Did you see our ad in the Hyde Park Herald this week? We were listed as Ellis Avenue Church and our tag-line was next to it. And as I read through the other tag-lines I thought ours was by far the best -- its not like I am biased or anything! We have a pretty good tag line -- it speaks to who we are -- we are preaching what we practice. But it also expresses our hope for what we want to be as well.

I am also glad for the process we went through to get here. Back in 1998 that we said to ourselves that we need to work on our identity. This January we reaffirmed that and started a series of meetings that would get us to this point. We had several meetings on Saturday afternoons to try to hammer out the options for name and tag-line. Most times we were warm, cordial and enthusiastic, but there were times when it was difficult and frustrating. You know, don't you, that this is not at all unusual, particularly in situations where we are considering major changes. In fact if we didn't have some anger and frustration I would have worried about us -- whether we have any passion at all! Turns out that we do, and we care about this church so much that we are willing to take some risks.

I hope we can get beyond being afraid of conflict. In our lectionary passage from Luke, Jesus is saying that he is going to bring fire on earth -- can you hear his passion? I don't come to bring peace but division, he said, to set father against son and mother against daughter. Living under God's reign necessarily brings us to conflict with the values of the world. This is not an option -- Jesus says, even in our families there will be division. We'd better get beyond being afraid of conflict.

For us, conflict is a necessary step in our journey towards new things. At bottom, the important thing is not the conflict -- but that through the conflict we can come to reconciliation. And through reconciliation we would put our relationships on a new footing. And through it all, we will come to own the new name and tag-line as ours.

The interesting thing about Celebrating Diversity, Building Community in Christ, is that that in itself highlights conflict. We cannot celebrate diversity by holding each other's hands and singing happy songs! We have to come to share with and understand each other deeply and on the other's terms. Building community is not so simple either. Breaking down barriers that divide us is something that takes serious and significant energy. In fact, God showed us how to do it, in nothing less than in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

But if any group would set out to celebrate diversity, we could, because we already have the right ingredients. I mean just look at the fascinating picture of diversity, right here. Let me ask you this. If you were to have chosen the people you would associate with, would you have chosen the people whom you are sitting with today? The miracle of this congregation is that we are here with people who are in so many ways different from us. There is no other way to account for this than to say, this is possible only because God brought us here.

Look around you. We have many sorts of African Americans, many sorts of whites and many sorts of Asians. Some of us have Native American roots, and some of us have Latino roots. We are also diverse in many other ways. We are young and middle-aged, we are students, professionals and welfare recipients, we are middle-class and low-income, we are formally educated and experientially educated, we are liberal, moderate and conservative, we are couples with children, couples without children and couples who have no intention of having children, and single people, we are also heterosexuals and homosexuals. Some of us are mid-westerners, who think snow in November is good for the soul, some of us are from rural communities and others of us are from various parts of the south from where we have come north, only because the money is good! Yes, if any congregation can celebrate diversity, we can.

And this is good because diversity was God's intention for us from the beginning. From Genesis to Revelation, and the recounting of the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11 this is obvious. Let me tell you one story.

When Cyrus the Persian emperor conquered the Babylonians, he released the exiled Israelites and allowed them to go home. Some who were well settled and making some money and those who were less devout, opted to stay. Those who returned were the more devout and less economically advantaged. They wanted a new opportunity. Those who returned, under the leadership of Zerubbabel, began to reconstruct Jerusalem temple but quickly ran into serious difficulties. They did not have the resources Solomon had. The returned exiles were poor and could not be as heavily taxed as in Solomon's day. Then there were heavy political pressures from outside.

One of the thorniest came from the people of Samaria. You know the animosity those early Jews had with Samaritans don't you? These were Jews who had inter-married with the Assyrians during their time of exile. From the point of view of these more devout former Babylonian exiles who had kept themselves pure, this was an utter corruption of the race; and they began to look down at them. When the temple building began, the Samaritans, who were also Jews offered to help, but were scorned and put down by Zerubbabel. The Samaritans were afraid that that the nationalistic fervor that was being aroused would cause violence to erupt against them so they made representation to Cyrus the emperor and Cyrus, ordered the re-building of the temple stopped.

Zerubbabel was discouraged. The only thing he knew to do was to get the people to pick up their share of the money and the energy that needed to go into the project. And the only way he knew to do this was to highlight their exclusivity and increase the nationalistic fervor. This exclusivity was expressed in the reforms of Nehemiah. Membership in the Jewish community depended upon one's birth, and one's devotion to the torah and the temple, they insisted, and associating with non-Jews was frowned upon and inter-marriage was forbidden.

Can you see a problem here? These great leaders lost sight of God's heart for celebrating diversity. The prophet Zechariah, almost begs him to rely on God. "Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord," said Zechariah to Zerubbabel. The temple was completed in 515, but soon after that Zerubbabel vanished from the scene; because of the political uphealvals this was causing, he may have been abducted by the Persians. But the new temple looked terribly inferior to the old Solomon's temple, some of the older people who knew the difference wept.

But God has a sense of humor. When human beings try to do their own thing, and keep messing up, God works in subtle ways to break through. There is very good evidence to suggest that the book of Ruth was written during this period. If you don't know that beautiful love story, I suggest that you read it. God seems to have inspired an unidentified author to communicate through a touching, romantic, utterly human story, how God's greatest favor on Israel came; through, believe it or not, a mixed marriage; the marriage of Ruth to Boaz; great-grandparents of David, Israel's greatest king.

Ruth and Boaz, this paradigm of diversity, were also our Lord’s ancestors. God’s design for salvation reaches its most explicit expression in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. In the incarnation, God identifies with the human condition, with human particularity. God engages it, becoming flesh. God finds location in human particularity. Can you believe it, the almighty God moves into the neighborhood. And when he sees a particular need, he responded to it. He sees a blind man and heals him. He sees a leper and touches him. He sees a despised Samaritan woman and restores her to her faith. He sees particular people in particular situations of life and deals with the particularity.

Particularity is a very important word. Now, we may have the ingredients to be a diverse community -- but we will sit on the kitchen counter as ingredients and will not become a stew, until someone picks us up and puts us in a pot, and on the stove and lights a fire under us. And the particular taste and flavor of each ingredient id drawn out in its interaction other ingredients when there's a fire under it. Celebrating Diversity is not about sitting on the kitchen counter but about drawing out the best flavors from each of us.

On the day of Pentecost God broke through in technicolor. That "there were devout Jews from every nation (and the word means ethnicity) under heaven living in Jerusalem." The Holy Spirit here is not only paying attention to our language, but also to our ethnicity, the particularity of who we are. The languages that we speak, the ethnicities we are a part of, the family traditions we bring, are not accidental, but a part of God's design and purpose for the reign of God..

One of the most fascinating things about Agalawatta Baptist Church is that its worship is conducted in Sinhala and Tamil. Most Sinhala people in that congregation understand Tamil and most Tamil people understand Sinhala. This is rare among churches, in fact it is rare to have any gathering where Sinhala and Tamil people get together and not talk in English. The British did us a disservice -- they gave us a great universalizing language. It gives us an out -- a way to avoid getting to know each others' language and culture -- we could not speak English and avoid each other's particularity. When I was trying to figure out where in India I should go to for post graduate seminary education, my choices were between beautiful and cosmopolitan city of Bangalore and the city of Madurai, heart of classical Tamil culture and religion, my father encouraged me to go to Madurai. He said, if you are to have a ministry in Sri Lanka that's worth anything, you should immerse yourself in the Tamil language, culture and religion and get to know it from the inside. In other words, you should know Tamil people's particularity. At Agalawatta, both Sinhala people and Tamil people know each others particularity. And in the context of a war that has as its base this ethnic and language difference that has thoroughly divided the country, Agalawatta stands out as a shining example of how the church can bridge that difference. Not just in a universalizing way, using English to sweep the differences under the rug, but speaking to each other in their particularity in Sinhala and Tamil.

In this country especially since we tend to be mono-lingual, we think of language as a barrier rather than a blessing; and we still hope that people who come to this country from various parts of the world will jump into that old melting pot and come out looking all alike. This is so contrary to how the Holy Spirit does things. Why was it not possible for the Holy Spirit to say, we are all going to be speaking and Spanish today, and when you hear it you will understand. The Holy Spirit celebrates diversity of the people who gathered not by universalizing language, but by accentuating the particularity. That day, all those people heard the gospel preached, not just in their languages, but in their dialects.

John in the island of Patmos saw a vision of what is going on at the throne of the Lamb. "You want to know what it is like in heaven?" he is asking his readers. And he lays it out in all its grandeur. And he describes in brilliant color. "There was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, dressed in white with palm branches in their hands." And I want to tell you, this gathering of God’s family is nothing but a representation, a picture of what that great gathering is going to be. By all accounts, it will be a gathering that celebrates diversity and accentuates particularity.

So here we come together at the Lord's table today, celebrating our Lord who incarnated at a particular place, a particular time, in a particular culture, speaking a particular language -- who sat around to dinner once with his particular group of friends. I bet he knew about the particularity of each person around that table -- about their family, about their needs, about their hopes and fears. He could talk to them in their language, that is in the way they can understand. He took a particular loaf of bread and a particular cup of wine and said this is my body and this is my blood.

Now we gather together. What do we know of each other's particularity? Universalizing language is easy. But that's like sitting on the counter top. Understanding each other's particularity is like lighting a fire under us. But that's what celebrating diversity is about. That's why there will be conflict. That's why Jesus said, I have come not to bring peace but division. That's why the heroes of the faith struggled so to do what God had called them to do.

So here's something to do -- go talk to someone today that you have not talked to. Get to know their particularity. Set up a time where you can meet again, have a cup of coffee and tell each other's story. Invite each other to dinner so you will strengthen the bonds of friendship. Enter into each other's particularity. That's how we celebrate diversity.