Rev. Joan Pell Sierra Pines United Methodist Church Sermon: 7/26/2015 Series: Building Community Scripture: Ephesians 2:11-22 Dismantling Walls Building Community is our sermon series title as we consider the type of community that God is calling us to be as we witness to the reign of God. Last week and for the next few weeks our scripture readings come from Paul s letter to the Ephesians. We ll be studying what Paul is telling the church in Ephesus and what it might mean for us as individuals and together as a church here today. Last week we read Paul s greeting of grace and peace and part of his opening prayer. We are going to skip over the rest of his prayer, and his discussion of how we are saved by grace through faith, and how grace is a gift. We ll save that huge topic for a sermon or a series another day! Today, we re going to pick it back up where Paul starts to talk about peace. And he is speaking to a church that is struggling with divisions and the need to break down the barriers. In my Bible, this segment is entitled The Reconciliation of God s People. <Read Eph 2:11-22 CEB> 11 So remember that once you were Gentiles by physical descent, who were called uncircumcised by Jews who are physically circumcised. 12 At that time you were without Christ. You were aliens rather than citizens of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of God s promise. In this world you had no hope and no God. 13 But now, thanks to Christ Jesus, you who once were so far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 Christ is our peace. He made both Jews and Gentiles into one group. With his body, he broke down the barrier of hatred that divided us. 15 He canceled the detailed rules of the Law so that he could create one new person out of the two groups, making peace. 16 He reconciled them both as one body to God by the cross, which ended the hostility to God. 17 When he came, he announced the good news of peace to you who were far away from God and to those who were near. 18 We both have access to the Father through Christ by the one Spirit. 19 So now you are no longer strangers and aliens. Rather, you are fellow citizens with God s people, and you belong to God s household. 20 As God s household, you are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. 21 The whole building is joined together in him, and it grows up into a temple that is dedicated -1-
to the Lord. 22 Christ is building you into a place where God lives through the Spirit. When I was a teenager, one of my favorite TV programs was the British Broadcasting Company s series called COLDITZ, along with the movies The Colditz Story and The Great Escape. The series told the story of the British soldiers and other nationalities too who were captured by the Germans in WWII and held in the Prisoner of War camps. Many of the prisoners spent their days plotting to escape looking for ways to get of the closely guarded compounds whether by sneaking through the gates, going over the walls or fence, or tunneling underneath. Prisoners who consistently escaped and got recaptured were eventually sent to Colditz Castle. Colditz was a maximum security POW camp that the Germans thought was escape-proof. But of course the prisoners were still determined to get out and the TV series told of their stories, bravery and escapades as they attempted to escape the confines of the walls. Walls, fences, gates, partitions and other ingeniously constructed barriers serve many functions. The walls of Colditz Castle were used to imprison. The walls of our homes provide us with shelter, security and privacy. Yet other walls can imprison, divide and isolate, and lead to grief and violence. Here are some of the world s more renowned walls and fences. Some are still standing, others are not. How many can you recognize? All walls serve a purpose. Only some of them do not serve God s purpose. 1 I leave you to ponder which category you understand each of the walls we have just seen falling into. 1 Can t remember where I found this quote, but it is not mine! -2-
But it is not just physical walls that we erect. There are plenty of invisible walls of hostility that divide the insider from the outsider. We build them not from bricks but from sin and division. And we cement them with the mortar of name-calling, labeling and prejudice. We put a lot of effort into maintaining our walls and keeping them in good repair. After a while, we do not even see them and we do not question them any more. It is easier to keep the status quo - because to knock the wall down will bring chaos for a while and perhaps even frightening changes. Last time I preached on this passage, I used an illustration here where a black young adult, a Harvard student, described the racist language he was heckled with in an encounter with some white folk while he was simply out jogging. One of my Placer County colleagues, a person of color, had posted the story on his facebook page with the comment the same thing happened to me yesterday. As I was wondering what illustration to use here today sadly I have no shortage of material on racial unrest and the racial divisions in this country in 2015. The hashtag #blacklivesmatter has been trending and gaining traction since 2013 after Trayvon Martin s death. It gained momentum with the death of Michael Brown a year ago, and the subsequent protests in Fergusson. And is at the forefront again this last month with Sandra Bland s death in Texas and the murder in Charleston of 9 AF AM at a church Bible Study in their church. I used to declare proudly that I was colorblind. I now know that the colorblind lessons I was taught and passed on to my children: invalidate people s identities, suppress stories of people s experiences, expose us to a single perspective, imply that color is a problem, hinder the tracking of disparities, and limit discussion. 2 As Christians, by our actions we influence our neighborhood and workplace and our children and grandchildren. My hope is that we can learn to see color in all its beauty, and be able to talk openly about it and understand how we contribute to the problem, and how the structures we have in place perpetuate it. Yes, these are difficult conversations to have. But while a disproportionate number of black children live in poverty, attend dilapidated schools, and are imprisoned, the Kingdom of God is still waiting to break in and as disciples of Christ, we are called to play our part. The invisible walls of hostility are still standing. The walls that say, you are not welcome on this side of the wall. 2 http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/02/colorblindness-adds-to-racism/ -3-
And then there are the walls that isolate. We do not know, and I do not want to speculate, what caused John Houser to go into a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisianna, and randomly shoot into the audience. We do not know John Houser s full story yet, but witnesses do say that he had a history of mental illness. and we know from past incidents that many people with mental illness find it very hard to get the treatment that they need and are isolated from family who can no longer cope. We also know that other mass shootings have occurred when the shooter was bullied for years and is a loner and lonely. God created us to be in relationship with one another, in community. The walls of our homes are easy to retreat behind. It is easy to be shut off from our neighbors. And even whole communities choose to live behind gates making it possible to avoid folk who have a different lifestyle. These walls are not bad per-se. Communities at their best offer protection, relationship, friendship, balance, support, love, and hope. But the walls of isolation, of desperation, are still standing in our communities. Walls that trap people inside, walls that others cannot penetrate. The Christians in Ephesus (and elsewhere that Paul visited) had also erected walls that divided them. Some of the Christians, the followers of Christ, were Jews. They had grown up knowing the God of Israel. They had worshipped God in the Temple, they had kept the commandments, made sacrifices, studied the Torah, and encountered Christ as the promised Messiah. AND the men, at least, were physically marked by circumcision. And then there were the Gentiles, the new followers of Christ. Before becoming Christians, they had no hope and no god. They had come to faith through Jesus Christ and were not circumcised. And the 2 groups, the Jews and the Gentiles, were wary of each other. Relationships were strained. There was an in group, and an out group. The wall of hostility was standing between them. And Paul writes to them with good news, and says, Christ is our peace. He broke down the barriers of hatred, the walls of hostility. He s reconciled you, united you as one body by the cross. Peace has been achieved. Hostility has been crucified. You have access to God the Father through Christ by the one spirit. You belong to the same household. -4-
Now to really understand the impact of this passage we have to understand a bit more about the culture of the time. You see this would not just be heard has a nice, tame, comforting statement. This news was shocking. It was daring! Christians living in Asia Minor were under Roman Rule, and Roman Emperors, Augustus in particular, saw themselves as the semi-divine forgers of a new world peace. The Roman brand of peace, Pax Romana, was an enforced peace through military domination, and when necessary, terror would be used, and specifically the terror of crucifixion for anyone who challenged the Emperor. 3 So now imagine the Christians at Ephesus packed into the largest home available for the first reading of this letter that has just arrived from Paul. It will be read out loud to the assembled congregation because most people cannot read. So they hear it together. The reader gets to the place where it refers to the crucifixion and Christ s blood and says, Christ is our peace. Can you imagine the quick collective intake of breath? The glances at the door? The statement verges on treason! Christ is our peace. Christ, not the emperor. Despite the claim of the Roman Emperor, true peace has been inaugurated by a man the empire crucified. The dissonance between the chilling rhetoric of the state and the thrilling rhetoric of the gospel would have set their blood racing. This was energizing news. It was exciting. It was counter-cultural. Can you catch the mood? Counter-cultural forces lead to peace and not the ways of violence and division. Christ has already reconciled us and ended the hostility. 4 It is when we dare to practice the counter-cultural way, when we dare to have the difficult conversations and reconcile with God s people then the walls will come tumbling down and bit by bit (as we read in v 22) Christ will build us into a dwelling place for God through the spirit. In October 2014, a local mosque was vandalized in Canada and neighbors turned out to repair the damaged walls within hours. 5 In December, a Muslim community in Sweden was attacked. Hundreds of people showed up to love on them creating a beautiful wall. 6 And earlier this month after the Charleston shooting which was followed by the suspicious burning of several African American churches, three Muslim organizations came together with a respond with love campaign to raise money to rebuild the churches and raised almost $100,000. It is when meals are shared, when prayers are said together, when we share the common work of justice, when relationships are formed one person at a time, when we take the non-violent counter-cultural way of peace that we discover our neighbors are 3 http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching_print.aspx?commentary_id=1332 4 Ibid. 5 http://www.groundswell-mvmt.org/faithshare/5-beautiful-stories-of-how-people-loved-their-muslimneighbors-after-terror-attacks/ 6 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/02/swedish-mosque-lovebomb_n_6407186.html?n -5-
no longer strangers, but are part of our household. We are one in Christ. Christ is our peace and has broken down the dividing wall. Let me finish by sharing a story with you: 7 It is a story about two brothers. They lived on adjoining farms, but they had a deep quarrel. They had often shared their resources, but that practice stopped; and there was nothing left but bitterness. One morning a brother we will call John answered a knock at his door. It was a carpenter. The carpenter asked if there was any work to do. John said that there was something he could do. He took the carpenter to where the two properties met and showed him how the other brother had taken a bulldozer and created a creek where the meadow used to be. John said, I know he did this to make me angry. I want you to help me get even by building a big fence so I won t have to see him or his property ever again. So the carpenter worked hard all day. When he reported back to John, John noticed there was no fence. The carpenter had used his skill and built a bridge over the creek instead of a fence. John s brother saw the bridge and was quite moved that his brother would do such a thing. The two brothers met in the middle and embraced. They saw the carpenter packing his tools and asked him to stay a while and do more work. The carpenter replied, I m sorry, but I have other bridges to build. And that s the good news that our world so needs us to be passionate about. Because those walls are causing pain and grief. And I for one, can t wait for more of them to start tumbling, and more bridges to be built. Paul has given us that assurance. We are one in Christ. And in the end, we will be in harmony. Thanks be to God. Amen. Resources New Interpreter s Bible. Vol 11. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000. Verhey, Allen & Joseph S. Harvard. Ephesians: Belief, a Theological Commentary on the Bible. Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 2011. 7 http://www.preaching.com/sermon-illustrations/11597717/ -6-