WALLS
The title of my homily for this 16 Sunday in Ordinary Time [B] is, “Walls.”
W A L L S: we know about walls. They surround us. They are everywhere! Walls.
That’s an image and a possible theme for a homily that I noticed in today’s second reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians.
I once read a whole book by Marcus Barth on just this theme - which was triggered from the text in Ephesians that we heard this morning. The book was entitled, The Broken Wall: A Study of the Epistle to the Ephesians. I’ve been working on a book on this theme ever since - and every once and a while I add a chapter. This homily will be one more itch to finish it. By the way, after finishing this homily I realized, this homily is going to sound like it’s a book. Smile.
Paul pictures Jesus as the one who breaks down the dividing wall of enmity - E N M I T Y - ECHTHRA - in Greek - better translated, I think, by the word HATRED, the opposite of AGAPE - LOVE.
Walls - sometimes we love them, want them, need them. Walls - sometimes we hate them. We don’t like them. We wish they would fall down. Walls.
ROBERT FROST
Robert Frost - one of our national poets - sums up both feelings - the ambiguity or mixed feelings - the pros and cons - about walls.
In his poem Mending Walls, Robert Frost says one man wants to repair the stone wall that separates his property from another man. Both meet every spring to check out their wall.
The second man wonders why they need a wall in the first place. If they had cows, smart move, but they have trees. The first man always says “Good fences make good neighbors.” The other man reflects, “Before I’d build a wall I’d ask what I’m walling in and walling out.”
Obviously, we need walls. It rains. It gets cold. It gets hot. We need privacy when we go to the bathroom and when we go to sleep. We need skin to keep our insides in and stuff from the outside out. We need tents and mosquito nets. We need umbrellas and laws - and front doors and windows with locks. We need cages and jails. We need places to live - with closets and bottom drawers and a good kitchen table. Now with this Aurora, Colorado horrible shooting, we're going to have to have more safety walls and screening at theaters.
Arab proverb: “Keep you tents separate and bring your hearts together.”
Arthur “Bugs” Baer said, “A good neighbor is a fellow who smiles over the back fence but doesn’t climb over it.”
Ben Franklin said, “Love your neighbor, yet don’t pull down your hedge.”
In a book of poems and reflections Carl Sandburg says, “A fence should be horse high, pig tight, and bull strong.”
Looking at your life - if you own your own home - how many times - have you pointed out to a guest - your property line - if you don’t have a fence or a wall? Why did you do that? What’s the back story?
Looking at your life - if you have kids - how many times have you told them about boundaries - when they have to be home - the rules of the house - and you add, “They are for your protection”?
SO WE KNOW ABOUT WALLS
We know about walls - and barriers - and obstacles - and blocks - and red tape. We know about our homes - our protections - our man caves - our hiding places - our escapes - the boundaries we have for human behavior. We know about covenants and contracts. But we also know about the beauty of freedom - and national parks - and the ocean and the sky without boundaries - and the vast unknown.
We know today’s gospel. We need vacations. We need a break. In today’s gospel Jesus says, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” Then Mark adds the comment - I hear him telling us this with a smirk in his voice - because there is wall to wall people in the scene. “People were coming and going in great numbers, and they had no opportunity even to eat.” Then Mark continues the humor, “So they went off in the boat by themselves to a deserted place. People saw them leaving and many came to know about it. They hastened there on foot from all the towns and arrived at the place before them.”
We know about walls - sometimes we are surrounded by them - especially people walls.
Tom, a priest I worked with for 8 ½ years before I came to Annapolis, told me a great story. He said, “Maryann called today and her voice sounded funny. So I asked her, where she was. She said, ‘In the cabinet under the sink. The four boys, Matthew, Mark, Luke and Sean, haven’t discovered this hiding place yet.’”
We know about the walls down the middle of our families, broken friendships - problems with people at work. We know walls down the middle of the marriage bed. We know walls inside our souls - mistakes we made many years ago - walls with pictures of the mistake that hang there on that wall for the rest of our lives.
We know about walls - those we build against those who are too loud or too fat or too thin or too different than us. We know that we just don’t understand why the other person doesn’t see what we see - and how we see - and they are so, so wrong, narrow, strange, different from us.
There’s a value in reading - and traveling - and discovering and dealing with the different. I love the story about the tourist in Mexico. He sees men riding their donkeys and the women are walking. He finally asks a man about this who says calmly, “But senor, my wife doesn’t own a burro.” We then think: maybe she does.
We know about walls. If we’re over 30 we know about the Berlin Wall coming down on November 9th, 1989.
If we know history and if we’ve been following the news down through the years we know about the Great Wall of China, the Iron Curtain after World War II, the practice of segregation in the United States, the program called, “Apartheid” in South Africa from 1948 to 1994. the difference coming in and out of the United States and airports before and after September 11, 2001, the call for walls on our southwest borders,
If you know your family and neighborhood history, you know stories and gossip about walls. The story that still intrigues me happened in a place I won’t mention, but you know this kind of a story. Two brothers got the family home when mom died. Dad had died earlier. Both brothers had their own family. One brother thought he should have gotten the whole house. A fight began. It was going on for 22 years when I was brought in on the story. The front door was broken open so two doors could go up. Behind the front walls - walls went up where needed right down the middle of the house. Both brothers didn’t talk for 22 years. That’s how I heard the story. I’ve often wondered how did it. There are a lot more particulars - but let me just say that much. That story can be a déjà vu story - for individuals, families, neighbors, churches, countries.
Walls.
NEW YORK TIMES STORY
Every Monday morning I read a section of the New York Times called, Metropolitan Diary. It presents 4 or 5 vignettes from life in New York City that people send in. One of the 5 usually grabs me - and I jot it down - for possible use in a future sermon.
Here is an incident from June 27 - this year. It’s entitled, “An Existential Guard.” A gal named Marcia Epstein writes,
Dear Diary.
A friend and I were wandering around the Metropolitan Museum of Art, trying to find the exit. The Met being enormous and full of hallways that turn into other hallways and exhibition rooms, we were not having much success.
Finally, I approached a museum guard and said to him, “We’re looking for the way out.”
His reply? “Aren’t we all.”
AREN’T WE ALL?
Aren’t we all trying to find a way out - or a way through - or a way to knock down walls and barriers that we don’t want or like - or that drive us crazy.
Paul is telling us that Jesus came to break down the walls between God and us. Jesus came to break through the walls that appear in religion and worship.
Read the four gospels and you’ll hear Jesus reaching out to all sorts of people - the strangers and untouchables - the little people and the sinners - over and over and over again. Listen to the gospels and you’ll hear what folks have been saying in churches for the past 1980 years, “Oh my God, look who’s in communion with Jesus! Look who’s eating Jesus. Look who Jesus is feeding and nourishing. Oh my God.”
Read the four gospels and hear Jesus giving solutions on how to get through walls. I love the Easter Gospels where Jesus comes through walls - notice the little comment - even though the doors were locked - and said to his scared, fear filled disciples, “Peace! I forgive you! Whose sins your hold onto they are held onto - whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven.”
I love that and I think that’s why so many people love Edwin Markham’s short piece called, “Outwitted.”
“He drew a circle that shut me out.
Heretic, rebel a thing to flout
But love, and I had the will to win.
We drew a circle and took him in.”
Notice the word “love” there. “But love, and I had the will to win. We drew a circle and took him in.”
November 7th, 2012 can’t come fast enough for me. The walls are going up and up and up - from both sides and all sides.
Erase the circles - or draw bigger circles - change the conversation - turn the other cheek - go the extra mile - and then some.
Jesus speaks to us many ways - 2 clear ways - as a baby and in suffering and dying - two moments that bring us together dramatically.
CONCLUSION
Here in church - we have an opportunity - to be together as Catholics - which means With the Whole Human Race - Kata Holos in Greek - the whole Catalogue of Peoples.
I loved Rome - seeing all those Catholics from all over the world - in St. Peter’s Square - with a German Pope right now - the one before him was Polish - the ones before that were Italian - but wasn’t the first one Jewish. Wouldn’t it be great if the next one was Chinese or from some country in South America or Africa? Surprise.
Let me close with one wall breaker - because I’ve heard this enough to know it’s some people’s sentiment. Some people see things differently than us - that’s a gigantic wall - we all face every day. Some people knowing our walls say, “Get over it!” The complaint, the barrier, the wall, the rule, some people want is that of what folks wear to church. Some people go crazy with that. Some people say, “Close your eyes!” Some people say, “Glad everyone is here.”
When I was in Rome last September, the guide had said women can’t have bare arms and shorts or something like that. Men couldn’t wear shorts either, so this one guy bought paper pants. I loved it. Then I saw men outside the bus ready for us to get off - selling shawls for the ladies. I thought, “Isn’t that great? Someone is capitalizing on the rule. I love it. It’s helping someone put food on the table.”
I’m sure they do the same thing at Mosques.
Then I saw the signs about modesty - a value of course. However, I would rather see at the door of every church or mosque, the sign they have at the Taize monastery in France,
“All you who enter here
Be reconciled
The Father with his son
The husband with his wife
The believer with the unbeliever.
The Christian with his separated brother.”
