Sermon 8/9/2015: "Nature and Nurture"

This sermon was offered at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Lake City, MN--my parents' church.

 I’ve sat at our dining room table looking out at the bird feeders a lot this summer.  I may have spent more time there this year than in the past because for the first time I was able to watch young birds master the art of landing on the feeder.  They would take short flights from a bush or tree onto the railing of the deck and then try to navigate the distance from the railing to the birdfeeder.  The windows would reflect back to them their own image, which would confuse some of them and they would sometimes miss their mark.
Then there was the family of squirrels.  The babies have learned different pathways to those same feeders; sometimes misjudging the distance and their leap would be short or sometimes even, long.  Sometimes the wiser young squirrels would simply wait for their mother to spill seed from one of the feeders and then gorge themselves with what fell.
Now the baby squirrels are trying to figure out how to build their nests for the winter.  One has diligently been cutting branches of leaves and bringing them to its favorite resting spot on a flat branch, only to have the twig tumble off.  This squirrel has some learning to do before it will have a home of its own.
All these things are natural, instinctive ways creatures develop.  It’s necessary to learn survival skills, find food and shelter and learn how to get along with the surrounding creatures—both friend and predator. 
Humans have natural and instinctive ways, too.  Though our methods are different, we, too, find ways to survive in the environments in which we live.  And when we are pushed out of our nests by our parents, we have to find our own way of being in the world.
The way we were nurtured will affect this.  Where we come from will always be a part of where we go, but as a mother of two young adults who have begun their journeys as adults, I know that they are also finding their own way of being in the world.  Who each child is naturally will remain their core, and some of the ways we nurtured them will provide their foundation, but as they each learn how to fly to the bird feeder or build their first nest, they will show their independence, express their unique thoughts, live within their own level of confidence and become adults.
I can only hope that how we nurtured them will impact some of who they become.
I read a story this week from the New York Times Magazine about four men in Colombia[1].  Two sets of identical twins who were switched in the hospital shortly after their births; so one of each set of twins went home with the wrong parents.  The boys were raised believing they were fraternal twins, having no clue that their identical twin was out there in the world.
The families could not have lived more different lives.  One family lived in Bogota.  The dad was absent, so their mother raised them and their sister.  Though they did not have a lot of money, the boys completed their education through high school, attended higher education and worked in business.  Their mother died of cancer when they were 24.
The other family lived in a remote village, where the nearest high school was a five hour walk, so the boys did not complete high school.  These boys had military training, but were stifled because of their lack of a diploma.  They worked with their hands in the fields with their four siblings and both parents.  As adults, they headed for Bogota and opened a butcher shop.
When the men were 28 they learned that there was another set of twins who looked exactly like themselves.  It’s an interesting turn of events and that story would make a great made for T.V. movie.  Suffice it to say, they were dumbfounded by the discovery and each man now had to reconcile their nature with their nurture.  Each set of fraternal twins vowed that they would always be brothers, but not without becoming brothers with the other set. 
Learning about their identical twins, each man would see specific traits that mirrored their own.  Not just physical, but personality, like which were the most organized, the most flirtatious, the most introverted.  Not surprisingly, the identical twins carried many of the same traits.  Their nature was contained in their DNA and no amount of nurture would or could change these things.
What became harder for the men was realizing the things they missed in life—or the things that changed their paths.  Not knowing their biological parents, for one.  Growing up in the village instead of the city, or vice versa, was another.  Levels of education, military service, job opportunities.  Siblings and extended family, too.  One of the four has really struggled with “what if?” and though he was reunited with his natural parents, he felt guilty because he could not talk about it with his nurturing mother, because she had died.  He found the crush of people in his natural family to be overwhelming, and he also knew he had opportunities he never would have had if the switch had never occurred. 
Nature vs. Nurture.  Who we are matters.  Where we come from matters.  How we become our adult selves is impacted by all these things.
When Jesus comes to his home town and announces he is the bread of life, and that he came down from heaven and that he is the only one who has seen God face to face, the people who watched him grow, who were a part of his nurturing, who knew his parents, complained, discussed and struggled with who this man had become.  They did not understand that his nature was God. 
Can you imagine the things that were being said? 
“But this is Jesus, that quirky kid born in Bethlehem.” 
“He’s from Joseph’s clan.  Mary is his mother.” 
“Remember that time he got lost in Jerusalem and Mary and Joseph had to go all the way back to get him?  I think he was about 12.  They found him in the temple talking about the Torah with the rabbis.” 
“He always questioned scripture, just like any good Hebrew.” 
“What is he talking about?” 
“How does he say he came from heaven? We saw Mary when she was pregnant with him.” 
“How can he say he is God?  What blasphemy is this?”
Jesus was different than what people remembered.  He had a different level of confidence.  He provided a different set of examples of how we treat one another in the name of love.  He had a different way of interpreting Torah, which challenged the religious leaders’ sense of God, but Jesus was acting exactly the way any student of scripture was to act:  he provided a new kind of conversation.  The problem was that he was implying that he was God, and that went against what everyone believed.
They were, as the writer of John said, Jews.  Just as Jesus was a Jew.  They lived in a world where being Jewish was not only their nature, but it was their nurture.  They listened to the stories; they knew their heritage and their history of traveling with Moses.  They knew that manna rained down from heaven when the Israelites were starving.  They also knew that dead meant dead.
It’s important to note that John’s gospel was written about 70 CE.  The writer of John has a different purpose than the writers of the other Gospels.  His goal is clearly stated in John 20:31:  But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.[2]  That means that John is writing to Jesus followers, with the intent to secure their faith in Jesus. 
In the eyes of the Jews who knew Jesus from birth, Jesus was just another man.  They did not understand, nor could they, that this man was God’s son, present at creation.  Their nurture in the Hebrew Scriptures placed God in the heavens; except for the few times God spoke to their ancestors to give the law or change the course.  God was God.  There was no other entity.  For Jesus to claim himself as God was preposterous.  And Jesus knew this would be the reaction, because he was a good Jew who knew the Hebrew Scripture, too.  How could he change their minds?
The writer of John also knew that the Jews would not change their minds.  It was part of his calling to write a Gospel that helped Jesus followers create a different understanding of God.  According to the writer Jesus said that “no one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me.”  When we understand the purpose of this Gospel, not as a tool to convert Jews but as a guidebook to following Jesus, we begin to understand that not everyone will be nurtured as Christians.  God has chosen other paths into relationship with God.  For Jesus followers, that path includes a relationship with Jesus.  For us, dead is not dead.  Dead is the beginning of eternal life.
Our nature requires us to be hungry and thirsty.  Our nurture guides our choices to supply those needs.  As Christians, we come to the table to receive the bread and the wine, our souls and bodies nurtured in our faith.  As Christians we invite others to the table to share these gifts because we understand that everyone is on a journey and it is natural to be hungry and thirsty.  We want to nurture that journey, too.
Those four men who were switched in the hospital remind us that no matter who we are we are each part of the human family.  How they were each nurtured prepared them for adulthood and for the amazing discovery of who they each naturally are.  How they each are nurtured through this revelation will impact who they become individually and with one another.  Each is a part of the other.  Each is welcomed into the circles they call family and friends.  It isn’t an easy transition.  I can’t imagine what it is like to have the world you have known to be … not a lie exactly, but certainly not the truth … and then have to figure out how to fit it into the life you have built.  The new knowledge expands their reality.
Jesus was offering new knowledge, according to John.  The Jews could not grasp that knowledge as viscerally as the Colombian twins.  They were not seeing the two realities Jesus was offering.  But that is okay.  They weren’t meant to.  This book was not written for them, it was written so that Jesus followers could be secure in the knowledge that Jesus is God’s son and that should we be nurtured in that belief, that should we choose to be drawn by God, we will have eternal life.

Let us pray.  Heavenly God, we thank you for the story about Wilber, William, Carlos and Jorge, guide their paths as they navigate their new sense of identity, balancing nature and nurture.  Guide our paths as we live out the lives you have provided for us through nature and nurture.  We ask these things in your Holy Name.  Amen.


Note:  to see photos and read the article about the four brothers, click the link in the first footnote, below.

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