THE RISE AND FALL

THE SECRET OF COMMUNITY=

Ephesians 2:11-22

Christ breaks down the barriers between people.

A sermon pr= eached by

Rev. Willia= m O. (Bud) Reeves

First Unite= d Methodist Church

Hot Springs, Arkansas

September 2= 3, 2007

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A few y= ears ago in downtown Little Rock, there was an old hotel that had fallen into disuse. Some developers bough= t it and announced that they were going to put a new, modern office building whe= re the old hotel had stood. The = first thing they built was a construction fence next to the sidewalk. Some construction fences have peep= holes, but this one was completely boarded up.&nb= sp; For several months, nobody on the street could see what was going on behind the wall. I had to wal= k by the construction site a time or two because it was near our Methodist headquarters. Even though I c= ould hear construction sounds coming from beyond the fence, I could not see what= was happening on the other side.

Finally= the day came when the construction fence came down, and there, where the old hotel = had stood, was a gleaming new office building, ready for renters. The wall had come down, and someth= ing new and beautiful was revealed in its place.

We live= in a world of walls. They are real= ities of contemporary life. Some wa= lls are good; they protect us, provide boundaries, and block unsightly scenes from view. But sometimes walls are= signs of hostility and alienation. = They are built to separate, to ostracize, to limit other human beings. Walls of hostility are a reality i= n our world, too. But Christ calls = us to experience the opposite of hostility. He invites us into community and peace: “For he is our peace; in his flesh he has …broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.”= = [1] Let’s look at some ways Jesus tears down the walls.

Jesus b= reaks down the barrier of religious hatred. If there has been one significant development recently in global religion, it has been the rise of religious hatred around the world. Ever= ywhere you see increased tension between different religions. Radical Islam is famous for its ha= tred of other faiths. Religious wa= rs are going on in the world right now. Even within the same religion, there is animosity leading to violenc= e. Protestants and Catholics square of= f in Ireland; Sunnis and Shiites kill each othe= r in Iraq. I just don’t get it.

But rel= igious differences are nothing new; people have been fighting over religion since = it was invented. Paul is talking in = the Letter to the Ephesians about the hostility between Jews and Gentiles. To the Jews, all Gentiles—an= ybody who was not a Jew—were despicable people, godless, lost, without hope= in the world. They were forbidde= n even to enter the Temple in Jerusalem. A few years ago, archeologists une= arthed an inscription that stood at the entrance to the Temple. It read, “No foreig= ner may enter within the fence and enclosure around the temple. Whoever is caug= ht will have himself to blame that his death will follow.”= = [2] = Their slogan was not “= Open hearts, open minds, open doors”!

It is this hostility that Paul address= es in our Scripture text today. Whi= le he acknowledges that the Gentiles were up the creek without a paddle—“you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Isr= ael, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world”[3]= —he explains that the reason Chr= ist came was to break down the barrier of hostility that had been there for generations. Christ came to c= reate community, to make peace, to bring the Jews and Gentiles into the same fami= ly of God. Paul says, “= 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 wal= l, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humani= ty 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 b= oth of us have access in one Spirit to the Father.”[4]=

Where Christ is present, religious bar= riers fall, even with people who do not even believe in Christ—yet. How can we expect them to ever bel= ieve in Christ if we do not show them love and respect first? When the power of Christ begins to= work, the barriers start to fall, community begins to grow, the stranger becomes = the friend, and the outcast is included.

During World War II, some American sol= diers took a dead comrade to a French cemetery to have him buried. The priest at this small Catholic = Church told them that he was duty-bound to ask if the dead man had been a baptized member of the Catholic Church. His buddies didn’t know. The priest said he was sorry, but he could not permit burial of a non-Catholic = in the church cemetery. So the soldiers took their fallen comrade and buried him just outside the cemetery fence. The next day they came= back to make sure the grave was all right, and to their astonishment, they could= not find it. There was not trace = of a freshly dug grave outside the fence. Then the priest walked up. He told them that he had been so troubled= by his refusal to bury the brave soldier in the churchyard that he had risen e= arly in the morning and personally moved the fence to include the body of the soldier who had died for the freedom of France.

The love of Christ compels us to enlar= ge the boundaries, to move the fences out, to include everyone we can in the famil= y of God.

Another barrier Jesus breaks down is t= he wall of racial prejudice. We = have made some real progress toward racial justice in the last 50 years, but we still have not realized the dream articulated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—the dream of a day when people will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. This week we have celebrated and remembered the events of 50 years ago when nine brave black children integr= ated Central High School in Lit= tle Rock for the first time. Can you i= magine the courage it took for one of those teenagers to walk down that sidewalk a= nd endure the angry voices of the people who hated them for the simple reason = that they were born of a different race?

We have made progress, but minorities = still have a tougher row to hoe. You still hear racially prejudiced language.&n= bsp; There are still statistical disparities in education and economic opportunities between whites and everybody else. Just this week thousands of people marched in Jena, Louisiana, to protest the perceived inequities in our justice system. I don’t know what the extent of those injustices was, but the fact that= the question was raised means we have not yet achieved the dream.

Jesus came to break down those kinds of barriers, too. Jesus loves al= l his children equally—“red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.” In the Letter to the Galatians, Paul gives our basic understanding of equality: “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.= ”= = [5]= Race, gender, nationality, economic condition—none of these walls exist under the love of Jesus Christ. He gives us the power to overcome = the barriers of the past.

One of the Little Rock Nine was a youn= g lady named Elizabeth Eckford. She = was the subject of one of the most dramatic photos of the Central High crisis.<= span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> Will Counts of the Arkansas Gaz= ette took a picture of Elizabeth, 15 years old, walking down the sidewalk surrounded by a shouting mob. The photo caught a white teenager = named Hazel Bryan in mid-shout, her face contorted with anger and hatred. Forty years later, in 1997, as the nation was remembering Central High, Hazel Bryan Massery sought out Elizabe= th Eckford and apologized for her hatred.&nbs= p; After forty years of that incident being portrayed around the world, after forty years of that burden weighing on her heart, Hazel asked Elizabeth to forg= ive her. After forty years, with = the same dignity that propelled her down that sidewalk, Elizabeth Eckford accep= ted Hazel’s apology.

Christ breaks down the barriers between people, but sometimes the barriers are not the external barriers of religio= n or society, but the internal walls we put up within our own hearts. We go about our daily lives with a particular outlook on life, an attitude toward the world. That outlook or attitude determine= s how we interact with people we meet. If we choose, we can let the walls of hostility, resentment, bitterness, alienation, mistrust and anger build up inside us until there is no way we = can touch or be touched by other people. Those of us who are Baby Boomers remember the anthem of alienation s= ung by Simon and Garfunkel, “Hiding in my room, safe within my womb, I to= uch no one and no one touches me. I am a rock, I am an island.”[6]=

Christ comes to smash the rock of lone= liness, to storm the island fortress of alienation, to tear down the walls of resentment and bitterness. Ma= ybe you have been hurt or given raw deals in life. Maybe you deserve to be angry. But you don’t have to stay t= hat way. The love of Christ enabl= es us to overcome all that, to see people as children of God, to step forward with trust and hope into a positive future.

Here’s the secret I want to shar= e with you today. You can actually b= e a force for community. You can = be an agent of Christ’s peace in the world. You can work for reconciliation. Because you have let Christ tear d= own your walls, you can break the barriers with other people, to include them in the community of love. How? By prayer, by loving other people,= by refusing to condone or participate in behavior that excludes people, by openness to folks who are not like you.&nb= sp; Maybe we can’t wipe out religious hatred or racial prejudice in the world. But we can create community right where we are by the way we live day by day.

Walter Wangerin, a Lutheran minister a= nd writer, saw the walls both built up and torn down in two very similar incidents. They happened in t= wo self-service gas stations. On= e cold and rainy night, Wangerin was filling up his car, when suddenly the young m= an watching the station stood beside him.&nbs= p; He smiled and said, “Hello.” He looked directly into Wangerin’s eyes as he spoke, and you could just tell he cared about w= hat was going on at the gas station. When Wangerin paid for his gas, the young man did a very simple but nowadays extraordinary thing. The shook his customer’s hand and said, “Thank you.” No big deal. A forgettable incident. Except as Wangerin got back in his= car his wife said, “Why are you smiling?” Walter had experienced commu= nity between him and a stranger. H= is life had been built up by a wall torn down.

A few days later—a bright, sunsh= iny day—Wangerin filled up at a different station and went in to pay for = his gas. The woman attendant just= sat there, staring down at the blank desk.&nbs= p; Finally she snapped, “Whaddaya want?”<= /p>

Wangerin said, “I’d like t= o pay for my gas.”

“How much?” she asked.

“Seventeen…” his voi= ce trailed off.

The woman snatched the money and stuff= ed it in the register. There were a= ngry creases all over her face. She cracked her gum like a bullwhip and whirled her hair around a finger. Wangerin stood there a moment too = long, and the woman looked right through him and growled, “You stuck? What’re you waitin’ on?” As he slid back in= to his car, Wangerin felt heavy. The woman’s sadness made him sad.

Thinking about these two incidents, Wa= ngerin wrote:

Every time you meet anoth= er human being you have the opportunity. It’s a chance at holiness.&nb= sp; For you will do one of two things, then. Either you will acknowledge that h= e is, or you will make him sorry that he is—sorry, at least, that he is in front of you. You will create, or you will destroy. And the things you dignify or deny= are God’s own property. They are made, each one of them, in his own image= .

There are no useless minor meetings. There are no dead-end jobs. There are no pointless lives. Swallow your sorrows, forget your grievances and all the hurt your poor life has sustained. Turn your face tr= uly to the human before you and let her, for one pure moment, shine. Think her important, and then she = will suspect that she is fashioned of God.[7]=

This is the power of Christ. This is the way of peace. This is the secret of community. Christ breaks down the barriers be= tween people. Paul says, “= 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 join= ed together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are bui= lt together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”= = [8]= That’s the community of Chri= st.

On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Rea= gan spoke to the people of West Berlin at the base of the Brandenburg Gate, near the Berlin wall, a symbol of the Iron Curtain that separated the people who lived under the oppressive regime of communism from the West. They turned the sound system so th= at the President's words could also be heard on the Communist-controlled side of t= he wall. Reagan’s words th= at day signaled the beginning of the end of the Cold War and the fall of communism= . A little over two years later, at the h= ands of the free citizens of Berli= n, the wall came down.

Reagan ended his speech that day by addressing the last of the hard-line Communist leaders of the Soviet Union:= "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Sovi= et Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!'&qu= ot;= = [9]

Let me say t= o you today, wherever you see the barriers of religious hatred or racial prejudic= e, for the love of Christ, tear down this wall! Wherever you find the barrier of s= in or separation, alienation or bitterness, for the love of Christ, tear down this wall! Let your heart be a dwe= lling place for God. Let Jesus be your cornerstone. Let Christ be your peace. Open the gate. Tear down the walls, and live in community. Amen!

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