Why I Shaved My Head Today

Dear St. Paul's Family,

A number of you told me this week that you weren't going to be in church today, and were hoping to receive a manuscript of this morning's message. So here is the sermon in full, including word about the "special change" that happened to me at the end of the service. Have a wonderful summer!

Magrey

“United, But Not Uniform”

June 19, 2011

Genesis 1-2

Trinity Sunday is the only holy day in the Christian year based on an idea, not an event. It is a biblical idea, even though the word trinity is not found anywhere in the Bible. Instead, church theologians have used passages like today's scripture lesson to develop some understanding of how three could equal one.

Notice the pronouns: When God creates human beings, God said “Let us make humankind in our image.” The church has traditionally interpreted those words as support for a God who existed in a plurality: one God in three persons. Somehow, at the beginning of the world, there was an "us"-ness to God, a quality which became infused into every human being.

The trinity is a part of all of us.

Of course, we don't fully understand how this trinity idea works. It is, by its very nature, irrational and mysterious. But what we do know about God is two-fold:

· First, each person in the Godhead is unique; each one is distinct from the other two.

· Second, they are all related to each other as one; they are one substance together.

They are unique, yet joined together; different, but the same. God the Creator is different from the Love revealed in Jesus, which is different still from the Spirit who guides and strengthens. Yet they are all the same God. All together as one.

Admittedly, this is all mind-numbing stuff, which is why I would prefer not to try to explain it you. Instead, I wish to look for ways for us to live it out. For if we are made in the image of God, as Genesis 1 suggests, then what does it mean to live in the image of the Trinity?

Here's the key: to live with the image of the Trinity is to live with that same kind of mysterious balance between 1) being distinct from everyone else, and 2) being related to everyone else as one. It is to see your life as one that is both “one of a kind,” but also just like the rest of humanity.

It seems to me that this is the critical question for us, and particularly for me, as I begin my renewal: How can you find the balance between celebrating your unique individuality and sharing yourself fully relationship with others?

First, a diagnosis. I think part of what ails our society today is that we tend to focus on of those ideas at the expense of the other. At the risk of sounding too simplistic, I think we might see people as fitting into one of two groups.

First, some of us work really hard to stand out from the crowd, to develop skills, personas, identities, and roles that draw attention to how distinctive we are. People like this know themselves so fully and so well that they don't take the time to learn about people who are different from themselves, to see how there might be commonalities among them.

Then, there is the second group of people. Those who just want to fit in. These are the people who seek out others who are just like themselves, to the point that they lose all knowledge of who they really are, where they came from, and what they can be. These are people who only associate with folks who look them, think like them, speak like them, vote like them, worship like them, and believe like them. All at the expense of finding what is truly unique about them.

I would suggest to you that so much of what makes our culture today so polarized, uncivil, and so segregated is that people, communities, and even churches fail to live in the image of the Trinity. They fail to celebrate both their uniqueness and their commonality. For in the Kingdom of a God who is Trinity, we don’t get to choose one or the other.

We are united, but we are not uniform.

That is the theological premise behind the next twelve weeks of my grant-funded study. It is a chance for me to explore how churches like St. Paul’s can be a congregation who welcomes a diversity of people by first appreciating themselves as unique individuals created in God’s image.

During this summer, that lesson for all of us begins with me. And I have to admit, that is the part that makes me both most excited and most nervous about the next twelve weeks.

I’d like to share with you some things about my childhood that I have never shared in public. I grew up in a predominately white, middle-class suburb of St. Petersburg, Florida in the 1970’s. We were one of the first ethnic minority families to move into our neighborhood, and I went to a school where I was basically one of a handful of ethnic kids in the entire school, and the only one in my class.

At first, I struggled to live a compartmentalized life. There was my life at home, where I ate rice at every meal, learned Filipino songs, and heard Tagalog, the Filipino language, all the time from my parents. Then, during the day, there was my school life, learning to speak, think, write, and live in English.

At times, that convergence of cultures was confusing to me. Sometimes my thoughts were in Tagalog, and I had to translate them into English. This often resulted in using both languages in the same sentence, usually with comical results.

It was clear to the other kids that I was very different. I didn’t quite fit in, with the way I looked, the way I acted, and the way I spoke. So it didn’t last long for other boys in the class to start teasing me. At times, it was harmless giggling. Other times, it became name-calling, taunting, and downright bullying. They would tell stories behind my back, not invite me to play games, or, worst of all, pretending I didn’t exist. It wasn’t all the kids who did this, of course, but there were enough of them.

And I still remember their names to this day.

It’s tough to go through that at any age, but especially when you’re a little kid, so I had to make a sad choice: if I wanted to fit in, then I had to lose what made me special.

From that moment on, I decided not to speak any more Tagalog. So, today, even though I can understand Tagalog fluently, I can speak English a lot better. Truthfully, this has served me very well in my career, as folks generally don’t complain about not being able to understand me. I have even debated changing my name to something more Americanized, which is something my dad did when he came to the states. Thankfully, I did not.

But talking like the other kids didn’t change the way I looked. I couldn’t change my skin color, and I couldn’t do anything about the shape of my eyes. But there was something that I believed I could change. Something that could help me fit in.

I could do something with my hair.

I have Asian hair. Hair that sort of flops down straight in every direction, like a mop head. We used to joke that my dad gave us haircuts by sticking a bowl on my head and trimming around it. I had bangs that hung down to my eyes, and it was something that none of the other kids had.

So, in third grade, I decided to start parting my hair to one side, sweeping my hair to the right, showing off as much forehead as I thought the white kids had. The problem, of course, is that my hair didn’t stay that way naturally. So I started using hair spray every morning and fussing with it for ten minutes. I wouldn’t get it wet in the showers after P.E. I was careful to adjust it throughout the day.

And that’s how I made it through school, college…

….and even today.

The bullying stopped somewhere around third grade. It had nothing to do with my hair, of course, but subconsciously I thought it did. I became not only accepted, but quite popular, not because of my hair, but because of my kindness, my with, my intelligence, and my charm.

But, even to this day, on a subconscious level, I keep my hair the same to ward off the bullies, to fit in, and to deny who I really am.

With all that said, I can’t tell you how important it is for me to go on these trips with my family. With the exception of a few weeks when I was two years old, I have never been to the country of my roots, immersed in the land where everyone looks like me. And Jessica has never been to the Netherlands. And the girls have never really been in touch with their ethnic roots as biracial children.

And that’s kind of sad. Sad for any one who wants so desperately to fit in that they forget that the first step in accepting people who are different is being comfortable with you are.

That’s why the Lilly Endowment fully funded this project for the church. If St. Paul’s is going to become open to people who are different from us, because they’re from another country or speak another language, or are even from another town, the place to begin is to celebrate what makes us each beautiful in God’s eyes.

The more you come to accept yourself as the unique person God has made you to be, then the less you will find others to be threat. And understand, even though my story has to do with a few white kids who were intolerant, I don’t see this at all as a “whites only” problem. There’s no need to blame just one group of people for this. I have prejudice in my heart that I have to work through, just as people of all skin colors can do a better job getting over their biases. The problem of prejudice really knows no skin color.

And this is not just about ethnicity. It is about getting along with people who think differently from you, act differently, worship differently, vote differently, and believe differently.

Ultimately, it all starts with each of us finding a balance between our uniqueness and our commonalities. To live the Trinitarian image within us.

So, there’s one more thing I need to do to be ready for these next twelve weeks.

(Take out hair clippers.)

I think it’s time to get rid of this hair.

There’s no need for any of us to try to earn our acceptance in God’s eyes. And there should be no reason for me to want to look like everyone else in order to feel accepted. That’s what I’ve done for years, hiding behind an obviously receding hairline and thinning scalp, pretending that I’m something that I’m not. So, in a few moments, during the Offertory, I’ve asked Karla Wilkie, one of our town’s hair stylists, to come up and shave me down.

And I hope this will be a reminder to all of us, especially myself, that we are each fearfully and wonderfully made. You do not need to be afraid of people who are different from you, because you can be comfortable in the way that God made you.

And when I come back, we’ll talk some more about what it means to be a church open and welcoming to new people, recognizing that all of us are God’s children, united, but not uniform.

In the name of our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, Amen.