Reduced To A Single Story

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

June 19, 2016

Reduced To A Single Story

Luke 9:51-56

When the days drew near for him to be taken up,

he set his face to go to Jerusalem.

 And he sent messengers ahead of him.

On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans

to make ready for him;

but they did not receive him,

because his face was set toward Jerusalem.

When his disciples James and John saw it, they said,

“Lord, do you want us to command fire 

to come down from heaven

and consume them?”

But he turned and rebuked them.

Then they went on to another village.

******************************************************

The young woman began to unpack

in her dormitory room.

She had arrived early, eager to get settled,

eager to begin her studies at college.

She’d traveled a long way,

a very long way from her home

in the African nation of Nigeria;

a long way to come to attend college in America.

As she put her clothes in the dresser

her roommate arrived,

the roommate the college’s housing office

had assigned to her,

a young woman whose hometown

was just an hour’s drive from the college.

The two struck up a conversation

each of them eager to become friends.

The roommate was full of questions:

“What is life like in Africa?

Is it mostly jungle?

Can you hear the sounds of

wild animals at night?

Do you have tribal music on your phone?

How did you learn to speak English so well?”

It was clear to the Nigerian woman

that her roommate thought of Africa as a country,

rather than as a continent

composed of 54 different countries,

with hundreds of cultures and languages.

While much of the continent was

wild and beautiful,

many people lived in urban areas,

as she and her family did,

living a very middle-class life,

not all that different from her roommate.

English was her native tongue,

just like her roommate.

And no, she didn’t have tribal music

on her phone;

she had songs 18-year-old women

throughout the world

tended to have on their phones,

including many songs her roommate

had on her own phone.

Her roommate had reduced

the Nigerian woman to a single story,

when in fact the woman from Nigeria

had a rich story,

deep and broad,

as did the roommate.

                 

In time, they learned each other’s stories;

In time they learned that though

they came from different parts of the world,

different countries, different cultures,

they had much in common,

in fact more in common than they had things

that separated them, set them apart.

In time they became friends.

We find it so easy to reduce individuals,

strangers,

even groups,

to a single story,

based on what we think we know.

Even two of Jesus’ disciples

found it so easy to go down that path.        

They knew,

or at least they thought they knew,

all about people from Samaria,

the region between Galilee in the north

and Jerusalem in the south.

Jews and Samaritans did not get along;

Jews looked on the Samaritans as

hostile, immoral,

basically no good.

In one instance, when a group of Pharisees

tried to condemn Jesus,

the worst insult they could think of

was to call him a Samaritan.

(John 8:48)

So the two disciples were not surprised

when the people of the Samaritan village

failed to welcome them,

showed them, as Jews, no hospitality.

But the two apparently had forgotten Jesus’ lesson

about simply shaking the dust off their sandals

and moving on,

when they said to Jesus,

“Lord, do you want us to command fire

to come down from heaven

and consume them?”

We can almost picture

the eager look on their faces:

“Come on Jesus, let’s pay these people back

for their rudeness.

Who cares about a few Samaritans.

The world will be a better place without them.”

Our text tells us simply that

Jesus rebuked them.

But a footnote tells us that

in some ancient manuscripts of Luke’s text

Jesus responded to James and John

with these words:

“You do not know what spirit you are of,

for the Son of Man has not come

to destroy the lives of human beings

but to save them.”

The disciples didn’t understand

that Jesus had no interest in payback,

in vengeance,

in violence;

He’d come to bring peace to the world,

reconciliation,

forgiveness;

peace not just to his own Jewish community,

but to all the world.

Hateful words.

Hate-filled actions.

Prejudice,

bigotry,

ignorance.

We are still writing the same chapters

we’ve been writing for centuries,

for most of human history.

When will we write a new chapter

in our human history?

When will write the chapter

that our Lord has been calling us to write

for 2,000 years?

When will we stop reducing people to a single story:

Mexican equals bad.

Muslim equals bad

Gay equals bad.

Black equals bad:

It was just a year ago a young white man

walked calmly into a Bible study class

in an African American church

and shot and killed the participants

because they were black.

They were each children of God,

each with stories:

mother, father,

grandmother, grandfather,

brother, sister,

neighbor,

co-worker,

friend.

Each was loved.

But the killer had reduced them to a single story:

Black…bad.

The killer in Orlando appears to have done

the same thing:

Gay….bad.

In the first letter of John we read,                       

“Whoever says, ‘I am in the light’,

while hating a brother or sister,

is still in darkness.”

(1 John 2:9)

The letter goes on to teach us:

“How does God’s love abide in anyone

who has the world’s goods and

sees a brother or sister in need

and yet refuses to help?...

Let us love not in word or speech,

but in truth and action…

Whoever does not love does not know God,

for God is love…

There is no fear in love,

but perfect love casts out fear.”

(1 John 3:17- 4:18)

The member of the British Parliament

who was shot and killed this week,

said in a speech in Britain’s House of Commons,

“While we celebrate our diversity,

what surprises me time and time again

as I travel around [my] constituency

is that we are far more united

and have far more in common with each other

than things that divide us.”

(New York Times, June 18, 2016)

We learn this lesson

when we make the effort

to learn one another’s stories.

We learn that the Mexican woman

works two jobs

and has three children,

the oldest of whom

is at the very top of her high school class.

We learn the Muslim man served in our Armed Forces,

and is now an oncological radiologist

at the local hospital

where he treats people with inoperable cancer.

We learn the gay man is a prominent attorney

who lives three doors down from you,

and who will be happy to collect your mail

and look after your home

while you are on vacation.

As Jim Wallis, the editor of Sojourners,

has observed,

“Hate is not only the antithesis of love;

hate is the antithesis of God.”

And hate comes in many forms,

not just active, violent emotion.

Hate is stereotyping,

it is indifference,

it is apathy,

it is tolerating another person’s hatred.

“The consequence of the single story is this:

It robs people of dignity.

It makes our recognition of our

equal humanity difficult.

It emphasizes how we are different

rather than how we are similar.”

(Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)

What have we learned this past week?

What will we do?

Surely we must do more

than offer a moment of silence!

What will teach Christopher, Caden,

 and all our children? 

Will we teach them that,

“God is love

and those who abide in love abide in God

and God abides in them”?

For that is God’s story….

for us.

AMEN

(The theme of this sermon

came from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

"The Danger of a Single Story")