First Parish Sermon

There’s an old expression that says, “If you don’t know where you’re going chances are you’ll get there.” Well that’s exactly what happened to Christopher Columbus and his crew back in 1492. What they discovered was not what they set out to find, a passage to the orient—what they discovered was a whole new world, a very surprising discovery indeed. 

Surprising discoveries—another word for it is serendipity, which the American Heritage Dictionary defines as “the faculty of making fortunate and unexpected discoveries by accident, a word coined by Horace Walpole after the characters in the fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip, who made such discoveries.” Surprising discoveries—life is like that sometimes. We don’t get what we plan or hope for. Something else comes our way, sometimes good, sometimes not so good. Life is what happens to us when we are making other plans. We plan for a baby and we get twins. We go to the bookstore to look for a bestseller and come home with an armload of books we never knew existed. You announce your retirement from the ministry and discover you hold the winning ticket to the Megabucks Lottery, which actually happened to a colleague of blessed memory, some 15 years ago.

Serendipity, you might say, is a naturalistic version of the theological concept of grace, the unmerited goodness and salvation that God bestows upon us. Amazing grace—a star studded night sky with the full moon shining through the trees when taking out the rubbish, the view of a stunning sunset when driving home on the Southeast Expressway at dusk, a dear friend who you haven’t seen for years drops by for an unexpected visit, your spouse remembers your anniversary when you forgot, you find a couple of dollars worth of change on the beach at low tide when looking for shells, someone’s piece of junk at a yard sale becomes someone else’s treasure of a lifetime. Those who derive pleasure in going to yard sales or tag sales are engaging in pure serendipity—in search of they know not what and always in hopes of finding a bargain treasure—serendipity, amazing grace, surprising discoveries.  
Columbus is the archetype of the surprising discoveries which life holds in store for all of us, and a reminder also of the mixed blessings that come with them. In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue/ In quest of a passage through/ The Indies and the orient too/ He discovered America,/ Serendipitous through and through. For Columbus it was a mixed blessing at best. Though hailed at first as a hero of fortune he died in obscurity, forgotten and ignored, only to have the continent which he discovered and made known to Europeans named after an obscure Florentine merchant, Amerigo Vespucci—a man who was no more than a junior officer upon ships captained by men who had served under his admirality. But life is not always fair, or as the great American historian, Samuel Eliot Morison put it, “History is like that, very chancy.”

In other words, serendipity. Morison describes it this way: “America was discovered accidentally by a great seaman who was looking for something else; when discovered it was not (at first) wanted; and most of the exploration for the next 50 years was done in the hope of getting through or around it…..Most  Europeans at that time were not looking for a New World, but a new way to get at the oldest part of the Old World—the Indies.” Until his 4th and last voyage to the New World Columbus thought he was in the East Indies, on the border of China, Japan and the Orient. That is why he called the friendly natives he encountered, Indians. Almost to the end he believed that the palace of the Great Kahn of Cathay (China), whom Marco Polo had visited, was somewhere in Costa Rica. Finally, in 1498 he discovered the South American continent and began to search for a straight through or around. He at last realized that what he had discovered on his journeys was not the Indies, but un otro mundo, an Other World, a land heretofore 
unknown to the ancients.

For some five centuries thereafter Columbus was held in great esteem by succeeding generations of Europeans and others who settled here seeking freedom and opportunity for themselves and their offspring. It is a fact that there are "more places in the English speaking world named for Columbus than for any other historical personage except Queen Victoria." In the United States only George Washington holds a candle to him, and oddly enough both of their names are attached to our nation's capital, Washington, D.C., District of Columbia. In 1552, Spanish historian, Francisco Lopez de Gomara, declared that "the greatest event since the creation of the world (excluding the incarnation of and death of Him who created it) is the discovery of the Indies", meaning the American continent. 

That was then, this is now. In this post-colonial age Columbus is now being 
being assessed and evaluated from the perspective and historical experience of those who were colonized and oppressed by the European subjugation of the Americas. For some Columbus is no longer a hero, but a villain in a story of exploitation, genocide and destruction of the natural environment. There is truth to be found in both views and we need to hear them both to make sense of our history and to redeem the times if redemption is to be had. First, Columbus the hero. What did he accomplish and does he merit any of the honor and adulation heaped upon him by generations past? Columbus' great achievement was that he proved that the great ocean, which others considered too vast to traverse, was indeed traversable. He opened up a route between Europe and the Americas that could be sailed again and again by himself and others. Yes, Leif Erickson and others had done it in ages past, but their journeys were long forgotten and the existence of a new western continent remained unknown to the general European consciousness. Columbus' voyage was a journey into the unknown, a journey that took courage and cunning and tenacity, a journey fueled by indomitable faith and a boundless curiosity. It was a risky venture and he endured shipwreck, administrative failure, imprisonment and rejection as well as the brief fame and fortune he so desired. But things didn't turn out the way he imagined they would. 

TIME columnist Paul Gray notes that Columbus' journey was "the first step in a long process that produced a daring experiment in democracy, which in turn became a symbol and a haven of liberty for people throughout the world." Like it or not, we wouldn't be here, to appreciate or criticize that journey, if he hadn't taken it upon himself to make it in the first place. 

So much for Columbus the hero. What about Columbus the villain? There is a great deal of data to substantiate this view and to appreciate it we have to put ourselves in the position of the Native Americans who were the recipients of the ill fortune that derived from his discovery. First of all, from their perspective, Columbus was not the one who discovered America. They were already here. They and their ancestors had been living on this continent for generations. This land was their land and neither Columbus nor anyone else had the right to possess it in the name of the King and Queen of Spain or any other monarch. One Native American sums up the question of discovery in the following words: "In 1492 that colonial pirate, Christopher Columbus, hopelessly lost, was discovered by the people of the Americas. Since then we have suffered 500 years of exploitation, domination and war."

Columbus' gift to the Tainos and Arawak natives who greeted him was slavery, murder, disease and death. The first hand descriptions of Spanish cruelty against the Indians are poignant and heart rending. In one description, some 1500 men, women, and children, were imprisoned in pens guarded by men and dogs. 500 of them were loaded on slave ships. The rest were kicked out of their cages and sent running off in terror, "rushing in all directions like lunatics, women dropping and abandoning infants in the rush, running for miles without stopping, fleeing across mountains and rivers." In another description it was told how every three months the Indians were required to collect a required measure of gold to be turned in to the Spanish authorities. Those who failed to do so had their fingers or hands cut off or were killed outright. 

It was an impossible task. Eventually mass suicides began among the natives, killing themselves with cassava poison. During a period of two years of administration by Columbus and his brother, one half of the entire population of Hispanolia was killed or killed themselves. Estimates run from one hundred and twenty-five thousand to half a million. These were the same natives who Columbus had earlier described as “peaceful, friendly, loving and gentle, no better people in all the world.” Within a period of 20 years the population of the Tainos natives declined from 8 million to 28,000, and eventually there were no survivors left to tell the tale. 

What's the verdict? Is Columbus hero or villain? The answer, of course, is that he is neither. He was a man of his age and time, driven by dreams of wealth and fame and religious fanaticism, and also moved by the longing to discover unknown lands and passages to realms untraversed.  He found more than he bargained for and his ignorance of what he had found brought both pain and suffering, and freedom and opportunity to millions.

We now live in a world of journeys into outer space to otros mundos, other worlds, and voyages into inner space, the deep mysteries of the human mind and spirit wherein reside all gods and spirits and religions and the laws of science and morality. Columbus had a religious vision derived from Isaiah the prophet—that God would “raise an ensign for the nations” to “gather the dispersed of Israel and Judah from the four corners of the earth.”
Having just watched the closing ceremonies of the 27th Olympiad I had the feeling that we were witnessing a partial fulfillment of that prophecy in our own time. For the truth be told we now live in the Global Village, an oasis of life in the infinite sea of space, ecologically bound in relationship, each to all, and all to each, one human family on the rounded earth. The late Joseph Campbell noted that the earth is now perceived as a planet where "all dividing horizons have been shattered. We can no longer hold our loves at home and project our aggressions elsewhere; for this spaceship earth there is no 'elsewhere' anymore. And no (religion or) mythology that continues to speak or to teach of 'elsewheres' and 'outsiders' meets the requirements of this hour." Would that the Palestinians and Israelis might get that message and find a way to live together in Jerusalem and the Middle East.

We now must ride the earth together into a new age, a new birth, and a totally new condition of humanity in an entirely new relationship to the universe. Whether we travel to otros mundos, other worlds in outer space, or to a new world order in a truly global community, we will need the courage and the foolhardiness of a Columbus to get us there. Who knows what surprising discoveries we may yet make as we journey forth together. Help us, O Spirit of Creation, to save our planet, and in so doing to find ourselves in relation to thee and one another.  In the words of the poet, “May God make our blunders wise.” Amen.