No Longer Strangers
a sermon based on Ephesians 2:11-22
Randy L. Quinn

Friday morning, Don Mowad spoke to our Rotary group about some of his experiences as he traveled to the war-torn regions of Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia. Don reminded me of some of the reading I have done about the history of the former Yugoslav Republic and the sources of the conflict there.

There are three distinct ethnic groups who have lived side by side for centuries. There are Muslims, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians. Each group has its own faith practices, each has its own history, each has its own customs.

And while each of the faiths teach love, none of them have been effective at reaching outside their own culture to embrace the lives of the other. The result has been the deaths of thousands, the destruction of cities, and the devastation of the land.

From the outside, it looks quite hopeless.

But Don told us the story of hope in the midst of the hopelessness. He told us about a conversation into which he had been invited where he listened to victims from each of the ethnic groups. They shared their pain with each other as a way of finding some common ground, a meeting point from which peace is being forged.

His stories made me hear Paul's letter with a little more intensity.

You see, Paul knew some of those same tensions existed within the church then and now. There have always been groups and divisions that tend to separate us so that we begin to think in terms of "us" and "them".

In Paul's case, it was former Jews and former Gentiles who had become Christians. It was inconceivable for these two ethnic groups to associate together, but Paul explained that because of Christ there were no more walls to divide them. They share the common ground of God's far-reaching grace. God has broken down the barriers and in Christ has made them one.

Studs Terkel recounts similar events in his book American Dreams: Lost and Found. He retells, for instance, the story of C.P. Ellis, who was a leader of the KKK in Durham, North Carolina. He tells it in Ellis' own words:

"All my life I worked my butt off and never seemed to break even. I didn't know who to blame. I tried to find somebody. I began to blame it on black people."

"I will never forget some black lady I hated with a purple passion. Ann Atwater. Every time I'd go downtown, she'd be leading a boycott. How I hated that black nigger."

Then something happened. Somehow the two of them got elected to co-chair a committee for the school district.

"One day, Ann and I went back to the school and we sat down. We began to talk and just reflect. Ann said, 'My daughter came home cryin' every day. She said her teacher was makin' fun of me in front of the other kids.' I said, 'Boy, the same thing happened to my kid. White liberal teacher was makin' fun of Tim Ellis' father, the Klansman. In front of other peoples. He came home cryin'.'"

"At this point I begin to see, here we are, two people from the far ends of the fence, havin' identical problems, except hers bein' black and me bein' white. From that moment on, I tell ya, that gal and I work together good. I begin to love the girl, really. The amazing thing about it, her and I, up to that point, had cussed each other, bawled each other, we hated each other."

"Up to that point, we didn't know each other. We didn't know we had things in common. It was almost like bein' born again. It was new life."

Finding common ground. That seems to be the key to reconciliation. It's what made the Camp David Accord happen, too. Jimmy Carter, Anwar Sadat, and Menachem Begin had reached an impasse in their negotiations. That's when Carter pulled out pictures of his grandkids. Sadat and Begin pulled out pictures of their grandkids and they began to find common ground.

You've all seen the house on Chuckanut Drive with the large concrete fence around it. I don't know the full story -- and perhaps I never will -- but as it was being built I wondered what kind of a person buys open land and builds a fence before building a house. My guess has been that a city dweller bought the property and started the way he would in a city, by blocking out the surroundings before creating a private home.

Now it's for sale and no one wants it. My own guess is that people who live in the country want to see beyond their own walls and yard.

But sometimes we don't even see the walls that exist. There are walls that divide us and we don't recognize the need to find common ground. We are so safe and secure inside our own fence that we fail to see that there are people on the outside wanting to get in.

Some of these separations are based on what someone has done, some are based on where someone was born, some are based on how someone lives.

I realized what some of those walls look like during one of the worship services at Annual Conference this year. The service began with a series of readings by four different couples.

One particular couple I remember were two women who spoke as if they were in a grocery store line.

The first woman had three young children with her. She spoke of the frustrations she experienced in having to take her children with her to the grocery store. They always wanted things they didn't need and she couldn't afford. And since the last store she went to treated her children rudely, she was in a new store in a nicer part of town.

But it was equally true that she couldn't afford to pay a babysitter so she could shop without her children at her side. Her husband had left her two years ago, and she had no other family in the area, so those were her only options.

As she stood in line, she thought about applying for a job in this store. In her mind, she began to decide if it would pay enough for childcare and still have enough for rent and food. As it was, she was living on welfare and near the end of her food stamps and she was worried if there were more groceries in her basket than she had stamps for.

Meanwhile, the woman behind her was in a hurry. She had her own idea of what was going on. She saw a woman whose children were a nuisance, a woman who didn't want to work, a woman who should be doing other things.

She saw the woman's basket was full of cereal, rice, and macaroni and cheese and wondered why there were no fruits and vegetables. When she saw her food stamps, she worried that her tax dollars were being wasted on this woman and her family. Meanwhile, it seemed to her that the food stamps took longer to handle than cash and she wondered if she'd get home in time to watch her soap opera.

And suddenly, I saw myself.

I make assumptions about people without meeting them. I create stories in my mind to fit the scene in front of me without ever making the effort to hear the full story or to find the common ground we may have.

And I began to listen for stories like these two women in the grocery store.

• How many times have we drawn a line between the "us" of our church and the "them" of the Migrant camps where we have been working with VBS or Circulo de Manos?

• How many times have we heard people draw a line between the "us" who speak English and the "them" who speak Spanish?

• How many times have we thought about the line between the "us" who grew up in Skagit County and the "them" who have moved here in recent years?

At the same time, how many of us have sought the common ground of family and values and faith that we share with our neighbors?

Paul says there is neither Jew nor Gentile, near nor far, English-speaking nor Spanish-speaking in the body of Christ. There are simply brothers and sisters in Christ who have all been reconciled to each other by God's grace.

The lines that once existed have been erased by God. The dividing walls have been torn down (v 14).

_ If we choose to continue to live as if the lines still exist, it is our loss.

_ If we choose to live in a house with concrete walls around the yard, it is our loss.

_ If we choose to live our lives separate from others, it is our loss.

It is our loss not only because we will not know our brothers and sisters. It is also our loss because God dwells in the common ground of grace where we meet, not in the privacy of our own little world.

We all know people who never meet a stranger. I marvel at those people for two reasons. First, it makes me realize how much of an introvert I really am. I know that comes as a surprise to some of you, but it's true. Being with people is hard work for me.

But like a lot of the hard work we do, that doesn't mean I don't do it. I've never met a logger who thought logging was easy work. I've never met a carpenter who thought building a house was easy.

For me, being with people is hard work. And those people I've known who don't know any strangers seem to meet people with an easiness that astounds me.

But I also marvel at them because they seem to have an incredible understanding of the common ground between people. They live as if there have never been lines of division between one person and another.

We have a lot to learn from those people who never know a stranger because they have learned what Paul is trying to tell us in this passage.

In a world where we teach our children to be leery of strangers, these people have learned that a stranger is only a friend we haven't met yet.

Maybe it's time for us to listen to people that we tend to see as "other."

m Whether that be someone who drives a Ford instead of a Dodge.

m Whether that be someone who grew up in California or Hixson.

m Whether that be someone who speaks with an accent that betrays where they grew up.

m Whether that be someone who earns more than we do -- or less than we do.

m Whether that be an estranged family member who has not been forgiven for an act committed in the past.

Whatever may tend to separate us, Paul says we need to learn what common ground we share in Christ.

At the point we begin to learn, like Don did in Bosnia, that we are no longer strangers, we become friends.

And in becoming friends rather than strangers, we begin to fulfill God's desires for us to live as one people, as one community of faith -- throughout the world and throughout the ages.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.