Some rough notes of a talk I'm giving this weekend to school chaplains, and next week to the Churches of Christ in South Australia.

Shalom!

Rowland Croucher

The Bible opens with God creating the heavens and the earth, 'all you see, all you don't see.' And at the end of 'Day Six' 'God looked over everything he had made; and it was good, so very good!' (Genesis 1, The Message)...

This variegated creation is celebrated again in a wonderful Psalm - 104: 'What a wildly wonderful world, God. You made it all, with Wisdom at your side; made earth overflow with your wonderful creations. Oh look - the deep, wide sea, brimming with fish past counting, sardines and sharks and salmon... Take back your Spirit and they die, revert to original mud. Send out your Spirit and they spring to life - the whole countryside in bloom and blossom.' (Again, The Message).

God not only celebrates 'aliveness' and diversity in the natural sphere, but in terms of our new creation in Christ, God has also designed a wonderful diversity of ways in which we relate to one another and to our God. God's grace is 'many-coloured' (1 Peter 4:12). Paul reminds the Corinthians about 'the various ways God's Spirit gets worked into our lives. This is complex and often misunderstood... [but] God wants us to use our intelligence, to seek to understand as well as we can... God's various gifts are handed out everywhere...' (The Message)...

~~~

There are 34,000 Christian denominations in the world (David Barrett, World Christian Encyclopedia, 2002). Half of them are independent groups with no desire to link with other Christian denominations. You can put them into various categories - according to their name/denomination, or within meta-groups (Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican etc.), or their theological belief-system (Calvinist, Arminian etc.), religious family (Baptist, Lutheran, Pentecostal etc.) or ideological 'wing' (fundamentalist, conservative, mainline, liberal etc.)

(But 2003 was the first year in history in which we could say 'More committed Christians in Western countries are not "in church" worshipping this week than are actually attending!' (Researcher George Barna). Why is that? (P.S. Many of them 'worship' via TV, radio, or the Internet).

The church has four purposes, not one.

There are at least 13 varieties of Christians, not one (and three biblical answers to the question 'How can you tell whether a person is a committed Christian?'). See http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/9664.htm

There are at least six answers to the question 'What do we mean by "worship?".

And at least four answers to another question 'Who, under the Lordship of Christ, has authority in the church?'

There are three biblical dimensions of mission (what are they?).

(If you Google intelligently on the John Mark Ministries website you'll find hundreds of articles on these themes).

~~~

Back to biodiversity. I did a web-search on this topic and found:

* There are 13-14 million species on the earth, and only 13% (1.75 million)

have been scientifically described

* David Suzuki says we're losing two species every hour! 50% of the earth's mamals will be extinct by the end of this century

* The earth's ecosystems are very fragile, and we humans are bound up in the web of life with all other species

* In Melbourne we're debating whether to deepen Port Philip Bay so larger ships can get in. But scientists are asking us to face the question about what happens to the fragile underwater eco-systems if we do that (for example, the plants and animals depending on a certain amount of light will have difficulty adjusting if the sea-floor is darker)...

* There are four categories of responses to this crisis: under the headings what you eat, the water supply, energy use, and what you buy.

* Human cultures, like the ecosystems on which they depend, are also under threat. Between 50 and 90% of human languages are like to disappear within the next 100 years.

~~~

Now the church worldwide is brilliantly diverse. From my travels I could take you on a journey to a 'house church' small favela in Rio de Janeiro; to services in Korea where tens of thousands worship; to a brilliant Sunday morning Mass in Chester Cathedral in England; to a 'revivalist' service where people jumped up and down for half an hour in the highlands of Papua New Guinea; to a charismatic Presbyterian service in a German community in Philadelphia, to a Brethren service in Bangalore... and so on. Brilliant diversity.

But when I visited an Anglican Cathedral in Nairobi, it was sooooo English (and only a few Africans - in suits and ties - attended). Even though the Yung Nuk Presbyterian service in Seoul, Korea was in the Korean language, if I shut my eyes I could have been in Edinburgh.

Which all raises the question about the cultural appropriateness of what Christians do when they gather. Hillsong has won the 'worship wars' because that culture is close to the pop culture of the Gen X'ers. But there are many other sub-cultures in the West.

~~~

Let's move on to theological diversity.

One Sunday night I visited a small 'non-denominational' church in rural Victoria, Australia. They had big black Bibles - and severe expressions! I decided to preach dialogically, so asked them to tell me all the good qualities they could think of about the Pharisees. Their list: Pharisees knew their Bible very well (most - off by heart), they were disciplined in their praying, they tithed, they were moral (many could say 'All these commands have I kept from my youth'), they fasted, some were martyred for Yahweh and the Torah, they were regular 'church-attenders', their beliefs were 'evangelical/orthodox' and they were evangelistic (even crossing the ocean to win a convert - and Jews don't make good mariners).

Then. a deep silence. I asked the extrovert Peter if anything was wrong. He said, 'Yes, that's us!' I responded: 'Really? But Jesus said these people were "children of the devil!"' The silence got deeper. 'Obviously,' I suggested, 'There's something wrong with that list. Everything Jesus said was 'most important' isn't there. It's a good list - but a healthy church will have other qualities...' (Now, class, 'go figure': start with Matthew 6:33, 15:8,9, 22: 24-39; 23:23, Luke 4:18-19; 11:42).

We said above that there are 13 varieties of Christians. The fundamentalist/pharisee is one of these. They can't tolerate ambiguity. But whilst we might deplore [any] lack of openness to any new thing God is doing, nevertheless this is the psychology of the human creatures God has made. Those whose thinking is rooted in 'simplicity this side of complexity' must not be too harsh with others who enjoy 'complexity the other side of simplicity'. Ideally, we are all moving towards 'simplicity the other side of complexity', but we must be patient with one another on the way there.

~~~

And diversity within ourselves.

John Fowles called his disparate selves 'the John Fowles club'. What animals are in my inner zoo? (A tiger who lashes out, a kitten who wants to be stroked?).

~~~

Resisting Diversity is not simply craving for simplicity this side of complexity, or uniformity, but may even be bigotry.

Our fights are still variations on the same Galatians 3:28 issues : relating to our homophobias (gender issues), the status of women, racial/ethnic issues,

So what do we do?

* Build walls to keep others in or out (cf. Sharon's wall, the Berlin Wall, the Great Wall of China). But ostracism makes the extreme person more extreme.

* Judge others (heterophobia: saves us the trouble of thinking).

* Learn nothing from history (as Mark Twain put it). (Why were the Jews expelled from England? Because the royal estates and the royal family was mortgaged to them. Why was that? Because Christians in the Dark Ages and Middle Ages took literally the idea that you shouldn't lend money at interest, so they left money-lending to the Jews, who were not allowed to own land or to farm it.

~~~

Human Beings are Like God

* C. S. Lewis said that we never come in contact with a mere mortal. If we could see each other as God sees us, we would cover our faces and bow in awe of the glory in each of us who are in God's image. Even in inanimate nature, nothing is merely natural for all came into being supernaturally. If we see things from God's perspective the categories of natural and supernatural cease to make much senseLord, as they are to us when we get to see them from God's perspective. But, as CSLewis says in his sermon 'Weight of Glory', in _essence_ we are 'gods and goddesses' in a sense, made in God's image,.

* During my second month of nursing school, our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a conscientious student and had breezed through the questions, until I read the last one: "What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?" Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times. She was tall, dark-haired and in her 50s, but how would I know her name? I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Before class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our quiz grade. "Absolutely," said the professor. "In your careers you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say 'hello'. I've never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Dorothy.

There's a medieval legend that though it has very ancient imagery has a challenge that is as contemporary as this morning's paper. It seems that two knights in full battle regalia were riding along late one evening and neither thought that there was anybody else for miles around, but by a strange turn of fate they happened to intersect each other at a particularly dark place in the wood. Both of them were startled and each one interpreted the motions of the other as gestures of hostility. Both of them perceived that they were in the presence of an adversary. And so they began to do what we humans always do when we feel threatened; they began to defend themselves and to fight. At first the blows they exchanged were very, very slight, just glancing blows but as you know, violence has a way of feeding on itself and with each blow it became more intense until at last they were giving lethal, lethal attacks on each other. Both of them were severely wounded but finally one of them was able to unhorse the other and with what little strength he had left, he was able to thrust his spear through the heart of his adversary. And then badly wounded himself he got off his horse, by this time it was night, and went over to the vanquished foe and pulled back the face gear that was over the knight's face. And there in the pale moonlight, he saw to his utter horror the countenance of his own blood brother. To think kinspersons had misperceived each other as enemies and as a result both of them had been destroyed.

I don't think I am stretching the truth to say that Jesus came into our world for one purpose and that was to reverse the story of the two knights.

~~~

Unity and Diversity Analogies:

A team of horses, all pulling in the same direction

An army - diverse regiments, unified command

Walking in another's mocassons

'The Balance of Harmonious Opposites' (John Ruskin)

What God has joined together, let no one separate...

'We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately' (Benjamin Franklin at the time of the American Revolution).

Unanimity? That's how the politburo operated.

Jesus chose both Simon the Zealot and Matthew the Quisling to be in his group of followers. (As you've often heard, if those two had met in a dark alley at night only one would have come out alive).

Theological straitjackets - safer; so others won't annoy us.

In Memoriam A.H.H.

OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII.

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

STRONG Son of God, immortal Love, Whom we, that have not seen thy face, By faith, and faith alone, embrace, Believing where we cannot prove;

Thine are these orbs of light and shade; Thou madest Life in man and brute; Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot Is on the skull which thou hast made.

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: Thou madest man, he knows not why, He thinks he was not made to die; And thou hast made him: thou art just.

Thou seemest human and divine, The highest, holiest manhood, thou: Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours, to make them thine.

Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be: They are but broken lights of thee, And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

We have but faith: we cannot know; For knowledge is of things we see; And yet we trust it comes from thee, A beam in darkness: let it grow.

Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before,

But vaster. We are fools and slight; We mock thee when we do not fear: But help thy foolish ones to bear; Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.

Forgive what seem'd my sin in me; What seem'd my worth since I began; For merit lives from man to man, And not from man, O Lord, to thee.

Forgive my grief for one removed, Thy creature, whom I found so fair. I trust he lives in thee, and there I find him worthier to be loved.

Forgive these wild and wandering cries, Confusions of a wasted youth; Forgive them where they fail in truth, And in thy wisdom make me wise.

1849.

In terms of theological diversity: 'Hold on to Christ, and for all else be uncommitted' (Herbert Butterfield).

In all things essential unity; in all things doubtful liberty; and in all things charity.