The Hostility Between Us
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THE HOSTILITY BETWEEN US
The Rev. J. Donald Waring
Grace Church in New York
The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
July 21, 2024
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. (Ephesians 2:14)
On the Saturdays when I am writing a sermon, if all goes well I will finish in time to watch an episode of Star Trek – the original series from the 1960s. Occasionally, Stacie will join me, and I must say that never does she love me more than when I am able to quote Captain Kirk’s lines before Captain Kirk himself says them. It’s a special skill that I’ve honed over many years of watching the same old episodes again and again. Why do I keep tuning in to Star Trek? Perhaps it’s the show’s prophetic ability to take earth’s vexing problems, set them in another world, and in so doing help us to see ourselves in a mirror. The crew of the starship Enterprise invariably encounters alien cultures wrestling with such things as arms control, runaway technology, and race.
One episode that first aired in 1969 is entitled, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.” A fugitive from the mysterious planet Cheron steals a shuttlecraft from a Federation star base, and is apprehended by the Enterprise. The fugitive’s name is Lokai, and like all the people of Cheron, his skin color is black on the one side and white on the other, with the dividing line running directly down the center of his body, perfectly bisecting his face. Lokai claims to be a political refugee and asks for asylum. Soon another citizen of Cheron comes aboard the Enterprise. This one’s name is Bele, and he too is black on the one side and white on the other. Bele claims to be the police commissioner of Cheron. He has been tracking Lokai across the galaxy for what amounts to fifty-thousand earth years. Lokai, he says, is not a political refugee but a notorious criminal. When the two meet it’s clear that the hostility between them is bitter and ancient as they accuse each other’s people of treachery, murder, and oppression.
In a quieter moment Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock ask Commissioner Bele what the reason is for the hostility between himself and Lokai. Bele states that obviously Lokai is of an inferior breed. Kirk and Spock claim that the two appear to be of the same breed. “Are you blind,” asks Bele? “Look at me … I am black on the right side. Lokai is white on the right side. All of his people are white on the right side.” Captain Kirk shakes his head in wonderment and says, “I fail to see the significant difference.”
If Star Trek provides a look into an imagined future, then today’s New Testament reading that we know as the Letter to the Ephesians gives us a look into the actual past. Tradition has always regarded the Apostle Paul to be the author of Ephesians, although some scholars suggest that the letter may be the work of someone else. For our purposes today, we have no compelling reason not to accept the information we find in the letter itself: that Paul is indeed the author, writing from prison in Rome, in approximately the year AD 60. Paul was roughly a contemporary of Jesus. He was born in Tarsus to a Jewish family and named Saul. He became an avid practitioner of his faith and advocate for his race.
The Jews believed that Yahweh, the one true God, had chosen them for his special purposes on earth. Thus, in order to fulfill their calling, it was essential that they obeyed the Mosaic Law to the last letter. Also, they were to keep themselves apart from Gentiles, non-Jews. To this end Paul was a Pharisee of the strictest sort, and thoroughly immersed himself in the Jewish world view. Then on the Damascus Road he had a vision of the risen Jesus that sent his life in a completely new direction. Saul of Tarsus became Paul the Apostle, who would spend the next 25 years spreading the good news of Jesus. Therefore, it would be towards the end of his life that he wrote Ephesians.
In the letter, Paul looks back on the way things were between Jew and Gentile before Jesus. Unfortunately, the Jews’ keeping themselves apart from the Gentiles often meant growing to hate the Gentiles, and the Gentiles reciprocated in kind. At the temple in Jerusalem, non-Jews were relegated to the Court of the Gentiles, and a dividing wall ensured that they would remain far off. So on one side of the wall – the right side of the wall – you had the Jews, the inheritors of God’s covenants. The visible mark in the flesh was circumcision. On the other side of the wall – the wrong side of the wall – you had the uncircumcised, the Gentiles who were strangers to God’s covenants, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, without hope, and without God in the world (Ephesians 2:12). We might look back now, shake our heads in wonderment, and quote Captain Kirk: “I fail to see the significant difference.”
Paul in his later years would agree. God sees no significant difference. Paul writes that God, in Christ has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. Paul goes on to write that Christ has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, 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. It all sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Surely, the end of hostility, reconciliation with God, and peace among all people is the ideal. But even mentioning such an ideal brings us squarely back to the present, and the realization that we are painfully far from enjoying the one new humanity that Paul declares should be our gift from God through Christ.
Here we are in the midst of what are supposed to be the lazy, hazy days of summer, but the news continues to be all about the dividing walls of hostility that run directly through our society. It’s been nearly ten months now since the Palestinian militant group, Hamas, invaded Israel, killed thousands of Jews, and carried away hundreds of others as hostages. In response, Israel declared war on Hamas, and in the ensuing bombing of Gaza, tens of thousands of Palestinians have died, many of them innocent children. Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine rages on, two-and-a-half years after Russia’s needless and criminal invasion of its peaceful neighbor. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands are dead, and the infrastructure of a country lies in ruins. Ukrainians and Russians, Jews and Palestinians, races and nations: do we hold out any hope that the walls of hostility can ever come down? Well, as you know we are in a summer of political conventions in which the two major parties will propose their solutions. Recognizing our polarized society, they will issue calls for national unity, which usually mean shouting across the chasm, “We think that you should agree with us.” On and on it goes.
This week I read an article about the powerful Webb telescope in orbit around Earth. We’ve been spying on planet LHS 1140 b, only 48 light years away. Scientists are able to deduce that it may share similar features with Earth, including oceans of water that could support life. Suppose that sentient beings inhabited LHS 1140 b. Suppose they had a telescope even more powerful than our own – one that could detect more than geological features, but also peer into our societies. What would they think of the mysterious planet, Earth? Surely, they would agree that we had given their world a very clumsy name. LHS 1140 b? What is the b supposed to mean? Is there an LHS 1140 a across the hall? How about naming the planet Klingon, or Vulcan, or even Cheron? Looking at us from far off, what would they think of the dividing walls of hostility that always seem to set humanity on the brink of war? Undoubtedly they would quote Captain Kirk: “I fail to see the significant difference.”
When Paul wrote that Jesus had broken down the dividing walls of hostility, we must ask: were these merely the wistful yearnings of an old man? The answer is no. What Paul meant to convey and wants us to believe and dares us to live is that something existential shifted on the cross of Jesus. This is good news for those who are far off and those who are near. But how does it work? Some say that Jesus on the cross made there by his one oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world. Through the offering of Jesus, God absorbed the sins of all humankind, freeing us all to be brothers and sisters.
Others say that because God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, the cross opens our eyes to what was true of God all the time: that God sees no significant difference between all the nations and races of earth. In the death of Jesus we see with sudden clarity the foolishness of our ways. So does the cross change God or does the cross change us? Or is it both? However you understand it, Paul writes that the dwelling place of God is now no longer in a temple made with hands, but in the spirits of all the children of earth. No longer can any one people declare that God lives with them, in their temple, and no one else’s. Instead, we are all members of God’s household, and we are also the house itself.
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. In thinking of how we in this household of faith might better live into God’s potential for one humanity, I remembered a story about one of my predecessors: William Reed Huntington, the 6th Rector of Grace Church. It all began thousands of miles from here in the small Russian town of Kishineff. The year was 1903. Two men who had murdered their teenaged nephew dumped the body in a Jewish neighborhood, and blamed the Jews for the killing. The local Christians, inflamed by an anti-Semitic paper, vowed revenge. Tensions were brewing, and finally boiled over onto the streets on the morning of the Orthodox Easter Day. Mobs of townspeople, most of them Christians who had just attended Easter services, began rioting and rampaging through Jewish homes and businesses, committing atrocities of unspeakable barbarism. Many said the police turned a blind eye to the mayhem and allowed it to continue. In the end, 49 Jews lay dead, hundreds more had been wounded, and over 700 Jewish houses had been ransacked and ruined.
Reaction from the world community was surprisingly swift and stern. Here in New York City, the Russian Jews organized a march up Broadway. It was to be a long, slow procession of dirges and laments. Seventy-thousand Russian Jews took part in it. On that day William Reed Huntington arranged for the great bells in the tower of Grace Church to toll as if for a funeral. And he himself stood for the entire time on the steps of our Broadway doors as the solemn procession passed by the church. One writer to The New York Times described the gesture as “a fine and sympathetic act, noble in its simplicity, and simple in its great nobility.” For the grieving Jews, the sound of the bells tolling in solidarity with them, and the sight of Dr. Huntington on the steps of Grace Church extending the hand of friendship to them was a moment they would long remember. They knew that here they had a friend. It was a moment – only a moment, but a moment nonetheless – when the dividing walls of hostility were down.
To be sure, we are a long way from reaching God’s potential for a new humanity. But God gives us his Spirit and his gifts so that if we choose, we never need flag nor fail in extending the hand of friendship to those who are far off and those who are near. God sees no significant difference in the one new humanity he has created through Jesus Christ our Lord. 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.