During my senior year in college, I was privileged to spend my Spring Break in Managua, Nicaragua. I was on a mission trip with a group of fellow college students from University Baptist Church, Chapel Hill, NC. We arrived on Saturday afternoon, tired from a long flight, apprehensive about being immersed in an alien culture, and desperately hoping we could remember something from Spanish 3 other than “Hola!” Myself, I kept repeating in my head, “Dónde está el baño?” (Where is the bathroom?) It seemed a useful thing to know.
Even before the plane landed, as I looked down on the streets of Managua and saw a completely alien landscape—tin and tile roofs, strange looking trees, drainage ditches littered with trash flowing into Lake Managua, horse drawn carts sharing streets with overstuffed buses and cars of unfamiliar makes—as I looked down on all this, I remember thinking to myself, “Good gracious, what have you gotten yourself into Helton?”
The next morning, being Sunday, we attended the small church where we would be working in the evenings. It was located in a very, very poor barrio. In the dirt streets, rain had eroded tire ruts until they were impossibly deep potholes and small canyons. Many of the houses were constructed out of whatever the inhabitants could scrap together: a few pieces of plywood, perhaps some stray concrete blocks, discarded corrugated roofing material (which might serve as part of the walls as well as the roof), and even pieces of cardboard. Even those fortunate enough to have four sturdy walls and a decent roof had dirt floors.
The people of the community were, as a whole, poorly educated. Nicaragua did not have enough money to guarantee everyone a high school education, though the situation seems to have improved in recent years. At the time, I was told that only a portion of students in any given grade would be allowed to advance to the next grade. I don’t know if that was a local or a national policy. Either way, many people did not receive an adequate education, not because they were not smart enough, not because they did not want to go to school, but simply because they had the misfortune to live in a country that could not afford to educate them.
So, it goes without saying that we were not exactly worshipping with the social elite that morning. And yet, a strange and miraculous thing happened. Early in the service we sang the hymn “Alas, and Did My Savior Bleed.” As we sang the refrain—“En la cruz, en la cruz, do primero vi la luz” (At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light and the burden of my sin rolled away, it was there by faith that I received my sight, and now I am happy all the day”)—as we sang those words, it suddenly dawned on me that the Nicaraguans understood what they were singing. I could hear it in their voices and see it in their eyes. They sang with a joy I had seldom seen in an American church. They knew God’s love and grace which reached out to them and saved them from the alienation of sin. My unexamined presumptions of spiritual superiority fell to pieces, freeing me to relate to the Nicaraguans in a new way. These folks who spoke a strange language, whose skin was darker than mine, whose culture was strange to me, who were poor and undereducated and socially outcast, they were my brothers and sisters in Christ. All the barriers, all the distinctions, all the walls that separated us as human beings had been torn down and we had miraculously been united in Christ.
Ephesians speaks eloquently of this unity. Gentile readers are reminded that they were once without hope, far off, alienated from God, while only the Jews, because of the Covenant, were in relationship with God. Gentiles were aliens, foreigners who lived outside of the people of God. They were strangers who did not know, must less trust, God’s promises. But no more: Christ has changed all of that, overcoming the cultural, ethnic and religious divide. “In his flesh Christ has made [the two separate] groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall,” reconciling both to each other and to God. Now both Jews and Gentiles have equal access to God through the Holy Spirit given to them. Christ has formed them into “one new humanity.” I think that is a beautiful phrase—many of you perhaps recognize it as one I use often. Those words are pregnant with meaning and new possibilities for both the first century church and for us, the twenty-first century church.
This new humanity in Christ is one: unified, no longer separate. The dividing wall, the hostility between the two groups has been overcome. Strict, legalistic adherence to a particular set of religious rules is not necessary for relationship with God. One’s particular ethnic identity is not determinative of one’s relationship to God. Now both groups have been reconciled to God by God’s grace, quite apart from religious and cultural differences. There is no longer any distinction between Gentile and Jew. Hostility has given way to peace, enmity to love, division to fellowship.
This has serious implications for the church. As Ronald Goetz observes, “After the dividing wall between Gentile and Jew has been broken down, the destruction of all other human barriers must follow.” [Goetz, “Miracles of Inclusion (Eph 2.14),” Christian Century, July 2-9, 1997, p. 625] We have all seen many dividing walls in our world. Some are physical: The Berlin Wall; signs that proclaimed “whites only;” signs that tell immigrants to go home; the security fence on the Mexican border; the wall separating Israelis and Palestinians; the railroad tracks that separate those on the right side from those on the wrong side. Other dividing walls are impossible to see, but just as real: fear of a person because of their race; the glass ceiling; subtle exclusion of the person who is different and doesn’t fit in. But none of these walls should exist in the church, for Jesus has “played [his] bloody part, to tear, to tear them down.” [Mumford and Sons, “Babel”] Thus, as Paul tells the Galatians, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (3.28) All divisions, all enmity and hostility, are ruled out and overcome by God’s inclusive love. Thus, the church, in all its diversity, represents one humanity.
Ephesians also tells us this is a new humanity. Christians are entirely different from what they, what we, were before. John Chrysostom, the great preacher of the early church, observed that it was as if one melted down a statue of silver and a statue of lead and “the two should come out gold.” [Homily 5 on Ephesians] Two different things have been combined to create something entirely new. A different kind of relationship is now possible, a relationship based not on external values and achievements, not on accidents of birth, but instead based on our common creation in God’s image and our common redemption by God’s grace.
This one new humanity has been brought into being by Jesus Christ. He is our peace (v.14). He has put to death the hostility, the enmity, the pride, the fear, the selfishness which separates us from each other. Our division, our sin, our alienation from God and one another has been crucified on the cross. Christ has made peace between us, reconciling us and becoming the cornerstone on which the church is built. Through Christ we are all united as brothers and sisters in God’s household, fellow citizens of God’s kingdom.
As I said, all of this has serious implications for the church. We are called to live into this unity. We are called to live out this unity. We are called to welcome others just as Christ has welcomed us. We are called to care for one another, “to bear one another’s burdens” [Gal 6.2] to care for the widows and the orphans, the poor and the resident aliens [Zech 7.9-10; Jer 22.3; James 1.27]; to love another, even our enemies, not just in word, but in deed.
Obviously, this rules out doing violence to the other, whether it is physical violence or verbal violence. Political violence, as we saw last Saturday with the attempt to assassinate former President Trump, is completely unacceptable. It is wrong. It is unchristian. It is also contrary to the principles and ideals of this Republic. The intention of the founders of this nation and of so many who have built upon their vision, was—is—to create a nation in which all citizens are able to participate in their own government—to vote, to speak their mind, to organize, to petition government—and to do so peacefully. We must reject physical violence as well as divisive, demonizing rhetoric and fear-mongering which encourages violence. We must recognize one another, with all of our differences and disagreements, as fellow Americans. More than this, we must begin to see one another not as enemies, not as rivals or threats, but as fellow humans, created in the image and likeness of God and loved so deeply that God came in Christ to reconcile the world to Godself. We must begin to see each other as Christ sees us.
For in Christ, the walls are torn down and we are made one. The walls are torn down and black and white are made one. The walls are torn down and gay and straight are made one. The walls are torn down and male and female are made one. The walls are torn down and rich and poor are made one. Able bodied and disabled are made one. Young and old are made one. Catholic and Protestant are made one. Orthodox and Pentecostal are made one. Liberal and conservative are made one. Republican and Democrat are made one. MAGA and progressive are made one. Hispanic and Asian are made one. American and Chinese are made one. Immigrant and native born are made one. The educated and the uneducated are made one. English speaking, American college students and Spanish speaking Nicaraguans with 3rd grade educations are made one in Christ.
Yes, that Sunday in Managua, as I looked around and marveled at that one new humanity and experienced the peace of Christ, I discovered the truth of Robert Frost’s words:
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, /That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it/ And spills the upper boulders in the sun,/And makes gaps even two can pass abreast….Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,/That wants it down. [“Mending Wall”]
That something is the Divine love that swells up and topples all the walls that separate us, that creates spaces for us to walk side-by-side in the world, which builds bridges so that enemies become friends and strangers become brothers and sisters, which calls us together into the church so that we are no longer strangers but members of one household of which Jesus Christ is the cornerstone.
May God grant us here at St. Peter and throughout the church universal—and indeed throughout our country and world—the courage and the love to live out this vision of unity, to truly become one new humanity.