Being Boundary Breakers

Ephesians 2:11-22

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Georgetown Presbyterian Church

Rev. Stephen H. Wilkins

Yesterday I returned from a week at the Montreat Youth Conference with three other adults and thirteen youth from this church and from Pawleys Island Presbyterian Church. Before I left for Montreat, I had already decided to use this passage from Ephesians as the text for today’s sermon, and I had chosen the title, "E Pluribus Unum," as a way of highlighting the unity that we share through Christ. In light of the past week at Montreat, I would like to change my sermon title to "Being Boundary Breakers."

At Montreat, the theme for the week was "Crossing Boundaries," and we spent a lot of time talking about the kinds of boundaries and barriers that we set up. Some boundaries are good, like rules and laws, because they provide a framework for healthy relationships and for a safe society. Other boundaries, however, serve to divide and exclude; they are boundaries that create animosity and fuel hatred between people.

I remember an incident that took place in Texas several years ago, and it captured the attention of the whole nation. The eyes of the nation focused on Jasper, Texas. On the night of June 7, 1998, John William King and two of his friends took a drunk black man named James Byrd, bound his legs with a chain, and dragged him behind King's pickup truck down a country road for three miles. The descriptions of what happened to Byrd as he was being dragged along are too horrible to repeat. The only reason given for the killing is that John William King is a white man, and James Byrd, Jr., was a black man. And King simply wanted to kill a black man in order to gain notoriety for a white supremist group he had founded.

There's something terribly wrong with our world when something like the color of our skin is cause for division, hostility, hatred. There's something terribly wrong with our world when people despise those who are different. The truth is, we live in a world where things like gender, race, language, culture, and economic status divide us. We create classes of people based on the color of their skin or the amount of money they have. And we do our best to ensure that people in one class do not associate with people of other classes. There are very real divisions and barriers that separate people from one another and these barriers, these walls we erect, create hostility and animosity from one side to the other. As long as each side continues to treat the other with contempt or indifference, people find themselves in an endless cycle of hostility and hatred.

One of the issues to which we were given the opportunity to respond at Montreat this week was the current conflict between Israel and the Islamic militias in Lebanon. Do you ever wonder when it will end? Don’t you find yourself hoping against all hope that someday there might be a peaceful resolution? How long will the hatred continue?

Unfortunately, the problem of division and conflict between people who are different is as old as history itself. From the earliest civilizations, people have used their differences to erect unseen but real barriers between themselves and others. One race is lifted up over another. Male is lifted up over female. Master is exalted over servant. From one generation to the next, things remain essentially the same. Divisions are created, and have resulted in hostility and conflict and even warfare.

This was a problem that Paul repeatedly addressed in the early church. For Paul, the problem was the hostility that existed between Jews and Gentiles, a problem that remained even after both Jews and Gentiles converted to the Christian faith. In the eyes of the Jews, the Gentiles represented everything that was dirty and immoral and unrighteous, and they wanted nothing to do with the Gentiles. The Gentiles in return hated the Jews and wanted nothing to do with them, either.

In the Temple in Jerusalem, there was a series of courtyards and inner rooms. The Gentiles were allowed in the outermost courtyard, but no further. Even Jewish women could go further into the Temple to worship than the Gentiles. An inscription was found on the wall that kept the Gentiles in the outer courtyard, and it read, "No man of another race is to proceed within the partition and enclosing wall about the sanctuary; and anyone arrested there will have himself to blame for the penalty of death which will be imposed as a consequence."

As Paul addresses the church at Ephesus, he is addressing Christians who are primarily of Gentile descent. And his first word to them in today’s lesson is "remember." Remember what it was like to be on the outside. Remember that you are not of the circumcised race. Remember that you were excluded from citizenship among the chosen people of God. Remember that you were foreigners to the covenant of promise. Remember that you were without the revelation of the living God, that you were without hope in the world.

But Paul doesn’t tell them to remember just so he can boast his superiority over the Gentile Ephesians; he calls them to remember, so that he might remind them that they are now a part of a new reality, a reality created by the redeeming work of Jesus Christ. "But now," Paul says. "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility. . ."

I spoke of this a couple of weeks ago, when we reviewed the long list of spiritual blessings for which Paul launched into doxology in the first chapter of Ephesians. This is the blessing of inclusion. It is the blessing that declares that in Christ Jesus the walls that divide us are torn down. It is the blessing that declares that the ground is level at the foot of the cross, and there is room for all who would gather there. It is the blessing that declares that people who the world would separate into different groups and classes, are people who share a common citizenship in the kingdom of heaven simply through faith in Jesus Christ.

And, my friends, the blessing of inclusion is one that the church of Jesus Christ has largely chosen to ignore.

One of the greatest scandals in the life of the church is that the church continues to erect walls even in the face of the reconciling work of Jesus Christ, or we choose to ignore the walls that are in place, and we conveniently allow them to remain. You know as well as I that as much as we declare with our lips that "all are welcome," in our hearts we hope that not everybody will hear those words. You know as well as I that in the Christian church we spend far too much energy focusing on our differences, and allowing our differences to divide us. It’s a scandal that there are so many Christian denominations that refuse to recognize one another. And even within denominations, including our own, we divide into camps of liberal-vs-conservative, biblical legalists-vs-social justice advocates, groups within our denomination defined by the issues that divide us. The barriers of generation, race, gender, socio-economic status are alive and well in the Christian church, as evidenced by the fact that Sunday morning is the time of the week that this nation is most segregated along some of those lines.

It is a scandal that the church that has its name from Jesus Christ has so thoroughly ignored the blessing of inclusion.

But we dare not stop at simply naming the scandal. No, the fact that we have been so remiss at spreading the blessing of inclusion gives us a challenge. God’s word to us challenges us to be aware that divisions exist, and to be intentional about breaking across boundaries and expanding our own boundaries to embrace others who share a common faith.

Our preacher at Montreat for the week was James Lee, an African-American pastor of a bi-racial Presbyterian congregation in Austin, Texas. He immediately garnered my attention when he told us that he had played football for the University of Texas! And he earned my respect and the respect of the 1000 or so people in attendance, by engaging every one of us as equals. Throughout the week, Pastor Lee challenged both youth and adults to reach across the boundary of age created by our generations. He challenged the adults to embrace the young people of our churches, and to be intentional about sharing with them our tradition, carefully explaining why we do what we do, so that they can gain an appreciation for the things in our worship that may otherwise seem like foreign language to them. And he challenged us to listen to the youth in our churches, and to find out what’s important to them, and to find ways to include them in every aspect of the life of the church.

When I decided at the last minute to go with the group to Montreat, I didn’t really know what to expect. The boundary between me and teenagers is very real, at least in my mind. I wasn’t sure how I could relate to them. But this generational boundary was forced upon me by my decision to go to Montreat. I could either retreat into myself and not interact with the youth, or I could try to be among them and learn how I could relate to them better.

We stayed in a cabin that had three bedrooms, so everybody was in close quarters. I even learned some new vocabulary. I’d like to share with you some of my new-found knowledge by reciting a sentence using some of that new vocabulary: Dude, like, Montreat was totally word, for shizzel. (Translation: Montreat was a fantastic experience, to be sure; "Dude" is a universal first name that can be applied to anybody with whom you’re conversing!).

By the end of the week, there were a dozen or so unclaimed dirty socks on the floor, empty Oreo wrappers, half-empty coke cans left everywhere. But it was all worth it, because I got to be with 14 of the coolest kids you’ll ever meet! I came to know them, not as a group of people with funny hair and odd clothes, but as people who are full of compassion and love and intelligence. They are young men and women who just want to know God and where God is in their lives.

When we baptize infants, we tell the parents that we have the right to care about their children. We have the right to ask the parents why the children aren’t in church or Sunday school. You see, when we baptize, we covenant to walk together. As a church, we can no longer simply assume that the children are the sole responsibility of the parents, because in Christ they become our children as well. And so, even if there are years and years that separate any of us from any of the children of this congregation, we cannot let those years create a boundary that prevents us from relating to the young ones, or that prevents the young ones from participating fully in the life of the church. We have to live into that new reality created by Christ, the oneness that we experience. We have to be a boundary-breaking people that says to one another: You are important to Jesus Christ, you are important to me, and you are important to this church.

Friends, our world is filled with enough boundaries as it is. Don’t you think that the church of Jesus Christ ought to be a place where those boundaries begin to diminish, and eventually disappear altogether?

Men may be from Mars and women from Venus, but in Christ we are not aliens to one another, because in Christ we are one.

You may say pé-can, and I may say pecan, but in Christ those are differences to celebrate, not cause for division, because in Christ we are one.

Some may be Democrats, and others Republicans, and people may disagree on politics and social issues. But in Christ we come together and wrestle with those things from common ground because in Christ we are one.

There are enough boundaries in this world that separate and divide. Don’t you think that the church ought to be a place where those boundaries are broken?

Before we sing our closing hymn, I invite you to stand, and to grab the hand of the people standing next to you. Even reach across the aisle to the person on the other side. And let us pray.

Lord Jesus, you prayed that all who follow you would be one, even as you are one with the Father. Yet our unity is fragile at best. As we seek to be faithful to the new reality that you have created, give us the boldness to reach across boundaries, to embrace others who are different, and to be a community that celebrates your unconditional love and your amazing grace. Amen.