It
hasn’t been a happy week in the Gaza Strip,
a harsh wasteland in Palestine occupied
by Israel since 1967.
Palestinians
have been trying to tear down a fence along the border.
Against
the direction of the UN, Israel has responded with force,
killing 38 protesters and wounding 1,600 so far.
It
is a standoff between fair-skinned Jews on one side,
and dark-skinned Muslims and
Christians on the other.
Another
encounter between opposites happened there
2,000 years ago.
The
Apostle Phillip, a Jewish Christian, had a Greek name, spoke Greek.
Shortly
after Pentecost, a persecution forced him out of Jerusalem,
That’s
when an angel sent him to the barren Gaza strip.
There
he ran across an Ethiopian Eunuch, the treasurer
for Queen Candace of Egypt.
You
could hardly imagine two more different people.
One
black. One white. One Jew. One Ethiopian.
One
in a chariot. One on foot.
They
had nothing at all in common.
But
God’s Spirit told Philip to strike up a conversation.
That
conversation led to the Eunuch being baptized
and he knew God in a whole new way.
But
he wasn’t the only one changed.
After
the baptism, the Spirit swept Philip away to the coast.
Acts
tells us, Philip took the gospel all the way up the coast
to Caesarea in the very north of Galilee.
Tradition
says he kept on going
teaching about Jesus in ever
stranger lands,
in Syria,
Turkey, and finally Greece.
Two
people of different races, religions, languages, and nationalities
met in the Gaza Strip and, in the
relational space between them,
they discovered God who changed
their lives.
It
was a different sort of meeting from what we see in Gaza this week.
My
point isn’t directly political
but it has political implications.
We
cannot censor our faith to a private piety
and be remotely true to the Bible.
But
my point starts out very personally
In how we approach or avoid each
other.
Two
things are happening in society today and they are not a coincidence.
First,
people are dividing up into smaller and smaller groups
of folks who are more and more alike
on every measure
– race, education,
socio-economic status, favorite t v shows.
We
want to feel safe by surrounding ourselves with people like us.
Different
people make us nervous.
At
the same time, we are withdrawing into our little enclaves of sameness,
our government is raising the
drawbridge to keep out refugees
and sending away thousands of
refugees from Haiti, Nicaragua,
El Salvador, and Nepal.
Birds of a feather flock together, the
saying goes,
and we are flocking in full tilt
panic.
Second,
church attendance and membership are going down.
It
isn’t that people believe one whit less in God.
It’s
that they want to deal with God on their own terms,
imagine God their own way.
They
don’t want to hear about how you or I have experienced God.
The
God people make up in their own imaginations
is not likely to cause them much
inconvenience.
But
your idea of God or the Bible’s or the Church’s might not suit.
That’s
an even more radical withdrawal into private individualism.
Both
these social trends
– the retreat into our silos of sameness
and
our abandoning covenant communities for private spirituality
–
are all about avoiding what theologians call
the Other
– that which is not me, especially if it’s not even like me.
That
is ultimately a political problem.
We
see how our own dividing up is making our country ungovernable.
But
before that, it’s a social problem.
We
live in isolation that breeds fear that breeds more isolation.
But
before any of that, it’s a spiritual problem.
The
basic Christians posture is reverence before the mystery of God.
Key
word mystery: 99% of God is utterly beyond us,
singing at a pitch we cannot hear
flashing at a wave length we cannot see.
But
there is still a place for us to encounter God.
We
get our hints and guesses of God’s poignant beauty
when God makes contact.
We
call that contact divine revelation.
That
contact is where we get our hope to carry on.
The
Bible says, we meet the mysterious God
in the oddest of ways
--- a way a lot of
people would rather avoid.
We
meet God when we dare to relate to people
who are different from us.
The
Gospels show Jesus befriending
the wildest assortment of people
– the
Syro-Phoenician mother, the Pharisee Nicodemus,
the woman
taken in adultery, the Roman Centurion,
Simon
Zealotes the revolutionary, Matthew the Roman tax collector,
the rich
young man, the blind beggars and lepers,
the Gerasene demoniac mad man – the
list goes on.
He
even introduced a lot of them to each other.
Then
he washed their feet and told them to wash each other’s feet.
He
said, Love one another as I have loved
you.
Why
do you suppose he said that?
St.
John tells us in today’s Epistle.
Everyone who loves is born of God
and knows God.
Whoever does not love does not know
God . . .
Those who say, “I love God” but
hate their brother or sister are liars
for those who do not love their
brother or sister
whom
they have seen
cannot
love God whom they cannot see.
There
are a lot of sweet notions of seeing God in the sunset.
William
James, a great shaper of modern thought,
defined faith as what each of us feels about God when we are
alone.
That
may be modern religion.
But,
I am sorry brothers and sisters, that isn’t Christianity.
The
God of Our Lord Jesus Christ shows up
when we stand face to face with each other.
God
is in between us, in the relational space of our caring for each other.
That’s
what Communion means and that’s what
makes it Holy.
Jesus
did not say The Kingdom of God is in each
of you individually.
He
said, The Kingdom of God is among you (plural).
He
said, When two or three are gathered I am
with you.
He
said when we reject or ignore the alien, the hungry,
the naked, the infirm, or the prisoner, it’s him we are
rejecting.
That
Nepalese guy we are deporting is Jesus.
That
visitor to the church we ignore because she is not like is,
that’s
Jesus.
Christianity
isn’t for the timid because other people, really other people,
scare us.
People
of other colors, languages, religions, and nationalities scare us.
That’s
why Jesus’ most often repeated commandment was, Fear not.
The
Bible says, Fear not, 365 times –
once for each day of the year.
John
tells us today,
There
is no fear in love but perfect love casts out fear.
The
Bible says again and again to use our faith to conquer fear
so we can really look at each other,
really listen to each other, deeply
know each other,
because that’s the way – the only
way, the one way –
to know God, to be born of God,
to plunge into the
source, the destiny,
and the
meaning of this God-given life.
