Sermon 7/23/06
Near and Far - Ephesians 2:11-22, Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
(view lectionary notes for this text)
I had a hard time figuring out where to go this week in my sermon. Every month when I put together my preaching calendar for the newsletter, I look over the texts, pick the one that speaks most to me or challenges me most or calls most to me, and pick a title, and then, eventually write the sermon. Usually, this works out well when it comes time to actually prepare for a given Sunday. Sometimes, though, my perspective or my thought process is in such a different place by the time I get to writing the sermon that I know I’ll have to go a different direction altogether. I had planned, when I put together the July newsletter, to mostly about our passage from Mark, and to talk about Jesus’ relationship with the crowds. That focus will still come into play today.
But as events in Israel and Lebanon and the surrounding region have unfolded this week, I find myself more drawn to our epistle lesson from Ephesians. Every day, the news seems a bit worse. Typically, news stories don’t hold our attention for very long. A headline story one day is barely remembered the next, as media outlets struggle to win our short attention spans. But this conflict has our attention. At least I know it has mine. The news is heart-breaking. It’s back and forth. Hezbollah captures Israeli soldiers. Israel files on Hezbollah. Hezbollah fires back. Israel sends ground troops. Hezbollah proclaims they’ll withstand anything sent their way. Of course, in the midst of all this, hundreds of civilians, both Lebanese and Israeli, have been killed. Thousands have been forced to flee home and country. While those fighting seem bent on outdoing one another, the victims are mostly those who have nothing to do with the conflict. Heart-breaking. And it is hard to see an end in sight. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, some will argue. We’ve heard it said: they have a right to defend themselves. But, as Martin Luther King once remarked, “an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” (1)
In this midst of this chaos comes our text from Ephesians, which seemed to cry out for a place in worship today. Paul is writing to the Christians in Ephesus, most of whom, in this context, were not born Jews, but Gentiles, converts to Christianity, but not to Judaism. Whether new converts had to become Jews before they could become followers of Christ was a matter of heated debate in the early Church. Peter and some other apostles thought that new Christians would of course follow the law and be circumcised, just as he and the rest of the Twelve were faithful Jews who were also disciples. But Paul argued adamantly that if Christ’s message was about grace, then his disciples weren’t under the law in the old way anymore. They are made righteous by faith, not law.
So Paul, writing to the Ephesians, writes to encourage them, to ensure them that they can draw as close to God as those children of Israel who already knew God in a different way, through the law. He says, “now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near.” In other words, for Paul, no matter your starting point, no matter your beginning context, God wants you to draw near, and will encourage you, lure you to do so, lure you into relationship. That’s good news for all of us! Wherever we are now, wherever we started, wherever we’ve been in our life to date, God is luring us closer, calling us to draw near.
But the problem comes when our human nature gets involved. For Peter, and some other leaders in the early church who were Jewish in their starting points, there was sense of priority given to the children of Israel when it came to relationships with God through Christ. They probably wouldn’t put it that way, but some of them seemed to feel very much like their brand of faith was better, and that everyone else who didn’t do it that way couldn’t possibly have a truly good relationship with God, and couldn’t possibly be right about their approach, and couldn’t possibly be part of the community. They weren’t going to be welcoming, unless people could meet certain standards, unless people completed certain rituals, unless people met certain membership requirements, you might say.
Paul writes convincingly, eloquently, and firmly against this mindset. He says, “Christ is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups [both Gentiles and Jews] into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making people, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.” Peace, near and far.
In some senses, Paul’s message sank in and pervaded the early Church, making it what it is today. Of course, we know, his inclusive view became the dominant view. Today, we do not have to adopt the Jewish faith in order to become disciples of Christ. And eventually, Peter and other leaders began, like Paul, to work with non-Jews in spreading the gospel as well. In fact, it was only a century or two later that the emperor became a Christian, something that would never have occurred if the Jewish/Gentile divide had remained embedded in the Christian movement. In fact, if the baby church hadn’t decided that we were one body in Christ, most of us today would not be Christians – the message would have never been meant for us, but only for a small, chosen few. So that’s the upside, the effect of Paul’s message.
The downside? If we managed to let Christ break down that dividing wall of hostility between Jewish and Gentile disciples, we apparently took the pieces of the broken wall and used them to build other dividing walls. We acted as if the message Paul shared was helpful only in that context, and not to be applied elsewhere in our lives, in our faith. And so, in our story of Christianity, in our human story, we have a long history of building dividing walls between us and other.
It wasn’t long after Christians grew in numbers that they actually turned on the very faith they’d once been so anxious to protect, and anti-Jewish sentiment has been a struggle ever since. A wall between us and them, new and old. It was only in 1968 when the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren merged together that segregation in the church was taken off the book – not even yet forty years ago. A shameful history of racism, of building walls to keep people of color out, right in our own denomination. Today we can think of literal walls that have been built – the Berlin wall, torn down less than twenty years ago. The walls built in Israel/Palestine. Proposed walls between the US and Mexico. Walls of hostility that divide us. And we have walls today in our churches too. These walls usually aren’t advertised. They aren’t named aloud. But they are there, the walls we put up between us and whoever it is we really don’t want to share our lives with. Perhaps we’ve built up walls against people who don’t dress right or who don’t have nice homes, or who might not be able to give as much. A wall like this is hard to see, but it might be perceived in a look or a glance or a less-than-friendly reception for someone who doesn’t ‘fit in’ Maybe we’ve built walls that keep our youth and young adults and young families from being active in the church. Our lips say that we want everyone here, but what walls do we erect in leadership, in worship, in programs that send a message of a barrier? Perhaps our walls are more personal. Perhaps you’ve built a wall a between yourself and a particular person. With our walls in place, it means we never really see each other, never see face to face that we are both, are all created in God’s image. The walls allow us to make sure we always know the difference between us and them.
So here we are, today, in the midst of global crisis. We live in a time of wall-building at an amazing, speedy, skillful, aggressive pace. We build walls seen and unseen, figurative and literal. We always work out the best excuses and arguments and intentions when it comes to wall building. We do it because – it will keep us safe. Because we’re afraid or in danger. Because we feel threatened. Because we’ve been hurt by others. Because we’re protecting what is ours, what we have. But all of our reasons add up to very little grace.
To move beyond this, to learn to live as builders of the household of God, and not builders of dividing walls, we have to change the way we look at everything that is not us and ours. In today’s gospel lesson, we find Jesus reuniting with the disciples after their time sent off two by two to preach and teach. Jesus himself is recovering from the loss of his cousin, John the Baptist, who was beheaded by King Herod. And so they want some time away. Jesus says, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For, Mark tells us, with all the coming and going they had not time event o eat. They need a day off. A Sabbath. But the crowds, so anxious for Jesus, follow on foot and arrive ahead of Jesus and the disciples. Can you imagine, on your day off, getting called into work after all? Finding you had responsibilities that meant you couldn’t get time to yourself after all? You can probably feel the expression your face would make. Probably the disciples were making this face too. But Jesus – Jesus sees something else. We read, “he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” His eyes see need, and he can’t look away. In fact the word compassion here is from the Greek word splanchnizomai, which means literally to "feel bowels of pity" - it is a physical, gut reaction of the insides - your stomach literally turning over in compassion. That's what Jesus feels when he sees the crowds. He sees not other, or enemy, or threat, or danger, or stranger. He sees them, the people, the ones in need, the names, the lives. He sees the creations of God – the sheep that need a shepherd.
We can only build walls between us and others if that is all we see – Other. That which is not us. Not-me. Not-us. Not-one-of-us. As long as we define everything else in the world as not-us and not-ours, we can go right along building walls throwing bombs. But if we see what Jesus sees – if we see with compassion. If our stomachs literally turn over with love for who we see, if we see God’s face instead of no-names, then we won’t be able to build walls that divide. If we see the names, the hearts, the lives that struggle to be as we do in the world, if we see face to face, then we can’t make the other less than us, less than God’s precious children too.
Paul reminds us that he’s not advocating for a wall-less world. We need walls. We need to build. But instead of building to divide, we can build together. We can build to strengthen, build to serve. Paul writes, “you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens . . . and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”
Christ is our peace. He has broken down the dividing walls of hostility between us. Let us pray for a world that lives in this truth.
Amen.
(1) Paraphrased.