"Restoring Relationships: Remembering Our Humanity"

 

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The First United Presbyterian Church of Loveland

“Restoring Relationships: Remembering Our Humanity”

Rev. Amy Morgan

October 24, 2021

Ephesians 2:11-22

11 So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called ‘the uncircumcision’ by those who are called ‘the circumcision’—a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands— 12remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. 15He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, so that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, 16and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. 17So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; 18for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. 19So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, 20built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. 21In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; 22in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.Matthew 5:21-26, 38-48

21 ‘You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.” 22But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, “You fool”, you will be liable to the hell of fire. 23So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. 25Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. 26Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

38 ‘You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” 39But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; 40and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; 41and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. 42Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

43 ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” 44But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? 47And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

At five years old, a sign was put in her hand with a hateful message on it, and she was brought to a funeral to dance and celebrate and protest. At twelve years old, she was upset on the day of Matthew Sheppard’s funeral because she wasn’t chosen to go and protest. Megan Phelps-Roper, granddaughter of Fred Phelps, the founding pastor of Westboro Baptist Church, grew up in what she describes as a close-knit, loving family that gained notoriety for spreading hate and intensifying divisions. The contradictions of her life were obscured by the highly visible atrocities committed by the church that nurtured and cared for her. 

In 2012, Megan left Westboro Baptist, and most of her family members, behind. She knew when she did this that she would be shunned by her family and church and would still be reviled by the rest of society because of what she’d done and what she represented. But she left anyway. 

She didn’t leave because she was ashamed of her family and church, and what they did and believed. She was ashamed, but shame could not motivate her to leave. She didn’t leave because she suddenly realized that what she believed and what she was doing was wrong. She did come to realize this, but moral righteousness could not motivate her to leave. 

Megan eventually left Westboro because a community of people on Twitter showed her empathy. Most people responded to her Twitter posts on behalf of the Westboro community with anger, insults, and name-calling. They expressed a desire to retaliate against Westboro for the pain they caused. The church, and its leaders and members, had been sued numerous times, and had received threats of violence, including death threats. 

But a handful of Twitter users started asking Megan questions, and really listening to her answers. They treated her like a human being instead of dehumanizing her. They wondered if it was difficult for her to know so many people hated her and her family. They wondered why she believed and did and said things. They didn’t try to change her. They tried to know her. They tried to love her. 

When I heard Megan’s story, I tried to imagine what it would be like growing up in her family and in her church. And frankly, I found my imagination was not capable of going there. But then I tried to remember what I was doing at 5 years old, and at 12, and at 20. I remembered what I was taught and what I believed. I remembered the communities that formed me and loved me. I remembered what I now think they got right, and what I now believe is wrong. And I realized, it isn’t so easy, even now, to be sure about the distinction. 

Remembering is what brought me to empathize with Megan’s story, after decades of feeling anger and disgust at the things she and her family believed and did. 

As human beings, when we find ourselves at odds with other humans, other tribes, or when we feel attacked or feel someone we love is being attacked, there are a set of responses embedded in our DNA that contribute to survival. We can retaliate, fight back. We can isolate the threat by ostracizing it, ignoring it. We can use shame and condemnation to diminish the threat and make ourselves feel bigger. We developed corporate justice systems that we can use as a tool to deal with threats. We can also pretend to go along to get along, allowing resentment to seethe but not provoking further conflict. These are all options available to us when confronted with people with whom we are in conflict. 

But our scriptures provide us with a very different option, a tool that is often overlooked. This practice is found in both our New Testament texts today, but it is a notion that is repeated over and over in the Hebrew scriptures like a mantra. 

Remember. 

“Remember,” Paul says to the Ephesians, “remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” 

Remember that you were once hopeless.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus teaches with astounding authority and shocks his listeners. But in this segment we heard today, he is instructing them to remember. “Remember when you heard this? Well, here’s what it really means.” He’s not instituting new laws and commandments. He’s giving an authoritative interpretation – that’s a phrase Presbyterians love – of instructions they should remember. 

Remember what the laws mean, why you follow them, not just what the laws are. Remember how your actions and reactions impact the people around you, not just how they make you look in the eyes of God and other interpreters of the law. Remember that even your enemies are human beings, just like you. Remember that you are someone’s enemy, too. 

This notion of remembering should be very familiar to Jesus’ audience. Moses instructs the Israelites as they prepare to leave Egypt to “remember this day.” This call is repeated again and again throughout their wanderings in the desert, and as they prepare to enter the Promised Land. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and God saved you. You didn’t do this yourself. And you aren’t slaves anymore. 

The great decline of Israelite devotion to God in the book of Judges is attributed to their failure to remember. And that failure has disastrous consequences by the end of the book. Despicable acts of violence occur that ignite a war among the Israelite that almost results in the extinction of one of their tribes. Judges ends with the words: “all the people did what was right in their own eyes.” They did not remember God, or one another. They only thought about themselves. 

The Psalmists and the prophets, too, beat the drum of remember, remember, remember. Remember what God has done for you. Remember God’s loving kindness and faithfulness. Remember how God has taught you to live so that you may prosper. Remember. 

But we are forgetful people. 

We forget that we were once hopeless. We forget that we were shaped by forces outside our control. We forget that we are someone else’s enemy, and that our enemy has people who love them. We forget. 

And that forgetfulness has consequences. Dividing walls and alienation. Endless cycles of judgment and punishment and retribution. 

We can’t escape seeing this in the world around us. Walls and alienation and dehumanizing have not solved the humanitarian crisis at our southern border. Neither has shaming and denouncing people and tactics that we disagree with. The prison industrial complex in this nation has failed to make us safer or more civil as a society, with recidivism rates at over 75%. Hate crimes in our country are at their highest level in more than a decade. This year, we experienced the largest increase in murders in sixty years. 

Everyone feels under attack. Everyone feels on edge. Everyone feels defensive. Everyone feels like this is someone else’s fault. Everyone is angry, and resentful, and hostile. 

Jesus wasn’t exaggerating. This leads to murder. The statistics don’t lie. 

Restoring relationships between humans is, right now, literally a matter of life and death. 

That is why this church exists, what we are called to do. It is our mission to restore relationships, not because it makes the world a nicer, kinder place. It saves lives. 

When we pledge our support of the ministry at 1^st on 4^th, it is not about keeping the lights on and the boiler running in this historic building. It is not about paying the staff and maintaining our online presence. It is not even about having a spiritual home for all of us to come and be with our loving church family. Yes, giving to the church does all those things. And they might be good in and of themselves. 

But the real goal is so much bigger and so much more important than all that. We do not have spaces in our society where relationships can be restored. We do not have communities that witness to our unity and peace in Jesus Christ. But this, is a space and community restoring relationships between human beings who are deeply and dangerously divided. 

Here, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are learning the respect and responsibility required to be in relationship as a civil society, and they are learning that the church is a place that supports that work, even as we recognize our ultimate citizenship lies in God’s realm. Here, we navigate political, ideological, theological, and any other difference of perspective with grace and love. Here, we attend to the needs of those who are most vulnerable and most marginalized in our community. Here, we make peace and are generous is ways that are outsized to our membership numbers. Here, no one is an enemy. No one. 

Because here, we remember. Week after week, we are reminded that we were once hopeless, lost, outsiders. Here, we remember that we were once oppressors, aggressors, and adversaries. Here, we remember that we are not perfect, but that God has loved us anyway. And here, we remember that Christ has inaugurated a new reality, a reality that currently exists but is not yet complete, a reality in which we are one new humanity, citizens in the reign of God, one household of God, one dwelling-place for God. We remember that this is who we are, not who we have to try to be. 

This church helps us remember, because it is so easy to forget. 

It is so easy to believe that we are conservative or liberal, native or immigrant, racially classified, blue-collar or white-collar, urban or rural, male or female, sober or drunk, economically classified, educationally stratified. 

But we are not. We are all living under the same roof, and the same sun shines and rain falls on us all. And the fact that we forget that doesn’t make it any less true. 

Megan Phelps-Roper encountered people who remembered. Remembered that she was human, that she was part of the household of God, that she was worthy of love. This didn’t mean they agreed with or even tolerated the hateful rhetoric and painful behaviors she promoted and participated in. Listening to and loving a person does not mean condoning or encouraging hurtful actions and words from that person. 

In Megan’s case, the love shown to her by people who saw her and her family as enemies did put her on a path to rejecting the horrifying ideology and destructive theology of her family and church. But if that was the point, it wouldn’t have worked. Megan had many tools at her disposal to ensure she was not manipulated into changing her beliefs. There were serious dividing walls between her and the rest of the world. 

The people she interacted with on Twitter helped her remember parts of scripture her family and church forgot. They helped her remember the humanity and suffering of the people at the funerals she protested. They helped her remember that God loved her, no matter what. They helped her remember that she would always have a home with God, even if she was excluded from the household of her birth. 

This remembering is what gave her the courage to leave, and to still love. She fell in love and married one of those people she met on Twitter. And she still loves her family, even as she is pained by the destructive ideology they continue to promote. She remembers what it feels like to have enemies, and to be an enemy. And she remembers that on the cross, Christ dealt a death-blow to hostility itself. 

So, family of faith, let us keep remembering. That we are all human beings, we are all part of the same household of God, we are all reconciled to God by the cross of Jesus Christ. Let us help our friends and family members, our community and our nation to remember. So that we can live into that reality that already exists, the reality of a new, unified humanity, whole and at peace, a place where God dwells in each of us and in all of us. 

To God be all glory forever and ever. Amen.