From the Dean of the Cathedral

Pentecost 2008

 

The Spirit and the Common Good

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit;

and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord;

and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God

who activates all of them in everyone.

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

1 Corinthians 12:4-7

Is multiculturalism a blessing? Sometimes I think we act as if we would be better off if we somehow could “all be one.” New towers of Babel seem to arise, whether they seek to assert what it means to love America and to be truly patriotic, to cast out immigrants, or to shout out and overpower others.

Growing up a Boy Scout and loving politics, I never thought that forced oneness was what America was about. Congress suggested "E Pluribus Unum" on July 4, 1776, as central to the design for the seal for the United States of America. As the design evolved, the center section of the seal’s shield included six symbols for "the Countries from which these States have been peopled”: the rose (England), the thistle (Scotland), the harp (Ireland), the fleur-de-lis (France), the lion (Holland), and an imperial two-headed eagle (Germany). All were linked together around the shield by 13 smaller shields of the "thirteen independent States of America."

Usually, the motto is cited as “Out of many, one.” E Pluribus Unum is more accurately translated in terms of an action: Many uniting into one. That motto never meant to me that we will all think alike or share the same political and social views about private choices and public policy. Rather, given the precious and invigorating pluralism and diversity of this country throughout its short history, we would – again and again – choose to unite into one.

I grew up surrounded and defined by ethnicity. In the larger community and in my local parish, I saw all sorts of people debate and disagree during the decades of the 50’s and 60’s. Yet more often than not they chose to unite to get things done for the common good.

Orlando Crespo is a second-generation Puerto Rican American and director of InterVarsity's LaFe ministry with Hispanic students. In writing on the Living Church blog in 2006 about the controversy regarding whether or not we should have a Transnational Anthem (THE CHRISTIAN VISION PROJECT), he said:

… very quickly in Genesis human culture becomes distorted by the Fall. Instead of "filling the earth," people huddle in Babel, … [and] hatch the plan of building a tower so as not to be "scattered over the face of the whole earth." …[an] attempt to seek human unity at the expense of filling the earth [which] draws God's intervention…[but the] resulting profusion of languages …often … seen as purely judgment…is also grace—the provision of a way to return to God's original plan.

 

Whether we huddle in arrogance or scatter in fear, we neglect the divine creative gift of our diversity. That we can become many uniting into one is what makes the gift so grace-filled. Greetings, in this Season of the Spirit, from a Cathedral that invites all of us – in our differences – to become, like this enormous Cathedral, bigger and more than we are.

The Very Reverend Dr. James A. Kowalski, Dean

 

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