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Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. [I Peter 3:15b-16a]

The world keeps getting smaller. We all know that.

Just recently my husband and I were visiting with a seminary classmate of ours whom we had not seen in over 20 years. On the spur of the moment, Dan decided it would be a great idea to introduce us to a friend of his who directs activities at the local mosque.

A few minutes later, after a quick phone call (whatever did we do before cell phones?) and a few blocks drive; we were entering the mosque, my husband; Rick, our friend Dan, the gentleman from the mosque, and me. A few steps into the building, our host hesitated a moment, gestured to the scarf/shawl thing I happened to be wearing that day and said, “Is that...? Would you mind? Could you pull that over your head?”

A split second and I did. And I enjoyed the visit.

The world is getting smaller. Different traditions meet and mingle. How do we get along? What are the characteristics of that meeting and mingling? The world is getting smaller.

I learned just the other day that I live in the aruv. Now, I had known, of course, that I live just a few blocks from the Jewish Community Center. That had been one of the attractions of the location. Just two and a half blocks from a great gym No excuses. No way to get out of a daily workout after a grueling eight (or ten or twelve) hours at work (Well, it turns out there are still lots of excuses.)

I knew, of course, that I live right next door to a synagogue. But this aruv thing. I didn't know about the aruv till I learned it from a new neighbor, a man in a yarmulke.

The aruv, as I now understand it, is the household, the rabbis' accommodation to the modem world and to Sabbath keeping. It's the household defined for the purpose of pushing baby strollers and other such activities disallowed outside the household on the Sabbath.

The world is getting smaller. Different traditions meet and mingle. I'm so glad to have met my new neighbors with their small children. So glad to see them play with my young niece who my sister adopted from China.

The world is getting smaller. Different traditions meet and mingle. What are the characteristics of that meeting and mingling? How do we get along?

Around the world, on the daily news, we see a different answer than the easy one I've been living.

From Bosnia-Herzegovina where Muslims have been oppressed and slaughtered by Christians, to the Mid East where Jew and Muslim clash and Christians are caught in the crossfire, to Iraq where Sunni and Shi'a exchange gunfire, to the United States of America were hooded Protestant Caucasian men by night terrorize Catholic and Jewish neighbors (as well as fellow Protestants of other races), to Ireland, to Darfur, to Kashmir, to Chechnya. In this smaller world of ours we see different religious traditions meet and mingle to disastrous effect.

We need another way.

Perhaps the Apostle Peter's way. He, too, lived in a time of violence, of suffering due to religious persecution. He called upon his community not to bludgeon, not to make war, not even to crusade or convert, but to give a defense, to give an explanation, to make a witness for the hope that is within you and to do it with gentleness and with respect.

Years ago, I was a missionary to Congo. I learned very quickly there that in order to tell my story, I needed to know the local language. And for people to listen I needed to be welcomed into their lives. And to be welcomed into other people’s lives I needed to be respectful of their ways. See, I don't let someone into my house to trash my house. And neither would they.

The world is getting smaller. A new acquaintance asks me to cover my head. I find myself living in the aruv. How we meet and mingle across religious cultures in this day and age will determine how our children live, in many cases it will determine whether children live at all.

Someone once told me about an interfaith conference where around the table were Hindu and Buddhist, Muslim, Christian and Jew, and such was the politeness that each wanted at first only to listen to the other. And then one said, we must each be willing to tell our own story so that the others can receive it.

Peter says, be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within you—an explanation, a witness—and do it with gentleness and reverence.

That day at the mosque I thought, in a Christian setting, I might not have been so willing to cover my head. An internal conversation among brothers and sisters of one faith might have to have taken place, but for my new acquaintance, on his territory, wanting to hear his story and find a moment when he could hear mine—to meet and mingle, to begin to find a common ground on which to build a common community in this small world—it was the least I could do for a moment to cover my head and open a way to give my witness.

The world is getting smaller. I hope, I pray that the way our lives meet and mingle is one of reverence, of respect, of listening to each other's story, so that a community may be created even a household built on the firm ground of mutual respect, of gentleness and reverence.

May we seek out the ways of gentleness and of reverence. Amen.

 

Conversation with Sharon Watkins

Daniel Pawlus: Sharon, thank you so much for sharing that wonderful message with us. I thought we would start with that beautiful quote from Peter. Why is it so difficult for us to model gentleness and reverence in this day and age? It’s such a challenge.

Sharon Watkins: It is such a challenge. I think our whole world, but even our nation and our communities, seem to have gotten to a point where we function on extremes. It’s all so this or that, black or white, and somehow we can’t find the nuances. That seems to be our challenge.

Lydia Talbot: People ask, how can we really talk about religious diversity these days when so many people are insisting on exclusivity. I mean there are Muslims who insist on a Muslim state, Jews who insist on a Jewish state, Christians who want a Christian America. How do we reconcile that?

Watkins: Well, I think that’s why that quote is so important to me because it really encourages each one of us to start where we live, to start with the truth that we have in our own heart, to speak what we know; not to have to force it on anyone else but to give a witness, to share something that’s important to us as we would share anything important to us.

Talbot: I love what you said in your message, Sharon: How can we all get along? Can we all get along? Which was a wonderful part of the living legacy of the historic Parliament of the World’s Religious held in Chicago in 1993. What are you finding in your work as a national religious leader, head of the Disciples of Christ, around that ecumenical and interfaith table?

Watkins: Well, we are all struggling with the same issues, we’re all breathing the same cultural air, and so it means that we are, I think, on this common search. I find that we are moving into a new time and I think we’re all looking to new generations who are coming along to help us show the way. I know my own adult children, young adult children, seem to have a spirit of openness and interest in inclusiveness that I think gives me hope for the future.

Pawlus: I start to feel that as well and I wonder in my reading about fundamentalism, extreme fundamentalism, what seems to drive that school of thought is fear. We really have to look that in the eye and talk about that around the table, don’t we?

Watkins: Yes, and I hope that two things are going to happen just naturally to overcome that fear. One thing is that the very shrinking of the world that I talked about is going to help us to know each other better and I think when you know someone then you begin to understand their very humanness and see the light of God in each one of them. And I think as we get to know each other better then we will find some answers to this.

Talbot: And, Daniel, your point is good about fundamentalism because there is a fundamentalism internal warfare, if you will, among the religious of all faiths and between people of the same faith these days.

Watkins: Yes. I think fundamentalism of all stripes really has to do with trying to hold on to a past that is behind us. And I think that if we can look at the future that God is trying to bring in among us and be focused more on that future, we’re going to let go of the past and we’re going to discover...

Talbot: Well, our children are our future! Tell us how your children, Bethany and Christopher, are embracing that sense of inclusivity. I love that.

Watkins: Well, our daughter has just entered divinity school, University of Chicago Divinity School, and she has done a lot of travel and is very interested in working to combine public policy and religion in a way that opens up new options for people all across our own country. Our son, Chris, is a political science major at Macalester College in Minnesota and he, too, seems to be wanting to find a way that our public lives can mingle with our deepest spiritual longing in a way that gives opportunity and room for everyone to blossom.

Talbot: Don’t leave out your husband. Professor of New Testament?

Watkins: Professor of Hebrew Scriptures at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa. And our kids come by their interest in the spiritual and the political naturally by having him as their dad.

Pawlus: I was going to add, it’s sounds like it speaks to Thomas Friedman’s book, “The World is Flat.” He addresses many different issues, some business issues, but this seems totally relevant to what we’re talking about in terms of religious faith and sharing the diversity of our faiths which each other.

Watkins: I think so. I think the first piece of the show today talked about God coming into our lives and kind of bubbling up in our lives. And I think that if the extent to which each faith finds that reality, that begins to find a common ground out there where we can discover each other, learn from each other, share what we have to offer, and I think our common humanity comes forth in a way that I’m sure pleases God.

Pawlus: Absolutely.

Talbot: Discovering, learning and sharing around that interfaith table, Sharon. What would be your language of faith from your own personal pilgrimage around that interfaith table about your story, your faith tradition?

Watkins: I would say that in our faith tradition, one of the things that is so important is that each one of us is created in the image of God. Each and every person is created in the image of God and we are called through the Scriptures, prior to Jesus and in a particular way in Jesus, to look upon each human being as see in the face of each human being the face of God, the face of Christ, and then to try to treat that person as we would treat the Christ.

Pawlus: I’m wondering how do we create more curiosity about other faith traditions, denominations and so forth? It seems like we’re brought up in our faith tradition or we come to it and then we lose interest in the way other people practice their faith.

Watkins: Well, I think it’s partly how we raise our kids. I was just talking before the show with a woman who was telling me that at her church they, when their kids were confirmed, they decided they needed to have a way of continuing their faith journey and she’s dreaming about taking the kids to go to worship at a synagogue, to go to worship at a mosque, to find ways of helping them to experience a different faith traditions so they can really get to know their own better.

Talbot: And to be able to say, isn’t it interesting how you see God, so many paths to the same God.

Watkins: Yes. Well, the Bible tells us that God has never left God’s self without a witness in any time or any place. And I think that as we learn to get to know other faith communities we find that again and again.

Talbot: Now, when you were a little girl growing up in Indianapolis did you ever dream of becoming a pastor in your denomination and leader of it nationally?

Watkins: No. I told my parents I will never marry a minister! And I never thought that I had to try to inoculate myself against being a minister. But, no, I never thought that would happen.

Talbot: But you grew up in the church.

Watkins: I grew up in the church. A kind of family where every so often we could maybe get out of a day of school just with a little cough, but if we wanted to get out of going to church, boy, we had to have it on the thermometer! A real temperature. We were a church going family.

Pawlus: It sounds like you feel a real sense of hope that the dialogue is changing, that there’s a movement toward more diversity in what you’re seeing.

Watkins: I have to have hope. Sometimes the evidence does not suggest that we should. I mean, we have to admit that. But God is faithful and so we have hope. And as I get to know other people who have that same hope, then I think we go with that strength and with those people, and we do the best we can to build the kind of world and the kind of community that we think that God intended.

Talbot: And as you know, one of the detriments to hope is fear, that presumption—immature presumption, self-willed—that leads to despair. How do you talk to young people these days in the church about that?

Watkins: I think that I’d say that we have to focus on God. And it seems almost too pat, but that is the truth. If we focus on what God’s will is and have a sense of each new day dawning and the sense of resurrection, that if you fall down you get back up again, I think that’s where our hope comes.

Talbot: Thank you so much.

Pawlus: Thank you, Sharon.      

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