We Dare to Cry

As we embrace the challenge to become a radically inclusive community, we want to take every opportunity to recognize and lift up our God given diversity whether that diversity is in our culture and language, our physical bodies, our faith traditions, our gender identities, our sexual orientation, spirituality, or any of dozens of other divine diversities.

This week we Dare To Cry with each other in worship as we continue with a theme inspired by Regina Sara Ryan's poem "Dangerous Prayers." But that's only one piece of our worship; this weekend we'll also celebrate Cinco de Mayo, the Fifth of May, when we gather together. Cinco de Mayo commemorates Mexico's victory over the larger and better equipped French forces at the Battle of Puebla in 1862.

As I've thought about our opportunity to celebrate with our Mexican brothers and sisters this weekend, I've become aware of many opportunities to grow in our relationships with our expanding multicultural families--opportunities that can be informed by our Christian experience.

First is an opportunity to grow and expand our language. Too often we congratulate ourselves over our daring use of gender inclusive language for our God and then stop right there. Every once in awhile we allow ourselves the rare Alpha, Omega, or Jehovah. But what beauty rests in "Vaya con Dios" and "La paz de Cristo." For centuries Christians denied ourselves the beauty and diversity of our own languages and approached God only in Latin, through priest translators. Martin Luther (I'm making up for criticizing him last week :-) ) wrested God language away from the institutional Church and offered it to the people.

May we honor that gift not only by using the breadth of human languages in our God talk, but also by allowing ourselves the inspiration of new translations and new voices. We can rest in the New Revised Standard Version or even the King James Version of the Bible if we like, but we can also dance in the modernity of The Message and allow ourselves the familiarity of the New Living Bible. We can read Bonhoeffer and Buechner, but we should also converse with Isasi-Diaz and Gutierrez.

I love the UCC's promise that "God is still speaking." Who am I to say whether God speaks with a lilt or a drawl or a 'het or a tilde or...

Dios Te Bendiga...