2007 Renewal of Vows

Sermon
Bishop Margaret G. Payne
March 20, 22 and 29, 2007

Luke 15:11-32

On days when I feel rushed,
     I often read the newspaper the same way that some people read the Bible –
     I let it fall open to a random page and take the message that appears before my
     eyes as the Word sent to me from above for my special attention on that day.

Two weeks ago I opened a local newspaper that way, and here is the headline I saw:

     Real Christians Don’t Go to Church Any More

At that point I had a choice:
     I could be offended and turn to another page for a better Word,
     or I could stop rushing, sit down and read the article.

I sat down and read the article….. and what it said has a lot to do with
     the text from Ephesians for today
     and our call as leaders of a church that is too often divided by
     difficulties and differences of opinion.

The writer of the article observes members of churches
     fighting with one another about worship styles, life styles
     and what the Bible really means.

He listens to them arguing about the war in Iraq and the sinfulness of the other side,
     and sees them dividing again and again because they cannot agree,
     and then clinging self-righteously to their own small and local church families.

Meanwhile, he writes, he knows some Christians who don’t go to church
     but who spend lots of time working
     in county-wide programs that feed the hungry and
     shelter the homeless, caring for the earth, advocating
     for justice, and engaging again and again in tireless
     protests and efforts to create a more peaceful world.

And so he concludes that real Christians don’t go to church any more –
     I guess he’s thinking along the lines of:
     “by their fruits ye shall know them” – or something like that.

Maybe he doesn’t know that we are justified by our faith and not our works,
     and that the church is the Body of Christ in the world…
     and that plenty of church-goers do all the things that he mentioned…
     but then again….. I wonder if we should take time to think about it when
     a child says that the emperor is naked
     instead of responding automatically with praise of his glorious garments.

So, today, as we gather to receive forgiveness, to renew vows and to bless oil for anointing,
     we might want to take time to notice our nakedness – our own and the church’s –
     and seek guidance for how to wrap ourselves more completely
     in the garment of Christ so that we can look and be more like Christ in the world.

This text from Ephesians calls our attention to a universal, timeless reality –
     there is always some way in which people are divided from one another,
     separated by spaces that sometimes seem as deep as the Grand Canyon,
     and wide with fear and judgment.

At one point in time it was said:
     All men are divided into two classes – Greeks and barbarians.

But there are many, many ways to divide people –
     there is an infinite creativity in constructing barriers:
     Gentile and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised,
     men and women, black and white, gay and straight,
     Christian and Muslim,
     smokers and non-smokers
     skiers and snowboarders….

I remember being reminded repeatedly during my candidacy process
     that I went to a non-Lutheran seminary,
     which always made me wonder if people from other denominations
     called our seminaries non-Presbyterian, or non-Methodist, or non-Reform –
     we love to divide ourselves up, and to put barriers between one another –
     it is a sign of our sinfulness.

But Jesus came to break down the dividing walls between us –
     to make two groups into one new humanity,
     any two groups – not just the circumcised and the uncircumcised.

The image of “dividing walls” comes from the plan of the temple – concentric boxes –
     (you know this) – there was the innermost holy place, then a wall,
     then space for the priests, then a wall,
      then space for Jewish men, then a wall, then space for Jewish women, then a wall,
     and the Gentiles could gather outside all those walls –
     how we love the power that we have to build walls
     and police the spaces that they create

There was a celebration when the Berlin Wall came down,
     but we love walls too much to let that be the end,
     and so now we are building one to imprison the Palestinians,
     and we are building one to “protect” our country from the flow
     of immigrants through Mexico.

We have an idolatry of walls –
     we love the promise that they will keep us safe;
     we love the way we feel when we are on the right side of them.

But we are strangely energized by the hostility in the air
      when walls shape our world – walls create a demonic airspace
     and we are so used to breathing that poisoned air
     that we can barely remember that there is a fragrant alternative that could
     fill our lungs if walls came down
     and hostility was replaced by reconciliation.

Jesus, life in Jesus, the reality of the risen Christ
     is that walls come down and a new humanity is created.

Paul says that God put hostility to death on the cross –
     the cross makes peace, not walls –
     that’s the way that God intended it, anyway –
     the crucified and risen Christ is our peace,
     and he is the reconciling peace that we should preach to a hostile and walled world.

Christ breaks down dividing walls, and we are called to do that also
     as leaders of the church and the faith that bears his name.

But sometimes walls seem so permanent and the rules seem so reasonable.

There is a story that comes from World War II of a group of soldiers
     who brought a fallen comrade to a cemetery in France to be buried.

They found the priest of the local church to ask his permission,
     and the priest asked: Is he baptized?

The men did not know if he had been baptized, and without that certainty, the priest said
     that he could not be buried in the cemetery.

So his friends buried him as close as possible to the holy ground,
     just outside the fence, and then they went away to a local inn to eat and to rest for the night.

The next day, before they left the town, they came back to bid farewell to their friend –
     and they walked around and around the cemetery,
     but they could not find the grave that they had dug just the day before.

So they went looking for the priest, and he told them what had happened.

During the night, his heart had been troubled – he could not sleep
     thinking about his decision.

So he rose up and went outside, and moved the fence,
     so that it included the new grave of the soldier.

If we cannot manage to remove a wall or a barrier,
     maybe at least we can move it, so that more people can be included.

Here’s the thing about walls and fences – they are invisible to God.

The gospel lesson for today is the story about the incredible,
     humanly unimaginable love of the Father.

It is a love that doesn’t notice the difference between the good guy and the bad guy,
     it is a love that flows unchecked over and around sins,
     a love that appreciates repentance, but loves on despite grumpy self-righteousness
     and questionable motives.

We worship this God revealed to us by the life and death of Jesus Christ
     who loves undocumented immigrants and those who want to kick them out
     who loves Palestinians and Israelis
     who loves gay and lesbian people and those who scorn them
     who loves Jew and Greek and barbarian and drug-dealer and slave-owner
     just as much as those of us who play by the rules and serve the church.

God’s love falls on both sides of every wall,
     and so we might as well pull them down so that we can
     enjoy one another more fully, in the reconciling way that God intends.

When we committed to a vocation in the church, we made a lot of promises.

Many of those promises had to do with what we believe and confess,
     and how we will be voice and guide for those Christians
     who do decide to continue to come to church.

But we have also promised to give faithful witness in the world,
     so that the amazing love –
     the reconciling, wall-busting, unimaginable love of God –
     may be known in all that we do.

It seems to me, that in a time when walls are being built in so many places,
     we are called to speak against those walls, visible and invisible,
     and especially to speak against the walls that are being built
     within the very body of our ecclesiastical communities.

Speaking against walls is not the same as being a really nice person
     who hates to offend – sometimes breaking down a wall
     is an enormously offensive act, even to those who might benefit from it,
     and even within the church that claims to worship a savior
     who breaks down the dividing walls between us.

And so, this work of breaking down walls, and being ambassadors of reconciliation
     is not for the piously weak-kneed…

Which leads me to my final point –
     we find the strength to do the work that Christ calls us to do
     by abiding in Christ
     by finding and nurturing our truest and deepest identity in him –
     not in our ordination, or in the esteem of the community,
     or even in believing that we are “right” and “correct” in our beliefs.

Lent has been a time of returning to God
     so that we can strengthen our life in him
     apart from the opinions of others
     and apart from a deeply internal desire to be “right.”

A few years ago I sent my husband a valentine.

On the front of the card, it said:
     If loving you is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

Inside it said:
     Who are we kidding? You know I always want to be right.

After more than 30 years of marriage, we could laugh about that,
     but only because so much love has been shared
     that we don’t need to be right any more –
     (well, at least, not as much as before).

Jesus makes us “right” with God –
     it is such a blessing that our rightness or error on any issue
     is totally irrelevant to God’s love for us –
     that it doesn’t matter which side of the fence we are on
     and that it is this very peace from being loved
     that gives us the ability to witness and carry
     that same reconciling love to the world.

It is a paradox –
when we let go of the need to prove ourselves,
and simply claim the gifts of God, we are the best witnesses and ambassadors.

One of my favorite parts of the ordination service,
comes just before the blessing for the “newly ordained.”

The paragraph begins by charging the person to care for God’s people,
and to be faithful in every way, but then it says:

“Give and receive comfort as you serve within the Church. And be of good courage, for God has called you, and your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”

You see, these vows that we are renewing are a two-way street –
not only do we give, but we should also receive.

In this call, we might not see all the fruits in ourselves and in the people
we serve that we think should come forth after all our hard work.

But our labor is never in vain –
we are the teachers and preachers and doers and conduits
of the only love that has the power to dispel hostility,
break down every wall
and create a new kingdom of justice and peace.

Thanks be to God. Amen.