MUMC Sermon-07/23/06

Yesterday morning I logged onto nytimes.com to read the latest on the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. The headline in the center of the page caught my attention and has kept it ever since. “Across the Middle East, Sermons Critical of the U.S.” The article went on to describe how imams at Friday prayer throughout the Arab world used their time of public discourse to lament Washington’s response to the situation unfolding in Lebanon.

As I read, I couldn’t help but wonder how the headline would read if it were describing what would happen in Christian pulpits across this country this morning. “Across the United States, Sermons…” Two questions come to mind: How would that sentence end? But also, and perhaps more importantly, how should that sentence end?

As far as the first question goes, it’s my unfortunate suspicion that if a consensus were to be found, it probably wouldn’t involve the conflict in the Middle East. All too often, the pulpit and pews alike can become hiding places from the things about our world (or ourselves) that we would rather not face…or at the very least have an hour break from. After all, we’re here to worship God, not talk politics!

And I couldn’t agree more. Which is why I feel we must talk about the conflict in the Middle East today. On Thursday I was speaking with a friend of mine, who knows I am a clergyperson. Remarking on the apparent religious undertones of nearly every conflict in the news - including the one between Israel and Hezbollah — he asked me, “Doesn’t it ever make you want to give up? I mean, can religion possibly produce anything other than division? Doesn’t it make you wish you weren’t a pastor?”

“Actually,” I said, “it makes me thankful I’m not a politician.” Because I believe if there is any reason to hope in the face of seemingly hopeless situations, if anything is ever going to change, if any differences are going to be made that matter then it will come from Sunday pews and Friday prayers long before it will ever come from parliaments or policies.

I realize that I am now teetering dangerously close to the brink of either complete naiveté or total narcissism, but hear me out. Or better, listen to some voices far more seasoned than mine. First, hear again the words from the first-century letter to the church at Ephesus. Of Jesus the writer claims, “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. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity 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.” (Ephesians 2.14-16)

Here, the “two groups” referred to are Jews and non-Jews, or Gentiles. And for our purposes, the significance of these groups is two-fold. Not only is it historically significant, locating us Christians in the larger story of the ancient Hebrew people, but it is symbolically significant as well. When and where the letter to the Ephesian church was written, there did not exist two more disparate groups than Jews and Gentiles. Walls of ethnicity, culture, religion, status, language, and supposed purity existed between them.

This morning’s text then insists that there is something stronger than those dividing walls. And it claims that Jesus’ very work was to bring that stronger thing into being. By creating “in himself one new humanity in place of the two…reconciling both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.” The cross is the end of hostility and the beginning of reconciliation with God and one another because the cross is the place of love. And not just any love, but a love that is active, fearless, unconditional, and defiant. Only such a love could transform an object of death into a sign of reconciliation.

Ah, but I know some of you are shifting in your seats at that one. “Since when is the cross mostly a sign of reconciliation?” you say. All over the world and down the street it’s used as a barrier for so many. Sadly, this is true. And so some would say that what the cross means to any given person is all a matter of how they see it. This is true too. But “how they see it” is all a matter of how we carry it. Whether you like the way the cross has been used or not, we who have gathered here today are all people who have been marked by it. It’s ours, to hide, to wield or to bear. It’s ours.

As most of you know, earlier this month I had the opportunity to lead a group of high school students to a place called Taize´. This small village in southeastern France is home to a monastic community of Christian brothers and has become a place of pilgrimage for young people from all over the globe. Taize´ traces its beginnings to 1942 when a young Christian from Switzerland named Roger moved to the village to create a place of sanctuary for those affected by the Second World War. Among the first people welcomed during the war were Jews in hiding. In 1945, among the first people welcomed after the war were German P.O.W.’s. A dividing wall fell. In Taize´, the cross is the death of hostility and the beginning of love.

Sixty years later there are over 100 brothers living at Taize´, Protestant and Catholic alike. Months before his own death last summer, the founder Brother Roger attended Pope John Paul II’s funeral mass. Brother Roger, a protestant, was served communion by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict. A dividing wall fell. Again, the cross is the death of hostility and the beginning of love.

On Fridays in Taize´, evening prayer concludes with a service called “Adoration of the Cross.” The large cross at the front of the church is taken and laid down on the floor, where hundreds of worshippers will wait their turn to come and pray around it. There is candlelight and singing. I went forward with the crowd — honestly more out of curiosity than anything else — to pray at the cross. I was a bit suspicious at first…that it would be ritualistic or cheesy. I approached with all manner of reservation and inhibition in my heart. And then everyone around me knelt down. So I did too. The crowd shuffled forward, on their knees toward the cross. It was stunning to make that journey in that manner with people from all over the world. When I took my place at one extremity of the cross I started to cry. I sobbed. A dividing wall — one inside — fell. The cross is the death of hostility and the beginning of love.

It’s this love which I believe leads us back to one of the first two questions we began with today. The one about the hypothetical headline. “Across the United States, Sermons…” How should that sentence end? Which is another way of asking, what is it that we want to do here today? After all my talking and all your listening and all our singing and praying, just what is it that we’re hoping for?

It’s love, right? Receiving God’s love and extending that love back to God and neighbor. “But what does it mean to love?” Brother Roger asks in his final written words before his death. “Could it be to share the suffering of the most ill-treated? Yes, that’s it.” And he continues, “Could it mean having infinite kind-heartedness and forgetting oneself for others selflessly? Yes, certainly. And again: what does it mean to love? Loving means forgiving, living as people who are reconciled.”[1]

And what does it mean to love like this? We do not have to read the papers and just shake our heads. We do not have to throw our hands up helplessly. Because there is no barrier — between people, races, religions, or around the human heart — that cannot be breeched with love. All we must do is decide how to begin. And it can be small. Brother Roger did not liberate a concentration camp. In a time of destruction he just refused to despair, and then simply protected and fed the few and the vulnerable.

That’s it.

And that’s it. That is why we’re here today. In a world of destruction to refuse despair and choose love. There is hope friends. And it continues here. “Across the United States, Christians…” The headline is in our hands. Let’s end it well.

[1] Brother Roger, Unfinished Letter, p.2.