Reverend Marsha Hoecker Sunday July 21st, 2024
Sermon - July 21, 2024 St. George Chapel
I was encouraged to stay away from politics in today’s comments, and please trust me, I am not intending to refer to any candidates, parties or races, but boy, with an opening like,
“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the Lord,” one could be sorely tempted.
I am going to talk about something that has been in the news lately though: the need to maintain our basic unity even with our differences. Our lesson today from Jeremiah is about the scattering of a people and the promise of reunification through righteous leadership and shepherding.
The lesson from Ephesians reminds us of the early disagreement in the church about circumcision. Non-Jews were not as a rule circumcised, but for Jewish men circumcision was a mark of their religious faith. With the appearance of Jesus, a prophet out of the Jewish tradition, it was initially Jews who were drawn to follow him.
As the faith moved beyond Israel, especially through the missionary work of St. Paul, many Gentiles became part of this new community called Christians. Paul himself had been a devout Jew who had seen the Jesus movement as a threat.
Until he was blinded by the light and knocked off his horse, he was intent on stopping this renegade sect. There is no question that he was circumcised.
Paul, who was an apostle to the Gentiles, rather than the Jews, clearly saw the demand for circumcision as an impediment to his mission. He went to the Christian council in Jerusalem to argue for his work among Gentiles, and to convince them that in Christ such divisions as Jew - Gentile, Circumcised - Uncircumcised, had been erased. One’s spiritual transformation in Christ required no outward and visible physical change.
Paul was about breaking down the divisions, not setting up new ones. He said “[Christ]... is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall that is the hostility between us.”
Yet even among Christians today, we see those dividing walls being built. In an election year like this one, in spite of all the talk about unity it is our differences that get the focus. And, of course that is, after all, what it is all about. We want to highlight the differences between party platforms and candidates because we are being asked to make a choice.
But highlighting differences is one thing, name calling and demonizing is something else entirely. We are all the children of one God, and each has the potential to do good as well as evil. It is our job as citizens of a democracy to evaluate our candidates based on factual and reasonable data and to make an informed choice.
We will not all come to the same conclusion. We have different scoring cards, different needs, and different beliefs about what is best for our country. I hope though, that one basic belief we can all share is that we are all children of a loving God; the same loving God. And in the eyes of that God we are all worthy of love.
And I hope we can all agree that our right to choose our leader through a democratic process is a cherished right, and because we will not ever all agree 100%, it is a right we need to protect.
Our God is a God of reconciliation and of love. We are different in so many ways, but love and reconciliation should always be our goal. Our unity as a nation and as a diverse people must be precious to us even as we disagree about the particulars. When all the voting is done let us pray that we will still be one nation under God, “indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”.
Conversation questions;
How do we love one another in the midst of contentious discourse?
How do we respect each other’s dignity when we vehemently disagree?