Tearing Down Walls. . .

23rd January, 2010 - Posted by nwilsonadmin - 2 Comments

Tearing Down Walls. . .January   31,  2010

Rev. Nancy Wilson

Jeremiah 1: 4-10; Psalm 71: 1-6; 1 Corinthians 13: 1-13; Luke 4: 21-30

The scripture passages today are about calling, youth and love.

I was struck, reading that famous passage from Jeremiah, about his call as a young person, even, a “child,” the Bible says.  This passage speaks the very words of MCC’s mission: “Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appointed you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.”

Reading that passage with fresh eyes this week, I saw MCC’s mission, “Tearing Down Walls and Building Up Hope,” a phrase that came to be in the midst of the early days of our ground-breaking work in Eastern Europe with young activists challenging religious homophobia, and standing up for Human Rights.

God calls people, often young people, to have the courage to tear walls down, ato open the doors and windows, to cross boundaries, to create new pathways of change, inclusion and hope.

Jeremiah and Jesus are linked in the readings today. Jesus who is cast out after he tries to tear down walls between Jews and Gentiles, to challenge his own community, to speak of healing oppression, lifting up those who have no hope. Jesus who, in our view, was relatively young, only a couple of years older than Troy Perry when he started MCC.

As MCC has aged, over time, sometimes I wonder and worry if we will hear the voices of our young prophets challenging us to break down walls. To not think that we have to always do it the way we have always done it. To hear the voices of those who are not yet certain we are for real, or for them.

I love The Message’s version of the Psalm of the day, Psalm 71: 1-6: “I run for dear life to God, I’ll never live to regret it.”  Jesus had to run for his life that day in he was rejected in Nazaeth — he had to run for his life so he could live to preach and heal and teach, before he faced his Jerusalem. It makes me think of young people on a bus in Moldova,  in Haiti today, or of a cross burning on an MCC lawn. Young people, speaking up, standing up for freedom, for dignity, for love, justice and peace, and inspiring the rage of their elders!

Before I found MCC, or really, really knew I was a lesbian, I was passionately involved in the anti-war movement, in the early 70’s in college. There was a period of time, in the Spring of 1970, when there was a “Moratorium,” and we shut down college campuses all over the US. For weeks, we worked full time to end the war. A group of us stood up in the stuffy Methodist Church I sometimes attended, and spoke out about the war, which they never mentioned. We went door to door in that small town asking people to sign petitions against the war. One day, a man greeted us his door with a gun, shouting at us to get off his property. We didn’t run, exactly, but we backed off, and walked pretty fast, I will tell you.

“My God, free me from the grip of the wicked, from the clutch of the bad and bully.” There were bullies in Jesus day, just like there are in our day – in our schools, taunting children who are different. Or, even, in our churches, sometimes. We need the voice of prophets to challenge the “grip” that bullies sometimes have.

One of the things I carry in my heart as an MCC pastor for so many years, are the countless stories of MCCers, who as children were bullied as children – in their homes, and, often especially, at school. The heart-breaking stories of what those young people did just to survive the violence, and the scars they bear. Some of you reading this have those memories. Some of us become like the bullies we hid from as children, and need healing not to continue the cycle.

All over the world, children and young people need us to stand with them so they can have safe space to become all of who they are. 

I can’t let this Sunday go by, however, without bringing in 1 Corinthians 13, the sonnet to love, Paul’s amazing, inspired teaching. At first, it seems not to fit in this group of readings.

But, in truth, there is one thing that inspires the young, and everyone else, to risk themselves to “tear down walls and build up hope.” That is love.

Love is a powerful motivator. I remember falling in love with God, in so many ways, as a young person. Then, falling in love with MCC, as the first community that embraced all of me, and where I could speak my truth and of the love that longed to be expressed through my life. I remember really knowing that if it wasn’t love, it wasn’t God. And that God was the Inexorable One, whose love for Creation, Humanity, for you and me, will not be stopped. Not by wounded bullies, by hardened hearts, by mistaken concepts of God and religion.

The world is full of religious bullies, who hate in the name of God, and Jesus.  I am always stunned by that, and imagine how God’s heart breaks with the lies. Standing up to religious bullies, telling the truth in love, is a huge part of MCC’s vocation.

God’s amazing grace and love “never ends.” It will go through anything to achieve reconciliation, well-being and peace. Sometimes we have to run for our life to be able to live and love another day. Sometimes we have to make way for and bless a new generation, whose words may even offend us at first, but who are “tearing down walls and build up hope,” in the name of Love.

Amen.

2 Comments

Tabitha

February 21st, 2010 at 3:52 pm    

Wow good sermon. I just sat here and read many of the posted sermons. Maybe I have found a church a girl like me “Transgered”. Please continue to tear down walls. I will locate your church in Austin and who knows maybe it will even become, our church.

jose marcel de los santo ortiz

March 31st, 2010 at 10:22 pm    

bendiciones pastora me gusta ese mensaje quiero escuchalo en español y es verdad dios esta llamando gente con coraje

Leave a reply