Can We Talk? From Common Ground to Higher Ground
Over the past 5 weeks we have explored the question: Can We Talk? In an election year in which there is deep division in our country, this is an important question.
We have looked to scripture to help us answer some basic questions, such as:
- Why has God given us the ability to communicate?
- Why do words have power? What is their power?
- How does God expect us to use the gift of speech and communication?
Well, early on we looked in Genesis to discover that God expects us to use speech to create, just as God did. God uses speech to create the world. And then gives us speech to be creative as well.
And recall from that weekly message that God’s creativity is about:
- Bringing order from chaos
- Giving life
- Making space, making room for all God’s children (that is everyone!) —> Freedom
These are the goals of our words, our talking, our conversation.
The past three weeks, we explored some of the How To’s of talking:
First, communication is not enough. In fact, too much can be and has been very harmful. What we need is conversation – people talking in-person, face-to-face so that true listening, responding, and asking questions can take place. We need conversations that we do not give up on or walk away from. We need to seek out people through conversation.
Second, we must get out of our echo chambers. It’s easy to pay attention to things we like and agree with. It’s much harder to listen to ideas we don’t like. We must be intentional to converse with people we do not agree with. Listening across the aisle is critical to knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. Proverbs says this: As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17) We need to be sharpened by one another. And the tool to sharpen is conversation…conversation about our differing ideas, perspectives, lifestyles, beliefs, and commitments. This sharpening process is critical because it leads us to truth. None of us have the edge on truth. The truth is God’s. And because we are all made in God’s image, the God’s truth is between us and beyond us. We come closest to truth when the spirit works between us to bring the best of each of us together.
And third, if Jesus life has something to say about the truth, then it is that the truth which exists between us always involves a new, previously unidentified path. An alternative solution. A third way. If you think the answer is A and I think it is B, Jesus comes to show us that the answer is C or D or E. We find this alternative answer by bring our A and B answers together in conversation and then creatively seeking something beyond what we have thus far considered. We ask the deep faith questions that Jesus asks. We search for the heart of the issue. And we stop settling for the either-or answers of the world around us. Faith is creative, from it’s first word in the beginning to its final answer when every problem is solved.
Today, I want to offer you a model through which you can practice these tools I have offered you over the past few weeks. This model is summed up in the motto of MeckMIN (an organization I used to work for in Charlotte, NC). The motto is
From Common Ground to Higher Ground
MeckMIN is an interfaith organization where people of different faiths come together based on things they have in common to work together on community issues, such as homelessness, hungry, or poverty. It’s the commons ground that gives a basis for ministry that makes our world better. One great example we used a lot was how every religion has a version of what we call the Golden Rule. Maybe that is hard for you to believe, but it’s true! Look it up! The golden rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you – is a belief that all religions share in some way, shape or form.
Well, Paul has something to say about common ground as well. Listen to how he handled a situation in Athens (Acts 17:16-34):
While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he argued in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and also in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. Also some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers debated with him. Some said, “What does this babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign divinities.” (This was because he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.) So they took him and brought him to the Areopagus and asked him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? It sounds rather strange to us, so we would like to know what it means.” Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.
Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us.
What you have to realize here is that Paul has not said anything new to the stoics. They already believed that God is not limited to temples (Acts 17:24), that God needs nothing (17:25), and that God created people (17:26-29). And Paul goes a step further…
For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’
Paul uses and agrees with this quote from the stoics own poets. Again, Paul is finding common ground.
Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed; but others said, “We will hear you again about this.” At that point Paul left them. But some of them joined him and became believers, including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.
Paul finds common ground with the Athenians, the Epicureans and Sotics. He then builds upon that common ground to show his audience how Christ fits into that common ground.
This was Paul’s ministry. He is doing exactly what we studied a few weeks ago – becoming all things to all people. He enters the world of the Athenians, learns how to speak their language, finds the common ground and then uses it to build trust, establish a relationship, and engage in an effective conversation. And the result is that everyone involved ascends to a place of wisdom and understanding. And we know that happened here because the story tells us that folks came to know Christ and began to follow his way.
Paul used Common Ground to lead to Higher Ground. And so should we.
If I can show you how Christ is already a part of what you believe already working within you beliefs, how Christ is the key that answers the questions within your beliefs, then I have done something far more faithful and effective than simply assuming you are wrong about everything.
When we share Christ with others, it is helpful to build on what insights they already have correct. Christ then becomes the cornerstone that scripture proclaims him to be. The cornerstone that completes the bridge already begun within the life of each and every human being.
Find Common ground and start there. Talk about the common ground. And begin to build upon it. This is scriptures model for our conversations. Can We talk? Yes, of course we can if we follow scriptures model.
One of the programs that I ran for MeckMIN was an Interfaith Summer Youth Camp. During this week long camp, we brought youth together from many different religions to find common ground and do mission and ministry work together. One of these amazing summers, a young Jewish girl named Elana had a pretty tremendous experience at the Urban Ministry Center where we fed and ate with persons experiencing homelessness. Her experience illustrates finding common ground and ascending to higher ground. Here are her own words describing her experience:
Honestly, I used to be afraid of homeless people. I thought they were crazed and would shy away when I saw them on the streets. But yesterday, we went to Urban Ministries to eat lunch with homeless men and the them quickly became people with names.
A middle-aged African American man in a brightly-colored shirt sat down next to me. I commented on his shirt to start the conversation, and he responded pleasantly, smiling. The next thing he did was tell me that :although we have good moments and laughter, sometimes life is very difficult.” I swallowed, waiting for a story. It didn’t take long for him to pour out advice and years of wisdom to me, a stranger he had just met. He told me of success, knowledge, individuality, judgement, hope and God. He told me how for a moment today, while I was talking to him, he did’t feel like a failure. I saw what I had previously mistaken as craziness in his eyes: fear. I could feel myself start to cry, but instead I handed him some sandwiches…as we continued to connect.
Leeanna has more to say, but she concluded her reflection with these words that show the kind of power common ground can have in our lives:
People will always be who you think they are…until you get to know them.
Starting getting to know people whom you don’t agree with, whom you don’t like, whom you think are crazy. Sit down. Share a meal. Listen to a story. Find some common ground. And begin to build on that common ground. You will begin to connect, to find something more, something greater, something amazing. You’ll discover part of God’s truth that was between you and them all along. And you’ll find Christ within your midst of the conversation.
Brothers and sisters, this may sound simple, it may sound hard, it may sound silly, it may sound easy said than done. But this is the model of conversation in God’s word. And in this time, particularly in this year as we are soon to embark upon an election where all kinds of words will be thrown around, this Godly way of conversing with one another matter more than ever. I promise you that if you use what we have studied the past 5 weeks now, you will be a lot happy this year, a lot more at peace, you will grow more, you will have more love in your heart and a lot less frustration. And best of all, your conversations – your life! – will look a lot more like Jesus Christ.