It is my belief that as Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane he gave voice in his prayer to one of his great fears.
We can find this fear in the passage we read from John 17.
What was it?
Was it his impending arrest?
The fact that he would be beaten, mocked and scorned.
Was it the fear of rejection, of betrayal, of desertion?
Of having to go through all this alone?
Was it his death?
He would be crucified and dead in less than 24 hours.

None of these things were his great fear.
They were each in their own way frightening but Jesus knew he could face the coming hours and day, and that with God’s help he would do what he had to do.
Jesus’ great fear had nothing to do with himself
and what he would soon face.
His fear had to do with his followers.
In particular, Jesus was afraid that his followers would become divided and would sooner or later start fighting with each other,
separating themselves from each other.

Why did Jesus fear this?
For two reasons:
First, the church divided would not be able to stand.
Not only would the church suffer but individual Christians would be hurt by disunity.
Nothing is more destructive for the church universal or local than disunity.
Second, the witness of the church, its very reason for being, would be destroyed by disunity.
What is, after all, the primary reason we are to be one
Jesus says simply that we need to be one in order that the world might believe.

And so Jesus prayed for his followers then and now for the church that would one day be as well as for our church today.
That we might be one.
That we might stand united against the evils of the world.
That we might in unity nurture, support, build up, encourage and minister to each other.
That we, united in mission and ministry, would reach out to a divided and hurting world with the unifying and healing word and love of God in Christ.
That was his prayer.
And this is our goal
That we might be one even as Christ and God the father are one.

It is important for me to emphasize that our unity as Christians is built upon the unity of God in Christ.
In fact, our unity is but a reflection of that which exists in God and is made clear to the world by what God has already done.

(The following is taken from the Life Application Study Bible)

This is made plain by Paul in Ephesians when he lists seven already existing unities.

Paul’s appeal for unity is given a foundation by the statement that there is “one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling” (v. 4). There follows what appears to be an early confession of faith: “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all” (v. 5-6).

One body. The Body of Christ is, by definition, unitary, and those who are made a part of the body share a common existence. Earlier, Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “You are the body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:27), insisting that although the church has many different kinds and types of members, it is nevertheless one (1 Corinthians 12:12, 14-26). In Ephesians, this metaphor is carried further, and the universal church is identified as the Body of Christ (1:23; see also Romans 12:5; Colossians 3:15). In this “one body” Gentiles and Jews become one (2:16).

One Spirit. To the Corinthians, Paul stressed that the many gifts present among them all came from the same Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:4, 11). In fact, he insisted that the Spirit was the common administrator of our baptism, and consequently Christians “drink of one Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:13). Through a single Spirit we have access to the Father (Ephesians 2:18). The “unity of the Spirit” mentioned in verse 3 is built upon the existence of a single Spirit.

One hope. In God’s call, one hope is held out to Christians, and this can be none other than the hope of the resurrection (1:18; see also 1 Peter 1:3 and Colossians 1:5, 27).

One Lord. Although unspecified, this can be none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. As the early Christian confession preserved in 1 Corinthians 8:6 states, he is the one “through whom are all things and through whom we exist.” This article of faith came to be tested severely in the early centuries of the church, when Christians were forced to choose between Christ, the Lord, and the emperor, who in the imperial cult was worshiped as lord. Echoes of this are seen especially in Revelation.

One faith. Here “faith” is used in the sense of the wealth of belief shared by all Christians; and more than likely, its essence was the confession that in Christ God had come in the flesh ( 1 John 4:2-3; Jude 3).

One baptism. As noted earlier, through baptism Christians came to drink of the “one Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:13), and this rite of initiation enabled them to become clothed with Christ (Galatians 3:26 and Romans 6:3). It is worth noting that when the Corinthian fellowship began to dissolve, Paul grounded his appeal for unity in their baptismal experience (1 Corinthians 1:10-17).

One God. Christians inherited from Judaism the central belief in the one God, who was Father to all (Malachi 2:10) and who brooked no rivals (Exodus 20:3; Deuteronomy 6:4 and Isaiah 44:6-8). Belief in one supreme God–what theologians would call “radical monotheism”–became an article of their confession (1 Timothy 2:5). In the confession preserved in 1 Corinthians 8:6, Paul says, “For us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist.” The oneness of God became central in Paul’s thought as he argued for one way of justification for all humanity, both Jews and Gentiles (Romans 3:30). Here God is said to be “above all, through all, and in all.” This is an affirmation of God’s supremacy over all things as well as an expression of the conviction that God is present in all the affairs of the world, working through them and in them.

By now I hope you see how important the idea of unity is,
and how important it is for us to model this unity in our life together.
We need to, in Paul’s words, maintain the unity of the Spirit,
to maintain what is already a reality.
The question, of course, is how can we do this?
How can we live out this unity in our lives?
How can our church be united in mission and ministry?
How can I be united with the other people of my church,
even those brothers and sisters in the faith that I may not like?

Technorati tags: Christian Unity, Ephesians 4:1-7, John 17, meditation, sermons

The primary passages are Ephesians 5:21-33 (read in the sermon below) and Mark 14:32-46(click here to read it).

Perfect Submission

Ephesians 5: 21ff is not an easy passage to read or preach.
I was certainly reluctant to preach it.
After all this text conjures up so many ideas and images which get in the way of our understanding it.
But I decided to struggle with it anyway,
as I hope you will struggle with it this morning alongside me.

This passage, especially the section that says
“Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands,”
has been used in some very negative and inappropriate ways.
For instance it has been used to support the supremacy of males over females.
It has also been used to condemn divorce,
the logic being that if a woman were truly submissive there would be no divorce.
And it has been used to prohibit women from entering the ordained ministry.
After all, the argument goes,
how can a woman lead a church that her husband attends,
to whom she is supposed to be submissive?
This text has even been used by wife-beaters as justification for their activities,
even when their actions cripple or destroy the women they supposedly “love.”

Given all this, how can a passage with so many negative ideas attached to it speak any good news to us?
Well, I believe it can,
but before we can hear the good news,
we need to drop any preconceived notions we have.
Many of the images or ideas floating around in our minds are not really appropriate to this text anyway,
and they do this passage a disservice.
Paul would no doubt turn over in his grave if he knew his writing had been used in the ways I have described.
So for us to learn something new from this passage will require that we empty out the garbage that clutters up our minds about it.
So let’s do that first.
Ready?
Alright dump it out.

Now let’s read these verses again,
as if we were reading them for the first time,
and see what they say to us.

Submit yourselves to one another because of your reverence for Christ.

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Did you notice anything you hadn’t before?
I couldn’t help but notice that first verse,
which I believe is the key to understanding all the rest.
“Submit yourselves to one another because of your reverence for Christ.”
Paul speaks here of mutual submission,
and then he follows this up with an example.

First he calls women to submit to their husbands in the same way they submit to the Lord.
Second he calls men to love their wives just as Christ loved the church.

So does this mean men are called to a lesser submission than women?
Only if your definition of Christ does not include his death for us at Calvary.
No, both husband and wife are called to submission,
and Paul would use this mutual submission as the foundation for lasting relationships and strong marriages.
And Paul does place a high value upon marriage.
He quotes from Genesis,
“For this reason a man will leave father and mother and unite with his wife and the two will become one.”

Now before we go any further it is important to clear up a possible misunderstanding.
Paul does not say here that every marriage will work out.
Many do not.
I know this myself, and some of you know this as well.
There is little more painful than divorce,
for either the man and woman or the children.
No, sometimes marriage doesn’t work out
and Paul does not claim that all will.

This verse is not about condemning divorce.
Indeed there are times when divorce may be necessary.
If there is not mutual submission by both parties in the relationship,
then divorce becomes more than a possibility,
and divorce is certainly better than a wife, or a husband, being subject to emotional or physical abuse.
When Paul talks about submission he is not giving any person permission to take advantage of another.
And neither is he placing one person in the marriage over another.
Paul is simply suggesting that marriage should be based on mutual submission.
Wives submitting themselves in love to their husbands,
and husbands submitting themselves in love to their wives.
It’s a two-way street.
Both are called to submit to each other,
just as they submit themselves to Christ.

Now if that was all there is to this passage we could stop here,
and all of us could go home feeling a little better about this passage and knowing a little more about a biblical understanding of marriage.
But to stop here would be premature because Paul has more to tell us.
Indeed, Paul has something extraordinary to say.
“There is a great mystery revealed in this scripture,” he writes,
“and I am applying it to Christ and the church.”

You see, Paul believes this passage refers not only to our personal relationships,
but also to the relationship that exists between Christ and the church.
Christ left his Father to unite with his bride – the church,
and his love and submission were so great that he died for the church.
You see, in this one passage Paul makes it easier for us to understand Christ’s death,
and in the process of doing this,
he also elevates marriage by comparing it with Christ’s relationship with the church.
And Paul says that the basis for both relationships is submission.

Now the truth is submission is not a word we like;
it’s not a popular word.
Most of us would rather rule our own lives.
It’s difficult for us to follow another’s rules or regulations.
And many of us hate it when somebody else tells us what to do,
and often we will do exactly the opposite in spite.

As I was preparing for today’s message,
I remembered that the hymn “Blessed Assurance” has a couple of lines about submission.
“Perfect submission, perfect delight,
visions of rapture now burst on my sight.”
Well, most of us would find submission anything but perfect.
It’s certainly no delight,
and more often than not we set our sight on visions of revenge rather than rapture.
I am reminded of the many childhood fights my brother and I had.
When one of us got the upper hand,
he would say to the other,
as children since time began have said, “Say Uncle.”
You may have lived through something similar in your life,
and you know what I’m talking about.

It didn’t matter that your head was in a vise.
It didn’t matter that another person was sitting on your chest and you couldn’t breathe.
It didn’t matter that to say those two words would bring immediate relief from your pain.
If there was any word in the English language you would not speak -
it was “uncle.”

We are not submissive people.
But that is what we are called to be.
You see, Jesus talks a great deal about yokes that fit around the neck of his disciples,
and about crosses that need to be carried,
and he all but guarantees that following him will not be easy,
and will, in fact, be all but impossible if we do not submit to God and God’s will.

Submission may not be popular,
but it is central to Christianity.
It was central to Christ.
Do you recall our gospel lesson?

It was night and Jesus had left the city with his friends,
the ones remaining that is.
The air had a chill in it,
and Jesus knew what the night held for him as he and the disciples walked toward this garden on the Mount of Olives.

The noise of the city died away as they climbed the hillside.
Looking back Jesus could see the lights of the city and the movements of people scurrying here or there.
He thought about the people,
how they had welcomed him to the city,
how they had rolled out the red carpet so to speak.
He so wanted to reach them, to touch their hearts, to make them understand.
But nothing he did or said seemed to work,
and even his friends, the one who had lived with him for the past three years, did not understand.

These friends had spent half the night arguing among themselves about who was best, and who should sit where,
and who deserved the place of honor when God’s Kingdom came.
Had they learned nothing?

A dog barking in the distance brought Jesus mind back to the present.

Leaving his friends at a clearing in the garden,
he walked to his favorite spot under a small olive tree.
And there Jesus knelt and prayed,
and though there was a chill in the air, he began to sweat.

I think that Jesus knew that if he stayed there,
if he lingered too long in Gethsemane,
he would be arrested by the authorities.
He knew why Judas had not accompanied them to the garden,
and even now he could see the flickering lights of torches in the distance as they left the city walls behind and began climbing toward up the hill.
Jesus had offended too many people for far too long.
To stay here meant certain death.
To stay meant that he would die like a criminal by crucifixion.

Anyone coming into Jerusalem could see the crosses at Golgotha.
They were a warning to all who entered that Roman justice was swift and severe.
Those convicted of crimes hung on crosses for hours,
sometimes for days.
The strength would drain out of them slowly,
and the usual way of death was by suffocation.
Hanging there, suspended between heaven and earth,
caused the lungs to constrict.
Breathing became more and more difficult.
Some would use their feet to push themselves up,
to relieve the pressure and continue breathing,
but that just prolonged the dying.
And if a person didn’t die before long,
the soldiers would come and break his legs,
and then being unable to push himself up anymore,
and no longer able to catch his breath, he too would die.

I can imagine Jesus’ thoughts.
I can hear his prayer:
I don’t want to die like that.
Please God, don’t let this happen.
I don’t know if I can handle it.
If there is anyway possible,
let this cup of suffering pass from me.
But God, not my will but yours.
I submit my life to you. I leave it in your hands.

As he rose from prayer,
Jesus could see torches just a few hundred feet away now.
The authorities were here, and with them his friend Judas.

Jesus knew why they were here,
he knew what they would do,
and he knew what would happen.
But… but he walked toward them anyway.
He met his friend Judas,
and he embraced him as Judas offered a kiss of betrayal,
and with this kiss Jesus death was sealed.

Perfect Submission?

Are we willing to follow Christ’s example?
It will mean following him in all walks of our lives –
not just in church on Sunday morning,
not just in Sunday School or Bible study,
and not just on our way to and from the church.
Paul says this submission applies to marriage,
and later on to our other relationships within the family.
But I would go further and say it applies to every aspect of our lives.
To our acquaintances, our friendships, our family relations,
and especially to our brothers and sisters in the church,
It applies to all of our lives.

And in case we think Ephesians is just an isolated passage,
and that Paul speaks of this kind of submission just once,
I would refer you to Philippians 2,
where Paul tells us that we are to look after,
not only our own needs,
but the needs of our brothers and sisters,
And he also writes that in humility we are to count others as better than ourselves.
But even more, Paul concludes by saying we are to have the same mind that was Christ had.
And what mind was that?
It was a mind of submission to God’s will,
a mind of obedience to God to the point of death,
even to death on a cross.

Perfect Submission?
It will be difficult.
You and I will fail many times.
But always there is grace,
there is the liberating and forgiving grace brought to us through the death of one who loved us and sought to be one with us.
The one and only one who lived fully a life of perfect submission.

Do we dare try to imitate this perfect submission?
Shall we risk binding ourselves together in a chain of love that brings the only freedom worth having?
Will you and I today submit ourselves to one another,
and devote our lives to praying the prayer of Christ,
Not my will, but thine be done?

Technorati : Christ, Ephesians 5:21-33, church, husbands, mutual, sermon, submit, wives
Del.icio.us : Christ, Ephesians 5:21-33, church, husbands, mutual, sermon, submit, wives

Powered by Zoundry

Ephesians 2:8-22
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands– remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. (English Standard Version).

Please note that this is a rough draft and spelling/grammatical errors are probably prevalent. I will hopefully catch most before I preach. Finally, I begin the sermon with a reading of the poem Mending Wall by Robert Frost.

MENDING WALL
Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

That poem seems to describe humankind to a tee – Good fences make good neighbors!
Fences and walls – they hold a fascination for us.

One of the seven wonders of the world is the Great Wall of China.
Beginning on the coast land of North China it winds its way for more than 1,500 miles in space and for more than two thousand years in time.
In recent years it has been transformed from historic ruins into a cultural glory.
It is visited by the leaders of nations great and small,
and it has also won admiration from tourists from both near and far.
The Great Wall, or the Ten Thousand Li Long Wall as the Chinese call it,
has leapt out of the past to play a new role in the life of individuals, nations, and the world.

But, as often as not, walls have a dark side:
Frost uses these words to describe his neighbor -
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed,
he moves in darkness as it seems to me.

And what is true of the neighbor in the poem is true of the Great Wall.
For instance did you know that it is said that a million people perished in building the Great Wall of China,
and that for every stone laid in the wall, a human being paid with his or her life.
Such is the price of walls, my friends.

Some of you here will remember when the Berlin Wall was erected right through the middle of that great city after World War II.
It was built to keep East Berliners from fleeing communist East Germany.
It is no doubt the most famous wall in the modern era.
And some of you may even recall watching on your TV sets in horror as people were shot trying to scale that wall to freedom..
It is a wall that stood for almost 45 years,
and it too cost the lives of many people until it was demolished on the night of November 9, 1989.

Now some are calling for a great Fence between the United States and Mexico to keep out people we call “illegal aliens.”
And on the border between Israel and Gaza a great wall is going up to keep out suicide bombers and terrorists.
Some of that wall runs around parts of Bethlehem through ancient olive groves and farm fields owned by Israelis and Palestinians.
Walls do great damage to innocent people on both sides.
The wall that is built to keep “them” out also keeps us “in.”
And neither those walled in or those walled out can ever really be free as long as the wall stands..

But it is human nature to build them.
One of the first things we seem to learn in life is how to build walls.
Remember when you were a child making sand castles – and surrounding them with walls and motes?

And we continue to do this even, and especially as we grow older.

My neighbor in Elysburg. (I will flesh this out)

Walls and fences are a part of our everyday life.
Sometimes those walls are visible – like the stone wall that is front of the parsonage holding up, to at least one degree, our yard, from collapsing onto the sidewalk,
and there are the locked gates to the courtyard of our church.
Some walls, some fences we can physically see.
Others are invisible..
For instance, as I was growing up, I knew where in my hometown I could go and where I could not…
how far I could ride my bike -
and what my boundaries were.
Ah, there it is,
perhaps that’s it -
part of the reason we loves walls and fences.
They create boundaries.
They protect us from having the world crumble around u
s and they keep us safe.
At least we’d like to think so.

In the midst of the renewed conflict between Israel and Hezbollah,
There was a report about a rocket attack in Northern Israel on the NBC Evening News one night.
The reporter was in a residential neighborhood in the city of Haifa as rockets began to explode. People rushed to the bomb shelters.
After one rocket hit the camera showed the body of a man who had been killed not far from the shelter.
And then the wailing of a woman could be heard.
“Where is my husband? Where is my husband?”
They had been separated in the desperate scramble to safety.
“She tried to call him on her cell phone,” The reporter said,
“And everyone heard a cell phone ringing not far away and looked to see where it was.
It was laying on the ground a few feet from the body of the dead man.”

The rockets that the Hezbollah Fighters in Lebanon have been firing into Northern Israeli cities this week, including Nazareth, where Jesus grew up,
and the bombs and missiles the Israeli air force has been dropping on cities in Lebanon,
are another grim reminder of how difficult it is for we human beings to share this earth.
We worry that there may not be enough room for all of us.
In our fear we decide “It is either us or them.”
We fear that “they” might try to take what we have,
so we build walls to keep “them” out.
After all, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

But in addition to thee supposed benefit of safety,
Walls also create barriers.
Barriers of religion, race, creed, gender, class, sexual orientation, education, location -
you name it and we can find a barrier -
a wall that tells us who is in and who is out…
who we can trust and who we cannot.

Walls create personal barriers -
structures set up to keep me from myself and to protect me from others
(and if the truth be known, to protect others from me!)
If I can stay so busy doing important things,
then I don’t have to face with honesty the person that I really am,
with all my quirks and all my graces.
If I can keep a wall built between other people and me,
then I won’t be vulnerable to hurt…
of course I also miss out on great joy, but…

Walls are created for good reasons, but can take on a life of their own….
And in the end, as Frost reminds us,
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,…
or as the writer of Ephesians puts it….
For Christ is our peace;
in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall,
that is, the hostility between us.

And what is this dividing wall Paul is speaking of specifically?
In his day it had to do with circumcision.
Under Jewish law, circumcision was a sacramental act that ensured acceptance into the community and gave self-identity..
It also marked one, literally, as one of the chosen people.
Part of an exclusive club, if you will.
For many years Jewish Christians continued the practice,
and in turn they also assumed that Gentile Christians would do the same.
It was a kind of you must be like us to be with us deal.
Gentile Christians, many of whom were horrified at what they saw as human mutilation,
did not agree!

And Paul, perhaps the apostle with the greatest Jewish credentials of them all, ends up siding with the Gentiles.
He tells the Jewish Christians, and us,
that our wholeness, our peace, our shalom,
comes not from some ritualistic act like circumcision,
but rather in the person of Jesus -
through his life, death, resurrection and ongoing life among us through the Holy Spirit.

You see, given Paul’s Jewishness, he knew all about walls and fences and barriers,
because, like all devout Jews, he was more than familiar with the Temple.
The holy temple of God at Jerusalem was, in essence, a series of walls.
Even though they were laid out in a rectangle,
we could imagine them like a target,
composed of concentric rings,
or like an onion, with layer after layer of skin.
As soon as you got by one wall, you were confronted with another.

If you got past the wall that kept out gentiles,
pretty soon you’d come to the wall that kept out Jewish women.
Jewish men could go a little farther, but then they too were stopped by a wall. Priests could go further, but most of them could never go into the actual building itself, the room called the Holy Place.
At the far end of the Holy Place was a veil, a curtain,
protecting the most secret place of all, the Holy of Holies.
Only the High Priest could go in there, and he could go only once a year.

Archaeologists have discovered a sign that used to be on the first wall:
If you are a gentile, and if you go beyond this wall,
it will be your own fault when we kill you!
One wall after another for protection.
One wall after another for secrecy.
One wall after another to screen out those who don’t belong.

That temple in Jerusalem is a parable about human nature.
It is a symbol of our fearfulness, our jealousy, our secrecy.
We look suspiciously at people and classify them: foreigners, aliens, strangers. outsiders, the enemy.
We are constantly judging each one:
“How much do I dare reveal to him, to her?”
We wrap ourselves in layers of defense like an onion.
Wall after wall of protection.
It’s human nature.
It’s human nature to build walls.

But there is another kind of nature:
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”
It is the divine nature – the nature of God.
The builders of the temple meant to keep people from breaking in.
They couldn’t stop God from breaking out!
When Jesus died the Temple Veil was torn in two!
God can’t be held behind walls.
Indeed, God is the originator of the phrase “don’t fence me in.”

In writing Ephesians Paul seems to be thinking about that temple with its restricting walls.
Jesus breaks the wall between us and God.
He changes separation into contact,
distance into nearness.
Once we were far away, but now we are close.
Once we were strangers, but now we are citizens.
Once we were slaves, walled in by rules and regulations,
but Jesus abolishes them all.
Jesus breaks the wall between humanity and God.

Jesus also breaks the wall that separates us from each other.
He preaches peace; he makes peace.
He melts us down and squeezes us together and forms one new person.
In Galatians Paul tells us that our baptisms wash away our differences.
No longer are there Jews and Greeks,
no longer are there slaves and free,
no longer are there men and women.
We are all one in Christ.
There is nothing, there should be nothing,
that divides us from each other -
for in the words of the marriage litany -
those whom God hath joined together,
let no man put asunder.

So if Frost is right about Fences making good neighbors,
he is also right about the fact that Something there is that DOESN’T love a wall,
and it isn’t exactly elves.
It isn’t even gravity, or the natural tendency of all things to degenerate into chaos.
Something ELSE there is that doesn’t love a wall,
and that something else is someone else,
it is the God we see in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.

So what does this mean for us?
Let’s bring Paul’s words up to date.
In the eyes of God, we are all the same:
We are all the same race:
Black or white, Arab or Jew, it makes no difference.
We are all the same class:
Blue collar or white collar, management or labor, CEO or broom pusher, it makes no difference.
We are all the same religion:
Catholic or protestant, liberal or fundamentalist,
Jerry Falwell or Jesse Jackson, it makes no difference.
We are a
ll the same: male or female, gay or straight,
rich or poor, smart or not so smart,
those of us from Kentucky and those of you from some god-forsaken place.
It makes no difference to God,
it must also make no difference to us.
The church doesn’t have any second-class members,
and God’s people are not allowed to discriminate.

In Ephesians, Paul tells the early church that both the Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians must look beyond the religious identities they have grown up with.
God has broken down those walls, he says,
bringing together those who were “near” and those who were “far off” into one body,
just as Jesus broke down the walls of his society,
abandoning his “insider” status and giving himself to the crowds of “outsiders” who flocked to see him.
And still today he calls us to cross the social, cultural and religious boundaries of our own times.
Christ is our peace, Paul says.
We are made one in him -
we define ourselves not by race or background,
but by the fact that we are God’s children,
citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.
There is no “near” and no “far-off”,
no “in” and no “out” to God.
He is at home everywhere.
He puts every person at the center of his love.
We will only make true peace – in the church, in our neighborhoods,
and in the world if we grasp this truth and hold on to it as if our lives depended on it,
which, of course, they do.

A story is told of a religious teacher who once asked his followers a question.
“How do you know,” he said, “when the night has passed and the day has come?”
His students pondered this for a while.
“Perhaps,” said one of them” it is when you can look to the distant hillside and distinguish whether the shape you see moving there is a dog or a sheep?”
“A good answer,” said the teacher, “But not the one I was thinking of.”
“Perhaps,” suggested another,” it is when you can look at the trees at the bottom of your garden
and tell whether they are figs or olives?”
“No,” said the teacher, “that’s not it either.”
His followers were stumped and asked the teacher to give them the answer,
“It is when you can look into the eyes of every person you meet and see that they are your brother or sister, because until you are able to do this,
the night will never end and the day will never dawn.”
Amen.

Technorati : God, Jesus, church, division, sermon, unity, walls
Del.icio.us : God, Jesus, church, division, sermon, unity, walls

Powered by Zoundry