“Different Identities but a Shared Humanity” by The Rev. Dr. Frank G. Kirkpatrick
Posted on
December 4, 2016
Second Sunday of Advent
Trinity Church, Hartford
“Different Identities but a Shared Humanity”
The Rev. Dr. Frank G. Kirkpatrick
We are now nearly a month beyond one of the most momentous presidential elections in American history. Many of us are still processing what happened and what it means for our lives going forward regardless of whom we might have voted for. At the core of many of the analyses of the election is the question of identity politics.
I know I have become identified over the years with sermons on the importance of social justice. And that identity is correct, up to a point. It is correct for me and for all who identify with what this morning’s collect calls the prophets God sends to preach repentance. It is correct because what lies ahead of us as a nation will be a continuing and vigilant commitment to the principles of social justice. But an identity that reduces itself only to doing the political work of justice without a deeper grounding in the power of God’s grace, is incomplete. Some of us, in our anger and fear of what the election might portend for many marginalized fellow citizens may find ourselves drawn to the incendiary language of Isaiah, the Psalm, and the words of John the Baptist which we’ve heard in this morning’s lessons. We hear with hope the command of God to the leaders of the nation to rule the people righteously and the poor with justice, and to defend the needy among the people; to rescue the poor and crush the oppressor. We find ourselves resonating strongly to the denunciations of John the Baptist when he excoriates those in power who oppress the poor. We might even celebrate the harshness of John’s prophetic proclamation that even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. Many are even prepared to identify some of those trees by name and party and association with those who have stirred up hate and division within the nation in pursuit of political success.
Some may even be looking desperately for a political redeemer whose winnowing fork is in his hand, and who will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
Many would also echo John’s accusation directed against those they feel betrayed the American dream. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”
In short, there is plenty of justified prophetic anger available in our biblical and moral heritage to inspire those who are deeply worried that the imperatives of social justice will, in the months to come, be weakened or ignored. We fear for the poor, the undocumented, the refugee, the alien, those with darker skin or different sexual orientations; those who have been marginalized by hate and fear and the rhetoric of exclusion or by the economic inequalities that are shredding the social fabric, a fabric that, no matter who we are, ought to hold us together as a people sharing a common land, a common wealth, and a common good. And that prophetic anger must not be silenced just because it was not satisfied by the results of the election. Continual vigilance against attempts to deny people their rights as fellow human beings is itself an abiding imperative. As the baptismal covenant reminds us, we are committed to persevere in resisting evil. We must be prepared, as Thomas Jefferson said about slavery, to ring the alarm bell in the night to warn us of the impending crisis if justice is not done.
But I said that our identity as Christians is not complete if it is characterized only by prophetic anger and resistance against further injustice and oppression. Our identity as followers of Christ is more than our identity as seekers of justice even as it is inextricably linked to justice if we want to live in community with others. We have an unalterable and unbroken identity as redeemed and renewed persons through the grace of God, an identity that precedes and underwrites our identity as doers of justice. It precedes and transcends all forms of political identity and action. Our true and basic identity is fundamentally characterized by a grounding in the love, mercy, and grace of God which reconciled us to God while we were yet sinners. Because of who God made us to be, we are intimately and together bound with all other human persons no matter how they are socially or politically identified. Our essential identity is inextricably linked to our common humanity which we share with all persons.
We must remember that that bond includes those others with whom we currently are in often radical political disagreement about how we should live our lives together and how justice is best achieved in a fragile and ever-changing society. And one thing this means is that prophetic anger, as justified as it might be, is not a justification for demonizing those with whom we disagree or writing them off because their political identity is not our identity. Some supporters of the winning candidate did, in fact, demonize some supporters of the losing candidate and did so on grounds of race, religion, ethnicity, and gender. But returning that demonization with some of their own by characterizing their opponents (primarily undereducated, underemployed, and mostly rural whites) as being irredeemably deplorable racists, does little to help us address the basic problems that we face us a people sharing a common nationality and different social agendas. I myself grew up in a part of the country that those outside it called hillbilly heaven because it was populated by undereducated poor whites. I was mocked for having a West Virginia accent and lacking in the social graces essential to acceptance into polite New England society. While the overt racism that accompanied some of the support for Mr. Trump cannot be denied, neither can the genuine fear many of those associated with that support felt about their exclusion from the economic progress being made by their wealthier and more privileged fellow citizens. We may disagree with the wisdom of their political choice but we cannot deny the fear they felt about being left behind while others appeared to prosper at their expense.
Fear, it turns out, is something both sides have in common. Fear drives much of the recent turmoil in our country. Fear of losing out while others gain: fear of being different; of being ‘other’ than the dominant groups: fear of being disrespected and dispossessed; fear of being discriminated against, marginalized, overlooked, or set aside while others reap the benefits of having a privileged place in society. Many will find different culprits or targets for the fear they feel. But fear crosses the boundary between politically opposed groups: each side has its own set of fears and in many instances they echo each other, even though they use different words and symbols and blame the other side for the fear they feel. Unfortunately there are also those who would stoke and inflame the fears that are felt in order to exploit those fears which they promise to alleviate by finding the right scapegoats.
Fortunately there is hope to be found in this commonality of fear. Our fears can be addressed by a more basic commonality which transcends and replaces fear: grounded in the hope that we share more in common than we don’t share. The ultimate shared good is love, a love which redeems and renews a shared humanity created by a single and all-inclusive fully accepting God of love. Divine love overcomes fear because it takes away or annuls the reasons we falsely believe justify our fear of others. We were not made by God or sustained by God’s love to be identified as opponents in conflict with others or to exploit insignificant differences based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, refugee or immigration status, wealth or health. Even openly avowed racists and misogynists are still our fellow human beings and by God’s grace we must have, as hard as it is, the audacity to hope that they can be reached at the level of their basic humanity: or so we must believe because with God all things are possible. Sometimes contrary to our most visceral feelings, even virulent racism can be addressed and shown to be without justification if we are willingly enough to try. Unjustified fear of the other feeds racism but we need to acknowledge that fear before we write off the people who are manipulated into holding racist sentiments. We must remember that none of us is defined by a single identity. As columnist David Brooks has put it: each of each is a mansion with many rooms, which can range on multiple occasions and contexts within each of us, from racist to inclusivist, from selfish to altruistic, from greedy and fearful to loving and hopeful. We are more varied in who we are in our particular lives than being defined with a single identity. Treating each other as if we have a single monochrome identity does an injustice to the complexity and often confused mix of identities that comprise each one of us. And that is why we most look beyond our multiple identities to the common identity God has given us in and through our reliance on divine power and grace. Having been given a shared identity in and through God that is more basic than all the superficial differences and identities we carry around in our lives, we are freed and empowered to embrace the instruments of justice within the broad inclusive relationships that comprise our society. We also have the gift of a common sense of what justice is. Justice is love in action. It entails fairness and equality in having all the material and social goods necessary for a meaningful and healthy life. The imperative and the ability to do justice is woven into the very fabric of our being. The fullness of the being God has given us precedes our commitment to justice and the political work necessary to implement justice. It comes before and undergirds politics and will be there at the end when the work of politics is finally done. The fullness of our reconciled and redeemed being has the power to overcome all our fears and enable us to enter into the fears of others and to offer them a way to achieve both justice and inner peace, in the name of God and for the sake of all of us.