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2 Samuel 7:1-14a
Psalm 89:20-37
Ephesians 2:11-22
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
I’ve just returned from our youth trip to Corrymeela in Northern Ireland, an amazing 8 day trip – which I left on after returning from a few days in upstate New York over the 4th, where I went after returning from a family camp in New Hampshire, where I went right after returning from General Convention in Louisville, KY. Next Sunday I’ll leave again for a week of congregational development training in Queens. And then I’ll go on vacation. It’s one of those summers. So I’m sure it’s because I’m jetlagged, but when I looked over the readings for today (in the airport in Belfast), I just felt tired. The disciples can’t get a break, everyone is rushing about looking for Jesus, even the presence of the Lord (God tells David) is moving around instead of settling down. It makes me want to curl up and wait till it all stops moving so fast. But I know that will be a while, with school departures looming, our beloved associate rector on leave, and the ongoing chaos of construction here. It is good in times like this to hear from God that no matter where we go, God is with us. There is a reason that our early Christian ancestors were called the People of the Way. Life is always about change and movement, even when we wish it would all sit still.
At any rate, it is good for right now to be here, and here with you all. Even despite the murk and heat. I have to say, the cool weather in N Ireland was a huge treat – the Irish kept apologizing to us for it, and we kept saying, no, really, it’s FINE. I’m carrying around the physical memory of coolness to get through this summertime in New York.
It was a powerful trip, working on peace and reconciliation, our teens and the teens from our Muslim partners getting to know one another and each others’ religions, and together learning about the Troubles, the conflict in Northern Ireland that was mostly from before they were born. We spent most of the time in Corrymeela, a place founded for reconciliation among Catholics and Protestants – and now working with people from all kinds of communities. When our youth director Mary Ellen planned this trip, her thought in going there was to learn from a place where people who violently disagreed had found a way to live in relative peace – skills and learning that might help us here in the U.S., in our own culture of conflict and division. Which meant that we were there when the news broke of the assassination attempt on our former president. The Irish looked at us with sympathetic eyes and asked how we all were feeling about it, and suddenly the peace work we were doing took on more of an urgent focus – practical and essential, not just theoretical.
So what stands out for me in today’s scriptures even more than all the traveling about is the passage from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, where he talks about the coming together of two hostile groups, the breaking down of the dividing wall between them. In our time in Northern Ireland, we heard plenty about dividing walls. In Belfast there’s a literal wall, one of many, what were security barriers between Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods – until very recently, they would close the gates at night to keep one side from crossing to the other. Now it’s the Peace wall, painted on over and over with murals and art, and signed with messages of peace by thousands of people every year. Like Paul tells the Ephesians, the dividing wall between the two is broken down by Christ’s peace. Those gates are not shut now, and in recent years the height of the wall was lowered. It’s more of a memorial, an historical landmark, than an actual divider now.
And yet, it’s still a wall. All the security walls there were slated to be taken down by 2023. But over 25 years after the Good Friday agreement, people aren’t ready for that yet. Over and over as we heard the stories, it was clear that the peace in Northern Ireland is a fragile peace, not guaranteed. The scars and memories of the violence are still present, and kept alive through the telling and retelling of stories; riots and protests do still happen from time to time. The peace is something they have to keep working at – it’s not something they’ve achieved once and for all. If we expected to see everyone happily together, singing Kumbaya, well, we quickly realized it isn’t nearly so settled. Our kids took note of this – in some ways the trip may well have been more disturbing than reassuring. Much of our discussion and reflection centered on how vivid the Troubles still appear.
But even though it felt like a much less satisfying message for our kids to carry back home, I think it’s a more honest one. We humans like our dividing walls. We like to make them higher and longer, more heavily patrolled. We find all kinds of ways to keep building them, based on our differences in religion, or ethnic or racial identity, or political beliefs. This reading from Ephesians is also read on the feast of St Simon & St Jude, the feast day in October when we honor and commemorate St Jude’s Chapel – a church born on the other side of the dividing wall of race. That division formally ended in the late 1950s, and we’re working on reparations for that separation here in our community. Now we celebrate our diverse community of lots of different colors. That’s a wall we’ve been working hard to take down. But for every wall we dismantle, it seems we erect more. The spectacle of our presidential election makes that clear – and frankly, the responses to the news of the assassination attempt show just how ugly this particular wall has become. Our teens had no sooner learned of the news before they were absorbing memes and ridicule about it all on social media. Meanwhile, President Trump’s supporters began painting him as a messianic figure, miraculously saved by God. It was a jarring contrast to the relationship building and friendly curiosity we were cultivating among ourselves.
The hard truth is that we will forever be working on peace and reconciliation. We will never achieve the kingdom of God, the Beloved Community, here on our own. Every one of us is infected with walls of separation. It’s too easy to lapse into our side vs the other. In our cities, in our communities, even in our families, we divide up, time and time again. But God doesn’t leave us to sort it all out for ourselves. Thank God we sheep without a shepherd are seen and loved by God, the God of such deep compassion. We have much to be healed from. And God is so ready to heal.
This community of St Michael’s is one of prayer. We offer healing prayer on Sundays; we pray for people by name every day; we teach and talk and practice prayer all the time. We come together in prayer here, in person and online, every week. And that prayer is so essential now – like food and air and water, we need it to survive. This summer, this fall, we will be praying. We will be praying for peace in our time; we will be praying for all those who need healing; we will be praying for those who differ from us. We’ll do it together, because we need it. We can’t live without it. May God build up in us the dwelling place of Love, and of healing for all the world. Amen.