“He has broken down the dividing wall, that is the hostility between us.”
Are you on of us, or one of them? Where do you belong? Do you belong with us, or don’t you? Let’s see. I notice that when you speak your accent isn’t the same as ours round here. And then of course there’s the question of your skin colour. Hmmm. Your clothes tell me something about your tastes and maybe about your income bracket too. It’s helpful to know where you live, the school you went to, who you’re connected with and so on. Just keep talking. What a relief. Now I’ve got you neatly pigeon-holed. You’re not one of us, you’re most certainly one of them!!
Are you one of us, or one of them? Often the question is unspoken. It’s the judgement we make of others, or the judgement they make of us. A complicated person is so much less complicated for us to deal with when we can clearly tell if they are one of us, or not one of us.
A Northern Irish ministry colleague of mine told me a true story of a Jewish writer who was invited to Belfast in the seventies to attend a literary festival. He was stopped at a check-point and asked, “Are you Catholic or Protestant?” He replied, I’m not Protestant or Catholic, I’m Jewish.” To which the soldier replied, “Yes, but are you a Protestant Jew or a Catholic Jew?”
Are you one of our tribe, or one of their tribe from over the hill? It’s just that next time our tribe comes over the hill with our bows and arrows, it would be helpful to know.
All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, writes the apostle Paul. If we needed evidence for human sinfulness it is surely the tribal mindset. These days we don’t call it a tribe. But all sorts of groups become tribes when they begin to define sharply drawn lines between themselves and others, become tightly excluding, define themselves over and against others, operate in a defensive manner. It is at this point that the school PTA or the neighbourhood group becomes a tribe, and that the church becomes a sect.
Writing to the Christians at Ephesus, Paul reminds them that up until recently, they had been in an “us and them” situation. Gentiles – that is, non-Jewish people – were allowed to enter the Temple in Jerusalem, but only as far as the outer courtyard. There was a barrier separating this from an inner court, and any non-Jew trespassing further risked punishment by death. Why? Because Gentiles – that is people like you and me – were outsiders from God’s presence. Religiously, then this was a world with insiders and outsiders, and if you were on the outside – well, that was tough. Salvation was for God’s people, the people of Israel, who carried on their bodies the mark of circumcision reminding them of their Covenant relationship with Israel’s God.
And now along comes Paul and says: In Jesus Christ it’s all different. Access to God’s grace has nothing to do with your skin colour, or your cultural heritage. Forget all that. Forget all the tribal stuff. Forget all this Jews to the right, Gentiles to the left stuff. Now something new is going on, something amazing. We all have access to God’s grace through faith: it’s for everyone. Now the dividing between Jew and non-Jew, between the saved and the unsaveable, crumbles away to dust. “For he is our peace” Paul writes. “In his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall between us.”
What Paul wants us to know is that Jesus didn’t die on the cross for a few select people; no, he died on the cross for all people everywhere. And what that death of Jesus makes possible – forgiveness, salvation, a new kind of intimacy with God by his spirit– is available, by grace, through faith, to all people everywhere. This is a revolutionary truth. It turns upside down all the “us and them” thinking that had penetrated people’s understanding of what religion was about.
No more us and them. But the church is made up of sinful people like us, and we don’t really get it. Just towards the end of my time in the Diocese of Sheffield we had a new Archdeacon appointed, the Venerable Javaid Iqbal. He was appointed to the Archdeaconry of Doncaster, which is a predominantly white area. One of my fellow clergy said to me: “Javaid’s a good guy, but I don’t understand why he’s been appointed to Doncaster – there aren’t many people like him there.” It was a deeply uncomfortable moment laying bare the us-and-them thinking that said Javaid was one of them, and should only therefore minister to them, and should not be ministering to us.
I’m sure many of you were glued to the TV for the final of the Euros last Sunday, and like me were ashamed by the racist backlash against the three gifted players who missed the penalties and who happened to be black. In fact Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka are all committed Christians as is Rahim Sterling who is open in interviews about the massive impact his faith has had on his life and his career. I was impressed with the way that the three players responded to the racist abuse they suffered: calm, and measured, but continuing to name the injustice. These young men are impressive role models.
We human beings continually default to tribal thinking. Yet the word of grace is insistent: the saving death of Jesus makes these artificial barriers null and void, no longer relevant. He is our peace. Christ is our peace because the profound reality of our lives is that we are members of one humanity, the one new humanity that Christ creates in himself. We belong to God, in Christ and we belong to each other.
Last week somebody lent me a children’s book about some little wooden people called the wemmicks. In the wemmick world, wemmicks award each other stars of circles. Wemmicks who are tall and strong and clever get stars stuck to them. wemmicks who are a bit battered and dog-eared get awarded circles – the mark of shame. One particular wemmick was covered in circles and feeling ashamed and miserable. And then amazingly, he met a wemmick who had no circles or stars attached. “How did you manage that?” he said. The answer came – you need to go and see the woodcarver. So along he went. And the woodcarver said – Look, I carved you out of wood, created you. You are precious to me. You are special to me and I love you. “And as he heard these words, all the wemmick’s circles fell away.”
This little parable is a powerful reminder that our identity is Christ with God, and that because of that the judgments that other people attribute to us have no lasting meaning. I hope that Rashford, Sancho and Sako know this deep in their hearts.
Because our identity is in Christ, we can as Christians withstand the pain of the misplaced judgements of others. But there is another side to this. Because we are sinful people, Christians are also prone to judgmental attitudes – to labelling people we meet with the wemmick’ s circles of shame.
Jesus knew this. “Why do you complain about the speck in your neighbour’s eye? Why don’t you take the log out of your own eye?” he says in the sermon on the Mount. Don’t judge other people.
Christ is our peace: he has broken down the dividing wall of hostility. We belong to God, in Christ and we belong to each other.
And that’s why, in our communion service, we share the peace. As we do so, we’re celebrating that greater reality of our belonging together in Christ, that wonderful reconciliation that Christ has achieved for us. So sharing the peace isn’t about having peaceful feelings, or of liking the people around us. It’s about acknowledging that we are Christ’s reconciled people and that like it or not, we belong together.
And because we belong together in Christ we are no longer strangers: neither to ourselves, nor to our God, nor to one another. Paul writes: “We are no longer foreigners and strangers but we are fellow citizens with God people and members of his household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.”