How disappointing we creatures must be to an impartial God.
God loves each of us with an intensity we cannot comprehend, and it makes no difference to God who or what we are:
black, white, brown,
fat, skinny,
male, female,
Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist,
young, old,
liberal, tory,
gay, straight,
ballpoint doodler, or cybergenius.
It doesn’t bother God if we have a criminal record, and it doesn’t impress God if claim sainthood.
God shows no partiality. Anyone who loves God and does what is right is acceptable.
So, to repeat, how disappointing we must be to God. Most of us base our judgments against one another on the very variances God ignores:
black, white, brown,
fat, skinny,
male, female,
Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist,
young, old,
liberal, tory,
gay, straight
ballpoint doodler, or cybergenius.
If we look at someone long enough, we quickly discover traits we don’t like.
I’d like to think humanity is growing out of this tendency to pre-judge others with prejudice. But there’s little hope we will ever achieve godlike impartiality.
My fall and winter reading has focused on generation of my parents, the stalwart individuals Tom Brokaw calls The Greatest Generation.
In his 1998 book, Brokaw praises the generation of the Great Depression and World War II as having gone “well beyond the outsized expectations” of President Roosevelt’s declaration that “this generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.”
“The young Americans of this time constituted a generation birth-marked for greatness,” Brokaw wrote, “a generation of Americans that would take its place in American history with the generations that had converted the North American wilderness into the United States and infused the new nation with self-determination embodied first in the Declaration of Independence and then in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”
Brokaw continued enthusiastically:
“It may be historically premature to judge the greatness of a whole generation, but indisputably, there are common traits that cannot be denied. It is a generation that, by and large, made no demands of homage from those who followed and prospered economically, politically, and culturally because of its sacrifices. It is a generation of towering achievement and modest demeanor, a legacy of their formative years when they were participants in and witness to sacrifices of the highest order. They know how many of the best of their generation didn't make it to their early twenties, how many brilliant scientists, teachers, spiritual and business leaders, politicians and artists were lost in the ravages of the greatest war the world has seen.”
There is no question there were – are – remarkable women and men in this generation. This fall I transcribed my father’s World War II diary (www.bunadiary.com) and was stunned by how casually he and my mother accepted grim wartime responsibilities. They were precipitously married 20 days after war was declared and were separated for three years: Dad was a combat lieutenant in the Pacific Theater, Mom was a laborer in a war plant near Oneonta, N.Y. They never complained about being thrust into a dire situation over which they had no control. They accepted it stoically and, when the war was over, did their best to resume their lives. When my four siblings and I were growing up, Mom and Dad seemed like ordinary folks struggling to make ends meet in a small town. Now that they are gone, it’s a bit of a surprise to realize how heroic they were. Looking back, it’s easy to romanticize the Greatest Generation as having fulfilled FDR’s soaring destiny.
It’s a shock that not everyone feels this way. A few years ago I was preparing a webpage to commemorate the high school graduation of my class, the Class of 1964. We were the very first of the baby boomers, and I included this motto: “The Greatest Generation Gave Us Our Baths.”
I was surprised when one of my classmates – a Vietnam veteran and government official – complained. “Let’s not get carried away,” he said. “You might as well say, the greatest generation wiped our asses.”
I grew up with this guy but have no idea what Oedipal issues he may be suffering.
As I read several accounts of the Second World War and the Great Depression, however, his words kept coming back to me. The more one reads, the murkier the Greatest Generation’s heroism gets.
For one thing, the generation was distressingly racist, classist, and bigoted.
This was the generation that prevented President Roosevelt from introducing anti-lynching legislation because he feared southern politicians and their racist constituents would stop supporting New Deal legislation.
This was the generation that showed its indifference when President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 to sent 110,000 Japanese Americans to “relocation camps” after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
This was the generation whose anti-Semitism caused the government to turn blind eyes to the murder of six million Jews in Europe, and to resist raising immigration quotas for Jews who were desperate to escape certain death in concentration camps.
This was the generation who refused to serve on an equal basis or in the same outfit with African American troops and war workers.
This was the generation that seemed utterly out of touch with the startling message in Peter’s sermon: God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.
To be frank, the Greatest Generation was no worse than the generations that preceded them. And the Baby Boom generation has not done much better. For the most part, we are stalwart paragons of partiality.
Unfortunately, the church has not improved us much. As Martin Luther King said decades ago, the most segregated hour of Christian America is 11 a.m. Sunday morning, and not much as changed.
In our own denomination, congregations argue endlessly over whether to declare themselves Welcoming and Affirming Baptists – that is, people who welcome everyone into their sanctuaries, regardless of age, gender, race, language, national origin, economic status, or sexual orientation.
Clearly, this is a debate Jesus settled with his first human breath. All Christian churches are Welcoming and Affirming. And if they are not, they are not Christian churches.
Looking back over the centuries of human partiality and bigotry, it seems an impossible task to change our obstinate human ways and extend a welcoming heart to everyone.
But Jesus has come to make the impossible possible.
The Gospel Lesson selected for today, Matthew 3:13-17, gives us a sense of the power for change Jesus introduced into our stolid human lives:
Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”
But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented.
And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.
And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
Jesus went to John for Baptism not because he needed the life-giving waters, but to demonstrate the power for change that could be tapped through this mundane act. It was a symbolic act as mundane as bathing, but when Jesus did it, the very heavens opened up.
All of us who have been baptized know it is not a magical ceremony that turns us from sinful bigots into lovers of all humanity.
Baptism, indeed, does not take away all our sin forever.
But baptism does open the doors of our hearts to sense God’s power of transformation. And because of baptism, we know we will never be far from that power or grace when we need it.
“Baptism consists of getting dunked or sprinkled,” Frederick Buechner wrote in his book Wishful Thinking.
“Which technique is used matters about as much as whether you pray kneeling or standing on your head. Dunking is a better symbol, however. Going under symbolizes the end of everything about your life that is less than human. Coming up again symbolizes the beginning in you of something strange and new and hopeful. You can breathe again.”
That something in you that is strange and new and hopeful is the potential to comprehend why God is loving and impartial to all, even to those persons and races and nations our human hearts cannot stand.
“God shows no partiality,” Peter said, “but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”
We see the reason for that in following Jesus’ example in baptism.
Peter added, “You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ – he is Lord of all.”
And in baptism, Jesus points us to the power of loving our fellow human beings with an impartiality that will win the heart of our loving and impartial Creator.
Whether we tap into that power, of course, is entirely up to us.
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