Bilingual

The other day a woman I am acquainted with startled me by saying that she has experienced people telling her to "go back where she came from."  I knew that she was born in the United States, so I could not imagine the scenario where someone would say something like that to her.

"When does this happen?" I asked.

"When I am talking to my 92 year old father," she said.

So people assume that, because she is speaking in another language, a language that they perhaps do not understand, that she is somehow less-than.  That she does not belong.

Things like this happen.  A woman from my congregation took her daughter to get her driver's license.  She has an hispanic last name, and the woman at the office asked if she or her daughter had a green card.  She is from CHICAGO.  But for some reason or another, because of the arrangement of certain letters in her name, it is assumed that she is less-than.  That she does not belong.

Like my new acquaintance, the one who speaks to her father in Spanish, and to me in English.  The fact is (and perhaps this is what really makes people uncomfortable) she is not less-than.  She is more-than.  She is bilingual.

I remember going to Disneyland when I was sixteen.  It was a long time ago, and we went on a tour with a number of other first-time visitors to Disneyland.  The tour guide was telling us all about the history of Disneyland, and then, she turned to some other guests sitting next to us, and she started talking to them in French.  I was fascinated.  I couldn't imagine being able to just switch languages like that.  I couldn't imagine being bilingual.

This is the immigrant experience.  It was the experience of my grandparents, on both sides.  My grandma Judy came from Sweden as a young woman, worked as a domestic in Connecticut, and kept her foot in both countries for awhile, traveling back and forth from Sweden to American until she met my grandfather.  She tried to teach us Swedish words.  I only remember a few of them now.

What is it that makes us want to believe that someone else does not belong?  That they are somehow "less-than"?  To know more than one language, more than one culture, more than one reality, is rich and necessary in our world.

I think that to be a follower of Jesus is, in a way, to be an immigrant.  When we take the values of the Kingdom of God seriously, we will realize that there is another language in the world.  It is the language of the Kingdom of God, and sometimes it doesn't make sense.  The kingdom of God speaks of valuing those who seem to be less-than:  the widow, and the orphan and the stranger.  The kingdom of God tells us to pay attention to the small and the vulnerable rather than the powerful and the successful.  The kingdom of God speaks of love that asks nothing in return.

And there are people who might hear that kind of language and say, "Go back to where you came from."

The woman I know who was told, "Go back to where you came from" -- she said that her family is from Patagonia.  She showed me pictures.  It's a beautiful place, where she's from. But she is called to be here now.  She promised to teach me a little Spanish.

The Kingdom of God is a beautiful place.  And more and more I hope to learn the language of that place too.   Every once in awhile I hear a new phrase:  "a bruised reed he will not break and a dimly burning wick he will not quench" -- so different than the language of the other world I live in, where the poor are crushed and turned away.

Someday this world will fall away, and all that will be left is the language of the love of God, and we will see the beauty in those we thought were less-than, and we will be astonished.  In the meantime, we are called to teach each other a few words of the New Language, to be bilingual.

Escapism and Hope

This year we are trying to offer opportunities for faith formation on Sunday morning and Wednesday evenings.  So, in the fall, we had an introduction to Spiritual Formation, a course called "Making Sense of Scripture" and the DVD series "Animate: faith."  I wondered what to do for the short weeks of Advent, and hit on the idea of a carol study.

So every Sunday morning and Wednesday evening we sing, and study a different Christmas carol.  We learn a little about the text and the tune, and the story behind it.  We look up the Bible passages associated with the text.  We talk a little bit about what the carol means to us, when we first heard it, how we might hear differently now than we did when we were five years old.

We also sing the carol.  Twice, if there's time.  It's a little subversive pushback to the "no Christmas carols until Christmas" meme.

The first carol we sang, and studied, was "Once in Royal David's City."  It's a song I didn't really know as a small child; I didn't get accustomed to it until I started buying the choral albums from the famous choirs in Great Britain, and listening to the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on the radio.  Some of our group had known it for a long time; others were just singing now, tonight, for one of the first times ever.

None of us knew that Cecil Alexander was a woman, a young woman who liked to write poetry, and was worried that her father would disapprove.  We didn't know that the carol was originally written for children, to help teach them a portion of the Apostles Creed.

Though this is not one of the carols I grew up with, and know by heart, I found myself unexpectedly moved to tears at that last verse, thinking of my father and his recent death:

Not in that poor lowly stable, with the oxen standing by,
we shall see him; but in heaven, set at God's right hand on high;
there his children gather round, bright like stars, with glory crowned.

I couldn't help thinking about my father, now shining with glory.

Another person noted the line in the second verse, "with the poor and meek and lowly, lived on earth our Savior lowly." She thought it was a good idea that the hymn writer reminds us that Jesus lived not among the rich and powerful, but with the ordinary and the struggling.

Yet another person expressed some frustration with the hymn though.  Sure, Jesus lived with the poor and meek and lowly while he was on earth, she said.  But then it seems that in the next verse, it's all about Jesus leading his children on 'to the place where he has gone.'  What about, instead of singing about us all following Jesus to heaven, we could sing about all of us following Jesus to be with the poor and the meek and the lowly?  What about acknowledging that Jesus still lives among the poor and meek and lowly, even now?

She has a point.

I can rationalize that these carols were written at a time when infant and child mortality was higher; I can also point out that probably the children who gather round in glory at the last verse are also some of the poor and meek and lowly.  At least I imagine it that way.  Those who follow Jesus, living plain and unlettered lives, will someday shine like the sun.

But, maybe I'm reading between the lines.

There's a fine line between escapism and hope.  The hope of the resurrection makes us yearn to see creation restored, to long for the time when the lowly ones will shine, will be seen for who they really are.  My passion for social justice does not preclude the hope that I will be reunited with those I love (and those I don't love, to be honest) as we gather around the throne of the Lamb.  But when does that hope become escapism?  When do we use the promise of heaven to ignore the hurts and injustices on God's beloved earth?

Just now I read a story about an incident in Iceland.  The police there killed an armed man.  This is a rare occurrence in Iceland.  It was the first time that police officers had killed someone since 1944.  And then the police actually apologized for killing a man.  You know what my first thought was, "Honey, let's move to Iceland!"  Escapism.

Escapism leads us straight to heaven.  But hope leads us back to earth again.  Hope sees the promise of the resurrection as a clue to abundant life right now.

Especially at this time of the year, with the message of the incarnation, maybe we should sings songs that tell us that, since God has come here and walked upon this beloved earth, let us plant our feet firmly on the earth, and walk in the ways of mercy and justice, as he did.