Busting Down the Walls

20 February 2011
Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18

In this season of Epiphany, which begins with the light of the star that marked the place where the child Jesus lay, we have been celebrating the light of Christ. Simultaneously, we have been enjoying a little more light day by day. So little, that you hardly notice it at first. But the other day, as we were driving up highway 371 on a return trip from the Cities, I noticed something wonderful. It was 5:00 p.m., and we did not need our headlights yet! I could still see well enough to keep on knitting. (Relax, Richard was driving. I’m not so accomplished yet as to drive and knit at the same time.)
The season begins with the cold light of the star, the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it. The darkness, personified by King Herod, tries but fails to snuff out the infant light.
The Old Testament writings reminded us that God gave us Israel, our spiritual ancestors, as a “light to the nations.” And Jesus called us to be the light of the world. In the Sermon on the Mount, which we have been reading bits of for several weeks now, we are shown how to let that light shine.
And at the same time, our part of the globe leans into the sun, like a sunflower drawn to the light, as if to remind us of our calling, to resist darkness, and lean into the light.
Meanwhile, beyond the church doors, we have been reminded of the eternal struggle. When we see in Egypt the crowds of peaceful resistors standing up to a dictator, we see it in terms of light versus darkness. And when we see the Wisconsin State Capital overflow with peaceful protestors, we see light versus darkness. My brother-in-law and I may disagree about who represents light and who represents darkness, but we both tend to see it as good versus evil. As if the drama of real life were as simple as High Noon or Star Wars.
But real life is complicated by the problem of sin. Whether it’s “original” or “new and improved,” sin is a part of each of us, and we deny it at our peril. Self-identifying with the white-hats, and casting others who are not like us as the villains, that is the very thing that drove Jesus into full-time ministry.
Jesus didn’t have a problem with sinners. He spent a lot of time with them. Jesus had a problem with the self-righteous, the pious, those who prayed, “Thank God I’m not like those people.” Jesus had a problem with the scripture, particularly those scriptures that build walls between “us” and “those people.”
We all remember the parable of the Good Samaritan, who took care of the man who had been beat up and robbed, after three nice religious people passed by on the other side. But do we remember what preceded the parable, do we remember the set-up? Someone was asking Jesus which commandment was the greatest, and then answered his own question. Jesus prompted, “What’s in the law, what do you read there,” and the person who asked the question answered: “To love the lord and to love your neighbor as yourself.”
It’s straight out of Leviticus, we heard it in our Old Testament lesson for today. Leviticus is most well known for being the source of the holiness code, the laws that build walls between “us” and “them:” the dietary codes, the purity laws, the “you shall not eat” and the “you shall not touch.” Leviticus is the book that uses the word “abomination” a lot, and it is the book that justifies a death sentence for those who violate the code.
Now, those people in the parable, who passed by on the other side, they were following the code. They were staying away from blood, so as to remain ritually pure. The Samaritan (feel free to read any despised person here, to personalize the paraphrase—the good Iraqi, the good Mexican, the good Muslim) didn’t follow the code, but allowed himself to be ritually violated by blood. And in doing so, in that beautiful paradoxical way that we find in scripture, fulfilled the law. The good Samaritan fulfilled the law by breaking the rules.
Go and do likewise.
Go and violate the laws that build walls. Go and break the rules if necessary, to keep the spirit of the law of loving your neighbor as yourself.
“Who is my neighbor?” is the title of the antiracism event we are co-sponsoring on Saturday. I want you to be ready for this. The event itself is not a protest or a demonstration. The gathering at the courthouse on Tuesday was a demonstration, a symbolic act. Symbols are subject to interpretation. Saturday’s workshop is our effort to provide an interpretation.
One possible interpretation of the demonstration might be that it was an effort to paint the accused as “evil” and identify the demonstrators as “good,” to symbolically paint black hats on the accused and white hats on everyone who gathered outside the courthouse. If that’s all it was, then we are no better off for having gathered. If that’s all it was, then it only served to put up more walls between “us” and “them.”
The workshop is an effort to come to terms with the difficult truth that real life is not that simple. The workshop is an effort to come to terms with the sin of racism, and the place that it has in our own souls and in our communal soul.
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” begins Robert Frost’s poem. Conversely, something there is that loves a wall. Sin is that wall-builder. Sin is that impulse that points the finger and says “that is not us.” Grace acknowledges a brother or sister.
The beating of Willie Navy held up a mirror to our community. We didn’t like what we saw, so we have done our best to deny it, to say, “That is not us.” But that is us. When we hold up a mirror to our community, we want to see the cover of the Lake Country Journal. That is us too, but that is not the whole picture. We must come to terms with the whole picture.
On Saturday, we are going to take a good look at the whole picture in the mirror. Once we acknowledge the whole picture, then we can chose how to change it for the better.
Here is a new parable for you. A gardener planted a garden in the Lake Country. To keep the critters out of it, she put up a fence. The deer leapt the fence, so she built it higher. The rabbits went through the gaps in the chain link, so she built it up with stone. And behind the stone walls, the garden withered and died, for lack of light.
Then she realized, if she wants this garden to grow, she’s got to start busting down those walls.
Go and do likewise.

The Unhistoric Acts of the Saints

(For the February church newsletter.)
In January, we celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr Day. In February we will celebrate the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln on Presidents’ Day, and observe Black History Month. While we all owe a debt of gratitude to great historic figures for their great historic acts, we should also remember, as George Eliot wrote, in her novel Middlemarch, that…

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

We are dependent not only on the historic acts of historic figures, but on the unhistoric acts of people who live faithfully, who do justly, who love kindly, and walk humbly with God. I’m sure you can think of someone who intervened in your life at a key moment. I am thinking of my sixth grade teacher.
In elementary school, I was an indifferent student, and an embarrassed reader. One day my sixth grade teacher called me to sit beside her desk and quietly explained to me that I would fail reading that semester, unless I read a book a week for the next nine weeks. I didn’t think that was possible. I didn’t come from a family of readers, we were avid watchers of television. As a child, I felt I was as much (or more) a part of the Brady family and the Partridge family as the Griffin family. I was sure I could not read a book a week, but my teacher was sure that I could.
So I went home that day, with a book from the school library, a book that my teacher recommended. When I got home, instead of sitting on the sofa for the usual fare of Gilligan’s Island, followed by Hogan’s Heroes and Star Trek, I sat in a chair and told my mom I had to read. And I read. The book was called Freaky Friday. That’s right, like True Grit, it was a book before it was made into a movie based on a movie! When Mom called me for supper, I was astonished to realize that I was one chapter away from the end of the book. I had read almost a whole book in a day, and I hadn’t thought I could read one in a week.
My sixth grade teacher changed the course of my life, by telling me I could do better. Through this simple, unhistoric act, she saved me—she became an agent of my salvation. I was saved from being a sixth-grade failure, and from whatever comes of being a sixth-grade failure.
Sometimes, people just need to know that they can do better. The apostle Paul knew this, and I believe that is why he began nearly all his letters with thanksgiving to God, for the people to whom he was writing. Sometimes he wrote to correct the people, sometimes to encourage the people, but whether to comfort or cajole, he first expressed his thanks for the people. In giving thanks, he was reminding them who they were. Not isolated individuals but members of one body in Christ; not powerless, but endowed with the power of the Holy Spirit.
Paul speaks to us through these pages, to remind us of who we are: We are God’s children, fed by God’s Holy Spirit, given authority to continue the work begun in Christ, saving the world in Christ’s name. We each have our part to sing, our role to play, our work to do.
We owe a debt of gratitude to the past, to the historic and unhistoric acts of the saints who have gone before us. And the best way to pay our debt to the past (wrote John Buchan) is to put the future in debt to us. Without ever expecting to collect interest, for all that we are we owe to others, who have themselves been agents of our salvation. Let us go, and do likewise.