“If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”
The world into which Saul of Tarsus (later to be known as Paul) was born was a world in which people were divided into camps: There were privileged citizens of the great Roman Empire and those who were forced to live under her rule, but granted no special rights. There were those who spoke Greek, the highly educated, and those who spoke their common native tongues. And there were many other social distinctions… For the early disciples, there was also another one: There were the Jews, God’s “chosen people” to whom God had been revealed and to whom all the promises of Hebrew Scripture had been made; and the Gentiles, that is everyone else, the pagan idolaters. From this perspective, the Jews were “us,” and the Gentiles were clearly “them.”
Some things don’t seem to change much. There seems to be something deep in human nature that makes us want to divide the world into “us” and “them” and that causes us to choose up sides, draw dividing lines, and building up walls. We do it all the time in so many ways: In many places it’s about the color of your skin or ethnic makeup or sexual orientation. In other places it’s whether you are Christian or Moslem, or whether you are a Sunni Moslem or a Shiite Moslem; or whether you are a Protestant Christian or a Catholic Christian; or among us Anglicans, whether you are an evangelical or High Church or Low Church. Or these days with the heated debate over sexuality in our Church it can be about whether you support Anglican unity over inclusion and human dignity. Sometimes it’s whether you are immigrant vs. native; or labor vs. management; Democrat vs. Republican; an environmentalist or an oil driller. It’s a world of differentiating “us” vs. “them.” It’s about who is a stranger or “strange” to us, because they are not like us, or do not agree with us. We humans are good at building walls to keep ourselves “safe” and to keep the stranger out.
It’s like the story I was told by the member of a congregation in the South I used to supply regularly, who was a forester. He used to often have to consult property owners to determine boundary lines. Walking up a dirt road to question one such person, he encountered signs all over the fence posts and gate that read: “No Trespassing,” “Beware of Dog,” and “Keep Out… This Means You!” Finally arriving at the door, he talked with the congenial, cooperative landowner. When the forester was ready to leave, the man said to him, “Come and see me again sometime. I don’t get many visitors.”
The great American poet Robert Frost wrote:
“Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall”
St. Paul says in his letter to the Galatians: “…for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith… there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” It is up to us to examine our lives and our hearts to find those invisible but very real barriers that we so easily erect between ourselves and our fellow human beings. God, through Christ Jesus, expands the boundaries of the sacred to include both those whom the rules of high-bound religion would exclude, and those that the secular world would exclude, as well.
We all are in need of the reconciliation spoken of by Paul, because in one way or another at some time in our lives we were meant to feel strange, that we were strangers. We all are in need of a fresh look at just who we are in the eyes of God and where we fit in to the family of God. As St. Paul proclaims, we are all called in Christ Jesus to be one; for through Him we all have access to God by one Spirit. The barriers of hostility, the walls of division, are broken down. In God’s eyes no one is strange; no one is a stranger: we are all citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.
Think again of the racial, economic, gender, sexual, social, theological, or political barriers that mark the terrain of our lives and determine whom we see, touch, and share our lives. If we erect those barriers, they direct our footsteps, where we go and whose terrain we avoid. And when people are avoided because they are different or strange, we are called to offer them hospitality, some space where they are welcome and in which they can be themselves. Hospitality means people do not have to conform to our ways, but that they can be themselves in our presence. This is the message St. Paul proclaims throughout his preaching and writing.
In another powerful passage from Ephesians he says: “But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He is our peace; in His flesh He has… broken down the dividing wall…So He came and preached 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 sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.”
Amen.
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