Pulling Down the Dividing Wall
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
June 15, 2018
Ephesians 2:11-22
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, 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.
Sermon
Have you ever had the experience of getting credit for something that you didn’t do – or maybe you only contributed in the smallest of ways. And then you say “oh gosh, thank you, but the credit is all down to John and Joan – they really did all the work.” And then somehow despite you setting the record straight you still get the credit, plus you get credit for being self-effacing and modest. Sometimes life is unfair to our benefit. Well, this is what probably, probably, happens every time we give credit to St. Paul for writing Ephesians. The likelihood that he wrote this letter is pretty slim. The reason why Biblical Scholars think this is that the letter seems to be very like Paul and uses many of his ideas, but it is unlike Paul because it reflects a church much more developed than the time that Paul was alive. Paul wrote from about 35-55AD and this letter was written between 80-100AD. Additionally, for those who know Greek very well, they tell us that the syntax and the writing style is quite different from Paul as well. But if I were Paul, I would love to get credit for this letter. There are so many gems in this letter – so much so that we use phrases frequently in our liturgy.
What we are dealing with in our New Testament reading for today by our unknown author is an on-going disagreement about how to follow Christ. On the one hand there were Jews who were maintaining the Jewish covenant and ordinances who were following Christ, and then there were the Gentiles, who according to Paul, were grafted into the chosen people by adoption – so they did not need to be as religiously observant as Jews to follow Christ. So for example they did not need to be circumcised or to follow Jewish dietary laws.
And so what the author of this letter wants to do is break down the dividing wall between the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians. The metaphor of the wall would have been significant to those who knew anything about the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem – there was literally a wall that divided where the Gentiles could go, and where the Jews could go. The Gentiles were not allowed beyond the court of the Gentiles. They had to stay in their own section. If they were to go further into the Holy of Holies, they would profane those more sacred parts of the temple. Now by the time this letter was written, the temple had been destroyed roughly 20 years before, but the metaphor would not have been lost on the audiences of this letter – the closest metaphor for us might be the Berlin Wall, or Apartheid in South Africa.
And what the author of Ephesians is saying is that through the sacrificial death of Christ – Christ has made peace. So through Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross, Jesus brought salvation to all people, and has reconciled both the Jews and the Gentiles to himself. But what this also means, is that the peace that Jesus establishes between himself and the Jews, and himself and the Gentiles, results in a mutually shared peace between these two peoples.
So what the author of Ephesians is saying is that it is fine for Jews and the Gentiles to have different religious practices, but what there should not be is a dividing wall between them that causes hostility and hatred.
So what can that teach us here in Holliston, MA in 2018? We don’t seem to have that kind of division in our church, or with the good people in our neighboring congregations both Christian and Jewish, or with the Hindu Temple down the road in Ashland or the Mosque at the Islamic Center in Wayland. So what is this gospel lesson challenging us to do?
I think the first challenge is to think long and hard about where we experience division in our own lives? Where do we experience hostility and perhaps even hatred? What are those Berlin Walls or systems of apartheid in our own lives, in our communities, in our country or in the world that Christ is asking us to tear down and to seek reconciliation and justice.
The second challenge is to address it. One of the teachings from Maya Angelou that I will always remember – and it was from the Oprah Winfrey Show years and year ago – Maya Angelou said something to the effect that the way that we overcome division is to recognize that which separates us is minor compared to what we have in common with others. We can relate to each other because we all have common experiences – as a daughter, or as a son, as an aunt, or uncle, or mother, or father, and that can be our starting point. Pushing this a little further, I always try to remember that although our lives may be very different from one another – they are also remarkably the similar in this way – we know what it is to want to be happy, to have hope, and we know what it is like to be afraid, to feel lonely, or to feel despair, or to feel insecure, or of being embarrassed and ashamed. And when we can see this and know this, and recognize it in ourselves and in others, the walls between us can begin to crumble down.
Now this might not sound all that important, but I want to share with you an experience I had about 20 years ago that proves the contrary. I was invited on a pilgrimage to Israel run by the Council of Christians and Jews – and one of our day trips was to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum. And there, on the grounds, of the museum is a beautiful avenue of 2,000 trees which honor 14,000 people. The memorial is called “The Righteous among the Gentiles.” It is a memorial to the brave men and women who were not Jewish, but risked everything to save a Jewish man or woman or family, from the atrocities of the holocaust – often by sheltering Jews in their own homes, or manufacturing fake documents, or finding ways for them to escape to safety. After the curators had compiled the list of names, they tried to find out why these men and women, the righteous among the Gentiles, risked everything to save another human soul. They asked them, why did you do it? Why risk your safety or your family’s safety? And what they found was that their answers all had one common theme: they said that when people came for help they looked into the face of their Jewish neighbor and in their faces they saw their own reflection. They saw in them, something of themselves. They had compassion.
This week, I invite you to think about where God is asking you to practice compassion.
One of the practical ways we can practice compassion is through a Buddhist practice called Meta Meditation – or Compassion Meditation, but there is nothing stopping it from being a Christian Prayer Practice. It is a practice to help us to be at peace and to forgive. For those of you who are unfamiliar the practice is simple. You start off by saying or praying:
May I be happy, May I be well, May I be safe, May I be peaceful and at ease.
Then you call to mind someone you love: And you pray:
May my loved one be happy, may they be well, may they be safe, may they be peaceful and at ease.
Then you call to mind someone you know, but don’t really know that well – like your postal carrier, or a clerk at a store you go to and you pray again keeping this person in mind praying:
May they be happy, may they be well, may they be safe, may they be peaceful and at ease.
And then you call to mind someone that you actively dislike who you find hard to love or to forgive and again, you keep them in mind as you pray:
May they be happy, may they be well, may they be safe, may they be peaceful and at ease.
So why is this important? It is important for this simple reason: As author and theologian Fredrick Buechner writes: “Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.”
Amen.
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