3rd Sunday in Lent -- Year B -- March 4, 2018 Panzer Military Chapel, Germany
Exodus 20:1-17 I Corinthians 1:18-25 John 2:13-22
Bridges or Walls
Watch the news, read the paper, talk to your friends… it’s not a surprise to any of us that the world is a pretty fractured these days. Instinct tells us to build walls between ourselves and the people who are different than us… religion, political affiliation, race, even our schools of choice would have us associate only with people who are just like us.
At first glance, it seems like walls would make us safer… our worldview is affirmed and we can stay safe and sound in cocoons of our own making. Walls are built to protect us, to set us apart, and even keep us pure. At the same time, our walls have a tendency to make us lonely and unchallenged. Bridges, on the other hand, are built to connect things, to bring us closer to places once considered unreachable and to open up the possibilities that surround us.
The scriptures for today beg the question: Bridges or Walls? Are there more things in our lives that separate us from people than draw us to them? And how that does that affect our choices in friendships, jobs, the places we go and activities we pursue?
I remember a story in Guidepost magazine about a family that retired to a friendly WV community. But after living there for a while, Fred Nicholas started thinking it was a little too friendly. It turns out that the shortest walking route to town went right through the middle of their backyard. At all hours of the day, they were greeted by young people riding their bikes up the driveway and through the grass. It wasn’t unusual to look up from the dinner table to see a stranger waving through the kitchen window as they ate their evening meal.
Call Fred irritated. No one ever asked – they just assumed it would be OK. And the more worn the yard became, the more irritated he got until finally one day he could take no more. He put up a sign -- “No Trespassing.” When that didn’t seem to make an impression, he began to speak to people as they passed through.
“Please don’t walk on my grass.” All he got in return were giggles, salutes, and blank looks. And they kept on walking. “Enough is enough,” he said. “I’m going to keep these people out, one way or another.” His solution? Erect a wall. Well, actually, it was a fence... a barbed wire fence. And you know what? It did the trick. People learned pretty quickly that “Nicholas Pass” was no longer the best way to town.
Walls do a good job of blocking out the things that we don’t like or don’t want to know about. Walls keep us, and everyone else, in our places. But walls also keep us from seeing what’s on the other side. They keep us from experiencing life in new ways. And in the end, walls built to protect us do more to chain us than they ever do to free us.
Bridges, on the other hand, connect things. Yes, they are sometimes scary… if you’ve ever been on a long bridge on a windy day, your hands stay tight on the wheel until you make it safely to the other side. But bridges open up the world in ways we never imagined. Think about all the new friends, new foods, new places and experiences that came to you when you took advantage of a bridge.
So, what does this have to do with our lessons?
Today’s Old Testament lesson was taken from the book of Exodus. We think of the 10 commandments as an ethical code. But that was not their primary purpose. Verse 1 sets up everything that comes after: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.” As a whole, they don’t just tell us how to live. They tell us in whom we must live -- The LORD our God.
If we don’t understand that, then we use 10 Commandments as a wall… to keep ourselves in line, to judge others, to stay safe from the unknown, and easily identified as members of the “family”.
But what would happens if we use these commandments as they were intended, as a bridge between God and us? As a means of bridging the differences between us, establishing common ground among people who worship to the same God?
Throughout time, the Hebrew people and their descendants have been interpreting God’s law as a law of exclusion rather than a law of inclusion. Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are filled with rules and regulations for how God’s people will behave. But Jesus was able to boil all of those laws down to two: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” And “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30-31). Isn’t this what these commandments are all about?
No wonder Jesus was so upset when he entered the temple that day. “Get out of here. Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.” Jesus was railing against a people who were more concerned with the purity of their sacrificial doves and cattle than they were their own hearts. With this act of holy anger, Jesus says, “You cannot worship the God of money nor the God of purity and be faithful in my Kingdom.”
The Hebrew Bible story is filled with evidence that God’s people don’t learn from their mistakes. Over and over, walls were built, when finally, God gave them the ultimate bridge. It became clear to God that the laws and his warning of the prophets were not enough to convince the people to change their ways. What else could he do to convince them of his love? What bridge could possibly be strong and long and high enough to carry the people away from certain death and bring them to the God of grace and mercy?
Jesus is the answer to all of those questions, but not in the way that anyone imagined. The Messiah was supposed to bring back their former glory, not get crucified for his trouble. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians says it well: “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Only a bridge as radical as the cross could get our attention, for it is not what we expect. “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”
I think this is the hardest part of us, for Christians of almost every generation. Power is so alluring. It is so hard to remember that we are the ones called to speak truth to power, not to conform to the conventional wisdom of the day. Our real challenge as Christians is to be brave enough to stand up to the injustices of the world. We are called to put Jesus’ and his call to love God first and best at the very center of everything we do and say.
Only bridges allow us to go from place to place. Sometimes they are scary. Sometimes they go into unknown places, but they help us to reach out to the world, to go forth in the name of the Lord, taking God’s peace, and the knowledge of our forgiveness with us. God’s best bridge, the cross of Jesus Christ, sends us out to proclaim the love of Christ to all the world.
Through the cross, we are all redeemed. Through the cross, we understand the real meaning of sacrifice. Through the cross, we hear Jesus calling us to challenge the way things have always been and build a bridge that connects us more fully to God.
God’s love cannot be bound by walls, no matter how tall or thick we build them. God’s love can’t be diverted by church politics or racism or sexism or financial difficulties or discrimination of any kind. God’s love cannot be diluted by laws and regulations which serve to keep people out of the family instead of welcoming them to God’s loving, forgiving arms. When we place our trust in Jesus, that’s when we can build the bridges needed to spread God’s love – to speak God’s truth.
So, whatever happened to Fred and his fence? Eventually, someone came and asked him why he built the fence. “What are you figuring on keeping in there -- cows or sheep?” “Neither,” Fred answered testily. “It’s to there to keep out trespassers.”
“Trespassers, huh? We ain’t figured anybody in the community as a trespasser before. We’ve always felt like neighbors.” And when his granddaughter told him about a grumpy, old man in her neighborhood who yelled at people for walking on his grass, saying “I’m glad you’re not like that, Granddad…” Children often are best tutors. Needless to say, the fence came down. (Guidepost 1994)
Our practice of building walls comes with years of practice, learned from watching those older than us perfect the process over time. But we all know that our first instinct is to build bridges. I shared a quote from Robert Fulghum earlier with the kids, and I think we’d all be well advised to remember the lessons we learn in kindergarten. When you get to the nitty gritty, this is what bridge-building is all about:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life -
Learn some and think some
And draw and paint and sing and dance
And play and work everyday some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world,
Watch out for traffic,
Hold hands and stick together.
Be aware of wonder.
(Fulghum, Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, 1986)
Now those are some great rules to live by. Let’s be bridgebuilders together. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Peace, Deb
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