I love the diversity of the Bay Area, where I’ve lived for over half my life. As I walk on the busy shopping street in my neighborhood, I’m happy when I hear languages spoken by the people who pass me on the street. As I walk past the store fronts that line the street, most of the languages I hear I can’t identify. All the better!
For many years, I said, from time to time, that in the Midwest, the weather was more interesting – and more rugged, of course! – than the Bay Area of California. But the people were more interesting in the Bay Area. They still are, to me.
As a pastor in downtown Oakland, I was enlivened by the diversity of folks who arrived to worship with us – folks who brought their diverse backgrounds, languages, music, dress, and all the gifts of another culture – to the mostly white congregation that had chosen to stay in Oakland when there were other choices they could have made. I loved the heart of that place, where in years past the people had decided to cast their lot in the city, a city with its share of problems, of poverty, of violence. I loved them for choosing to stay in Oakland.
Today was Pentecost Sunday, and I had the honor of preaching for an anniversary celebration at Oakland Chinese Community United Methodist Church in Chinatown, Oakland. I read my sermon in English, paragraph by paragraph, and the Pastor of the congregation followed each paragraph with a Cantonese translation. The two of us, each speaking our own language, brought to mind the myriad of languages that were spoken when the disciples left the Upper Room and became apostles who went out to tell others about what they knew of God, and of Jesus. “Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. 7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language?” (Acts 2:1-8).
Jeff accompanied me to the celebration, and we were the only white people in worship. Many times here in the Bay Area, we are minorities – seldom in other places, or in Wisconsin, our birthplace. As we said the Lord’s Prayer in English, I listened for the voices of most of the others, praying in Cantonese, at the same time. A young man who had been raised in China read his statement of faith to the congregation, recounting how he had found his way to the Church, followed by the Pastor translating into English; then, he was baptized. A holy moment.
Diversity has its problems, to be sure. But it’s good to be in a place where people who are different are not afraid, where folks can speak in their own language as they shop or as they walk down the street, and be safe. That’s not true in many places in the United States now, or in so many other places.
As we walked to our car after worship and after receiving the generous meal we all shared together in the fellowship hall, Jeff and I stopped to wait at a corner for the light to change, across from a Buddhist Temple that brings the Holy to those others who do not worship as we do. I’m grateful that they are here.
We crossed the street and drove home to our little house on a quiet street in another part of the city.
In St. Mary’s Cemetery, Oakland. Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 4/2024
