St. Paul’s United Methodist Church
Luke 24: 36b-48
Marianne Niesen
April 19, 2015
Getting to Know You
It's a very ancient saying
But a true and honest thought
That if you become a teacher
By your pupils you'll be taught
Getting to know you
Putting it my way. . . but nicely
You are precisely
My cup of tea
As a teacher I've been learning
You'll forgive me if I boast
And I've now become an expert
On the subject I like most
Getting to know you
Getting to feel free and easy
When I am with you
Getting to know what to say
Getting to know you . . .
Getting to know all about you
Getting to like you
Getting to hope you like me
Haven't you noticed
Suddenly I'm bright and breezy?
Because of all the beautiful and new
Things I'm learning about you day by day.
As I recite that poem, some of you recognize it immediately. Some of you even began
singing it – and may not be able to get it out of your head for the rest of the day! (For that, I
apologize!!) It is from The King and I, a musical version of a basically true story. In 1862 (just
before gold was discovered at Last Chance Gulch), Anna Leonowens, a widow with two children
was invited to Siam (present day Thailand) by the King to teach his 39 wives and concubines and
his 82 children English and proper manners – as in, British customs. Anna spent six years at the
palace of Siam and left because of some health concerns. She wrote two memoirs of her life at
the court and those were the basis for a semi-fictionalized adaptation of her story, Anna and the
King of Siam, written by Margaret Landon. That was the basis for a play, film and the award
winning musical, The King and I. Anna herself lived a long life and was a feminist long before
that was popular. If you do a google search, you learn that she was a ‘travel writer, educator and
social activist.’ So there was a lot more to her and her story than the fictionalized snapshot of her
life that most of us glean from the well known movie. And, as the Thai people want us to know,
there was much more to the King of Siam than the portrayal of him by Yul Brynner as a polkadancing-despot. Still, despite all of that, one of the things the popular film and musical portray
well is the challenge that exists any time people from differing cultures come together.
The song Getting to Know You, with catchy tune, captures one of the most profound
truths and serious challenges of that time and of our own. Indeed, ‘getting to know each other’ I
would submit, is our best chance for peace in the world! What would it be like if we, like the
Anna of the film, worked to become experts on ‘getting to know’ rather than ‘daring to judge’ or
‘jumping to conclusions’ or any one of the other behaviors we all use far too often? In a way,
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the importance of getting to know, taking the time to listen and learn “what to say” is at least part
of what Jesus taught us.
Consider the disciples in the gospel today. Jesus greets his grieving friends with the
words ‘peace be with you.’ That was a relatively standard greeting among friends. And they are
terrified. Terrified! The person they are grieving is suddenly with them, greeting them, and they
are terrified. They think they are seeing a ghost. But, before we judge them too harshly, consider
what happens to us all when we meet with something or someone we don’t understand. Fear is a
normal response, right? If we are unable to put something into our categories of how life is, we
get frightened. The disciples knew Jesus was dead. Sure, there was talk about resurrection – but
what was that, really? The disciples were ‘in’ over their heads and they knew it. And so they
literally locked themselves in – away from the crowds, away from the threat – and yes, away
from everything Jesus had so carefully tried to teach. They were afraid of it all. And that is
precisely what we all want to do when we are afraid, right? We seek to protect ourselves, to put
up barriers, wall out the threat. Fear quite literally makes us blind. That’s what happened with
those disciples and it meant that they couldn’t see what was right in front of them.
But here’s the good part of the story. Jesus took it in stride. His response was not . . . O
great! I suffer, I die, I rise . . . and this is the thanks I get? He does not judge or get angry or
express disappointment. He simply gets to know them again. And, even more importantly, he
lets them get to know him! “Look,” he says. “Look at my hands, my feet. Touch me. Listen to
me. Oh, and you think I’m a ghost? I’ll show you . . . let’s eat. You got any of that baked fish I
like so much?” And then the text says, he did a little review of what he had taught and
challenged them again to be his witnesses. To follow his way despite the fear. Jesus challenged
his disciples – and he challenges us – to be about the business of getting to know them . . . all of
the ‘thems’ out there, reminding us all that there that there is another way to live besides the way
of fear. It is a way that is different from ‘might makes right.’ It was and is a way that refuses to
let fear be the final word. Remember those disciples were people who lived in fear . . . fear of
the Romans, yes – but also fear of not having enough, not measuring up, fear of the outcasts, the
stranger, the lepers, the unclean. And those fears sound a lot like ours, don’t they? Fear is an
equal-opportunity lender – and its devastating effects are evident throughout human history.
I believe that at its heart, ‘getting to know’ is what Christianity is all about. Think about
it. Isn’t that what Jesus did throughout his life? He ate with sinners and touched the unclean.
He hung out with the upperclass and the underclass. He went off by himself to pray, getting to
know God. He spent time in reflection, getting to know himself. Jesus did not conquer fear in
his life by using his super-human “god” powers. He confronted his fears and showed us how to
do it as well. We humans have not been particularly good learners. In fact we cling to our fears,
holding on relentlessly to the stereotypes and judgments that have served us in the past. Getting
to know takes time and effort and requires something of us. Like change. And growth. And that
is painful.
I’m reminded of a Peanuts cartoon that has Lucy saying her prayers. When she is
finished, she walks into the kitchen where Linus is eating and comments: "I was praying for
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greater patience and understanding, but I quit ..." In the last frame, she continues: "I was afraid I
might get it." Is there not a bit of Lucy in us all?
I remember a haunting scene from the film Schindler’s List, where Oskar Schindler, a
German industrialist, asks about a particular woman on a list he has of his factory workers. He
didn’t find her at work one day. He inquired after her and was told that he shouldn’t get too
interested in names because that can ‘get you in trouble.’ And, of course, it did get him in
trouble. He couldn’t turn his back on what was happening to the people he had come to know by
name, his neighbors, his employees. And so in the midst of a time of tremendous fear, Schindler
did the unthinkable and the impossible – he saved over a thousand Jews he had ‘come to know’
from the death camps. He put them to work in his factory where they made ammunition for the
Nazi war effort. And he took it a step further. His factory made ammunition that was secretly
and purposely defective. When he died, in 1974, relatively penniless and more or less an
embarrassment in his native Germany, he was granted his request to be buried in Israel. There,
his burial was attended by more than 500 of the ‘Schindlerjuden,’ the people whose lives he had
saved. You see, overcoming fear does not make life easy – but it does allow us to be faithful to
the way of Jesus.
Today is Native American Awareness Sunday. As Tyler has said, we have a special
offering today – an opportunity to help various Native American ministries in our country and
right in our own area. But even more, Native American Awareness Sunday is a reminder that we
all have work to do in getting to know a culture and people who are like us and different from us.
And there is much at stake in doing just that. Terrible things happen when we don’t get to know
one another.
One of those terrible things happened a little over 150 years ago, at Sand Creek in
Colorado. It was a time of tremendous fear and unrest on the frontier. The Treaty of Ft. Laramie
that guaranteed settlers safe passage through the west toward California and that guaranteed
Indians that no whites would settle in the territory of Colorado - had been broken. The Gold
Rush was on and it seems to be difficult to keep promises when money is at stake. So,
hostilities between whites and Indians were at a fever pitch. The Governor of Colorado, John
Evans, a good upstanding Methodist layman, issued an order that all Indians needed to report to
Fort Lyons. He also authorized citizens to kill all Indians who did not comply. He promised the
Indians safety if they cooperated. And so the Peace Chiefs led their people to Fort Lyons and
from there, they were sent to an area on the banks of the Sand Creek. On November 29, 1864
(just before the start of St. Paul’s) the cavalry attacked more than 200 old men, women and
children and massacred them. Soldiers desecrated the bodies, taking body parts as trophies that
were displayed in a Denver theater. The Cavalry was led by a man known as the ‘fighting
parson.’ He was Colonel John Chivington, an ordained Methodist preacher from the Kansas
Nebraska Conference who had served the church as a presiding elder (or district superintendent).
He had left the ministry and taken a military post. He was the leader of this military action on
the peaceful camp. Two Cavalry officers refused to let their troops participate . . . they are the
ones who sent firsthand reports of the atrocities they observed to their superiors. In the years that
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followed, two Congressional and one military inquiry found the event to have been an unjustified
massacre of peaceful Indians.
After the attack, many peace chiefs were dead, their bodies lying under the American
flags they proudly flew over their tipis. Those that survived had no credibility. Indians fled
Colorado and unleashed vengeance along the way. Twenty-five years of war followed all across
the plains. Today, no tribes reside in eastern Colorado. Descendants of the massacre are the
Northern Cheyenne in Montana, the Northern Arapaho in Wyoming, and the Cheyenne and
Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma."1
White people were afraid – and with good reason. Native people were afraid – and with
good reason. And Mr. Chivington, an ordained minister, a Christian who should have known
better, along with Mr. Evans, the governor – a ‘good Christian man’ - perpetrated one of the
most devastatingly horrific attacks in the American West. There was no justification. But fear
does terrible things. I don’t want to sound simplistic . . . but friends, ‘getting to know’ one
another is, I believe, a key to how we move forward. Mr. Chivington and Mr. Evans – and I am
deliberately refusing to use their titles because they clearly didn’t deserve the titles they had –
were not bad people. But they did allow fear to have its way and the result was terrible violence
for years after – the effects of which continue to this day among the descendants of the survivors
of the massacre. I don’t like telling this story. I don’t like acknowledging the involvement of
Christian leaders, Methodists, in the reign of terror that ultimately settled the West. But it did
happen and, we need to remember because, as William Faulkner said the past isn't dead, it isn't
even past.
But it does not need to have the final word. Fear can be overcome. Better choices in
human relationships can be made. That’s what those disciples learned. So, this week, make
some time to get to know, to learn about, to understand, someone who is different or a culture
that seems strange or the basis for a decision you don’t understand. When you find yourself
judging, take a minute to catch yourself. Stop. Listen. Catch fear before it catches you. It is no
mistake that Jesus’ first greeting to his disciples in their fear-filled room and their fearful lives
was Peace be with you. But it was not a peace that would simply fall from above. It was a peace
they were called to build, one person, one life, one new understanding at a time. It is work that is
still before us.
How would life be different if we committed to building peace in our day by getting to
know one another?
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Information taken and adapted from the Episcopal Address by Bishop Elaine Stanovsky, shared
at the Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain Conferences, June 2014.
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