The Melting Pot

I sit on the subway and watch as the doors open at the next stop. The world steps into the train. The 70-80 people jammed into this small space are the world. The skin color ranges from pale white to dark black, and every shade in between. As I eavesdrop on conversations, I detect many different languages I cannot place, and many English words spoken with heavy accents. These are not tourists, but my neighbors. We are far from Times Square, Broadway, and other tourists hangouts. These people commuting to or from work. This is their home.

A few stops later, a dozen high school students jump on board a train that is already wall to wall with people. Somehow, we make room. There is no such thing as personal space on a subway train during rush hour. I look at the students talking and laughing together, seemingly unaware that they too represent many different ethnicities…Hispanic, Asian, African American, Caucasian.

In college I worked on our newspaper called The Melting Pot. The term was initially a reference to America as a place where people came from all over the planet and were assimilated into a culture where what was shared in common was more critical than the differences brought into this new world. In 1782, J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, in Letters from an American Farmer, wrote the following:

"…whence came all these people? They are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes... What, then, is the American, this new man? He is neither a European nor the descendant of a European; hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. . . . The Americans were once scattered all over Europe; here they are incorporated into one of the finest systems of population which has ever appeared."
One of my favorite things about my first year in New York is to experience the reality of de Crevecoer’s words (and the population diversity is even more diverse than the Europeans he identified!) While racial tensions still exist, there is a refreshing acceptance of diversity that I have not experienced elsewhere. It almost seems as if ethnicity is a non-issue. Diversity is taken for granted and people are accepted on the basis of shared humanity.

When I was a child, we learned a song about Jesus loving all the little children of the world- “…red, brown, yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight…”. Paul wrote in the early days of this new thing called Christianity that we “…are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, or all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” He also wrote: “…you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household.”

It would be an understatement to say that over the centuries the Church has not always represented this vision of unity among diversity. In fact, often the opposite, racial hatred and prejudice, has been promoted in the name of God. I am hopeful in the early days of Communitas that, just as our city represents the world, so also our one expression of the “household of God” can do so as well.

I hop off the sub way and walk the 6 blocks to my apartment. As I wait at a corner of Lexington and 33rd for the light to change, I see a young African American chatting with an elderly Jewish man, evidenced by the yamika he wears on his head. I can’t hear the conversation, but as they turn to walk their separate ways, they smile and exchange a brief embrace. They are precious in His sight!