Something in humanity urges us to define Who We Are by excluding those whom we are not. Wall-building is an ancient practice of “civilization”: “Stay off my turf!” Ruins of Hadrian’s Wall can be seen in Britain, and the Great Wall of China remains as a current marvel of antiquity. Westerners of the ’50s & ’60s deplored the Berlin Wall, but have little indignation about the one which keeps Palestinians away from ancestral homes in Israel. I scoff at Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric about keeping “Mexicans” away from the SouthWest–yet in fact, fences and guard-stations already exist. Americans were sorely seduced when St. Robert Frost wrote, “Good fences do good neighbors make”.
Many of us will be caught up short by the lessons for this weekend. Jeremiah begins by urging the Exiles in Babylon to Bloom Where They’re Planted (29:4-7). “Build houses…live in them, plant gardens…take wives…multiply there….Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find YOUR welfare.” You must be joking, Jeremiah! Be happy away from Zion? Pray for this God-forsaken place? Does that mean that YHWH is lord HERE, too? You mean that there’s good news of great joy for ALL the people?
World-citizen Paul is pictured as writing to Timothy, a second-generation preacher, about not getting tripped up by semantics: “Warn them before God that they are to avoid wrangling over words…” (II 2:14) He must have caught a premonition that the Church of all ages wastes much time and energy in splitting hairs and adding footnotes to Disciplines. Our proud posturing has resulted in drawing lines in the sand about who’s Us and who’s Them, unfortunately diluting the love and compassion of Jesus. Our church buzz-words have themselves become walls.
So ten borderland outcasts approached Jesus, seeking healing and restoration to their community (Luke 17:11-19). He instructed them to return to the priests–to get their credentials–and Be Whole. One came back to express thanks, “and he was a Samaritan”. Good Jews would be doubly offended, for to clean what God had afflicted was blasphemy; and this SAMARITAN!! Luke proclaims a God Without Borders more than the other evangelists, for traditionally he himself was a traveler with Paul to the frontiers of faith. This paragraph should be read with an attitude of incredulity, as the teller conveys amazement in such a universal grace.
I’m a Utopian, admittedly, and I suppose that erasing all the lines on the map would lead to anarchy. Yet I follow John Wesley’s purported reminder that “the world is my parish”, and become impatient with the slowness of the world to equalize the imbalances of justice and economics. The afore-mentioned Robert Frost began his selfish poem, “Something there is that doesn’t like a wall.” If Nature and history are making some gains at destroying our barriers, Disciples may also accrue hope for proclaiming a Universal God into our current turf-wars…
God Bless Us, Every One Horace Brown King
My thoughts about the lecitionary readings for the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this space on Facebook, or at horacebrownking.com
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