One of my favorite story
tellers (and naturally, one of my favorite preachers) is Fred Craddock, and one
of the stories that Craddock used to tell involved an old church somewhere in
the Deep South (I believe it may have been in Eastern Tennessee).[1] This
antique church was quite proud of its heritage. In particular, the folks of
that church loved to tell the story of how one Christmas Eve during the height
of the Civil War, there was a battle taking place not too far from their little
church. The fighting was intense; many men had been wounded, and the sound of
canons and gunfire could be heard for miles. But that night, as the church was
preparing to hold a Christmas Eve service, soldiers from both sides showed up
at the church, laid their rifles on the porch, and went inside. Blue and grey
uniforms filled the pews, sitting next to each other as they sang “Silent
Night” and listening to the nativity story from Luke’s gospel. The men
worshipped together, and after they had prayed and received the benediction,
they went back out, picked their rifles off the porch, and headed back out into
battle where they would commence to shooting at one another once more.
Craddock told this story
because he had the privilege to hear it from the folks of that church himself
as he had been a guest preacher there some years ago. He said just about every
person in that church knew that story and loved to tell it. It was after his
sermon, however, that Craddock discovered something: he was standing on that
same porch where those soldiers had left their guns, after he had preached in
that same church—same chapel they told him—where those soldiers had gather to
worship the new born king and sing his praises, when Craddock noticed the
little corner stone in the foundation of that building. It said something to
the effect of “First Christian Church. Est. 1867.” The church had missed the
Civil War by almost two years, yet every person there knew this story—a story
that was clearly, historically inaccurate, but they held on to it. Surely
someone had noticed (as Craddock had) the corner stone, with its chiseled
proclamation of the church’s founding year. Surely there was someone in that
little church who knew that their story was false, and perhaps some inflation
of another church’s story. Surely…so why keep telling such a story?
Because it’s a good
story. It’s a story that reminds us—at least a little—about what the kingdom of
God might actually look like: soldiers laying down their weapons, sitting side
by side, to worship. It’s a story that gives us some small glimmer of hope that
maybe, just maybe, there’s a way past the things that seek to divide us. And if
there ever was such a time we needed to hear such stories of hope, it’s now.
Of course, for all the
rhetoric revolving around how divided we are as a people, for all the talk
about Democrats and Republicans, elites and the working class, rich and poor,
none of it is new. As long as there have been two folks in this world, there
has been an imaginary line drawn, a chasm created that causes each of us to see
an alteration in appearance, a variance in opinion, a discrepancy in biology,
or a difference in the location of our birth as grounds for animosity. Such a
truth is recorded in one of the foundational narrative of the biblical text, as
Cain kills his brother Able after he is overcome with jealousy at God’s seeming
favoritism over Able’s choice of agricultural vocation. Yes, as long as folks
have been in the world, folks have fought. We’ve gone to war, drawn borders,
built walls and weapons of mass destruction. We’ve thrown stones and insults,
sold each other as property and subsequently treated each other as such. We’ve
hurled curses and hand grenades at each other, posted signs and installed
special water fountains, passed laws, and bombed churches. As long as we’ve
noticed even the slightest difference, there has been someone, somewhere who
has sought to exploit it, use it, and weaponize it to crack the chasm even
wider. Division is nothing new. It’s as old as humankind itself.
But that’s why we tell
stories like the one that old church told. It’s why we tell stories about folks
of all stripes coming together in the wake of tragedy. It’s why we tell stories
about reunions, why we love stories about forgiveness and reconciliation,
because it reminds us that this ideal of hope we have is not too far gone that
we can’t take hold of it ourselves. It’s the hope that Paul proclaims in the
text we’ve read this morning.
You see, division was
just as rampant and vicious in Paul’s day too, especially when it came to religion.
The Jewish people believed they were the chosen people of God; they had their
scriptures and the covenants of Abraham, Moses, and David to back them up. They
had been God’s people; they were they ones who had suffered for generations
under the oppression of foreign powers; they were the ones who built God’s
temple in Jerusalem, and they were the ones with first dibs on God’s eternal
blessings. But then the followers of Jesus come proclaiming that Christ has
made a way even for the Gentiles, that God has sought to reconcile unto God’s
self even those who were not seen as a part of Abraham’s covenant, those whose
ancestors had oppressed the people of God, destroyed their temple, and
scattered them across the face of the known world. I’m sure it wouldn’t take
much imagination for you to see why this wasn’t exactly “good news” for these
ancient Jews.
Of course, the
Gentiles—Greeks, Romans, other non-Jewish folks—weren’t exactly lining up to
get in good with God’s chosen people. At best, they viewed them as an odd
bunch, with their single God, strict rules, and somewhat gruesome practices
like circumcision. At worst, they viewed them as pests, a people who were so
hung up on their religion that they needed to be removed, kept in line,
oppressed, or flat out killed in order to keep peace in the empire. One could
understand the difficulty in trying to reconcile these groups, especially by
way of a seemingly new religion.
It is Paul, however, the
“apostle to the Gentiles,” who sees this reconciliation as absolutely necessary
in understanding the gospel of Christ. For Paul, without this present, physical
reconciliation of people, the eternal spiritual reconciliation is all “pie in
the sky” nonsense. I mean, can’t you just hear it when he writes, “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, 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”? For Paul, Christ has made a way of
reconciliation for both Jews and Gentiles—a way around, over, through, beyond—a
way that unites each side in its common humanity, a way that reminds both sides
that they are, at the end of it all, human beings, brothers and sisters, children
of God.
I think we need to be
reminded of that too…
It’s too easy, I suppose,
to see difference in another and use it to create only more difference, to call
attention to it, to hold it up as the core of the curse that separates us.
Maybe it’s our own brokenness that makes us do it, our own insecurities that
cause us to seek out a different shade of melanin, a slight shift in language,
an apparent clash of ideology. Whatever the cause (I tend to blame that sin
above all sins, selfishness), it can’t help but create distance. It cannot help
but widen the chasm that separates us, leaving us far off from some of our
brothers and sisters. It’s why I think we need to hear the words of the
apostle, words from scripture, not just today, but every time we’re tempting to
look at someone else—anyone else—as
different, as other, as far off from where we are: “So [Christ] 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.”
It seems to me, that God
prefers to build houses over fences, that God through Christ has united
us—every last one of us—together, that God through Christ has shown us that
they way of heaven can be found in the renewed fellowship of brothers and
sisters on this side of eternity just as much as it may be on the other. Jesus,
“in
his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing
wall, that is, the hostility between us.” For Paul, “both groups” were
Jews and Gentiles, that is Jews and everyone else. For us today, both groups
may be different: democrats and republicans, white and black, liberal and
conservative, whatever variation of “us vs. them” you have in mind the words
before us are still true: “in his flesh [Jesus] has made both groups
into one and has broken down the dividing wall.”
God has no use for the
things that separate us, whether they be walls, fences, languages, class, or
status. God has no use for those things that separate us, which is why Christ
has torn them down, and where they once stood Christ is building something new,
something better, something eternal: “the household of God, built upon the
foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the
cornerstone.” May we be people who find no use for the things that seek
to divide us. May we be people who seek to break down the walls that divide us.
May we be people who welcome all into the household of God, a family of sisters
and brothers with Christ Jesus himself as our cornerstone, our foundation. And
as we tear down that which divides us and live into the reconciliation of our
faith in Christ Jesus, may we, as a body of believers, broken, imperfect, and
flawed though we are, truly become the dwelling place of God. Amen.
[1] I
can’t find the exact source of this story from Craddock, but I do remember
hearing him tell it.
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