"Break Down, Build Up"
July 23, 2006: 7th Sunday after Pentecost, Year B
The Rev. John MacIver Gage, pastor
United Church on the Green, UCC: New Haven, CT
www.newlights.org
Scripture:
Ephesians 2:11-22
So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called 'the uncircumcision' by those who are called 'the circumcision'—a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands—remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens 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 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. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, so that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, 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; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also 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.
May God speak through these words and make from them a holy word for us today. Amen.
Sermon:
It's hard to know what to say this morning after ten days of the most terrifying sort of developments coming out of the Middle East. Though I was away up on the Cape and largely incommunicado, still the news seemed to seep in around the edges—radio reports in the car on the way up and back, coffee shop newspaper headlines and email tidbits from the Times. Since I've been back, of course, the images of bombed out neighborhoods in southern Lebanon, of warships working to evacuate foreign nationals, of numbered coffins lining the roadside, have taken up residence front and center in my mind. And I have walked the last several days on eggshells, waiting for news that the conflict has widened in any number of disastrous ways.
What can I say, and how can we respond? In the last ten days I have received pleas from various different advocacy groups asking me to show my support for the nation of Israel, for the state of Lebanon, and the Palestinian people. So what should I do? How are we to discern a way forward in this multilateral, multinational, multiethnic, multi-religious, multigenerational mess? Just whose side are we on?
Personally, I am sympathetic to them all and disgusted with them all, all at the same time. I understand that the state of Israel was planted as a sheep among wolves, an unwelcome neighbor to nations who to this day deny their right to exist, but how can a people who were themselves the victims of oppression and race-hatred turn around and perpetrate the same systematic injustices on the foreigners among them? I understand that the Palestinians were displaced from their homelands to make room for Israel, that hundreds of thousands have lived as refugees for generations now, but how can a people who have expressed a desire to take their rightful place among the community of sovereign nations elect a government that will not renounce the destruction of their neighbor as an ultimate political objective? I understand that Hezbollah arose to give expression to the frustration, anger, and experience of powerlessness among Shi'ite communities in Lebanon under Israeli occupation in the 1980s, but does that give them the right today to kidnap at will, to sponsor suicide bombers, or to fire deadly rockets into the family neighborhoods of northern Israel? And what of our role, as the United States, or the role of Syria or Iran in this conflict? Can any of us really pretend to be blameless even as for years now we have funneled political support, money, and weapons to our particular dogs in this fight?
Sure, the Secretary General of the United Nations has called for an immediate cessation of hostilities in the conflict, and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is headed to the area this weekend to try to help broker a resolution, but what chance does diplomacy really have when nearly everyone involved is already eyeless and toothless thanks to a deeply embedded culture of revenge among long-embittered enemies? How can negotiations go forward when true security is believed to be achievable only through the complete degradation, or better, annihilation of the other? All us involved, on the ground and at a distance, seem to be caught in a cycle of manipulation, violence and recrimination with no end in sight. No, sad to say, the situation at present seems in desperate danger of breaking down completely.
In this context, the words we hear this morning from Paul in his letter to the church at Ephesus may seem silly, at best, or worse, like a slap in the face. How can we read about a God who overcomes the barriers that divide one person from another, one people from another, when we know all too well the present pain of the divisions among us that not only persist but deepen with each passing year? How can we hear the good news of reconciliation in Christ when the daily news shows us Jews and Christians and Muslims and Hindus and people of all faiths and people of no faith at one another's throats in all too many places in the world today? How can we believe that through Christ all persons are now part of one world family? We know that walls are being broken down. We see them being blown down, in fact, in Lebanon, in Israel, in the Palestinian Territories, in the streets of Baghdad and Kabul and Mumbai, in Sudan. But the ancient animosities remain, and we continue to pervert the creative powers within us to invent new reasons to hate.
In the face of the evidence, we might well ask, Is it perhaps the Gospel word that is broken? Or was it really all just pie-in-the-sky, by and by, from the very beginning? It's a valid question, even for people of faith—perhaps particularly for people of faith. If Jesus came to usher in God's reign of justice, peace, and compassion, if he came to reconcile humanity to God "in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it," what happened? The lion and the lamb are not yet such amiable bedfellows. Wolves and leopards still prey on the weak. Little children still have reason to fear the venom of the serpent. Where is the transformation we have been promised?
The sad truth is that two thousand years later, this broken down hurting world does not much resemble the kingdom of God Jesus preached. Quite the opposite. So what's gone wrong? It makes me think of a hymn, one we have never sung in this congregation, though it is there in our hymnal, number 165, "Did You Leave Your Temple" (words: David J. Torbett, 1992, alt. © 1998; music: Gustav T. Holst, 1906). In verse three of that hymn, author David J. Torbett poses this very question in song. With truly courageous questioning faith, I think, he dares to ask Jesus on our behalf:
Did you end oppression? Did all warfare cease?
Did you bring the kingdom of eternal peace?
Why do we still suffer? Why do we still mourn?
Did you make a diff'rence when you were born?
Why do we still suffer? Why do we still mourn? Dear God, we'd like to know.
It's a hard question, born not of theological sophistry but right out of the blood, sweat, and tears of a suffering world. Neither is it a statement of disbelief, but rather one of profound faith. Why, O God, is the world not the way we believe it should be, the way you have told us it will be? We hear the same cry echoed over and again in the words of the psalmist. "Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain?" (Ps 2:1). "Why do the wicked renounce God, and say in their hearts, 'God will not call us to account'?" (Ps 10:13). "Rouse yourself! Why, do you sleep? Awake, do not cast us off forever!" (Ps 44:23) And most famously, in the mouth of Jesus himself as he hung on the cross, the very prophet of the kingdom himself hoist on the bloody instrument of empire and oppression: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me" (Ps 22:1, Mt 27:46). There are some Christians who say Jesus was playacting at that moment, that he was only pretending to suffer for the benefit of us, his future audience, but don't you believe it. Jesus himself knew in his all-too-human body just how far this world is from the reign of God.
Then why? Why Jesus, of all people? Why did Jesus suffer?
I believe Jesus suffered to point to our suffering, to underline our suffering with his own. I believe God suffers with us in Jesus not to triumph over sin and death like some kind of superhero, but in order to force us to face the ugly fact that countless millions of faceless others over the course of our bloody human history have been, are being sacrificed just like Jesus was to feed our greed, allay our fears, or grease the wheels of empire. Jesus' death on the cross at our hands is God's ultimate act of solidarity with a hurting and hurtful humanity. We are complicit in both his suffering and his death. Our bloody hands and his are the same. In his body there is no longer victim or perpetrator, enemy or ally, friend or foe, but one long-suffering humanity, beloved by God and in desperate need of the deep reconciliation only God can offer.
In Jesus and in his suffering we are shocked out of complacency to discover our common humanity in God our Maker. No matter who we are, no matter where we are on life's journey, whether Israeli or Lebanese or Palestinian or American or Syrian or Iranian, in the words of Paul, "Christ is our peace; in his flesh he has made all groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us... So he came and proclaimed peace to those who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him all of us have access in one Spirit to the Maker." If we can recognize ourselves in Christ on the cross, and recognize that our neighbors suffer there, as well, then the laws and commandments and ordinances and all the other walls that divide us are abolished. They are broken down, the playing field is leveled, and we are all one. In the light of Christ, we are called to speak prophetically and name the long habits of sin on every side that keep us all bound up together in this cycle of violence and suffering.
And our revulsion at the images flooding our newspapers and televisions and computer screens is the first step toward doing just that. Painful as it is, and as much as we want to turn it off and turn away, we must not let this go of this fire that burns and churns our stomachs into knots, for through it, through Christ, we move into sympathy with the sufferings of the world. We must let it kindle within us a spiritual fire, the zeal of the prophets for God's justice, peace, and compassion. Like them, like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Paul, like Jesus before us, we must lift our voices and say Enough! Enough of violence and revenge! Enough of 'sides!' Enough of them and us! This is not the way God intends us to live, any of us, anywhere.
But it is not enough just to say the words. It is the first, necessary step, it's true, but it is not the whole journey. We must be not merely hearers of the word and speakers of the word, but doers of the word, as well. We must become architects of peace. In the place of the institutions of greed and fear and oppression we must build something new, something better. If we are truly are followers of the Christ who died and was raised to resurrected life, then we are called to build a new way of life to replace the old; otherwise, as history as shown, suffering will spring up again all to easily, thicker than before, like weeds in a bombed out neighborhood. As Christ's disciples, we are called to work diligently to build a true peace, a peace with justice, a peace that will last. This is what Paul means in the second part of prophetic message in his letter to the Ephesians this morning when he says:
So then [since we are all reconciled through Christ]... we are citizens with the saints and also 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.
In other words, instead of just waiting around for God to wave a magic wand and make the mean people go away and the hurt people better—presto change-o!—we are called to be the change we wish to see in the world. We are called to be embody the Gospel word of peace in ourselves, to make our ways of living together as a congregation, as a community, as a nation and a community of nations not just profitable and secure and camera-friendly, but holy. We are called to break the cycle of violence and in its place build new ways of relating whereby so that all God's children, of any faith or none, may be valued and cared for, that none may go hungry and none live in fear, that all may flourish.
Hymn writer David Torbett touches just this point when he moves from the confusion and anger of his third verse to these words of hope and dedication in the final:
Still your living temple has a beating heart.
Still you seek to build it, part by fragile part.
Love and hope and suff'ring will have victory;
Let your gentle Spirit now be born in me.
Friends, this is no easy task. I have no illusions on that score. It is every bit as daunting and complex as it feels, and more so. The root causes of this conflict, and of all violence—poverty, racism, intolerance, greed, and fear—run twisted and deep in our world. But there is good news. There is Gospel news. We are not powerless to act, for God has been this way before in Jesus. Jesus has been all the way to the cross, and in his death and resurrection, the door to change, to reconciliation and, yes, to peace, has been thrown open. Another world is possible, for with God, all things are possible. And it is our sacred calling as children of God, followers of Christ, and citizens of the Spirit to dream the kingdom, then work like hell to build that dream here and now in concrete acts of love and faith, risk and trust, strength and vulnerability, in flesh and bone.
In closing this morning, I leave with the powerful prayer of The Rev. John Thomas, our General Minister and President in the United Church of Christ. John writes:
You did not make us, O God, to die in bomb craters or to huddle through the night in basement shelters. You made us to play under olive trees and cedars and to sleep soundly with animal toys and gentle lovers. Lord, have mercy.
You did not make us, O God, to hold hostages for barter or to rain deadly fury on innocent children and beautiful coastlands. You made us, O God, to welcome strangers and to cherish all creation. Christ, have mercy.
You did not make us, O God, to oppress in the name of security or to kill in the name of justice. You made us, O God, to find security in justice and to risk life in the name of peace. Lord have mercy.
While leaders in Tel Aviv and Damascus, Tehran and Washington, and southern Lebanon pander to ancient fears, claim the mantle of righteous victim, and pursue their little empires in the name of god of their own devising, the people of Lebanon and northern Israel are made captive to fear, true victims whose only advocate is You.
Save us from self-justifying histories and from moral equations that excuse our folly. Search our hearts for our own complicity. Spare us from pious prayers that neglect the prophet's angry cry. Let us speak a resounding 'no' to this warring madness and thus unmake our ways of death, so that we may be made more and more into your image. Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison.
Amen and amen.