Sermons

Don't Abide the Fence

Aaron Doll                                     Third Presbyterian Church  May 25, 2003                                           Acts 10:34-43

Fences. All shapes and sizes and heights. How many fences do you pass between home and your weekly destinations? Two hundred year old stone fences around stately stone houses. Cute white picket fences next to doll house kinds of homes. Chain link fences to protect our goods. Flimsy fences with a single wire that carries a wallop if a cow brushes against it. If I look down the green corridor of my back lawn, I’ll see at the lawn’s edge, a tall wooden fence, unpainted, that encloses Cameron and Chewbacca, two spirited dogs who enjoy chasing squirrels that run frantically along the top of the fence to the safety of the neighbor's tree or our garage. “Fences to keep out, fences to keep in, fences to protect or to guard, fences that are traditional more than functional, fences that are ineffective,”. 

Robert Frost once wrote a poem about fences. Two guys are out on the back forty walking along a stone fence that separates their property. During the winter, dogs and hunters have dislodged stones and broken down the barrier, so here they are on this spring day trying to reassemble their crumbly stone fence. Then one of them says a strange thing, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Sounds good enough. Fences do have a way of making neighbors behave themselves. But the other guy has to ask that dumb question why. “Why do fences make good neighbors?” “I mean if there were cows,” he says to himself, “then I can understand why fences make good neighbors, but there aren’t any.” Then he concludes, “something is that doesn’t love a wall. That wants it down.”  

I wonder if Frost’s poem speaks about the dilemma that we face. On one hand we can understand the old farmer’s wisdom that good fences make good neighbors. We’ve been ripped off enough to know that fences are needed to guard, to protect, to keep out and to threaten. But isn’t there also something deep down inside us that doesn’t love a wall. That wants it down. I guess it all depends on which side of the fence we’re standing on. But one thing is for sure--fences don’t have to come from Sears or have electric charges to make distinctions in our lives.  

There once was a Sunday School teacher that gathered the children of the congregation up in front of the church for a Children's message story. The teacher imaginatively divided the  congregation down the middle to make a point. Good folks on the right side and the not-so-good folks on the other side. Little Brittany, a little nervous when she noticed that her parents were on the not-so-good side of the congregation quickly reminded her teacher that her mommy and daddy were good too. Brittany saw an invisible fence and imagined what it might feel like to be on the wrong side of the fence. 

There were no fences that you could see with your eye when Nissim Gudai went shopping for groceries in the marketplace. Seventy year old Nissim strolled the marketplace chatting. Moments later he lay on the pavement with a knife buried in his back. “Fences make good neighbors,” but sometimes the fences are sharp and hateful. The stabbing of Nissim Gudai happened next to an invisible fence with a sign that read: “You are Jewish and this is Hebron. “You are trespassing. Get out and stay out of our neighborhood.” 

Obren thought the Muslims would be only a bad memory a few months ago. Thought he wouldn’t have to see Muslim children playing in the street anymore, or watch their women hoe in the garden or plant their flowers, or their men bow in prayer. Obren, a Serbian soldier had seized a Muslim home, one that had been abandoned during the war. But just as he was getting comfortable in his new home they started returning by the busloads. Refugee Muslims returning to their village. After all, under the Dayton Peace Accord they were guaranteed safe return to their homes. But to Obren, this was an invasion. So the fence went up; a literal fence made up of Serbian soldiers standing body to body blocking the road, wielding clubs, shovels, rocks, and hammers and bricks. “Good fences make good neighbors?” 

Or take retired Sergeant Vernon Baker, who received at the age of 76 the prestigious Metal of Honor for his heroic efforts during World War II. When I learned of this sergeant’s award, I wondered why did Sgt. Baker have to wait five decades before being honored? Well, like one million other American soldiers, Vernon Baker was black, and since the racial fences were strongly entrenched, there wasn’t a single black veteran who was given a Metal of Honor until 1996. The four other black soldiers who had also been selected for this honor had long since died. But they didn’t die on enemy soil, they died in America beside an invisible fence called “racism.” 

“But that’s where the Easter story comes in,” we say. “Jesus rose from the dead and that means that God forgives and accepts all of us--no matter what race, color, or creedal background we’ve come with.” True enough--at least in theory. But it doesn’t take too many Sundays of worship in this church, or any church, for that matter to become aware that the invisible fences of human nature are up - the fences we abide with most of the time unknowingly.  

There are fences of education, fences of station, social standing, fences of mindset, fences of moral and political opinion, fences of greed and material gain.  Fences that create fences in a vicious circle that erodes the common good of all.  In preparing these thoughts on fences to be shared on Memorial Day, I have been struck with these complex fences in our world community that cause the need for national defense.  In this most recent conflict with the former regime of Iraq I have encountered a fence that has the words "not supporting the war is equal to not supporting our troops."  While I believe this is hogwash, I tell you that I have a new respect for our men and women in the armed forces because of the fences we ask them to navigate.   

Sometimes I see fences in the church; Sometimes I see the fences separating newly arriving members from long-established members. I’ve seen fences that separate us based on age. There are walls based upon different approaches and different ways of doing things, and different ways of worshipping.  In our defense these are all common socially based challenges for congregations.   

Seems that all too often in the Church our invisible fences can often play a stronger role in making distinctions among us than physical ones do. Consider our lesson in Acts 10. Peter gives a bold, inclusive word to all within ear-shot: Because of Christ’s resurrection, he says, there are no more fences to keep folks out, for God doesn’t show partiality. Then comes his terrific sermon about Jesus who goes around everywhere healing and freeing “all” and “everyone.” What a profound word coming from the lips of one who just hours before could have been the grand wizard of his local KKK! Peter has been given a vision by God to eat, touch, and get involved with what he and his Good News colleague Jews believed to be unclean stuff. So thick and high are the fences in Peter’s imagination, that God has to push the replay button three times. Three times Peter reviews a rerun of pork, cleaved hooves, and reptilian types slithering and crawling through God’s troubling vision.  

So overwhelming is this vision that God forces on Peter, that at the end of it about all Peter can do is to scratch his head.  Within twenty-four hours, Peter the Christian, Peter the racist, finds himself standing in the living room of a Gentile. And there he faces the greatest challenge of his life. Will he tear down the fence that keeps the Good News inside his little Jewish-Christian enclave--the same fence that keeps the rest of the world outside?  

Well, before he can really struggle through his own mixed emotions on this issue--God knocks at the door. Just when Peter gets to the part in his sermon where he says, “all who believe in him will have their sins forgiven through the power of his name...”  

It happens.  

All hell breaks loose for the fence-builders. Yet it is Heaven for those on the outside of the fence.  

As the crowd on the other side of the fence receive the unmistakable sign of the Holy Spirit and begins to praise God and speak in other tongues, Peter stands there stunned. All of the stupid jokes that he has uttered about Gentiles comes racing back, all of the hate and suspicion and animosity he painfully remembers. And he suddenly realizes that he--the Christian, the disciple of Jesus--has himself built walls that has kept the Good News from reaching people. Peter makes a life-changing, fence-destroying discovery. His discovery frees the Good News to spill out to all lands and among all peoples. But what’s really astonishing is where he makes this discovery: right in the middle of his Easter sermon and right in the middle of a Gentile living room.  

And so this morning we remember the truly Good News that Peter made and that we must continue to make throughout our journey: that God loves everyone -- red, yellow, black and white, White Collar and Blue Collar, young, and old --and that those who trust in Jesus will experience the forgiveness of sins. Period.  What fences have kept us away from the God who invites, who forgives, and who tears down every fence that we could possibly erect to keep neighbors and God out? What fences to we hide behind at school, at work, in our families.  What fences are the elders and commissioners of the Presbyterian Church struggling against this week at General Assembly?  

Where are our modern frontiers for bridge-building?  Are they to those beyond our socio-economic circumstance, national origin, or philosophical or theological leanings?  Who would we least expect to receive the gospel in our day?  What personal transformation would we be least likely to think possible for ourselves?  

God offers us an open-fence policy! Did you catch Peter’s sermon summary? “That everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” That’s the invitation. Period.