| February 04, 2007
From the First Baptist Church of Providence pulpit
John Claypool tells about a medieval legend about two knights in full armor riding on their horses who suddenly intersected one another in the darkness. Both were startled and interpreted each other’s actions as hostile. So they did what humans do when threatened: they defended themselves. The initial contacts were slight, glancing blows. But the violence escalated until the adversaries were swapping lethal attacks. Both were wounded, but finally one was able to dismount his horse and render his opponent helpless. After he ran his sword through the other knight’s heart. When he opened the shield on his helmet, there in the pale moonlight, he saw to his utter horror, the face of his own blood brother.
How sad. When brothers mistake each other for enemies, the predictable outcome is, both are destroyed. One from a pierced heart. The other from a broken heart. That parable parallels the dark history of our world. And here’s the Apostle Paul declaring to the Church at Ephesus that Jesus came into the world for the explicit purpose of reversing the story of the two warriors, to make peace and unity possible instead of our “warring madness.”
The theology underlying this is the Judaeo-Christian understanding of monotheism. Our belief that a single source is behind all reality, which makes us all siblings. But our primal unity, that knows at the deepest level we’re all kin to each other, has been lost. Why? Because we’re different; different color skin, ideas, or world view. And because we persist in defining ourselves by our differences, we keep turning brothers into adversaries. Ever since Cain killed Abel, people of the same family have been fighting and killing for generations, as problems appear to be more and more insolvable. And it seems worse today than it ever was.
This text seems so implausible: a unified Jewish and Gentile Christianity, and the lofty goal of overcoming the bloody history of cultural and ethnic animosity? Paul makes it clear that any unity the church enjoys is not a result of what we’ve done, but an act of God through the cross of Christ, which has “broken down the wall of separation.” Can you hear the good news in that? This is not a promise. It’s past tense. We’re not asked whether we like it. We’re asked only: that we stop treating one another like strangers and aliens. This is the only foundation upon which a church can be built. And any impulse that creates barriers between brothers and sisters will destroy a church. Now we can affirm this or deny it; but we can’t change it. There are only two choices: we can keep putting up walls or honor the gospel. We will either cling-to the dividing wall of hostility and continue the carnage, or we can believe-in the unifying cross of Christ, and his peace.
In the life of the early church, death was the overriding problem. So for centuries the gospel was framed in terms of the resurrection of Christ, symbolizing the promise of eternal life. But in medieval times, there was a shift away from death toward guilt and sin. Thus, the gospel was articulated in terms of substitution, and the forgiveness of sin. The rise of the mass and sacramentalism. Is not the overriding problem in our day, fragmentation? We’re being balkanized in our country today. To where some think they’re different in kind, from the stranger, foreigner, immigrant. People long for community and acceptance and a good word of inclusion from the Lord. I have one for you today, our text is of prime importance: “Christ is our peace. He has made both groups into one and broken down the dividing wall of hostility between us.” So that we are strangers no longer.
Paul utilizes many metaphors to say this. That which was “far,” has been brought “near.” At one time some were “without Christ,” but are now “in Christ.” Once they were “hostile,” now they’re “peaceful.” Formerly “strangers and aliens,” but now “fellow citizens.” The wall of difference was transformed into the priesthood of every believer; one body, with access to one God through one spirit. He takes images from the political world, with words like “commonwealth and citizens;” and the field of construction, with words like “foundation and cornerstone.” Which means God’s church is a reconciled across ethnic, social, geographic and linguistic barriers. Treating one another as strangers is antithetical to the gospel. So church is not just a place where strangers need not feel strange. But a place where there are no strangers. Where everybody are friends.
Francis of Assissi became a saint because of his universal theology, regarding all creation as a family. And so, “All creatures of our God and King.” “Brother sun, sister moon,” make up his lyrics. He even named the animals and trees as kin. And Francis was declared a saint precisely because he sensed the profound connectedness that makes us family. We can’t overlook the genuine differences among us that are always there. But it need not lead to segregation, because Jesus has broken down the dividing wall! The church that bears the name of Jesus is to have no barriers between rich or poor, the powerful and the powerless; male or female, black or white. On things that really matter, we’re more alike than different. We all eat food we didn’t grow. And breathe oxygen we didn’t create. We’re sustained by things other than ourselves. If we quit focusing on the ways we’re different and instead on the ways we’re alike, it becomes apparent that we have the same needs, the same hopes, the same hunger for love and affirmation.
That’s why surgery is about physiology not geography. Any physician can operate in the seven continents on earth, because underneath our skins of different hues, we’re alike, if we’re human. Cut one person open in Providence, and somebody from Baghdad is predictably similar on the inside. No surgeon has to say, “This is how you operate on Iraqi’s. And this is how you operate on Americans! There’s a reason for that. Because “God has made from one blood all nations to live on the face of the earth...” (Acts 17:26).
Victor Hugo in his classic, “Les Miserables,” has a character Jean Valjean–a man jailed but falsely accused of a crime. Consequently, his imprisonment made him bitter and cynical. He saw all the world as adversarial. But he eventually escaped from prison and stopped at a bishop’s home because he was hungry. When he asked for something to eat, the bishop invited him to stay overnight. So he did. But he didn’t trust the bishop, thinking he might turn him in. He got up early the next morning in need of resources, so he stole one of the silver candlesticks in the dining room on his way out. But he was stopped by the police who recognized the bishop’s candlestick and took him back to the cleric’s house. “We caught this stranger stealing your property!” And the bishop said with a twinkle in his eye, “Ah he’s no stranger. He spent the night here and I’m glad to see him back. Because he needs the other candlestick to make a pair.” The police left, scratching their heads.
All that remained was a red-faced, escaped convict looking into the eyes of a bishop who treated him with mercy, when he’d been dishonest. “Where are thine accusers, stranger? No man Lord. Go and sin no more.” What is it that enables people to treat an alien like a fellow citizen? Is it not in the way we look at life and God’s world and the people in it? Not as adversaries to be punished. But even tho we treat each other as enemies, whom Jesus said to “love!” Because he knew our deeper identity is that of a brother. Haven’t you heard the good news? We’re “no longer strangers!”
Nothing could change this world or our church for the better, than learning to treat strangers with hospitality, like Hugo’s bishop showing grace to a desperate prisoner. It wasn’t the 1st time its happened. And as long as this church is here, it won’t be the last. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” “No longer strangers, aliens, misfits, but brothers and sisters, and therefore fellow citizens in the household of God...because Christ is our peace, who has made us both one and broken down the dividing wall of hostility.”
If the world is to have a prayer of overcoming its painful divisions, if there’s to be any hope for peace and unity, the folks out there have to 1st see it in us. We are the only concrete, visible, tangible evidence the world has that in Jesus Christ, “God is reconciling the world unto himself.” So let God do the judging. And His Spirit do the convicting. Let Christ do the redeeming. And us do the loving.
Pastoral Prayer: 2/4/07 We give Thee thanks O God, for establishing a house without walls in a kingdom that never ends. We praise you for acting in Christ to break down the hostile barriers that divide one from another and for granting to all, through Christ, access to you. Work in us through the ministries of this church and help us to keep building on the foundation you have laid.
It encourages us to think of the many ways you are with us and others this day–for calling us to work for peace, wholeness and right relationships between our neighbors and you. Show us how all people are brothers and sisters, no matter where they come from or what they’ve done, no matter what the differences are even now in how we look or believe or worship or die.
Change makes us feel like strangers and aliens, and causes us to gravitate toward our comfort zones, where we feel the safety of home with fences. Remind us of the good news in this worship, that in Jesus Christ, we are home. Give us the eyes of Christ and his heart of compassion, his mind of truth, his words of wisdom, his healing hands. We pray for all experiencing anxiety or grieving the losses in their lives. Comfort them with your strengthening grace. We remember all bowed by guilt or pain or all who look to the future with fear and loneliness. May they experience Thy loving presence.
We pray for our country. Show us that by building walls to keep out strangers, we only turn ourselves into strangers. Remembering that we were once strangers to you, help us to pay special attention to those who are strangers to us–who live in other nations, or see things differently than we do, those of a different economic class or race. Because you have received us as strangers, help us to receive others into our fellowship so that all can be transformed from strangers into friends.
We pray for our church. Enable us to demonstrate to a fractured world that Jesus really can enable us to live as sisters and brothers in all that we do and say. Be with our church family, that when any among us are facing hard times, we will bear witness to the joy of our faith. Because we strive for peace not hostility, because we love and care for one another in the name of Jesus Christ, make our place one in which we who were once strangers, have become family. In the name of Jesus, Amen. Back |
