The next 2 Sundays (August 1 and 8) I will be teaching from Matthew 6. This coming week we will be talking about worry and anxiety. In preparing for this sermon I came across a reference to this Time magazine article. It was published almost a full 50 years ago (1961), but it has some incredible insights. Some of the material is dated, but some of it is truer now than when it was written. Either way it is a helpful way to start thinking about worry in your life and it will make you say, "they don't write articles like this any more."

www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,872203,00.html

I (and 5 high school students and 2 adult leaders) recently returned from a trip to Memphis, TN where we repaired roofs in the inner city. I have been thinking a lot about cities. My wife and I believe that God has called us to work in cities for their restoration. And two weeks ago I was priveleged to see Bluetree explain the story behind their song "God of this City." They wrote it while playing worship songs in a brothel in South Asia. Even in that place, God is still God.  Give the song a listen. Click here.

Cities are the places of greatest human cooperation and magnificence and at the same time  the centers of our foulest violence and greed. It is not surprising that the first city mentioned in the Bible was built by Cain, the son of Adam and Eve. Cain murdered his brother, Abel. He was punished for his crime, but also blessed with special protection - in his mercy, God gave him a mark that warned the world not to harm him. Cain named the city he built after his son, Enoch.

The city bears the burden of Cain, that ambiguous blessing, the ambivalent attitude. Cain built Enoch in his wandering under the curse and protection of God (I suppose we all wander under the same curse and protection). Cain's fear was to be cut off from the soil, but what about the civilization he brings? The heroic songs of Jubal, the smithing of mighty cities and the tools used to build them?  God dwelt in a city - Jerusalem - called it holy. John (Revelation) saw a city coming down from heaven to earth as a blessing for eternity. Perhaps the obsession with the urban urges us toward its transformation. We don't often look at a spring meadow or a mountain and see the need for redemption, though God knows the need is there. But we kick an empty McDonald's fry sleeve in the gutter and head-duck past burned out crack houses and whores on the street corners and we imagine, hope and pray for intervention. Will the violins at the symphony drown out the drug pushers? Will majestic streets shine brighter than the glint of guns? And will the fruit of our orchards fill all our babies stomachs? John's vision in Revelation declares that Rome is Dead! It is burning from the inside out. Yet he cannot but stare at the columns of the coliseum and wonder - what if God himself filled this space?

My sister, Beth, is serving in Caracas, Venezuela. She and her team live in a barrio outside of the city. It is poor and violent. Their goal is to be a presence of peace and comfort and healing in their neighborhood. I want to tell you one of her stories.

This week, she and 2 team members were sitting in their office. Gun shots rang out on the street. When they ran outside they saw a man lying in the street. Neighbors cautiously came out of their homes. A group of firefighters happened to be driving by a few minutes later and rushed the man to the hospital. Someone thinks he was from the apartments at the base of their hill and was buying drugs in their neighborhood. No one knows who shot him. Most likely no one will ever know. They may never even know why. Violence is common, random and severe in their tiny part of the world. There are very few old men in their community. The chances of them living that long are slim because of the myriad forces that assault them and pressure them and tempt them every single hour of every day. In conditions like this it is almost laughable to talk about "making good choices" - most of these youth do not have any good choices.

Beth watched as they loaded the wounded man into the Jeep and drove away. She walked back into the office, numb with anger, fear and helplessness. This is not the time when you hope your energetic, extroverted adolescent neighbor will stop by unannounced. But R has a knack for timing. He bounced over to Beth and asked if she wanted to bake something.  Bake something? My sister, having a deep love for this boy, could not say no but told him to come back in an hour. He would forget anyway. And so she reflected on her experience of this violence in solitude for the next hour, at which point R promptly returned, this time with his cousin M.

So they baked.

They made chocolate banana bread. My sister and two teenage boys mashing and stirring and generally getting the place messy. The ingredients came together. The boys laughed. Beth directed. In a world where everything around them could be destroyed in seconds they were not destroying. They were creating. And it was a delight. At the end all they had to show for it was a loaf of mediocre banana bread. But they had something to show.  Beth could not have been more grateful for that spontaneous act of amateur baking.

God's answers to our most intense questions rarely seem satisfactory. In the midst of a world where young men are gunned down in their prime every day we get down on our knees and cry out - "do something!" as we pound a fist on the floor. It is the way of God to respond with banana bread. Jesus slept on the boat when his disciples were being tossed by the storm. He delayed for several days after his friend Lazarus died. He hung on the cross as hecklers tempted him to save himself.

And somehow he remains victorious. It is the devil who wanted the impressive: jump from the top of the temple to be swooped up by attending angels. But God's great victories are even more incredible because they are found in the most unlikely places and unlikely people - the washing of feet, wine at a wedding feast and two teenage boys and one small loaf of banana bread.

"...then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery."   Deuteronomy 6:11-12

Believing that the blessings we have are gifts from God causes a paradox. On the one hand, we are called to take great satisfaction in the bounty and the gratuitous gifts that God gives us in land, family, laughter, food and relationships. Believing that these things have been given as gifts should cause us to  partake in these blessings with a profound enjoyment. How would I eat differently if I reminded myself before every bite that God imagined and formed my taste buds and made the earth fertile so that the things I am eating could grow? I dare say that I would practically embarass myself with happiness. So it is with many of our blessings.

But we are also called to remember that God gives all in order to be humble. Humility is the recognition that everything we have comes from God (i.e. not me). In this important passage in Deuteronomy, God warns the people not to "forget" him when they inherit the promised land. He knows that human tendency will lead them to take enjoyment in the good life and forget how they are so blessed in the first place. Even worse, they will give themselves credit for all they have. Our call to remember God is a serious one. It is a challenge to remember the very order of the universe - that God is the well-spring of life and we are but recepients.

This is the paradox. We are called to embrace our material blessings as wonderful gifts. But we are called to remember that they are just that - gifts. Given to us by a loving God. This is such an important point because it means that for all the enjoyment we should take in our blessings, they are not ours to use as we please. They are God's and if we are to remember that we are to keep a loose grip on them. Hoarding, greed and gluttony are not ways to thank God for his gift. Using the gifts for the work of God through charity, hospitality and the flourishing of justice and life for all people - these are the ways to write a thank you letter to God.

Thankfulness is more than a feeling. It is surrender. It is the act of being so grateful for our material blessings that we could not possibly keep them to ourselves. It means being so appreciative of what we have been given that we let it go.

"I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can doo all this through him who gives me strength."  Paul,  Philippians 4:11-13

Let me begin with a few foundational statements:  

1)  Diversity is a growing reality in our city, county, and country.  

2)  This diversity extends to every part of life: ethnicity, culture, worldview, values, appearance, ethics, etc.   

3)  Diversity is not a virtue; it is not an end in itself, in that we cannot make a statement that "diversity is always good."

4)  Diversity is praised at many points in the Bible:  the variety in the natural world is a glory to God (Genesis 1; Psalms); God's ultimate kingdom is praised for having people from every toungue and nation (Revelation); diversity is present in the spiritual gifts that God gives (1Corinthians 12) and Christ brings together many different types of people in the Church (Galatians 3, Ephesians and Colossians 3).

What do these things mean for Christians?

1)  Diversity is a reality. We can ignore it, we can be in denial about it or we can even fight it. But none of this will change the reality. We need to wake up to it and address it if we are to understand our own American culture.

2)  The comprehensiveness and complexity of our diverse world is what makes understanding it difficult sometimes. We are surrounded by so many viewpoints, values and customs every day that it becomes hard to assimilate all of this and even know where to start in our understanding.

3)  That diversity is not a virtue does not mean that it is bad. What it means is that we must look for ways in which diversity may or may not be virtuous. What I mean by this is that if I were to say, "Our workplace should be diverse" I must say it knowing that it lacks ethical force. My listener should still wonder, "Why should your workplace be diverse?" So I would have to add reasons, "My workplace should be diverse because diversity will provide a fresh mix of perspectives, give minorities a chance they might not have had otherwise, obey a law etc." Diversity might be done out of love, cross-cultural understanding or economic pragmatism for instance, but it makes little sense to promote it for its own sake.

Faced with diversity as a complex reality we must decide how we will address it in our personal and social lives. Do we ignore it as irrelevant?  Do we hold it up the ultimate end-all of virtue? Or do we fight it as something to be feared or destroyed? The fact that diversity is very real makes the first option a mere delusion. The fact that diversity is not an end in itself makes the 2nd option somewhat absurd. And they are all thrown out as options because of what we believe as Christians about diversity.

4) The diversity that the Bible describes in the church is a deep,  rich gift. We do not do it for its own sake; we do not do it just because it is a reality in our world. We do it because it is a reality of God's Kingdom and a result of the grace that he extends to each and every human being. God reconciles each person to himself; because of this he then calls us and gives us strength to reconcile to one another. As Christians we come from different places but we have only one cornerstone as our foundation (Ephesians 2:20-21), and that is Jesus Christ. We are adopted by Jesus into the family of God. And like a family we may not always get along, we may have conflict, but we are called to be united in love for God and one another.

This is what diversity means for the Christian. That when we open our eyes to the reality of our diverse world we hear 2 clear calls in scripture in response. One is that we are to overcome our differences to be united to other Christians. And the 2nd is that when we are called to "love our neighbor"  we are called to do so unconditionally - we are not just called to love those that look, talk and think like we do. We are called to love whomever we encounter. And to fulfill that great commandment we must dive into relationships with the myriad people with whom we live and work and fellowship. Even go out of our way to do so! Then we are living into the reality of God's Kingdom, in which we join with the angels who sing praises to Jesus Christ because his blood "purchased for God members of every tribe and language and people and nation. [He] has made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God." Revelation 5:9-10  Now that is a diversity worth celebrating.