America's Oldest Religion

My apologies for the difficulty in reading this as originally posted a couple weeks ago. I copied and pasted it from the original sermon manuscript, and that led to a new discovery: the blog doesn't communicate well with double-spaced documents. If you went to the bother to read the earlier blog, thank you; if not, this version may be easier to decipher. Perhaps?

Prior to my retirement, many of you received manuscripts of my sermons in your e-mail inboxes, maybe because you requested them, but maybe not in some instances. One advantage of blogging is that such material can be launched into cyberspace without worrying about whether or not it is solicited. It's just out there, as if one is sealing a message in a bottle and casting it into the sea. Occassionally I am called out of retirement to preach, as happened this past Sunday, but now I don't have to be concerned about cluttering your inboxes; those who want to go to the bother can simply check my blog.

America’s Oldest Religion
Acts 17:22-28
A Guest Sermon
Central Christian Church, Fairmont, WV
August 2, 2009

A couple of factors have primed the well for this morning’s sermonic spurts. A goal for preaching that I never got around to prior to my retirement involved doing a series of sermons on different world religions as well as the various Christian traditions, the purpose of the series being to explore possible threads that may exist between these multiple faith expressions, in effect, tying them together. Having failed to achieve that goal but reluctant to let it go, I realized recently that since I am called on occasionally to pinch hit for other preachers, I could still work toward that goal, though doing so would entail a much more prolonged process—a process that, in all probability, would never be completed. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be begun.

Another factor was the trip that our Vacation Bible School scholars along with twice as many of us adults went on last Sunday, the visit to the wonderful Pittsburgh Zoo. It was a terrific way to conclude our month of Sundays focusing on the story of Noah and the Ark. Getting to spend time in such an immense array of the world’s many different species, both zoological and botanical, led to my wondering which of the religions seems to comprehend most clearly the unity of all life, the sense that life is meant to live in the kind of harmony in which the welfare of all creates the welfare of each, and the welfare of each contributes to the welfare of all. Because of the earlier portions of this morning’s service, you have already guessed the world religion that readily came to mind, the one that may very well be the first religion practiced in the Americas—Native American religion. Even though there were natural boundaries at the zoo to keep the tigers and lions out of the fields where the deer and antelope, the zebras and giraffes were grazing, there was something about seeing all of those signs of life together in one place that overawed me with the awareness of life’s relativity, life’s oneness.

St. Paul points to that oneness in this morning’s scripture reading. He was questioned by the Athenians about his God and he reassured them that the “unknown God” out of the pantheon of gods to whom they prayed was, in fact, the God of all creation, the one God of all life. This is the One who cannot be separated from the creation because this God is the Creator who is still creating. This God is all around us, this God is never far from us at anytime. “We live and move and have our being” in this God, says St. Paul.

Moreover, says Paul, this is the One who created all lands and their inhabitants, and from “one ancestor” all the nations and races of the earth. Amazingly this is one of the few places where the Bible and modern science agree! The most widely accepted scientific view today, stemming from recent archeological and genetic research, is that our species, Homo sapiens—human beings, originated in one geographical locality of Africa some 200,000 years ago, and that about 75, 000 years ago our ancestors began migrating “Out of Africa” and spreading across the globe. About 25,000 years ago the first Native Americans, having migrated to Asia began to cross the Tundra in what we now know as Russia or Southern Siberia and from there they traveled across what was, in effect, a land bridge that once connected Russia to Alaska. From Alaska they migrated throughout the American hemispheres. (Gosh! Had Sarah Palin been living then she not only could have seen Russia from her back yard, she could have walked the 600 or so miles to get there. Yeah, I know, don't give up my day job!)

So our more distant brothers and sisters made it to these shores about 24,000 years ahead of our more recent ancestors who came here by way of the Atlantic. And these earliest settlers developed wondrously rich heritages, cultures, and religions thousands of years before our particular Jewish/Christian understandings began to take shape. So, it may be productive to see if there are some similarities between the various faith understandings that they and we hold.

Census information indicates that there are 500 tribes in the United States and about 1.3 million Native Americans. These persons are as plural and diverse as those who comprise any other group. There’s nothing unusual or wrong with that. Being different is a good thing. What if we were all exactly alike? What if we all believed and felt the same way about things: “The only appropriate color for neckties is blue.” “Yes, everyone agrees.” “Women should never wear pants suits to church.” “Oh, that’s so true that everyone says so.” “Rush Limbagh should be our next president.” “Indeed, all people in the country know that.” How deadly and devastating life would be if we all agreed all the time, not to mention BORING! The differences are what make life exciting, full of zest and tang, causing both agreements and disagreements, times of delight and times of exasperation, times of closeness and times of distance. That’s the way life is.

So as all people have differences, the same is true of Native Americans. They have separate languages, customs, dances and ways of living their daily lives that are different. And that’s the reason no Native American individual, even within his or her own family, speaks for another individual. No tribe presumes to speak for another tribe. To do so is to act discourteously, if not indecently.

Even so, there are some interesting ways in which Native American stories are very similar to the stories we find in the Bible. The stories of the vision quest for the Native Americans, in which one goes out into the wilderness to be alone and clear one’s head and to seek the wisdom of the Great Spirit and get prepared for life, are similar to Jesus’ experience in the wilderness, where, he too, searched for insight through fasting and solitude until enlightenment was gained through God’s Holy and Great Spirit.

The Native American stories of visions of holy ones are no different than Moses’ encounter with God on the mountain or the narratives of Jesus’ birth. What we gather in such stories is the sense of the mysterious presence of the Creator.

A Lakota, a word meaning friend or ally, by the name of Black Elk, once had a vision of a sacred hoop (or circle) of his people which was only one of many hoops, all joined together to make one great circle, the great hoop of all peoples. In the center of the great hoop stood a powerful, sheltering, flowering tree, and gathered under it all the children of all nations. (It sort of recalls that image in the words attributed to Jesus in John’s Gospel: “In my father’s house there are many (hoops) dwelling places.”)

As you may have surmised, the circle for Native Americans is very significant. The sun is a circle; the drum is a circle; the ripples of the water are ever-widening circles. The circle means everything returns to the center of all life, to the Creator. The Great Spirit makes everything in the form of a circle. Mother Earth is a very large, powerful circle. The circle proves that life doesn’t end. It is part of the great eternal circle.

The sun dance, which Christian missionaries mistakenly took to represent pagan worship of the sun, was actually giving thanks to God for making the sun, for the sun produces life and without it, we would not exist. The dance was performed in a circle to represent the wholeness of creation.

The circle represents harmony and when it is broken or uncompleted, there is disharmony. Even today Native American understanding realizes that the circle of harmony has been broken by prejudice, contemptuousness, maliciousness, injustice and cruelty done by humans to one another. What is needed today, and what as Christians we believe Jesus comes into our lives to do, is to make the circle complete again—to close the circle in a way that includes all that is.

Spending the past week taking a closer look at Native American history, I learned some things that if taught when I was in public school, then I must have been sleeping when they were being taught. For example, did you know that the Constitution of the United States is based, in part, on the Tribal government principles of the Native Americans? Or, are you aware that our present-day emphasis on ecology, on earth days or green days or whatever it is we are calling it, has always been a part of Native American belief, a belief that the earth is a living place to be respected and cared for and nurtured and nourished.

My review of Native American heritage also made me aware of how the Hollywood image of Native Americans has been a cruel caricature of who these people really are—with one possible exception, the film some years back, Dances with Wolves. And I had a good laugh when I came across the meaning of the phrase of “Kemo Sabe.” How many of you remember the phrase? Ah, all of us above a certain age. That was the name Tonto gave to the Lone Ranger, and I’ve always believed that it meant “faithful friend.” (Heads nodding) But according to Fred Shaw, the official story teller for the Shawnee nation, that’s not what it means. It really means, “Soggy Shrub” or “He who does nothing.” Way to go, Tonto!

Native Americans see all races as brothers and sisters and have been taught by their ancestors that there are four nations on the earth—the black nation, the red nation, the yellow nation, and the white nation. According to Ed McGaa, a Dakota Native American, there are four commandments from the Great Spirit of the Indian tradition: (1) respect for Mother Earth; (2) respect for the Great Spirit; (3) respect for all humankind, and (4) respect for individual freedom (provided it doesn’t threaten the tribe or the people of Mother Earth).

You may have guessed that the sacred number for Native Americans is four. There are the four seasons and the four directions on the earth. The sacred color of the west is black to represent the setting of the sun; of the north, white, to represent the snow; of the east, red, to represent the rising sun; of the south, yellow, to represent the growing of wheat and other grains. And these sacred colors are the reasons we cannot be prejudiced—all people are related by the seasons and directions, and all have the same mother, Mother Earth.

Today we are invited by our Native American sisters and brothers to realize that if we are to survive, that will mean working together to close the circle again until it encompasses the center of all life in the heart of God.