Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Let us pray. O Lord send forth your word into our ears that it may bear fruit in our lives, in Jesus’ name, Amen. What is it that divides us? I remember the image was different, the language was different, when I was in elementary school. In elementary school, I was taught that America is a melting pot. Didn’t matter where you came from, didn’t matter what your own personal history was. Everyone was thrown into one big pot together, and melted down, blended into something new, something uniquely American. Then when I was in college, the image shifted from melting pot to salad bowl. America was like a salad, and a salad is different from a puree, because in a puree all the ingredients get blended together in such a way you can never take them back apart. Instead, we were taught that America should be like a salad. Carrots stay carrots, tomatoes stay tomatoes, the lettuce stays the lettuce, and each person lives out their heritage individually, and the flavors combine to make a nice multicultural experience. I don’t know if there’s an image like that circulating today. If we stick to the food analogy today, it feels more like everything is supposed to be prepackaged, and to stick to its packaging, everything separated into a different category, the apples stay in their wrapper with the other apples, but the uncrustables stay on its side of the lunch box, never to touch any other part of the food, let the dipping sauce stay in its own container. Or perhaps that’s just the way I see the situation. Maybe there’s actually something there, but it feels like the rhetoric of division in our world is just getting out of control, and we see it pretty much everywhere we look. We see it in politics. Political opponents no longer debate the issues with each other. Instead, they opt for name calling, fear mongering. There’s rioting, there’s looting, burning down cities. An assassination attempt is bad enough, but the conversation following it, if you can call it conversation, well that has been, in many ways, worse. But let’s not pretend that we can limit it to politics. There’s a lot of social issues that are a powder keg, waiting to explode. We’re divided over pay for men and women, divided over who should pay what in taxes, divided over sexual orientation and gender identity, divided over climate change, sustainable farming practices, critical race theory, DEI mandates, the list just goes on and on. Feels like we’re being driven towards division, towards argument on all sides, but such division is nothing new. The intensity of the language may ebb and flow, the ferocity of it may rise and fall over time, but it’s nothing new. Go back and read the newspaper editorials about the possible election of Abraham Lincoln. They could easily have been written anytime in the last 10 years. So, we return to our original question. What is it that’s actually dividing us, because ultimately, it’s not politics, and ultimately, it’s not social issues, it’s not race or gender that lies at the root. It’s sin. It’s my sin. It’s our own sin. It’s the sin of the people around us. It’s sin that leads to hostility. It’s sin that drives wedges of division between people. It’s sin that turns the rhetoric so harsh. Our world is lost in its sin. Our world is dead in its sin. Our world has no true knowledge of its sin, and no desire for repentance, but Paul gives us a different way. We are not of the world. Remember Paul says, “remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promises, having no hope and without God in the world.” And when people have no hope in the godless world, it’s not really all that surprising when their words and actions and attitudes sound the way that they do. But Paul says, “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility… so making peace,” Now to be fair Paul’s language in today’s reading, is really directed more towards the relationship between Jewish converts and Gentile converts in the early church, but I think it still applies to us. I think it’s still relevant in the church today, and our relationship to each other, and our dealings with the world around us. Jesus came in order to reconcile the world to God through the work of the cross, killing the hostility by taking it upon himself. “And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by[e] the Spirit.” It’s all nice language, but what does it mean? I think first it means we’ve been given the gift of the eyes of faith, the gift of seeing the real problem, and the real solution. I think that’s one of the causes of the escalating rhetoric in our world around us, is that people can’t even agree on what the biggest problem is. Is the biggest problem abortion, or guns, or climate change, or wealth distribution, election integrity, immigration, discrimination, foreign threats, the list goes on and on. Through the working of the Spirit, we know the true problem is actually sin. Sin that alienates us from our Lord. Sin that produces all manner of bitterness and hate in us. Sin that corrupts our speech, that leads us to villainize the people around us, sin that drives the wedge even deeper, creating even more separation, even more hostility, but sin cannot be solved through any earthly means. Fixing the economy isn’t going to cleanse the heart of sin. Fixing the environment is not going to remove sin, neither will solving gender inequality, or bringing peace to the Middle East. Jesus is the only solution for sin. His death is the only payment. He is the only way out. It’s like when a person is hangry, might be lashing out at you because the way you’re typing too loud, I don’t like the sound of your pen clicking, but simply removing the minor annoyance won’t ultimately fix the problem. The anger is just going to get directed somewhere else. When a person is hangry, the only true solution is to eat something. When the problem is sin, the only true solution is the death of the old Adam, the gift of new life that is ours through Christ Jesus, our Lord. And so, we come to our Lord in repentance. We humble ourselves and confess our sin every time we gather in this room. We remind ourselves of the true problem. We cry out to our Lord for his deliverance, and he answers every time. He forgives our sin to the proclamation of absolution, he forgives our sin in the sacrament of this altar, he renews us, he strengthens us to leave this place refreshed, ready to be his salt in a world of bitterness, ready to be his light in a world of darkness. That’s another gift of being brought near by the blood of Christ. It changes the way we respond to the world around us. The world will continue to bicker and fight and sling mud at each other. We speak the truth in love. We speak the truth, and the truth will always cause division, that’s what the truth does, it divides itself from error and falsehood, but even in the midst of such division we recognize that our battle is not against the people who disagree. Our battle is not against flesh and blood but with the spiritual powers that work in this present darkness. And so, we speak God’s truth, but we always speak God’s truth in love to the world around us. It doesn’t mean that we should never get involved in social or political causes, doesn’t mean we should cloister ourselves away either, barricade ourselves apart from the world around us, but it does mean we don’t get dragged down into the muck, we don’t play by the world’s rules. To use Paul’s language from later in Ephesians, “walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” We don’t seek to defeat or obliterate or humiliate the people around us. We want to convert them, to help them see the depth of God’s love for them, to bring them to confess the truth of their own sin, to experience the sweet healing of forgiveness. As far as it concerns us, we live at peace with the world around us, and we live at peace with each other. There’s so much in this world that would divide us, and Satan would love nothing more than to rip the body of Christ apart, limb by limb, but he is not more powerful than our Lord. He is not more powerful than our Lord’s Word. We are united to the world around us because we all share the bondage to sin from which we are unable to free ourselves, but even more so we are all united to each other, those who have been made alive by the blood of the Lamb. And so, we live in that unity. We rejoice in that unity. We speak the truth in love. Where the world would sow despair, we speak hope. Where the world would sow death we speak life, and even in the midst of all such worldly chaos and division, we live in the peace of our Lord, the peace of our Lord that surpasses all understanding, that guards our hearts and our minds in the one true faith unto life everlasting. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Sunday, July 21st, 2024