Sent to Reconcile
Ephesians 2:11-22
July 23, 2006
Rev. Nancy Pfaltzgraf
When I lived in Wisconsin, I was involved in something called The Ulster Project. The Project was begun to provide a safe place in the United States for Catholic and Protestant teenagers from Northern Ireland to get to know one another, discuss what they called The Troubles and begin building bridges of understanding across what was a deep and painful divide.
As part of the project I went to Northern Ireland on two different occasions. I don't think I will ever forget the impact of my first trip; soldiers walking the streets of Belfast in full combat gear, automatic weapons in a ready position; armored trucks patrolling the city and the so called Peace Walls, erected between neighborhoods to make it hard for the paramilitaries from either side to cross over and detonate a bomb. I especially remember one such wall that ran right through a church building. The front door of the church was boarded up, since it would open to folks on the wrong side of the wall. I also remember walking through one of the Catholic neighborhoods with one of my hosts, Father John. We met some wee boys no more than eight or nine years old. During our conversation he told the boys that I was part of a group that helped teenagers go to America and asked them, if they like to go someday. "O, yes," they answered enthusiastically. "When can we sign up?"
"Well, now," Father John said, "You have to be a few years older and you need to know that some protestant teens would be going as well."
"No way," they replied. "We wouldn't go with the Prods, not even to America." When Father John asked them why, they looked at him like he was crazy as they replied, "Why father, because they're Prods and we HATE Prods. All Prods ought to die!" The Peace Walls that divided the neighborhoods were just as high their hearts.
But such hatred and hostility is nothing new. In fact, at the time of Jesus the hostility which was present between the Jews and the Gentiles was every bit as intense and every bit as destructive. In fact, in the temple in Jerusalem there was an actual wall which separated the court of the Gentiles from the courts of the women and the Jews. Over every doorway which passed through that wall, written in several languages, hung a sign which read, "Death is the penalty for any Gentile who dares to pass through this door." The Gentiles were just as fearful and suspicious of these odd people with their odd customs and beliefs. In their hearts, as well as in the temple, the wall between them was long and high. On the one side, the holy law became an instrument of exclusion, walling people out of the promises of God. On the other side fear and suspicion kept it in place. All in all, the dividing wall stood then as it stands everywhere--a symbol of racial, religious and ethnic hostility.
But, as a Robert Frost says so eloquently in his poem Mending Wall,
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.
In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul seeks to remind them of the power of that "something," by reminding them of what God has already done in their midst. Earlier in the letter he reminds them of the individual healing, transformation and reconciliation which they all experienced. Then in today's passage he reminds them of the incredible communal healing, transformation and reconciliation which they also experienced.
[Christ] 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. .... that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, 16and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.
Whether they had been a Jew or a Gentile, as each of them came closer to God; as they opened their hearts and minds and spirits to the love of God; as they began to feel the healing power and the liberating grace of the Spirit within them, they began to discover that their interior walls of fear and hatred and hostility were being torn down. Instead of enemies, each began to see the other as a real human being, like themselves in many ways; a person of dignity and worth; a person in whom the presence of God also lived. And in place of the walls of hostility, little by little, bridges of understanding and acceptance were being built. There is perhaps no greater witness to the power of Divine Love to transform human life than that these age-old enemies should become companions, friends, members of one body, all changed by their coming together, all made new in God's love.
What I think Paul is saying here, was captured in a poem that Rev. Grace Moore wrote after reading the wisdom of a Abba Dorotheus, a 7th century mystic. Moore titles her poem The Circle of Love.
Imagine a circle, and in its midst a center,
and from this center rays extend;
each one, each radius, radiates from the center of the circle.
The farther these radii extend from the center,
the more they diverge,
the more remote they become from one another.
On the other hand, as they approach the center,
they converge and come together.
Now, imagine that this circle is the world,
and the center of the circle is God,
and the radii from center to circumference,
from innermost point to the outer edge
from the outer edge to the very center
are the paths of life of people.
When people withdraw from the center, from God,
they withdraw from one another,
and when they approach the center,
when they seek after God,
they come closer to one another.
Such is the circle of love.
If we do not love, if we are distant from God,
we are distant from one another.
The converse is also true.
The closer we are to each other, the closer we are to God.
Such is the circle of love.
Now, the reality is the letter to the Ephesians would not have been written if there were not some in the early church who sought to rebuild that wall. Prejudice, misunderstanding, anger, hatred and fear always want to build walls! But those who claim to be followers of Christ must remember that, "The church cannot abide when hatred dwells inside. God's arms are open wide. Love will not be denied." It follows as truly as night follows day: the closer we come to God, the closer we come to one another. The closer we are to each other, the closer we are to God.
Through The Ulster Project, I witnessed this truth. Each year we welcomed teens, from both sides of the Peace Wall. When they arrived they were pretty much two separate groups, the Catholic teens anxiously clinging to each other and the Protestant teens doing the same. During the course of the project month, all of us attended worship in both Catholic and Protestant churches, we worked together to feed the homeless, we did fun things, like going to Great America, and we participated in Discovery Sessions where we built relationships and talked about issues of fear, hatred and prejudice that we all share, no matter what country we call home. In the process the walls began to come down and friendships were built. One time stands out in my mind as a vivid picture of what happened time and time again. In one discovery session near the end of one Project we were doing an exercise where the Northern Irish teens told their own stories of how The Troubles had affected their lives and their families, while the adult leaders and the American teens provided a safe circle of witnesses. Two girls -one Catholic and one Protestant- were sitting together on a love seat. One talked about her brother who was killed by one of the paramilitaries. The other talked of having her home invaded in the middle of the night, having floor boards house torn up in search of weapons and having her brother carted off to jail as a suspected terrorist simply because of where they lived and where they went to church. As they talked, they cried and so did we. As they talked they began to hold one another in a loving supportive embrace, aware for the first time in their lives of how everyone was affected by the hatred and the violence, no matter which side of the wall they lived on. In our closing devotion that day each teen was given a stick and asked to break it in two pieces, as they remembered the brokenness they had just witnessed. Then they were asked to tie those broken pieces together as someone read: "[Christ] 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. .... that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace," In that moment we all felt the brush of angel's wings and knew that God was surely present with us.
There are still so many walls! Something there is that doesn't love a wall; something that wants it down. The God of Love invites us to open our hearts, minds and spirits to that something; to allow the walls in our own hearts to be dismantled brick by brick and stone by stone. The Spirit of Wisdom draws us closer to God to the table of love she sets for us all to drink the wine of reconciliation and eat the bread of peace. Thus reconciled to God, Christ sends us out to be agents of reconciliation and instruments of peace bringing down walls of fear and hatred whenever and wherever they exist. Amen.
