In 1871 two
archeologists found a piece of engraved stone from the Jerusalem temple with
Greek writing on it. It held a stern warning: “No foreigner is to enter the
barriers surrounding the sanctuary. He who is caught will have himself to blame
for his death which will follow.”
This was one rule they were, evidently, pretty
strict about. No gentiles were permitted to enter the temple. But it was not
the only rule. There were degrees of acceptability in the temple worship of the
time.
The outermost area of the temple was called the
court of the gentiles, and it was a large, open, public area. Anyone could come
into the outer court. But within this courtyard there was a barrier, called a
soreg, which surrounded a wall defining the perimeter of the outer court of the
temple. The outer court was also called the court of the women, because this
was as far as Jewish women were allowed to enter. Further within, there was an
inner court, the place where the burned sacrifices were made. Jewish men were
permitted to enter the inner court, as long as they didn’t have certain
conditions that would make them disqualified. And finally, the innermost
region, called the Holy of Holies, where only the purest ones could enter.
When you read the Old Testament you notice that
there were many types of people who were restricted from participating in
temple worship. Foreigners, or those of mixed race; women; eunuchs; anyone with
a skin disease; these were all barred from entering. But additionally, Jewish
men who were deformed in some way were prevented from entering the inner
region. The scriptures speak of the blind and the lame, dwarves, and
hunchbacks, all excluded. Anyone judged to have abnormalities or imperfections,
excluded. There were many ways a person could be shut out.
We talked a bit last week about
insiders and outsiders, and the ways we tend to separate the world into these
two categories. The human mind likes order, and if we can’t find it in the
world around us, we will create it and impose it. We divide people up into
categories, and then judge those categories. So, in the end, there are those
who are like us and others. These others might be frightening to us. They might
just be perplexing to us. Or they might somehow seem wrong to us.
In the first century, as the church
was yet small but growing fast, who should belong was still an open question.
But it was becoming increasingly clear that many different, diverse peoples were
going to belong. Among those who gathered to worship, there were differences in
race and culture, which would not easily be erased yet must be overcome. No
longer, in the church, would there be the circumcised and the uncircumcised,
but there would be one body in Jesus Christ.
These issues are raised in many of the
New Testament epistles, seeming to indicate that this was a common problem at
the time. The Spirit of God was crossing over boundaries and drawing diverse
groups together in Christ – but those people were, maybe, a little averse to
being drawn together. They were too preoccupied with their differences, and the
ways those differences made them uncomfortable with one another. And in their
own ways, they were prone to judging those who were different.
There were the poor Christians, some
of them even slaves, and the wealthy Christians. They had dramatically
different lifestyles, obviously. And the wealthy ones were sometimes unable to comprehend
the unique challenges of the poor ones.
We have to admit that we are still
beset by these kinds of problems. It is hard for us to understand people who
are different from us. For those who abide strictly by the law, it is hard to
understand the law-breakers. For those who are free of addiction, it can be
hard to understand those who suffer under the weight of addiction. For those
who have enough, or more than enough, it can be hard to understand those who
don’t have enough and, to our minds, do a poor job of managing what little they
have.
Put simply, it can be very hard for us
to understand those whose path through life has been different from ours. In
some cases, we admire them; in others, we disapprove of them. sometimes we are
simply appalled by them.
Philip Yancey, in his book called
What’s So Amazing About Grace, relays a story a friend once shared with him. A
young woman came to his friend in desperate straits. A miserable sinner without
a shred of dignity left, she was an addict, homeless, a mother of a
two-year-old girl. She had no money and no food. She unloaded on this man a
torrent of words, confessing to him all the horrible things she had done, all
the horrible things that had been done to her. He listened, then he asked if
she had considered going to a church for help. She looked at him with shock,
and said, “Why would I do that? I feel terrible enough about myself already.
They would just make me feel worse.”
To be truthful, I am afraid if I had
been sitting across from the woman Yancey wrote about and listened to all the
things she confessed, the thought would have entered my mind, “How could
anybody do that?” And it is possible I would have judged her, condemned her,
proving to her that yes, the church is there to make you feel bad about
yourself, just in case you don’t feel bad enough already.
Any time we start a sentence with the
words, “Why would anybody …” it is a chance to stop. Pause. Think about what it
is we don’t understand. And then perhaps rephrase the question: “What kinds of
circumstances might cause me to do such a thing?”
The reason Yancey told this story is
because he couldn’t help but see the contrast between this young woman’s
relationship with the church and Jesus’ relationship with sinners.
Particularly, the stories about some of the women who came to him, miserable
sinners without a shred of dignity. They were accustomed to being scorned by
the religious establishment, but they looked at Jesus and saw someone they
could turn to. They saw someone who would have compassion for them. Even
though, as Paul wrote, he himself was sinless, Jesus put no barriers between
himself and all the sinners of the world.
When we think about what the church is
for, it is worth noting that it is sometimes called a hospital for sinners. No one,
no matter how deep their transgressions, should be turned away from the church
in their time of need. No one, no matter how appalling their sins, should ever
be turned away from the church because of them. Remembering that we, too, are
sinners and have found sanctuary in the church, where Christ heals us of the
sickness of our souls. How could we not extend that same grace to others?
The radical thing that Jesus Christ
did in his life was to draw the sinners and the outcasts to him. He healed
those who had been cast out of society, giving them a chance to become
reconciled with society, an opportunity to be restored to wholeness.
The letter to Ephesians speaks to the
gentiles, saying you who were once far off, or aliens, have been brought near,
by the blood of Jesus Christ. You who were once excluded: the gentiles, the
women, the blind and lame and deformed, the sick, the imperfect. Now the walls
and barriers have been removed, the gates are open. In Christ, all have been
brought together.
For in him we find our peace. There
becomes a whole new way to find and articulate our identity – and a whole new
way to frame our outlook on the world.
You see, where we once looked at the
world as a framework of lines dividing peoples into groups, separating them
from others, we found our identity by focusing on the lines and what they
represented: differences in acceptability, differences in belongingness. The
lines represented the ways we differed, and we defended the boundary lines
because they defined who we were
against who we were not.
But in Christ everything changes. And
we no longer look to the boundary lines, but we look to the center, which is
Christ. The holy of holies. He is our center, our purpose, what we are drawn
to, where we find our peace. He is our peace.
And so in Christ the circumcised and
the uncircumcised came together. The slave and the free, the Jew and the
gentile, the north and the south and the east and the west, all came together
to find their peace in him. Turning our attention away from the lines that
separate us and toward the center which now defines us.
May it be so.
Photo: A copy of the soreg inscription at the Museum of Roman Civilization in Rome. Translation is "No stranger is to enter within the balustrade round the temple and enclosure. Whoever is caught will be responsible to himself for his death, which will ensue."
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