[This is a sermon I preached in the Wabash Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) twenty-five years ago on World Communion Sunday. Our whole service, including hymns and the choir special, centered on Native American Christianity which, I suggest, is a form of the Christian faith which is more faithful to the gospel than much of white American Christianity.]
When I was at seminary, I had a Brazilian friend named Isidoro de Paula. Isidoro was in the music school of the seminary. One of his goals was to compose church music which reflected the Brazilian culture–music with varied rhythms, rich tones, and the definite mark of celebration. He told me how many Southern Baptist missionaries from the United States in Brazil insisted that Brazilian Christians sing “proper church music” which of course meant Western European and North American music. But Isidoro said that the Brazilians needed music which came from their hearts and souls–music which allowed them to praise and worship God in ways in harmony with their culture, their experiences, and their collective identity. So Isidoro, in spite of the objections from some missionaries, went back home and wrote Brazilian church music using the musical forms and instruments common to Latin American culture.
That was one of my first experiences in realizing that Christianity in a specific culture has at least two components: the essential gospel of Jesus Christ and the customs, mores, and traditions of that culture–customs, mores, and traditions which may have very little, if anything, to do with the essence of Christianity. And what is at stake is more than just the kind of music we sing in church. Christianity as it is understood and promoted in the United States reflects our cultural biases and traditions. Here are two examples:
a) In the U S we have what is called the Protestant Work Ethic which emphasizes working hard, saving money, and increasing capital. And yet with the exception of a couple of verses in Proverbs, we are hard pressed to defend this work ethic as Christian. Jesus, in fact, had nothing to say about work which remotely resembles the Protestant Work Ethic.
b) The understanding of sin in many American churches reflects at least as much of the biases and values of our culture as it does the essence of the gospel. For example, the American obsession with success and the accumulation of wealth is an expression of greed and self-centered living. The entire Bible denounces this type of sin. But because of our Puritanical background (which itself celebrated greed and acquisitiveness), our cultural Christianity has historically stressed what I call “the hot sins” of sex, drinking, dancing, etc. The truth is that each culture understands and expresses the gospel out of its own experience and history. That means that what may seem to us strange and out of place in one cultural expression of Christianity may be very authentic to the people of that culture. In fact, it is likely that if we look at the expressions of Christianity in other cultures, we may learn something of significance about the essence of the gospel. It is possible that Christians in some cultures, because of their experiences and setting in life, can understand the gospel in authentic ways that we cannot. Perhaps their situations more closely approximate the situations of biblical times, and thus they can see clearly what is hidden from our culturally distorted vision.
What may cause apoplexy and coronaries in some U S fellowships with their perhaps too staid, cerebral worship helps these people to fulfill the great commandment of loving God with all their hearts, souls, minds, and strength and loving their neighbors as they love themselves.
For example, in parts of Latin America, Christians gather around their mud churches to dance. Their sense of family and community, their oneness with the earth, their struggles with life and death, their sense of reverence, celebration, and prayer find their expression in the harmony and mystery of dance. They praise and worship God through movement, with body and soul, heart and mind. And they do so with a choreography which reflects the reality and importance of community. What may cause apoplexy and coronaries in some U S fellowships with their perhaps too staid, cerebral worship helps these people to fulfill the great commandment of loving God with all their hearts, souls, minds, and strength and loving their neighbors as they love themselves.
Or take the churches in Africa. Many of them focus on storytelling in their communication of the gospel. Gathered around the altar or around a campfire, the ministers or teachers of the church begin to spin their tales, weaving the stories of the Bible and the stories of the people and appropriating ancient stories reaching back into the mists of the distant past and relating them to the message of Jesus Christ. The people trust the storytellers because the storytellers know and love the people. In a culture where oral communication is more valued than the written and where time is measured in terms of generations going back for centuries, stories bind the people to time and space, to God and their ancestors, to their contemporaries and their children’s descendants, to the natural world and to the reality of the Spirit. They gather around their storytellers much as men, women, and children gathered around a certain Carpenter two thousand years ago to listen to parables as they hear the word of life.
You see, we can learn much from the Christianity of our brothers and sisters all over this globe. Our way of understanding and following Jesus is not the only way; in some cases, it may not even be the best way. Today on this World Communion Sunday, I want us to spend some time considering Christianity as it is understood and experienced by Native American Christians. Today is also Reconciliation Sunday which this year focuses on the Native American experience. In a moment the women of the choir will share with us some music from that culture. There is much we could learn from Native American Christians, but today I want us to center on just one theme within their understanding of the faith.
For years Native Americans, like the natives of many other lands, were told that they must embrace the perspectives and customs of Western civilization if they were to be truly Christian. Native American children were severely punished in schools if they spoke Native American languages. In many cases, children were taken from the parents and raised in white-operated orphanages and forbidden to demonstrate anything about their native cultures. Some Native Americans surrendered to such pressure and entered into despair and hopelessness as they saw their roots ripped from their souls. But others refused to become white in order to become Christian. And today there are Native American Christians who are writing theology from their perspective and experience. They are learning how to be Christian without surrendering their roots. One such Native American theologian is George Tinker. Tinker is a minister of Living Waters, a joint Episcopal-Lutheran Indian parish. He is also professor of cross-cultural ministries at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. I believe we could learn much from Tinker and other such Native American Christians.
Tinker points out that the fundamental symbol of existence within many Native American tribes is the circle–a symbol signifying the family, the clan, the tribe, and eventually all of creation. The circle is observed as the chosen design of creation–from the earth and sun and moon to the nests built by birds to nurture their young. Many Native American dwellings from the tipi to the wigwam are in the shape of a circle. The Plains Indians always erected their camp in a circle to reflect their unity as a tribe and their awareness of their connection with the rest of the earth. Because the circle has no beginning and no end, all in the circle are of equal value. The circle with a cross within it symbolizes among other things the equal balance of the four nations–the Two-leggeds, the Four-leggeds, the Wingeds, and the Living Things. The circle thus encompasses all that is created–the trees and rocks, mountains and rivers as well as animals. Human beings rather than being the dominators of creation become a part of creation. Native Americans recognize the personhood of all “things” in creation. When the Lakota people pray mitakuye ouyasin (“all my relations/all are related”), they understand these relations to include not just tribal members, but all of creation.
You may wonder what connection this has with the Judeo-Christian faith. Well, the connection is simple: Because of their cultural roots, Native Americans are better able to understand the place of creation in the heart of God than Western Europeans and white Americans can. They see in Genesis, the Psalms, the prophets, the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Scriptures (such as Job and Proverbs), the teachings of Jesus, the message of Paul in I Cor. 15, Romans 8, Colossians and Ephesians, and the Book of Revelation a central truth which has been virtually ignored for centuries in Christian theology: that creation is precious to God, can reveal God, and is included in God’s great plan of redemption. We are redeemed as a part of creation, not apart from creation. We are saved along with creation. What St. Francis saw over seven centuries ago is understood even more clearly today by Native American Christians. Any talk about salvation and redemption which ignores the condition and destiny of creation is not Christian.
And this perspective has shaped the Native American understanding of repentance. What we perhaps most need to be liberated from in our day when ecological disaster seems to be our certain fate is the need to be and play God. We must assume our rightful place in the world as humble human beings in the circle of creation with all the other created beings. Only a respect and reverence for creation can result in justice. And only the achievement of justice can assure peace. Only as we understand ourselves to be part of a vast circle encompassing all of God’s creation–only as we see ourselves as part of a community as vast as that which God holds in the divine heart–only then can we hope for a tomorrow that is not a future shock or a nightmare. Only as we allow that circle to expand from self to family to tribe to nation to all human beings to all creation–only then is there hope for us, for surely we are but one strand (and a very fragile and perhaps ephemeral one at that) in the web of life.
Our Native American brothers and sisters in Christ can see clearly what we have been unable to see. Their cultural roots allow them to understand a part of the gospel to which our cultural roots, with its idolatrous and excessive focus on individual salvation, have rendered us blind. They understand what Paul said so beautifully in Colossians, that in Christ God was pleased to reconcile to God’s self all of creation by making peace through the blood of the cross. By God’s grace the cross of Jesus becomes a circle which encompasses all of creation.
Our worship service today can celebrate World Communion Sunday in at least two ways. It is a time for us to celebrate and experience our oneness in Christ with all Christians all over this globe in every culture and every tongue. And it is a time to remember that “world” in World Communion Sunday refers as much to creation as it does to humankind. So, let us come to the circle as it expands to meet the vastness of God’s heart.
(Before the Lord’s Supper was observed on this World Communion Sunday, worshipers were instructed to make a circle around the inside walls of the sanctuary after coming forward to receive communion. A rope long enough to surround the inside of the sanctuary was passed from one worshipper to another as everyone took their place in this gigantic circle while jointly holding this rope as a symbol of what binds us and creation together in the love of God.)
Communion
Chuck Lathrop writes the following about the circle at the Lord’s Table: We must be loved into roundness, for God has called a People, not “them and us.” “Them and us” are unable to gather around, for at a roundtable there are no sides. And all are invited to wholeness and to food.
Roundtabling means no preferred seating, no first and last, no better, and no corners for “the least of these.”
Roundtabling means being with, a part of, together, and one. It means room for the Spirit and gifts and profound peace for all.
Paul tells us in Ephesians that God’s plan is to gather up all things in Christ, things in heaven and on earth. This cosmic roundtabling is anticipated in our communion today. Let us come to the circle of grace which encompasses all creation in the heart of God.
Commission
Among some Native Americans there is a ritual called the binding of the people. The people gather in a circle as we have done this morning and pass a rope from one person to the next until all hands are on the rope symbolizing the binding of the people to one another in love and concern. As we hold this rope together, let us become aware of the ties that link us to one another through the love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
As this manifestation of the Body of Christ, we leave with the cords of love holding us dear to one another. We also leave acknowledging that as dear as this circle is, the circle of God’s grace encompasses far more than we can ever imagine. So, as a symbol of this awareness, let us now drop this particular rope as we open ourselves to this wider circle of God’s love and care for all creation.
Benediction
May the Great spirit send choicest gifts to you. May Brother Sun and Sister Moon shed their softest beams on you. May the four winds of heaven blow gently upon you and upon those with whom you share your heart and home. And may the circle you cherish expand to match the vastness of God’s grace. Amen. (Adapted from a blessing of the Coahuila Nation)
