July 22, 2018:
Jeremiah 23:1-6
Ephesians 2:11-22
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
In my teenage years and into my early or mid-twenties I was involved with the University of Waterloo’s little radio station. And just last Saturday I attended a documentary about the history of the station, at the Registry Theatre downtown. And while it covered its humble beginnings in one of the engineering buildings, when it started out as a broadcasting club, and mentioned some of the now famous artists who visited the station and played live in studio, and talked about how some of the volunteer DJs ended up going on to national TV or radio positions, the primary focus of the documentary was to recount a series of turbulent experiences about ten years ago.
The situation was that the radio station got most of its funding from student fees. Each term students would pay for their tuition (their class fees), and also additional items, like use of the physical activities building, health care plans, and so on. One of these extra fees was for the radio station: around $5.00 per term ($4.50, and eventually $5.50). And it was refundable. If you really wanted that $5 back, or didn’t like the radio station, you’d just pop by the building on the north campus and get a refund. But the idea was that, for the cost of a sandwich or a beer, each student contributed a small amount to keeping the station operational.
Eventually, though, some voices in student government made it their crusade to do away with what they saw as an unnecessary expense. Party lines “for” and “against” the radio station were drawn, and there was lots of coverage in the local and university press, and even Maclean’s. A referendum was held, with the result being that the $5.50 fee was revoked, meaning that the radio station’s funds would dry up. Since then the station has moved about five times, reorganized itself as a co-op, and no longer has an official relationship with the university.
And, something I learned from that documentary is that within one year of that anxiety and hostility-laden referendum, two students would die, by suicide… One vocal proponent for the “yes” side. And one vocal proponent voice for the “no” side. A terrible, terrible turn of events that makes us realize that at the root of this $5 debate wasn’t a question of the relevance of the radio station, or its relationship with the university. Not a question about student federation governance, or the financial challenges or autonomy of students. The issue is about how, under pressure, relationships devolve and dissolve like that. We don’t do well as communities in situations of anxiety. We pull back and put up walls; we mock and caricature our opponents. And we get so caught up in trying to win, or save our skin, that we neglect the capacity for creative problem-solving. The very thing most needed.
That contemporary example of the radio station, for me, gives a bit of a glimpse into the issues of unity and community-life that come up again and again in the New Testament writings attributed to St. Paul. Bishop N.T. Wright, probably the world’s most famous Paul scholar, he writes this: “Sibling rivalry is fiercest when the siblings have an inheritance to share, or when one feels that another is ruining the chances of any of them inheriting it at all.”* He’s writing about Jewish and gentile relations in the early Church. But it could just as easily apply to that radio station reminiscence. For Paul, and the Ephesian, and the rest of the early Church, there are some, or several, presenting issues that are pulling apart the community. Culturally-based tensions. Fear of ‘the other.’ Sometimes gentiles who try to outdo their Jewish neighbours by observing Jewish law themselves. Financial tensions, with some churches being rich, and others, like that in Jerusalem, experiencing poverty. Jewish followers of Jesus wondering what to keep and what to let go from their inherited practices. And “super apostles” with charismatic gifts that are creating schisms in the community. A lot of these things, in some way, are still being experienced by the Church today.
But for Paul, he doesn’t just want to keep peace between the different parties in the Church in the interest of spreading the Gospel. He wants to keep peace in the Church because that is the Gospel. That is the Good News. Reconciliation of all, with all, with God. “He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, so 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. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father.” The vocation of the Church, right there: live out that reconciliation in everyday life, for the world to see. “Let your light so shine before others, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matt 5:15-16).
And though the author uses the word “abolish” when speaking about the Law, he sees the Gospel as a development in the Jewish understanding of salvation. The crucified Messiah thing is a bit of an unexpected twist, but it’s a legitimate part of the rolling out of the story of salvation.
In the Jewish scriptures already there was a clear stream of thought that the Jewish people were chosen, not to win, while the rest of the world loses. But chosen to be the precursor, the model for, or experiment in salvation that would one day stretch out to the whole world. Isaiah speaks of the Jews as “a light to the nations.” And even earlier, when they settled the Promised Land, their law dictated that strangers and aliens were to be treated with kindness and respect. An openness to ‘the other.’
But there’s also a stream of thought we see in that same library of scriptures that is more protectionist. After the exile in Babylon, they didn’t want to do anything to mess up in God’s eyes, like intermarry, and then start worshipping foreign gods. And so in Nehemiah we read that they were looking through their scriptures and found references to how “no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of God…” So “they separated from Israel all those of foreign descent.”
These two opposite approaches to dealing with supposed outsiders are found in the scriptures. And then, like now, we can pick and choose, and probably find the proof, the evidence or ammunition that we want for our ‘side,’ our ‘party.’ And in times of stress it’s especially easy to fall back into a more defensive, suspicious position, like Nehemiah writing after the exiles’ return from Babylon. In Jesus and Paul’s day certain Jewish factions were protectionist out of concern for gentile — whether Greek or Roman — encroachment on their culture. And so in the Gospels Jesus keeps butting heads with people preoccupied with Sabbath-observance, and dietary laws and suspicion of the Samaritans (illegitimate quasi-Jews). Those were symbols for them, of their identity, and of their struggle. Maybe like that little $5 radio fee, in itself not a burden to anyone, but a symbol of a subculture, or institution that some students took exception to. Those symbols became opportunities for walls to be built up between people. Symbols that numbed people to the common humanity of others. And got in the way of compassionate, creative problem-solving.
What Paul does, elsewhere, is go back not just to Abraham, the father of Judaism, but to Adam. And he says where Adam and Eve went wrong, Jesus, went right, and gave humanity a second start. And for Paul, the Messiah isn’t just a Jewish prophet or king, but God’s very presence among us, opening up salvation to ‘the others,’ “the far off” by virtue of that common humanity.
And Jesus, based on the mercy and openness shown in his life, and by the ugliness of his death, Christians are called to be specially mindful of the oppressed. Paul says to his gentile audience: remember, there was a time when you were strangers. For us, we are reminded, in our treatment of strangers, or ‘the other,’ that there have been times when we’ve felt isolated. Or when our people were outsiders, others. “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.” That is Paul’s Good News. And our Good News. It’s Good News for those who feel far off. But not always welcome news for those who benefit from walls that exclude and divide.
© 2018 The Rev’d Matthew Kieswetter
* Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 450.