“Movers of Fences”

First Congregational United Church of Christ

November 13, 2011

The Rev. Sharyl B. Peterson

 

Scripture Readings:  Luke 5: 27-32; Matt. 21: 12-15; Matt 5: 13-17

 

Today I want to begin our reflections with a story.  It’s a true story about a group of American soldiers who were stationed in France during World War II. 

            One day, during a terrible battle, one of their friends was killed.  That evening, they went looking for a proper place to bury him.  Carrying his body, they came to a small Parish Church, and asked the priest if they could bury their friend in the church’s graveyard.  But, because their dead friend was Protestant, not Catholic, the priest refused.  Instead, he allowed them to bury their friend’s body just outside the graveyard fence.

The next morning, the soldiers returned to pay their last respects … but they couldn’t find their friend’s new grave outside the fence.  Alarmed, they went to the priest to ask him what had happened, and where their friend was.  He told them “Don’t worry.” “I couldn’t sleep last night, because I kept thinking about your friend.  I didn’t move his body.  I got up before sunrise, and moved the fence[1].”

I find that a profound metaphor – moving the fence –for what we are called to lift up, and to celebrate, and to recommit ourselves to, each and every time we gather for worship.  It is also a profound metaphor for the values we celebrate in the special observance we are including in our worship today, Veterans Sunday. 

Beginning with today’s worship, as some faith communities recognize and honor both past and present veterans, they – we – might want to consider some of the ways those veterans have helped to move some very large world-fences.  Some very large world-fences that the European-American founders of this country themselves found problematic, and, as they unpacked the idea, even “un-American.”

            In fact, if we go as far back as one of the founding documents of this country, in the Declaration of Independence, at least the beginning of which many of us memorized in grade-school,  we read the proud declaration:  “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, (and) that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  In other words, as citizens of this country, we are called to live in ways that recognize equality, that recognize not just our own rights, but the rights of others, that call us to tear down all the fences that divide people. 

            Interestingly, what many of us may not have learned in grade-school is that in his original draft of this Declaration, Thomas Jefferson didn’t describe these truths about equality, and inclusion, and justice, and freedom as “self-evident” – a rather dry, potentially elitist, political word.  Instead, in his original draft, Jefferson used the word “sacred.”  “We hold these truths to be sacred; that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creation with certain unalienable rights… (including) life … liberty … the pursuit of happiness.” 

            And in our finest hours as a nation, we have indeed striven for – worked for – sacrificed for – some even fought for – those sacred rights for all people.  Many of the wars in which we have engaged have been fought because of our national aspirations to move fences, to make wider and deeper the places in the world where more people truly enjoy liberty, where more people truly experience justice. 

In fact, it’s a pretty safe bet that if you talk to a veteran of any of the wars in which our country has fought, and ask them why they went, why they served, to a person they are likely to answer, “to help free the (people of the country in which we fought).”  War veterans of every kind – soldiers and C.O.s – did what they did to help preserve what most of us understand to be human beings’ – whatever their nationality or place of residence – sacred rights. 

            I remember reading a story several years ago that offers a lovely illustration of this belief.  A pastor named Edwin Bacon tells the story about a close friend of his, who is Jewish. 

As they were eating lunch together one day, his friend told Bacon about an encounter he had had that week with an older African-American man in the Jewish community center where the friend works.  The older man at the Center asked the younger man if he was Jewish.  When Bacon’s friend said “yes,” the older man said to him, “The Jews hold an important place in my heart.  I was in the military company who liberated the prisoners from Dachau.” 

            Liberating others.  Tearing down fences.  Creating liberty and justice for all.

            But it’s important to remember that we don’t come to worship today to worship our veterans, although we do honor them.  And we don’t come this day to this place to worship our country, either.  We come to this place this day to worship our God. 

            Our God who throughout history has called people of faith to be fence-movers in their own times and places.  Who calls us to be fence-movers in our time and place.  To welcome strangers.  To embrace even aliens.  To love and care for the marginalized among us. 

            We come to worship our God who, some 2,000 years ago, gave the world the gift of a man named Jesus Christ, who was the number one, all-time, grand-champion fence-mover.  You only have to flip randomly through the Gospels to find story after story of Jesus moving fences –

or of Jesus challenging other people to move fences. 

            Like the time He heals the daughter of a Canaanite woman – a woman who was deeply despised and “fenced out from” the Jewish community of which Jesus was a part – even as Muslims may be despised or fenced out from some Christian communities today.  Or like the time He heals the beloved “boy” of a Roman soldier – a man who would have been as loathed and despised as any arrogant, power-abusive, “controller” in today’s world. 

            Time after time, we are told that Jesus touches – that He reaches out and puts his hands on – the people who were literally fenced out of regular, “nice people’s” communities  like lepers … and hemorrhaging women … and children … all those who folks who were considered “unclean,” or “undesirable” in Jesus’ time and place.  Today, we might think about our “lepers” and our “hemorrhaging women” – say, for example, people with HIV or AIDS, or the homeless, or undocumented workers, or any other group we try to fence off from contact with us.

            Jesus socializes with – goes to parties with – sits down to lunch and to dinner with – the “icky” people – the “unacceptable” people – the fenced-out people – whom the “nice people” of his day would never, ever have sat down with.  With people like the IRS agents (and embezzlers) of their day … and the hookers …and the drunks, and the thieves, and the chronically unemployed, and all of the other fenced-out people of His day. 

            In that story we heard from Luke’s gospel this morning, we’re told that Jesus invited a tax-collector (a true “scumbag” in Jesus’ time) to join Jesus in his ministry work.  And that out of gratitude, this tax-collector throws a dinner-party, and invites all kinds of disreputable characters as his guests.  And when the Jewish religious leaders hear about this, they were “greatly offended,” and asked Jesus what on earth he was doing eating with crooks and sinners. And what does Jesus say?  He says, “Listen up.  I'm here inviting outsiders, not insiders –

(offering) an invitation to a changed life, changed inside and out."

            In perhaps the quintessential block-bluster fence-moving scene in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus goes into the Temple – into the church itself – into the Holy of Holies – and raises havoc. 

He kicks over the tables of the loan-sharks, and the booths of all those merchants selling doves and other sacrificial animals, and he angrily sweeps his hands through their piles of accumulating cash, and he screams at them:  What do you people think you are doing?  God says, “my house is to be a house of prayer, for all people … and you have made it a hangout for thieves.” 

            He yells at, He criticizes, He derides, all those Temple “insiders” who are so focused on doing business as usual that the “outsiders” – the sick, the lame, the poor, the excluded, the people who most need access to God’s sanctuary, who most need access to God’s priests, and to God’s healing – are kept from coming in.  And the story says that after Jesus had trashed out the vendors’ booths, “Now there was room for the blind and crippled to get in. (And) They came to Jesus and he healed them.”

            Jesus was all about moving – or straight-out knocking down – fences.  He was all about challenging his culture about the fences they put up to exclude other people.  And oh yes, and he challenges us about that too.  He was all about challenging his culture to stop conforming their lives to their culture’s stereotypes and prejudices, to the culture’s mores about who should be “in” and who should be “out,” and to transform their lives, to live their lives in a way

that brought about what Jesus called the “kingdom of God,” the reign and rule of living in the world where there are no outsiders, where everyone becomes an insider. 

Jesus says I challenge you – me … you … every single person who wants to follow in His Way … to become salt for the world … to become light for the world … to show others how it is that God calls us all to live.  To knock down the fences of our times.  To work toward a world in which there is no longer “them” and “us.” 

            And what might that look like today?  As I was preparing this sermon, I had a mental flashback to a YouTube video someone sent me a couple of weeks ago.  It’s an ad, although I’m

not going to tell you what it’s an ad for (although I’ll be happy to give you the link so you can watch it yourselves).  But I will tell you the basic “plot.” 

It begins by showing the outside of a large movie-theater in Brussels, Belgium, then moves to shots of the inside of the theater, where 148 of the 150 seats in the theater are filled with big, tough, biker-looking dudes, complete with tattoos, and muscle-shirts, and humongous muscles.  Out in the lobby, you see ordinary-looking couples buying tickets, and then entering the theater … where they stare up at the crowd of tough-looking men in obvious dismay. 

            There are clearly only two empty seats in the entire place … and to reach them, the newcomers have to climb past several men seated in the first aisle-seats.  Many of the couples shake their heads (and the voice-over shares their appalled comments with us), and leave the theater.  Only a brave few make their way up their stairs, climb over the aisle-seated men, and sit down in the two empty seats. 

And when they do (and this happens with several different couples), the “tough-guy” audience breaks into cheers and happy laughter.  A few folks, it seems, do have the courage to step outside their comfort zones … or have the unwillingness to stereotype others by their appearance… that it takes to knock down a lot of the fences in today’s world.

Now, in our lives, we might not have enough courage to do what many of those movie-theater couples did.  To deliberately plant ourselves in the midst of a group of people whom we have fenced off from our personal worlds.  We might not have – or have had – the kind of courage or commitment it took (and takes) for some people to put their lives on the line in order to help break down world-wide fences.  But we might be willing to do some fence-moving work in other ways. 

            Like, as volunteers, or missionaries, who go to areas in this world where there are no schools, and build those schools, and teach in them,     so that uneducated children can become educated, and are no longer fenced-out of survival, much less success, in their worlds.  Or like the ones who donate their time and their financial resources to travel and offer free dental care … free medical care … free help with housing construction … or free installation of water-wells …

so people in the places to which they go will no longer be fenced out of the world of the healthy and secure … or, at the extreme conditions in which many people in our world live, fenced out of life, quite literally.

            We might be willing to move (or try to move) some fences in our own communities.  Like the fences that separate kids who get a really good education from those kids who have to attend schools which are underfunded and understaffed, fences erected by voters and taxpayers

who seem able to find a dozen “good reasons” not to fund schools.  Or like the fence that separates seniors, “vintage” members of our community, from feeling connected to other people, or from feeling safe and secure in the last part of their lives, fences erected by governmental systems and individuals like the politico who described seniors as “acceptable collateral damage” or another who described seniors as “unfortunately discardable” in our current efforts to fix the economy. 

            Or perhaps even like the fences that faith communities have built – and continue to build – to keep out groups of people who – for whatever reason – they are not willing to “welcome” in their places of worship.  (Perhaps you are flashing back to the Jesus-clearing-the-Temple story,

and that little quotation, “This is meant to be a house of prayer, for all people … but you have made it a den of thieves.”  If you are, then you’re still paying attention.) 

            And friends, if we’re honest, we have to admit there are still a whole lot of groups of people like that, who are unwelcome in a whole lot of faith communities, for a whole lot of different reasons.  In some, it’s because they are differently-abled.  Or because they are mentally ill.  Or because they are very young.  Or are very old.  Or are single.  Or divorced.  Or have families which somehow look “different” from what some people may think of as “the norm” (even though you’ll find it impossible Biblically to find one single type of family that is defined as normative). 

            Fences are still strong and tall in too many of our communities.

            But as people of faith – as would-be disciples of Jesus Christ – we are called to join our spirits with that of that World War II Roman Catholic priest, who understood that regardless of our religious affiliation, we are all beloved children of God.  We are called to join our spirits

with the founding fathers and mothers of the United States of America, who believed in building a country where every person had the sacred rights of a life lived safely and wholly, a life of freedom, and justice, and the pursuit of happiness.  We are called to join our spirits and our efforts with those of the One we call the “head of the church,” that Nazarene radical and rabble-rouser, that outrageous, and supreme mover of fences, Jesus Christ. 

                        When we do, we not only honor and obey our God, we also honor every person across time who has put others before self, who has put their energies and their very lives on the line on behalf of others, who have committed themselves to bringing about the kind of world of freedom … and justice … and peace … that we call the “kin-dom of God.”  Amen.