Invocation & Lord's Prayer: Ginna Bradshaw Congregational Response Ministry of Hospitality Organ Interlude Morning Prayer: Shannon Cook Hymn of Communion *When You Do This, Remember Me* Witness of Scripture: Ephesians 2: 11-22 Anthem *Make Me a Chanel of Your Peace* Temple/arr. Holstein. Julianne Annesley, alto Sermon *No Longer Strangers* David Spain
Recorded on July 21, 2024
Growing up in central Texas in the late 50’s and early 60’s, there were two traditions we followed each weekend. On Sunday mornings we loaded into the Chevy and were in our pew in the balcony of Columbus Avenue Baptist Church, and then later loaded into the Oldsmobile station wagon to be in the folding chairs of Lake Shore Baptist Church. If it was Sunday, we were there. The other tradition happened on Saturday mornings, when with pillows and sometimes blankets in hand, several of us piled in front of the television to watch Bugs Bunny cartoons. Warner Brothers baptized us with opera, humor, classical music, and life’s basic truths.
One of the classic cartoons pitched a battle between Bugs Bunny and a foe, each of whom was safely ensconced behind a high walled fortress. Each fort had a flag—Bugs Bunny’s flag said “We,” and his opponents flag said “They.” After lobbing cannonballs back and forth, the gates of their respective forts would open and Bugs and his opponents would yell charge and run at each other, only to pass each other and into the opposing fort. What would happen next is part slapstick and part truth. Once occupying the captured fort, Bugs would lower the “They” flag and raise the colors saying “We,” and his opponent would lower the flag saying “We” and raise the flag saying “They.” This went on through several such charges and occupations, each time accompanied by the raising and lowering of the identifying markers of “We” vs. “They.”
Surprisingly, or maybe not, there was similarity in the liturgies of Sunday morning and Saturday morning. Each had a style of music—sometimes both classical; each traded in humor of a sort; each proclaimed basic truths. And yet, perhaps the most striking similarity is that both the Warner Brothers and the Baptist Brothers tended to view life from a fortressed, ‘we’ vs. ‘they’ perspective.To be fair, Baptists were hardly the only ones with this perspective. In the Christ haunted South as author Flannery O’Conner described it, religion tended to be shaped as much or more by a Southern ethos rather than a Savior’s ethic.However, this was not a description befitting only the South of the 1950’s and 60’s, for the tension between culture and Christ still exists today for all people everywhere. Does religious faith give shape to everything else, or does everything else give shape to religious faith?
This is not a new question. A long time ago, the apostle Paul dealt with the same question in the earliest days of the Christian Church—Ephesians gives us a picture of that tension. We recall the church in Ephesus was in Gentile territory, in Asia Minor. No longer confined to a population of Jewish faithful, the Spirit that is God has pushed beyond the fortresses of ‘we’ to include ‘they.’ In a rather indelicate phrasing of the conditions of inclusion, the mark of membership was circumcision, which cuts out half the population for which that would not be a consideration. Silly as that demarcation might seem to us all these years later, it is sobering to ponder the blinders we have that future generations will ask ‘what were they thinking?’ But that was the issue of the day for the Ephesian Church, and it is not lost on us that we are the Gentiles, we are the outsiders, we are the excluded. We were not the first to the table when the covenant between God and Abraham was established. Today many of us—not all of us to be sure—but many of us in our culture are the insiders, the included, Jesus’ first pick. But it hasn’t always been that way, and it is helpful to remember we were outsiders and aliens first. When the banners labeled “we” and “they” were distributed, “we” were “they.”
So, Paul sets out to create a new banner called “us.” It may not seem like fresh fabric now, but 2,000 years ago Paul wanted Jew and Gentile alike to know that what God has done in Christ deconstructs walls that had kept people separated. Of all the things the life, death and resurrection of Christ tore down, the veil of separation and superiority was once and for all dismantled. Jesus did not come to deepen divisions and sharpen differences; instead, he came to bring peace and unity, camaraderie and compassion. That message was important to both groups in the Ephesian Church—those who traced their lineage to Abraham and those newly grafted into the historic faith who might consider their latest, greatest status as superior. Christ did not abolish the Torah, nor the Jewish faith, nor anyone who happens to be different. What Christ abolished is contempt for the other—the temptation to think that the person who disagrees with you isn’t simply wrong, but worthless. Paul, who once did frame faith with contempt for those who were different, now raises a different banner, which he summarized in his letter to the Galatian church-- “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” It is difficult now to appreciate how revolutionary that “us” banner must have felt to both groups in the Ephesian Church.
At one level, what Paul is saying is elementary and obvious—we have more in common than we don’t; more to share and gain by being for each other rather than against each other. It seems so readily apparent—Robert Fulghum said all he needed to know he learned in kindergarten and Fred Rogers normalized neighborliness. By spirit and love they were channeling the better angels of Christianity, the better angels of all religions. So why is it so incredibly difficult to live the elementarily obvious? Why is it that those churches we attended on Sunday, where a river named Brazos ran through that town—the river’s full name being “Los Brazos de Dios” meaning “the arms of God”—why was it that river of life was used to stiff arm groups who were different rather than be the embracing arms for all kinds of people in that town?Why so much suspicion? Why so adversarial? Why a framework in culture, and too often in religion—and not just in the Christ-haunted South but in many places all over the globe—that separates, divides, vilifies?
Have we become so anesthetized to life being separated and divided that we think this is nor
mal, by whatever standard gets used to determine normal?
We know hard questions never have singular, simple answers. Sadly, religion at times has been part of the problem—and it is an old problem. Though being chosen was not for self-glorification but to be a light of love for all nations; though Jonah was sent to Israel’s enemy to proclaim God’s steadfast love and mercy; though Solomon’s grand temple was to be a place of prayer for anyone; though Christ said all who are weary and heavy-laden can come to him, religion has at times preferred inquisition and crusade to community and compassion.Perhaps it is something in our wiring, where some part of us is programmed to be cautious and protective; where as Will Willimon has written “thousands of years safely huddling in our tribe hardwired us to regard strangers as foes until proven otherwise.” To be sure safety has its place—not everyone is benevolent—but not everyone is dangerous either. No doubt we need a sense of identity and belonging, but does the hyper-stoking of fear foster a protectionism, or a mob reaction that far surpasses any reality and diminishes not only the others’ full humanity but also our own? Does the framework of dominance define life, or can we affirm that God did not create anyone to live under anyone else’s boot? Theologian Paul Tillich said the core human problem is estrangement —we are estranged from God, estranged from others, estranged from ourselves. There is certainly enough evidence to suggest that estrangement is a powerful description of what the church has called sin.While we would never be naïve about the human problem of estrangement, neither do we accept that estrangement is the Divine intention. Time and again, beginning in the first few chapters of Genesis, our biblical story proclaims that we are made for connecting not dividing, for reconciling not separating. God’s banner unfurls with the word ‘us’ on it.
Years ago, while playing golf with my Uncle Glen, a man of wise, country sense, he spoke of a seminar he had attended about Jewish and Christian relationships. He shared something from the seminar that impacted him, quoting a speaker who said, “Jews are waiting for the Messiah to come, and Christians are waiting for the Messiah to come again, so why don’t we wait together?” The questions we ask go a long way to framing the responses we discern.Some years ago, Bishop Michael Curry told of an awakening moment when his church was hosting a conversation with representatives of the three Abrahamic faiths. On this particular evening, Eva a prominent member of the Baltimore community and a survivor of the holocaust was speaking. Curry described her as a warm and soft-spoken teacher, the kind of person you always wanted to volunteer for to clean the chalkboard erasers.Curry said as she spoke, he was hearing her words but not connecting with her, not truly listening to the story of her living a normal childhood until the violent shadow of bigotry, racism, hatred, and evil forced her family out of their home. But it still wasn’t connecting for him until she raised her arm slightly and her sleeve slid back revealing the number tattooed on her arm.And that is when it hit him—that to her captors she was a number, a thing, an object. When a fellow human, a child of God becomes an object, the unthinkable becomes possible. Curry then recalled Martin Buber’s best book entitled I and Thou, in which Buber writes that God creates people for relationship—not to own or stereotype or ignore another—but to meet one another, to forget what we think we may already know and open ourselves to new possibilities. He then recalled an old saying from his childhood—that ‘everybody is God’s somebody.’ (cited in Love Is the Way, pp. 140 – 145)
What flag do we hoist in the fortresses of our own living? To be sure, there are matters worth standing up for and hostilities worth standing against because Christ’s love never goes along simply to get along, but to transform injustice and heal however hurt happens. But is our banner always adversarial? What is the cost of ‘we’ vs. ‘they?’ Even Warner Brothers knew in its comedic wisdom that frantic and frenzied running between we and they is exhaustingly absurd. Now, we know, if you have no adversary, you have no story. You don’t have much of a show if both flags say ‘us.’ You don’t have a show; but you do have a life.