Roll Down Justice: Christ is Our Peace
Psalm 13
Ephesians 2:13-20
Emmanuel Baptist Church
March 8, 2020; Rev. Kathy Donley
Psalm 13 is a psalm of lament. It is a prayer for when the bottom drops out. It is a prayer for when your hopes have been crushed and then raised and then crushed again until you cry out, “How long? How long, O Lord?”
It is a prayer many will pray today. Perhaps some of us have heard about the newly released UN Report which studied attitudes towards women in 70 countries, including the United States. It found that almost 90% of the men and women in those countries have some specific biases against women.[1] On this International Women’s Day, some are saying “How long? How long, O Lord?”
This week we saw again the dashing of hopes that this would be the year when a woman would appear on the ballot for president of the United States. I read about a 60-year-old man who was sure that a woman would be elected this time. That man was confident, but his own mother was skeptical. She, of course, turned out to be right. She has been saying “How long, O Lord” for longer than he has. And after this week, she is still saying it.
If the Psalter is the hymnbook of ancient people, then these are the sad, angry, protest songs. Significantly, these songs are addressed directly to God, because only God can change this situation. Emmanuel Katongole, Professor of Peace Studies at Notre Dame, said, “Lament is not a cry into a void. Lament is a cry directed to God. It is the cry of those who see the truth of the world’s deep wounds and the cost of seeking peace. It is the prayer of those who are deeply disturbed by the way things are.” [2]
If we are seekers of justice, lament will be the soundtrack of our lives. If we are Christians, we live between the now and the not-yet. We live in the now of brokenness with the knowledge that God was in Christ reconciling the world. The fullness of that reconciliation has not yet been realized. So we live between times. We live with protest on our lips, but with hope in our hearts awaiting transformation, because we trust that God’s lovingkindness will have the final word.
Just like we do, the early Christians in Ephesus struggled with transformation. They wanted to be God’s faithful people, but their imaginations were limited by long-standing divisions. So there was conflict in the community between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. There was a wall of hostility between them. This wall began as a physical wall, a stone wall in the Jerusalem Temple that stood about five feet tall. Gentiles were allowed into the temple, but they were not permitted to go beyond this wall. Signs warned that non-Jews could be put to death for going further. [3]
If this letter was written after the destruction of the temple, then the literal wall was gone, but the people were still separated by mutual hostility. Maybe it is part of being human. Maybe it is part of the brokenness of creation, but we seem to be so very good at building walls and maintaining them. They give us identity and help us feel safe, among our own kind, whether we define that category on the basis of race or religion or gender or national origin.
The literal wall separating Jews and Gentiles is gone and Paul says, even more importantly, Christ has created peace. This passage is one of my all-time favorites and so incredibly important. “But 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 wall, that is the hostility between us.”
Christ has broken down the wall. I love that Mark Miller’s song repeats that so emphatically, because it seems to be something we lose sight of so very often.
Last night there was a send-off for the Albany delegation going to the border this week. Each person going was asked to share something about why they’re going. One woman spoke about work she had done in Guatemala near the end of its civil war and how the brutality of those years continued even after peace was declared, so that those who are now arriving at our southern border represent the next generation suffering from that same hostility. Two Jewish women each spoke eloquently about the parallels between the Holocaust and now, and how they see that “Never again is now.”
I am keenly aware that we are headed to a place where another literal wall of hostility has been built to separate us and them. I learned recently that on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, the people of Berlin gave President Trump one of the wall’s remaining sections. It weighs 2.7 tons. This was no small gift. The President did not accept the gift, but it still made its way here. It now stands in a park in Los Angeles. This letter is inscribed on it:
Dear President Trump,
This is an original piece of the Berlin Wall. For 28 years, it separated east and west, families, and friends. It divided not only Berlin and Germany, but the whole world. Too many people died trying to cross it—their only crime being their desire to be free. Today the world celebrates the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Germany is united again, and only a few scattered pieces remind us that no wall lasts forever. For decades, the United States played a major role in bringing this wall down. From John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan, the Presidents of the USA fought against it. We would like to give you one of the last pieces of the failed Berlin Wall to commemorate the United States’ dedication to building a world without walls.[4]
Humans are so very good at building and maintaining the walls of hostility. History repeats itself and the lament goes up again, “How long, O Lord?”
We could spend a great deal of time listing all the walls that we humans have built preserve our identity, to keep ourselves safe, walls of hostility which cause suffering and death and enmity. We could recognize that Christians have been just as guilty of that wall-building, perhaps even more egregiously because sometimes we did it in Christ’s name. The litany of affirmation and celebration we shared a few moments ago could easily be rewritten as a confession of the many ways we get it wrong.
We do often get it wrong, but sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we submit to Christ’s peace. We recognize the one new humanity he has created. And justice rolls down.
One Sunday in the 1940’s, a young woman invited her boyfriend to go to church with her. Both of them were African American, but the church they attended that day was all white and right in the heart of segregated America. The young man waited in the pews while the congregation went forward to receive communion. He was anxious because everyone was drinking from the same chalice. He had never seen black people and white people drink from the same water fountain, much less the same cup. He kept watching his girlfriend. She received the bread and waited for the cup. Finally, the priest lowered it to her lips and said, what he had said to the others, “The blood of Christ, shed for you.” The man decided that any church where black and white people drank from the same cup had discovered something powerful, something he wanted to be a part of. That boyfriend and girlfriend stayed together and got married. In time, they had a son they named Michael. We know him as the Rev. Michael Curry, He is the presiding bishop of the Episcopal church in the USA.[5]
Sometimes the church gets it right. We teach that people should do what God calls them to do, no matter how hard it is. And our children hear us and believe us. And little girls grow up and hear the call of God to ordained ministry and we pursue it, no matter how hard it is.
We sing “Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in God’s sight.” And when white Christian nationalism rears its ugly head, sometimes, we remember that song and recognize it for what it is – white supremacy with nothing Christ-like about it at all.
We say “Jesus loves you” early and often to babies in the nursery and children of all ages and grown-ups. We preach the love of Christ who went to the cross for you and for me and for the world, the Christ who is our peace. And then, sometimes, in spite of other hurtful messages of exclusion, LGBT people know that the church is wrong and Jesus really is love and they show up at the table, as if they had a rightful place, which they certainly do.
There were ways for Gentiles to draw near, to be included within the people of God in ancient Palestine. There were requirements, hoops to jump through, ways to change one’s identity from Gentile to Jew. The radical thing that Paul says in this letter is that because of Jesus, there is peace with God, peace between Jew and Gentile, a new reality. The Gentiles are now included in God’s promises to Israel, but they do not and need not act like Jews. They are accepted as they are. People on the other side of the wall do not have to become like us. Nor do we have to become like them. Christ has broken down the wall. We are all part of the new reality he has created.
Our government has declared new immigration policy in which the asylum process has been virtually eliminated. They call it expedited removal. There are other laws by other names which make it possible to send people to countries that are not their home countries. Several days a week right now, people are being deported by the planeload, principally to Honduras and Guatemala, the places of violence and corruption and death that thousands of others are fleeing.
Witnesses regularly go to the Brownsville airport to see these deportation flights with their own eyes and hearts and to lament, what one Jewish man calls “the boxcars in the sky.” The human cargo of these planes are brought in on buses. A few weeks ago, the witnesses arrived before dawn ahead of the buses. Like they have done elsewhere, they waved red paper hearts and shouted “We love you” and “no estan solos, You are not alone.” They got remarkably close to the buses so that they could not fail to be heard.
It was dark inside the buses. The people were handcuffed and would be put into shackles before boarding the plane -- hostility expressed in cold hard metal. But the witnesses did everything they could to tear down the wall between them. Heartbroken, they sang and cried and waved their hearts. And then one man, or maybe he was just a boy, somehow managed to pry open a small window at the back of one bus. And he said something. What would you say in that situation? What could be said? The witnesses strained to listen. “Muchas Gracias” he said. “Thank you.”
For a flicker of time, the wall of hostility wavered. For an all too brief moment, there was human connection and perhaps a smidgen of peace.
It is not enough. Not nearly enough.
And so we cry “how long, O Lord, how long?”
We who seek justice must live with protest on our lips, but with hope in our hearts trusting that God’s lovingkindness will have the final word. Because Christ has broken down the wall.
[2] Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice, Reconciling All Things:A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2008), p. 78
[3] Allen Verhey and Joseph S. Harvard, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible – Ephesians, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2011), pp. 97-98
[5] Rachel Held Evans, Searching For Sunday: Loving, Leaving and Finding the Church, (Nashville: Nelson Books, 2015) pp. 150-151