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Moving the Fence
suggested scripture: Acts 8:26-40 It was France, near the end of World War II. William Barclay, the Scottish preacher and theologian, was with his patrol doing mopping up exercises, roaming the country for any straggling enemy personnel. In the process, their captain was shot and killed. They wanted to give him a proper burial. They went to the first church they found and asked the priest if they could bury their friend in the graveyard next to the church. The priest asked in the man was a Catholic. He was not. Only Catholics could be buried in the graveyard. Seeing the soldiers’ sadness, the priest thought of a compromise. He said they could bury their captain just outside the wire fence, and he would personally see to it that the grave was cared for. And so they did that. The next day, wanting to put flowers on the grave, the soldiers returned to the church. They looked and looked but could not find the grave. They went to find the old priest. He saw them coming and came to meet them. “You are looking for your captain’s grave. Well, I’ll tell you what happened. Last night I lay in bed, but couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking of your friend and his grave resting outside the fence line. So in the middle of the night, I got up and moved the fence.” Who gets in? It’s a question the church has been asking for 2,000 years. Who gets into heaven? Who gets saved? Who gets into my church? Who gets into my heart? Who gets to be inside our fence? In our time, that question focuses around the hot and hard issues of race and class and, especially these days, sexual orientation. In other times, the church focused on other issues, but it has been the same question: who could be inside the fence? In the mid-1800s, some Christians used the Bible to support slavery. In the 1950s, we barred African-Americans from entering our white churches. In the 20th century we began to deal with the role of women in church. Some churches argued over whether divorced people were welcome, or non-traditional families. It isn’t just a modern question, either. Deciding who gets to be inside the fence has been a struggle for the Christian church since the beginning. Not long after Jesus, maybe around the year 49, the question was not about African-Americans or women or gays. It was about non-Jews, those whom scripture calls the Gentiles. Could they be inside the fence? Jesus was Jewish, after all, and scripture did not speak highly of Gentiles. It was a hot issue, and the leaders disagreed bitterly about it, just as we do today on our issues. So they called the first big church meeting (you can read about it in Acts 15) to decide who would be allowed inside the fence: Jews only, or Gentiles also? Peter was there, and Paul, and Jesus’ brother James. Acts 15 even records some of the debate. And it tells us what this very young church decided: among this new movement, these followers of Jesus, non-Jews would be welcomed, the equal of Jews. They decided to move the fence. Even before that council, the issue arises; Acts 10 records it. Peter has a dream in which God commands him to eat food that Jews considered unclean. Peter, devout Jew, is horrified and refuses: “I have never eaten anything unclean in my life.” This vision repeats itself three times, and three times God says, “What I have called clean, you must never name unclean.” From then on, Peter lives out of a different model of reality. And he’s able to translate his new vision into behavior: when (in the next chapter) he welcomes as acceptable some people that he had all his life been taught were not acceptable. Peter learned that God is always leading us into a deeper truth than the one we have, and that God is always leading us into more love. Peter moved his fence. Among some ancient Jews, the stork was one of the animals considered unclean. Someone once asked a rabbi: “The stork is such a devoted bird. It gives so much care to its mate and young. Why is it unclean?” The rabbi answered, “Because it only cares for its own kind.” Let’s look at one last story from Acts, this one in chapter 8, and one directly relevant to contemporary struggles. There was an Ethiopian official who was a eunuch, one who had been castrated. In that culture, eunuchs were considered unclean; they were definitely outside the fence. The Ethiopian official was reading the prophet Isaiah and not understanding it. Along comes Philip, one of the early Christians, who interprets Isaiah through his experience with Jesus. The Ethiopian is transformed by what he hears, and asks “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” This man is a foreigner. He is a eunuch, which in that society made him unclean. He is not one of them. And yet when he asks “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” Philip answers “Nothing.” Philip moved the fence. That means that within a few years after Jesus, the early Christian movement was welcoming sexual minorities into the church. You see, for 2,000 years we in the church have been trying to decide who gets to be inside the fence. You might say it comes down to a grammar lesson on which word to use: accept Jews only or Gentiles also recognize Catholics only or Protestants also make a place for whites only or people of color also give authority to men only or women also accept traditional families only or non-traditional families also welcome straight people only or lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people also Only or also: two millenniums of trying to discern which four letter word God likes best.
The history of our faith is a history of ever-increasing expansiveness. Through one biblical story after another, one church issue after another, God leads us to wider and deeper inclusiveness. I don’t like moving my fences. I don’t like having my deepest beliefs challenged, my lifetime understandings turned upside down, my already difficult life made more difficult. I don’t like it. But I love Jesus. I love Jesus with all my heart and soul. And I am convinced that Jesus was a fence-mover. Speaking to women in public. Accepting prostitutes and Pharisees equally. Welcoming tax collectors and lepers and beggers. Breaking purity laws in order to include those who were considered unclean. Saying really bizarre things like love your enemies. I believe that Jesus is about an ever-expanding love, that Jesus welcomes everyone at his table, and that Jesus asks the same of me: that I make the stranger family. Minnie Pearl tells a story about her childhood in the Tennessee mountains. Her father got caught far from home one night, and a fierce storm was threatening. He stopped at the first farmhouse to ask for shelter. The people were very quiet folks, and they did not know him. But they invited him in to supper. The storm broke loose in all its fury. They ate in silence for some time. Then the woman became concerned that the stranger might feel uncomfortable because of their quiet, perhaps interpreting their silence to mean he was unwelcome. She began to make some conversation. “Sure is raining outside.” And her husband, in the only words he said the entire meal, answered, “Let it rain. Everybody’s in.” Everybody’s in. I think that is God’s vision. I think that is scripture’s truth. I think that is Jesus’ challenge. It’s a very ancient Christian tradition: deciding who’s in. And this, too, is a very ancient Christian tradition: moving the fence.
© Janice Jean Springer 2007
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