Eastertide
May 13, 2018
Scripture reading: John 17:6-19
Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.
–John 17:11b-19
We have an interesting relationship with science. We absorb it quickly but have more difficulty letting it go. That reality is directly opposed to the empirical methods used by scientists. Remember when we thought stomach ulcers were caused by stress. Then one day scientists identified a bacterium that causes ulcers, Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori). While stress can negatively impact all healing, there is not a cause and effect relationship between stress and ulcers. Remember when persons with developmental disabilities were labels as idiots, imbeciles, and morons? Science has long debunked these descriptors, but the words hurtfully remain in our language. The same is true of the labels trying to discern differences among human by something we dubbed race. Remember them: Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid? This science too has been debunked and our world still swims deep in its pool of discrimination based on false hypothesis. Why?
The following is the opening of a statement from the American Anthropological Association shedding light on what we call race:
In the United States, both scholars and the general public have been conditioned to viewing human races as natural and separate divisions within the human species based on visible physical differences. With the vast expansion of scientific knowledge in this century, however, it has become clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that most physical variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups. Conventional geographic “racial” groupings differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes. This means that there is greater variation within “racial” groups than between them. In neighboring populations, there is much overlapping of genes and their phenotypic (physical) expressions. Throughout history whenever different groups have come into contact, they have interbred. The continued sharing of genetic materials has maintained all of humankind as a single species*.
Jesus Christ called us to be one turning our differences into positives as our many talents and skills comingle to create even greater outcomes than any of us can attain individually. We have known this from the beginning when we learned that all humans were created in the image of God. That is easy to say but it takes a vast amount of intentionality to break our habits of hostility among those we identify as different. Now is the time to let our not-from-God habits go and remember who made us and for what purpose.
Prayer: Make us aware of how our actions and attitudes are perceived by others. Habits burrow deep into our beings. We do not know when we are offensive. With increase awareness, give us the courage to let the comfortable and familiar go and move into a new being in Christ. Amen.
*Opening statement from the American Anthropological Association Statement on Race. See athttp://www.americananthro.org/ConnectWithAAA/Content.aspx?ItemNumber=2583