people in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who like to visit upstate New York. The logical thing to do is to drive through New Jersey. But since it seems Philadelphians hate New Jerseyans that much, they would rather take a barge to New York City/Manhattan and drive up to upstate New York from there - or maybe even take a plane just to avoid New Jersey.
But of course, Jesus was different, a principled non-conformist. When he traveled to Galilee from Jerusalem, he walked through Samaria and even engaged a Samaritan woman in conversation. “Through the cross, Jews and Gentiles have been reconciled to God, by which he has put to death their hostility… We and they are no longer foreigners, no longer strangers, but fellow citizens and members of God’s household.” Jesus is the main foundation or cornerstone, and we are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
It is easy to say “death to hostility in Jesus Christ,” but when we have not experienced that ourselves, how can we preach it? Enmity, hostility, prejudice… we cannot see these things with the naked eye. These are perceptions - these are value judgments and feelings. How do we take them out of ourselves, out of our systems? I had years of hostility, enmity, anger and hatred with my father. I never imagined I would live to see the day we will become friends. But Jesus made it possible. I don’t even know where that enmity went.
Through my local church, the Lord Jesus Christ has given me a song to sing and a message to preach. The Lord has given us at Calvary an inspiration and a hope. For me, there is a prophetic voice that says, “This is the kairos of the multicultural church; this is the coming, this is the time of the multicultural church. This is the direction the Lord wants us to take.” There has been a demographic change in our communities and our society. The harvest is plentiful – it is ripe for the taking. Some other churches or Christians may have planted the seeds and nurtured these people. Let us reach out to the people around us – those who desire to respond to the Gospel of Christ.
When we think about our local, national and global life, the root cause of our problems is relational in nature. There is a secular spirituality, there is a value judgment of certain people and peoples who think and believe that they are more superior and destined to be more privileged than others. But we have to fight together to fight the things that hold us in bondage, because our freedoms are connected as oppressors and oppressed, as privileged and as victims. Sometimes - or perhaps oftentimes - we as a church, as Christians, get eaten up by the seduction and power of materialism. We lose our own religiosity as we get anxious about power, wealth and property. We lose out on the essential things, the meaningful things, of life: the warmth of friendship, the beauty of color and nature, the power of gentleness, the strength of tenderness are too often taken for granted and spoiled in our anxiety for selfish vanities and worldly pursuits. We shall become Christians when we rejoice for the right reasons, when we rejoice for the essential things in life. We shall become Christians when the sight of a sunset means more to us than the sight of a new car.
We can say, “Lord, you cannot just remain critical about our fallen-ness. Give us a model of this kingdom you want to build. Give us an image, an illustration, a picture that we can see and understand and follow. At one time Jesus said, “Look at the birds… and the lilies of the fields…” Many years ago in the Philippines, when we would buy white rice, we would need to do additional cleaning before cooking it. This was because the threshers then were not that good and could not thoroughly clean the brown skin off the rice. Usually the women (mostly the mothers) would put the rice on a big native container and they would toss the rice in the air and the breeze would blow the chaff away. Some of the smaller grains of rice would get blown to the ground.
One time, my mother called me and said, “Manuel, come here watch the birds when they come when I am cleaning the rice.” Behold, my mom was doing the cleaning, and as some of the rice fell to the ground, I could hear the birds chirping and singing as they came. They seemed to be singing good news. And the chirping got louder as more birds came and shared the food. They ate and shared, continually chirping and singing. They wanted to tell everyone who could hear, “There is food here - there is life here - there is love and joy. Come!”
In that picture, I saw what the kingdom of God is like. There was no insecurity of being left out. There is room, and food, freedom and life for everyone. There were no powerful birds or only a few birds dominating the others. There was only love and sharing.
Or what about that illustration of the kingdom of God likened to a mustard seed? The mustard seed is so very small, but when it grows, it has big branches, and birds can perch in its shade.
What about our churches, associations, regions and denomination? As we witness to the world about Jesus Christ as the reconciling hope, our guarantee that it works or will work is when we can live that event here and now.
Look at the birds, and then look at our churches. Because of Christ we have become truly a family.
We’re no longer strangers … we’re sisters - we’re brothers - we’re friends. Amen.
Manuel de la Fuente serves as Pastor of a multi-cultural church; Calvary Baptist Church of Clifton, New Jersey, (3 1/2 years) and is the incumbent President of the Asian American Baptist Caucus. He is a product of American Baptist Missionary work in the Philippines. His wife Miriam and their three kids: Michael, Tim and Kathleen are all active in the ministries of their church.