Our Blue Genes
Luke 7:1-17 and 1 Kings 17:1-24
June 6, 2010
We humans are always fighting. Warfare, struggles, and arguments dominate our existence; however, many, if not most of these battles are waged not upon the soil but within our souls. We bicker within our minds over proper courses of action. We harbor doubts about the good and bad we have done. Our personalities split and duel over which choices to make—whether to show kindness or discipline, affection or callousness, jealousy or tenderness. We are divided beings; and this makes us decidedly remarkable creations.
Why are our divided selves remarkable? Because we have choices. We may choose one path, or we may choose another, or we may choose a third, fourth or fifth way. In this ability to choose what we do and how we act lies both our salvation and our destruction, as individuals and as a society.
A few years ago this human predicament was highlighted in the ending of a popular television show called The Sopranos. In the series finale—the one episode which is supposed to cinch up loose ends and give viewers a sense contentment and comfort—the writers and directors left the audience with a huge cliffhanger.
For six years viewers of the show had followed the triumphs, exploits and indignities of the lead character Tony Soprano and his gang as they battled rival mafias for turf and power. And now, finally, in the highly hyped series finale, resolution would surely come. Wouldn’t it?
The final scene of the Sopranos begins with Tony sitting quietly in an Italian restaurant with his wife, Carmela, waiting for the rest of their family to arrive. They discuss Tony’s pending court trial for a bit. Then their son, A.J. arrives. The family continues to talk with one another. Alert viewers notice that during their conversation a man can be seen in the background casually glancing over at Tony every once in a while. As Tony’s daughter, Meadow, parallel parks her car and prepares to enter the restaurant, the mysterious stranger gets up from his table and heads to the restroom. The next scene shows Meadow hurriedly entering the restaurant to join her family. The camera next quickly cuts to a close-up of Tony Sopranos’ face and pauses; then the screen goes completely black. For ten seemingly eternal seconds the audience stares at nothing but a blank, black scene. Then the credits begin to roll.
And that’s it. The end of the scene. The end of the series. We, the audience, are left only with perplexing, frustrating questions. Did life go on as usual? Why did the man who was suspiciously gazing at Tony go to the restroom? Is he Tony’s silent assassin? Did he give into the darker emotions of human nature—lust, revenge, selfishness? Or does the fact that we don’t actually see Tony die leave us with a sliver of hope that violence and vengeance, this one time, didn’t have the last laugh?
The reason I really appreciate the ending of the Sopranos is the same reason many fans of the show don’t—it is ambiguous. Often times we humans are content only with direct answers and decisive conclusions. But our lives are rarely painted only in black and white. Neither are they simply gray. Rather our lives are as varied as a color wheel, our choices a rainbow of diversity. Making the best decisions with the ambiguous choices we are presented with daily is the hardest part of our moral lives.
Our stories from 1 Kings and from Luke highlight these ambiguities of human life, though in a less noticeable way than the final scene of the Sopranos. In particular, the one common, often ambiguous question these biblical passages seek to solve is “What is the best way to treat an outsider?” How do we get along with those who are different? Who is worthy to receive help from our human hands as well as help from the hands of God?
Let’s begin with 1 Kings. The story seems like a rather simple tale of a holy man receiving help from a kind widow and then responding by helping her when her son was sick. However, this tale is far more complex.
First, we must pay attention to where exactly Zarephath, the widow’s hometown, is located. Did anyone notice? It is in a region called Sidon. Sidon is located in Phoenician territory, on the coast of the Mediterranean and far, far away from Elijah’s homeland. This is enemy territory; a land of foreign gods and, for the Israelites, wayward practices. So why is Elijah, a man of Israel, in the middle of enemy territory ordering its citizens to bring him bread and water?
Because Elijah is fugitive. Elijah is on the run from King Ahab, whose wife, Jezebel, has influenced the king to build altars and sacred poles for gods from her native country. Elijah confronts Ahab and instructs him to correct his blasphemous practices, stating that God is sending a severe drought as punishment. God then guides and protects Elijah in the wilderness eventually, God sending him to Sidon, the land of his enemies, the land of his queen Jezebel. Here it is Elijah who is the foreigner, the outcast, the unwelcome immigrant in a foreign land and culture.
And what happens to our prophet in enemy territory? He finds comfort in the destitute widow of Zarephath. It is this poor woman, a starving woman with only enough food for one last meal for herself and her son, who scrapes together her meager bits sustenance and serves them to a foreigner, an enemy, an outcast, like herself.
Two outcasts, one an impoverished widow, one a political refugee, finding common ground, discovering friendship and generosity, kindness and affection in a culture of fear and hardship. It is a powerful story.
Like our story from 1 Kings, the episode from Luke also teaches us a vital lesson on the importance of helping those who may seem different than us. It is often easy to forget that in the time of Jesus Palestine was an occupied territory. It was ruled over by the foreign nation of Rome and even its local leaders, like Herod, were in the employment of the foreign occupiers. Tensions were high. Just a few years before the gospel of Luke was written a full scale war broke out between the indigenous Jewish population and its Romans overlords. Thousands were slaughtered and the Jewish Temple was destroyed in the war.
With this background perhaps it is easier to understand how Jesus’ healing of the centurion’s slave would have been quite shocking for Luke’s audience. Surely, in many people’s eyes Jesus was providing comfort to the enemy. Why help the slave of man from an occupying army? Why care for the servant of an enemy? Sure the centurion had helped build a synagogue for Jewish people and had treated them with some kindness, but he was still a foreigner. His nation had ravaged and slaughtered the indigenous population. Yet Jesus heals the slave and responds with kindness to the centurion. Why? Perhaps when Jesus said “love your enemies” and “do good to those who hurt you” he really meant it.
This past week I listened to a fascinating interview on the NPR show “Talk of the Nation.” The topic was crime in America. The show began with the simple question that I ask you now. If your answer is yes please raise your hands. “Do you feel that crime is increasing in the United States?”
If you raised your hands then you are in agreement with 75% of Americans. 3 out of every 4 people believe that crime is on the rise. The problem is this is not true. Crime was down over 5 percent last year according to preliminary FBI figures and since a peak in the early 1990’s crime has steadily declined for twenty years. In fact, the crime rate hasn’t been as low as it is now since the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. The “good ole’ days,” it appears, are back in full swing!
The question we are left with is this: Why is there such a difference between reality and perception? Why do we feel unsafe, when our nation has actually become safer and safer over the past two decades?
The first caller on the show pointed to a commonly cited reason: the media. The media, she suggested, shows all the bad stuff and none of the good stuff. Rapes, murders, kidnappings all make the primetime news, while other stories highlighting the beautiful aspects of life are left to collect dust.
The expert on the show, Prof. Robert Sampson, a sociologist, asserted that he didn’t think the news media had changed that much in the past twenty years and instead pointed to an intriguing theory: it is the increasing cultural diversity and mixing of cultures that has affected our perceptions of crime.
Quoting from Prof. Sampson, “The research shows that where you have increasing heterogeneity or increasing immigration—in other words, communities that have lots of different groups mixing together…it tends to lead, at least initially, to lower trust and it leads to increased perceptions of disorder…whites, Latinos, blacks, everybody believes that disorder and crime are higher where there's higher levels of diversity and immigration…”
In other words, we humans have a natural tendency to congregate with those who are like us. We trust those who are similar and distrust those who are different—at least initially.
While I am no evolutionary biologist, I do wonder if this natural tendency of fearing outsiders is part of our genetic makeup. We want to mark our territory, so to speak, to claim turf as our own, to have things the way we want them. Humans don’t often do well with drastic changes. Our biology and our genes encourage us to thrive and survive at all costs. And often it is easiest to be successful in life if everyone around us thinks, talks, acts, and feels the same way we do. Diversity is hard. Like the mafias in Sopranos, we want to stake out our territory, claim our land, and keep others who are different away.
In this sense, our genetic desire to thrive can be a hindrance for us. It can force us into isolation and fear of those who are different. It can make us melancholy toward those who are not like us, to outsiders and foreigners, to those whose cultures are different. In a way our genes can make us blue, they can nudge us to be despondent, defensive, pessimistic about the diverse world in which we live.
But we humans have the unique and valuable ability to move beyond our blue genes and act contrary to our biological notions. This is perhaps what is most encouraging about our passages today. Despite their cultural, political, and religious differences, the prophet Elijah and the widow of Zarephath provide care for one another. The same is true with Jesus. Jesus, a Jewish man with every reason to hate the Romans because they were foreigners occupying his homeland, nevertheless, and with kindness and love, heals the slave of the centurion.
These two instances of strangers finding peaceful common ground are particularly important today because they show that we humans are at our best when we use our God-given gifts of love and concern to care for those who are different. Our world is unrelentingly mixing its cultures, our country and our cities are becoming increasingly diverse. How we deal with this diversity is the critical issue: do we hide behind the comfort of what we have always known? Or do we find ways of reaching out to and understanding those who are different?
There is no doubt that we humans have the ability to find common ground with outsiders. We have the power to live without fear, without skepticism, without pessimism of the different cultures that increasingly surround us. The question is not should we love those who have a different race, language, culture, background, religion, or belief system, but will we? For there is no greater love than to love those who are different, to care for those who are not the same, to find joy in the diversity of life, despite our blue genes. Amen.
“You’re (Probably) Wrong About Crime, “Talk of the Nation,” National Public Radio, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127370540, accessed on June 4, 2010.
