Reconciliation and Relationships

The scriptures referred to are Jeremiah 23:1-6 and Ephesians 2:11-22.

While contemplating today's passage from Ephesians, I came across a surprising difference between 2 of my favorite science fiction franchises: their attitudes towards enemies. Doctor Who, the longest running sci-fi TV series, premiered the day after President Kennedy was shot. It didn't really become a big hit however until it introduced the iconic Daleks. The Daleks were a warrior race, so mutated by a nuclear war that they ceased to look human and encased themselves in battle armor. They are xenophobia personified, always trying to wipe out or enslave every other race in the universe. They even attacked the Doctor's home world, Gallifrey. The Doctor is loathe to kill any species, even the Daleks, but he has a hard time being a pacifist when facing them and he often maneuvers them into situations where they are wiped out, usually through their own aggressive actions.

In Star Trek, which premiered 3 years after Doctor Who, the main villains were the Klingons, another warrior race. Again the hero, Captain Kirk, has a personal reason to hate them. In one of the films, they kill his son. Yet Kirk, albeit reluctantly, becomes responsible for the admission of the Klingons into the Federation, a kind of Galactic United Nations. And in the second and third Star Trek series, a prominent member of the crew is Worf, a Klingon orphaned and raised by a human couple.

With the Klingons now allies, subsequent Star Trek series have had to create new archenemies, like the Borg and the Cardassians. But each of these eventually becomes an ally, if begrudgingly and out of necessity. Meanwhile, more than 60 years later, the Daleks and their rivals, the Cybermen, remain enemies of the Doctor. I can only think of one alien race, the Zygons, who have come to live, at least somewhat peacefully, with humans because of the Doctor. Whereas in Star Trek, adversaries eventually reconcile.

The theme of reconciliation with one's enemies is at the heart of many of Paul's letters, such as today's. The two adversaries he wrote about were the Jews and the Gentiles (that is, all nations that weren't Jewish). Jesus was a Jew and was revealed by his life, death and resurrection to be the long-awaited Messiah, God's Anointed one. But he was quite different from the popular conception of the Messiah. Instead of a holy warrior king who would liberate the Jews from their oppression under the Gentiles, Jesus came to liberate all people, Jews and Gentiles, from evil and sin. Though the first Christians were all Jews, when Paul preached the gospel in synagogues outside of Judea, the majority of converts turned out to be Gentiles. These were “God fearers,” Gentiles who attended synagogues because they were attracted to a God who was just and moral, unlike the pagan gods, but they did not become converts to Judaism. However, the good news that this God so loved the world that he sent his Son to save all people resonated with many of these Gentiles, who then became Christians.

Problems arose. Jewish Christians felt these Gentiles should become Jews first, getting circumcized and following the Jewish ceremonial laws. But Paul, who had been a zealous Pharisee before encountering Jesus, saw this attitude as a mistake. After all, the first group of Gentile converts, after hearing Peter preach, were given the gift of the Holy Spirit without first submitting to circumcision. (Acts 10:24-48) Another problem was that requiring Gentile Christians to observe all 613 commandments of the Old Covenant diminished what Jesus did on the cross to establish the New Covenant. All who are saved and who become members of God's people, both Jews and Gentiles, do so through Christ's sacrifice. Making the Gentiles retroactively become Jews would be akin to making newly naturalized U.S. citizens become British citizens since that was the national origin of the first citizens of the United States

Remember that the Jews were a barely tolerated minority in the Roman empire. They wouldn't participate in sacrifices to the cult of the emperor as a god. Ever pragmatic, when the Romans realized that monotheism was central to Judaism, and that Jews would rather die than worship any other gods, they secured an agreement that the Jews would pray to their God for the health of the emperor and left it at that. But the Romans never did understand why the Jews couldn't, like Rome's pagan subjects, simply add another place in their pantheon for the emperor. This Gentile attitude towards the Jews went back to the Greek successors of Alexander the Great and is the original source of antisemitism. So you can understand Jewish resentment towards Gentiles and why the first Christians, all Jews, felt the Gentile converts were getting off too easily.

What Paul says about this division in society is interesting. He says that this was one of the things that Jesus died for: to remove the barriers between people. “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. 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 2:13-16)

But, wait a minute! Didn't Jesus die on the cross for our sins? Yes, two of which are not loving our neighbor and not loving our enemy. (Mark 12:31; Matthew 5:44; Luke 6:27) Hatred for those who are different from us is a sin. When Justice Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed to the Supreme Court, an Hispanic acquaintance said that was good because “she looks like us.” That is the least important reason that we should support or oppose anyone for any position. It should be for their competence and conscientiousness.

When we lived in tribes the fastest way to recognize a friend or foe was by appearance—because everyone in our tribe was related. I never thought about the persistence of family resemblance until I went to an extended family reunion and met many distant relatives for the first time who nevertheless looked oddly familiar. If I grew up in a nomadic tribe or even in a small village where I was related to nearly everyone, it would be natural to think of them as normal, and to think of outsiders as odd folks not to be totally trusted, or even to be hated, if that was my tribe's outlook.

Once people started to live in cities, when various peoples mingled and settled, we had to expand our ideas of who was a friend or ally. But even in urban settings, sharing appearance or language or culture still determines who is in our inner circle, doesn't it? And we have seen how in countries where different people have lived together in peace, perhaps for centuries, certain persons can, to gain power, incite folks to attack and kill their ethnically distinct neighbors, such as in Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq, and Nazi Germany. Even here in the United States we are having trouble remembering that being an American doesn't mean belonging to a certain race or religion or national origin. Unless you are Native American on both sides going back thousands of years, you are the descendent of immigrants, most of whom came here because the United States was founded on an ideology of freedom and equality for all.

The idea that the people of God are made up of folks from different nations and ethnicities is in fact found in the Bible. It's in the Torah (Leviticus 19:34) and in Isaiah (Isaiah 2:2-4) and in the book of Ruth, which shows us that King David was part Moabite. In Jesus' genealogy, we find he was descended from at least 3 women who were Gentiles: Tamar, Rahab and Ruth. (Matthew 1:3, 5) During Jesus' ministry he healed Gentiles. (Matthew 8:5-13; Mark 7:26-30; Luke 8:26-39) And after Pentecost, the deacon Philip is led by God to baptize an Ethiopian official who happens to be a eunuch. This puts him outside the normal criteria for inclusion in God's people for 2 reasons: he's a Gentile and he's a eunuch. (Leviticus 22:34; but see Isaiah 56:3-5) But God does not judge people by appearance but by their heart, as he tells Samuel. (1 Samuel 16:7) And we see the apostles being surprised by the kinds of people God calls to come to Jesus.

Paul came to consider himself the apostle to the Gentiles because, though he would preach in synagogues all over the empire, he saw more converts among the God fearers. (Romans 11:13) He came to understand that God had a different idea for the composition of the body of Christ. This caused friction and so the church leaders, headquartered in Jerusalem, met with Paul and figured out what elements of the law the Gentile converts had to observe. And after some debate, and the testimony of Peter, they wrote this: “For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from sexual sins.” (Acts 15:28-29)

Now this was hotly debated throughout the churches Paul founded. (1 Corinthians 8) After all Paul preached that “...by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works so that no one can boast.” But he continues, “For we are his workmanship, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand so we may do them.” (Ephesians 2:8-10) So we are not saved by good works but we are saved by God's grace through faith so that we may do good works. Refraining from the things mentioned by the church council in Jerusalem didn't save you. Rather, they were what someone who was saved would do out of love for God and for their fellow Christians, Jewish and Gentile.

In any relationship there are trade-offs. You have to think of others in the relationship. Marrying means giving up dating other people. Having kids means you can't just go off partying on a whim and leave them to fend for themselves. Belonging to a group means you respect others and don't work against its mission or violate the ethics of the group. You do these things out of affection or love for others in the relationship. If you don't do these things, the relationship will suffer and probably break down.

To be sure, relationships change, but not the essentials, at least not if the relationship is to last. There was a story on NPR about an Iranian couple who came to the US. The father remained very Old World and ruled the family and his wife autocratically. When the wife objected, she was told to shut up. When the kids were grown and married, the mother divorced the father. During this period he discovered and read—don't laugh—Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. In reading this pop psych book, he began to change. In the end, the couple remarried—over the initial objections of their grown daughters! But the man had picked up a skill that researchers say is essential for a marriage to survive: the husband learned to listen to his wife. That change in behavior allowed them to save what was essential: their love for each other embodied in the marriage.

The early church was learning what was essential and what wasn't. Who you were, what you looked like, what race you came from, even what gender you were, were not essential. Paul wrote, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) What is essential is not who you are or were; what is essential is who you trust and follow.

But there were still tensions. If you read Paul's letters you can work out the primary flaws of each group. The Jewish Christians suffered from self-righteousness. They couldn't let go of the old regulations and rules. But the Gentile Christians didn't try to understand, much less respect, the scruples of their Jewish brothers and sisters. They thought that because they weren't saved by their own righteousness, they didn't need to be good. (Romans 6:1-2; 1 Corinthians 6:12) So Paul keeps having to tell them obvious things, like “Don't get drunk at communion” (1 Corinthians 11:20-21), “Don't everyone talk at once during worship” (1 Corinthians 14:29-31), “Don't dress immodestly” (1 Timothy 2:9), “Control yourself sexually” (1 Corinthians 6:18), “Don't gossip or sue each other.” (2 Corinthians 12:20; 1 Corinthians 6:6) In other words, if you believe in Jesus and follow him, act like him!

In our Old Testament reading, the prophet Jeremiah is relaying what God is saying to what he calls the shepherds who are scattering the sheep and destroying the flock. In other words, the bad kings and bad prophets who are dividing the country. This comes after a whole chapter of God denouncing the king of Judah, the descendant of David, for what he has done. He criticizes Shallum, the son of the good king Josiah, this way: “Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, his upper rooms by injustice, making his countrymen work for nothing, not paying them for their labor.” (Jeremiah 22:13) Of Shallum's father he says, “'He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?' declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 22:16) He tells him, “This is what the Lord says: 'Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the alien, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place.'” (Jeremiah 22:3) He goes on after today's passage to condemn prophets and priests who lie, are wicked and who use their powers unjustly. (Jeremiah 23: 10, 11, 25, 32)

When people are treated unfairly, they look for someone to blame. They find scapegoats in other people and turn against one another. Injustice disrupts unity. As a pope once said, “If you want peace, work for justice.” If people think that everyone is treated fairly and equally, they will settle down and work together.

Just as Captain Kirk could not at one point envision a Federation that included the Klingons, we cannot seem to envision a country that includes both conservatives and liberals. And we act as if our adversaries are genocidal monsters like the Daleks, rather than people who believe, as the Declaration of Independence says, that “all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” And this hostility has infected and divided Christians who are supposed to be following the same Jesus Christ as Lord. In my ordination vows, I affirmed, as all priests must, that I believe “the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary for salvation...” Are the things causing divisions in the church necessary for salvation? How can they be, since the Bible doesn't mention Republicans or Democrats? How can it be, seeing that most Christians around the world do not belong to either of these parties? What is necessary to salvation is trusting in the good news of God's love and grace as seen in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, his Son and our Lord and Savior. To require anything else is as much a heresy as believing Christians have to be circumcized in order to be saved.

Paul tells us that we have been given the ministry of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5:17-20) We are to be “ambassadors for Christ.” But, sadly, we still face the same obstacles Paul did. Pride, self-righteousness, lack of respect for others, not listening, unloving and ungodly behavior still divide us. We can't be bothered to make sacrifices to be in the church whose founder said, “If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23; compare to Luke 14:27) We must deny ourselves the idea that our differences are more important than reconciliation, that who we are or how things were are more important than being the body of Christ, that hateful speech and selfish actions are more important than the love that Jesus said was how the world would recognize us as his disciples. (John 13:35)

Let those who have ears, hear!

First preached on July 19, 2009. It has been updated and revised.