In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit ☩ one God and mother of us all. Amen.
You’ve probably heard the cliché “Good fences make good neighbors.” Maybe that’s true for some neighbors, but it simply doesn’t work when it comes to our faith. Good fences make terrible Christians. In the letter to the Ephesians, we heard this morning that “For Jesus is our peace; in his flesh he has made both Israel and Gentiles into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” The Greek actually says that Jesus “destroys the dividing portion of the fence.” You might know that the saying about good fences comes from a Robert Frost poem called “Mending Wall,” in which he makes the point that good fences do not actually make good neighbors. Frost writes “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” As we read in Ephesians, that something that doesn’t love a wall is called the Gospel.
As you’ll recall last Sunday when I preached about the context and overall themes of Ephesians, I said that the church in Ephesus was experiencing some turmoil. From what we can piece together from this letter and other ancient sources, there was conflict between the Gentiles Christians, that is, those who were not Jews before becoming Christians, and those who were Jewish. For generations, Israel had seen itself as the chosen people of God. God may well save and bless the entire world, but that blessing comes through a Jewish Messiah. Understandably, this identity as the chosen people was a source of pride for Jews. Given the nature of human sin, it’s not surprising that along with this pride came an unhealthy sense of superiority among some. The Gentile converts to Christianity generally had pagan roots, and so when you compare pagan beliefs to the chosen people of God, it does seem that one would be preferable. This was one side of the tension.
The other side was that Jewish Christians remained observant Jews who believed in the Messiahship of Jesus. They generally kept the Sabbath, dietary laws, and religious observances. Meanwhile, the Gentile Christians were experiencing what they perceived as true freedom in Christ – they ate what they wanted to and didn’t have to keep any sort of purity laws. And so they looked down on the Jewish Christians for perhaps being too conservative, too stuck in the past, too likely to misunderstand and miss out on the freedom of Christ.
Both sides saw themselves are superior to the other, as being more correct in their interpretation of faithful living. I know it’s really hard to imagine what that would be like. We’re really good at building fences – whether they be literal fences across borders, or cages holding immigrant children, or gerrymandered lines on voting maps, or a box on an employment application that asks if you’ve ever been convicted of a crime, or the assumption that if you are wealthy and white that you don’t understand what it means to have struggles, or media outlets and political parties that insist if you care about a particular topic that you have to vote for their candidate.
Surveys have shown that parents often care more about the political affiliation of their child’s future spouse than nearly any other category. The racial tensions in this country remain sinfully and incredibly high. As the middle-class is evaporating, the wall between the top 1% of those with wealth and everyone else is growing taller. Out of pride and fear of litigation, we rarely hear apologies but often hear blame and scapegoating. We are so good at building fences.
Of course, sometimes you need a fence. In John, Jesus says that he is the Gate, which assumes that there is also a fence. Fences are great at keep livestock from wandering off and predators out. Retaining walls can prevent landslides. Privacy fences can turn a crowded backyard into an oasis. Fences are not always bad things, it’s about how we use them; and perhaps more importantly, it matters how wide the gate is. When we use fences to keep ideas out or people trapped then we get into trouble.
As we heard in Ephesians – in Christ the dividing wall has been broken down, he has made peace, he has reconciled us. We so often overlook this work that Jesus Christ has done for us already. If you hang out around Christians or politicians, you’ll often hear someone say something like “We need to break down the walls between us” or “We need to reach across the aisle.” And they generally mean these things in all sincerity and with good motives. But these phrases completely miss the point of the Gospel.
If you and I disagree about something, perhaps something really important, perhaps something so important that we’ve built a fence between us because of our disagreement, what’s going to happen when we tear down that fence? We might exchange words or we might even exchange punches. If we take it as our mission to dismantle fences and destroy walls, well, we might end up starting some wars. In this sense, the fence was the peacemaker. For one, this is idolatrous because it puts a fence, whether a literal or an ideological one, in place of Jesus Christ as our peace. But perhaps more importantly, the fence didn’t really create peace, it simply prevented hostility.
The Gospel’s vision for peace and reconciliation isn’t as simple as comingling with people on the other side. Tolerance is not a Christian virtue. Rather, our calling is higher than that. Our faith is about the new creation inaugurated in the Resurrection. It’s not that all of the red dots and blue dots need to break down the wall between them and become a mixture of dots that are next to each other. So often though, that’s what we do when we tear down fences or think about reconciliation. What Jesus Christ does is to take the red dots and blue dots and turns them into green dots. Peace only comes when we are transformed in Christ into something that we were not before the saving grace of God.
As Ephesians notes “For Jesus is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one.” It goes on to say that in Christ, God creates one new humanity in place of two, through the one body on the cross, that we might have access to the one Spirit. So then, we are no longer strangers and aliens, but we are citizens of the commonwealth of God, all joined together as the Body of Christ. The operative word in this section of Ephesians is “one.” It’s not that Jewish Christians are right or that Gentile Christians are right, but rather that Christ is right. That truth is true for every single division that you can think of.
But when we tear down fences and we aren’t transformed, nothing changes, we just find new ways to divide ourselves. When we say, “You’re welcome to join us if you’re willing to follow these rules,” then we’ve missed the peace that Christ offers to us. Ephesians says “Christ has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances.” All the things that we use to separate ourselves from one another have been abolished in the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It’s about new creation, about an option that you had never considered, about being transformed in Christ. As I said last Sunday, that phrase “in Christ” is a shorthand way of saying that we recognize that the story of our lives is not the story that we choose to tell ourselves, rather the story of our life isn’t even ours, it is God’s story and grace is God’s including us in it. And if God is the source and the end of all things, then we maybe don’t have to hold onto the reigns so tightly. If our sins are forgiven in Jesus, maybe we don’t need to hold each other’s mistakes over their heads. If, by virtue of Baptism, the Holy Spirit dwells within that person who is the complete opposite of you, well, then that foundation of Jesus Christ as the cornerstone means so much more than any differences. As is noted in today’s reading, there was a time that we were without God’s saving grace, when we were hopelessly dead in sin with no way out. And then the love of God was made manifest in Jesus and we were not only shown his way of love, but we were brought into it. When we take that story of God’s generous, abundant, undeserving, unwavering, and lavish grace towards us to be the core narrative of our lives, then all of the reasons that we have for building fences fall apart.
This, though, is hard work, and so it is often left undone. It’s far easier to walk around with a sledgehammer and break down walls and institutions. To be sure, some of those walls do need to come down. But the world has more than enough social justice warriors already, we don’t need more of those. Getting pleasure out of watching the public disgrace of others is just as barbaric as watching people be fed to lions in the Coliseum. We fool ourselves into thinking that we can dismantle something like racism or sexism with policies and procedures when we are unwilling to actually change how we interpret and live in the world. It is so very easy to tear down and always be on the lookout for what others have done wrong. That’s not the Gospel.
Rather, our Baptism into Jesus Christ compels us to actually live in Christ. And even if we agree that being a part of the new creation in Christ is a good thing, change is still challenging. So it can be hard to ask questions like what is it in us that needs to die so that we can live more fully in Christ? Is it our need to always be right? Is it our insecurity around having enough? Is it our fear of not being forgiven? Is it our desire to be on the winning side? Is it our disgust with ourselves that we project onto others?
The way to thrive in this peace of God which passes all understanding is to have the Resurrection as the center of our lives, as the thing that we orbit around. It’s not that we do any of these things to earn God’s grace or to become better people, but rather in order to more fully become what we already are – the beloved children of God. And so we devote ourselves to prayer and worship, not because that’s a rule, but it’s how we enter our story. We are generous, not because on the cosmic April 15th we’ll have to settle our accounts with God and make sure we did enough charitable giving, but rather because when we practice generosity, we are practicing being the way we created to be. We are forgiving, not in order to earn our forgiveness, but we forgive because by being forgiven, we have been set free from keeping score.
These are three of the hallmarks of what it means to be in Christ as citizens of the new creation: prayer, generosity, forgiveness. I am convinced that if Christians took these three: prayer, generosity, and forgiving to be their most important work that we would live in a more just, equitable, and peaceful society. But we can’t just tear down walls without first grounding ourselves on the foundation of Jesus Christ. So instead of picking up sledgehammers, pick up a Prayer Book. Instead of writing a scathing letter to the editor, write a check. Instead of demanding that someone else make a change, proclaim how the grace of God has transformed you, and invite that person to join you in the new creation of Jesus Christ. These are some tangible ways for you to be more fully in Christ and will lead us more fully into the Resurrection where the fence has already been torn down by Christ: pray, give, and forgive.
