IT'S ALL "US"

A Sermon for the 7th Sunday after Pentecost
Pastor Laura Gentry

Ephesians 2:11-22

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.

There was a young man who was an All-American football player in college and then went on to play professional football for a few years. After a brief career, he came back to his alma mater as an assistant coach. One of his main responsibilities was to go and recruit players the team. Before he made his first recruiting trip, he went in to visit with the head coach—the same coach for whom he had played when he was in college.

The head coach was a serious old guy with a raspy voice from all the years he’d yelled at players. He had held that position as head coach for many years, was widely known and highly respected all across the country. The new young coach said to him, “Coach, I’m about to head out on my first recruiting trip, but before I go I want to be sure that you and I on the same page. Tell me, Coach, what kind of player do you want me to recruit?”

The old coach leaned back in his chair. He looked the young coach straight in the eyes and said: “Son, I’ve been at this job a long time and over the years I have noticed that there are several different kinds of players. For example, there are some players who get knocked down and they stay down. That’s not the kind we want!” He said, “And then there are find some players who get knocked down and they get right back up only to get knocked down again and then they stay down. That’s not the kind we want!”

And then the old coach went on: “And then there are some players who get knocked down and they get knocked down and they get knocked down, and every time they get knocked down, they get right back up!”

At this point, the young coach got excited and he said, “Now, that’s the kind of player we want, isn’t it, Coach?”

“No!” said the old head coach. “We want the one doing all that knocking down!!”

Now in today’s epistle lesson, the Apostle Paul is talking about this kind of incessant knocking down, but he’s not talking about knocking down people—like in football—he’s talking about knocking down the walls that divide people from one another.

Paul, you see, was born into an “us” and “them” world. There were two, very distinct camps: the Jews—that is, the chosen people of God, to whom God had been revealed and had given all the promises of Hebrew Scriptures—and the Gentiles—that is, everybody else. In his worldview, the Jews were “us,” and the Gentiles, clearly, were “them.” Until Paul’s conversion to Christianity, he was so set on the wall between them that he persecuted everyone who wasn’t a Jew and even killed them. So the writer of today’s scripture understands how walls work.

Some things never change. Nineteen hundred years later, the English writer Rudyard Kipling said, “East is east, and west is west, and never the twain shall meet.” He wasn't just saying that to sound poetic, even though it does (especially the twain part). Kipling was reflecting the reality of the world in which he lived. He fully understood that there is something deep in human nature that makes us want to divide the world into us and them—that causes us to choose sides, to draw dividing lines, and to build up walls, walls we will defend with our very lives.
There are so many ways in which we do this! Our society has endless barriers and walls that divide us such as cultural background, nationality, race, socioeconomic class, gender, sexual orientation, political party, favorite sports team and so forth. We even divide ourselves up based on the kind of car we drive. We have barriers between Christians—perhaps the most of all. I can’t tell you how many people refer to different Christian denominations as different “religions.” We aren’t of different religions! We are all of the Christian religion—we share the same Lord, Jesus Christ. Even within the ELCA, we build walls that divide us as we struggle to find God’s truth on various theological and social issues that confront our church. In fact, the churchwide assembly is going to be next month: August Aug. 17-23. Because there are so many controversial issues on the table, the Bishop has invited the whole church into 50 days of prayer for wisdom, discernment and unity. Obviously, unity is a big challenge for our church. It's still a world of us versus them.

As humans, we are really good at building walls—both physical and philosophical ones. Some of them have names: the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall. We all remember the historical speech of President Reagan's when he challenged the Russian leader about the Berlin Wall. He emphatically said: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” I remember visiting that wall when I was a little girl and seeing the fences within fences surrounding the walls with gunmen sitting on towers. I remember hearing my relative recount—with tears streaming down his face—how he had escaped East Germany with bullets whizzing past him as he swam to safety but how he was, then, separated from his friends and family. I never thought that wall would come down in my lifetime. And yet it did! Shortly after I’d graduated from high school, it was dismantled and people all over the world grabbed pieces of it as souvenirs to take home—each stone a powerful symbol that walls CAN be torn down.

This is good news because walls are not God’s intention. Christ came to build bridges, not walls. In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians we read, “He has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.”

“Something there is that doesn't love a wall,” wrote the great American poet Robert Frost. We could add to that statement: someone there is who doesn't love a wall. That someone is Jesus Christ—the one who came to knock down the dividing walls of our world.

As Christians, then, it is our job to continue that work; to be like that football player who is doing all that knocking down. We are to knock down walls wherever we see them and to be very careful that we don’t contribute to building and maintaining them—which is all to easy to do. We need to examine our lives and our hearts to find those invisible but very real barriers that we place between ourselves and our fellow human beings—setting up the old us and them scenario again. Our fearful, sinful self is all too eager to do this.

“East is east and west is west, and never the twain shall meet,” just isn't okay. Paul explains that in Christ, we have been saved by grace and therefore, we have all been given peace that makes us one. He writes it this way: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (3:28) In a world that constantly encourages the us and them mentality, the Christian message is radical—it declares that there is no them. Them is a myth. There is only us—we are all in the same boat, all members of the same body with Christ as the head. It reminds me of a bumper sticker I have. It says: “God bless everybody. No exceptions.”

Paul goes on to say that we are to be “one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace,” For Christ himself is our peace and it is he who makes us one. There is NO us and them. There is only us and Christ is Lord of us all.

But do we live like this is a reality? Think about times when you’ve seen others knocking down dividing walls. What a miraculous thing it is. How can you do this too? How can you build bridges instead of walls? How can you connect with people that you consider them instead of excluding these children of God? What can you personally do to promote Christian unity and peace in our world? These are questions which Paul urges us to ask of ourselves day after day, that we may be moved by the Spirit to positive action for the sake of the kingdom.

Let us pray: O God you have made all your people one and sent your Son to preach peace to those who are far off and to those who are near: Grant that people everywhere may seek after you and find you. Pour out your Spirit upon ALL your children; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.


Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.