 have always wanted to be able to begin this way. Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. Now let me explain which scripture and how it has been fulfilled. When Peter spoke on the day of Pentecost he reached back to the prophet Joel where he says that your old men will dream dreams and your young men will see visions. I have this recurring dream that I'm to speak some place significant and before I go up to speak there's not a working toilet in the place. Here I thought it was simply you know a phobia of fear. I never knew it was divine revelation before but this old man has dream dreams and Adam Tice Naomi Tice if you ever lead that song again before I am speaking I'm taking my name off the program. Thank you. For those of you who missed the gathering last night we learned a new song. There were seven constipated men in the Bible and who knew that they would all find relief at the same time and create havoc for our maintenance staff. Jeff thanks for arranging for that. Juan thank you for what you have done this morning and the sacred space you create it through word and is the place that the spirit could inhabit and move among us through sacrament. This week for me has just been phenomenal and I feel like I'm here just simply standing on the shoulders of those who've come before and they've made a mighty good foundation. So thank you to all of you who have spoken. I thought about trying to interject this piece and this piece and this piece as way of summing up and I realized I would have spent the entire time because I couldn't edit out those things that were extraneous because I found little extraneous in this week. So I simply want to acknowledge that I seek to build where others have already started. I also want to acknowledge while I'm not Korean I am Pennsylvania Dutch and we know something about shame also. We can do that one real well. Let me tell you. Do you know something about that Sarah? Yeah I thought you did. Anyway scribes fit for the kingdom of heaven. I imagine most of us here who experiencing a call to ministry whether that happened at an early age or happened at a later time in life never really wanted to be called scribe. I mean the scribes get lots of bad press in the Gospels. They're almost always paired with the Pharisees and they become easy whipping boys and this is a good moment to be gender specific because they're always messing up. In fact maybe if they'd been more gender inclusive they wouldn't have messed up so much. But there is this one moment where the scribes get a really good billing but they get a new job description. You see the role of the scribe was to preserve and pass on tradition to interpret to draw legal documents and understandings based on the tradition. But Jesus in the midst of his parables on the kingdom declares that every scribe who is fit for the kingdom of heaven is like the householder who brings out of their store house that which is old and that which is new. And I there's the rub for those of us who are scribes today. What is the balance between that which is old, the preservation and guarding of that which is sacred tradition and vital and that which is new. Bringing that tradition into conversation with the contexts and moments in which we are finding ourselves. What is the spirit breathing and challenging and inviting and what is the tradition saying wait don't go there you're giving up something sacred. And I want to suggest at least in our minds that in this moment of momentous squaring off in division we do well rather than the other names that we attach to one another and other ways we are dismissive to ask the question huh what is this person seeking to preserve of the tradition and what is this person seeking to understand of the newness it won't change the fact that there are differences but it may reframe the fact that we will see each other as those who are seeking to be responsive to what God has done is doing and will do so I won't be coming back to that text it's not but it is it is that task that we're going to be looking at here and we'll be doing it in a framing of a might call it a methodology although that's probably a stretch of hearing humility hermeneutics and hope first first I want my little thing here we go oh there it is the text thank you okay hearing I'm going to share with you first a bit of my journey we've been hearing from you and a Baptist voices that that language wasn't around in the fall of 1976 when I who came out of a mainline Protestant tradition frustrated and ready to abandon the Christian faith over the inability of the church to answer questions of violence you see the dominant two realities of my growing up years in the larger world where the war in Vietnam in the civil rights movement the first one impacted me more than the second I went to a high school where there were out of a class of 456 African-American students and maybe six national students who would come for a year and study there and go back and we were always happy on the soccer team that they came so the civil rights movement while it stirred us and in fact when I thought about my own sense of call to ministry and why ministry was worthwhile I realized most of the images that shaped me were those who were public preachers and pastors and leaders Martin Luther King Ralph Ralph Abernathy CT Vivian the brothers Berrigan and Richard McSorley that it was these who stirred me but as I said the tradition in which I grew up deeply rooted in just war I was part of a congregation actually that almost left our denomination when the denomination came out against the war in Southeast Asia yet I was nurtured in faith there were good people in that place it's another story for another day to mind that out but in the fall of 76 through a friendship I'd spent a year in a work study program there was a guy taking a year off from Goshen College Jim Brenerman happens to be his name he was already I guess worried about admissions levels and numbers at Goshen College he got me to come and I showed up at Goshen College and all of a sudden came into this conversation that had been going on for nearly 500 years about following Jesus the way of non-violence I was astounded I must be in the place where all Christian Democrats live well there were some things that I found out later then I took a course with JR I was a science major unfortunately I spent most of my time the stage which let me tell you is the best preparation for ministry and the work of improvisation but then I took a course with JR Berkholder I don't know if JR will ever be memorialized as one of the great evangelists in the Mennonite Church but I was certainly evangelized in his classes and I took one after another after another met Dan Schrock both on a dorm floor and in one of those classes and I discovered that there really was one fruit church without spot blemish or wrinkle I met a daughter of that church and we were married that church offered me a job my first boss was June Olamin Yoder best supervisor you could possibly have especially at break time and lo and behold one thing led to another and a call to ministry which I had experienced early on but now had had come to set aside you see by the end of my freshman year of college I had blown it so bad academically I was afraid that the possibility of a career in medicine was out and I had blown it so badly morally that I was certain that a career ministry was out so at 18 and a half 19 19 and a half life's options seem closed and I arrived at Goshen College and this clannish people you know what I knew about Mennonites from growing up and I grew up in Bucks County Percasy I could go two hours away from Percasy and people had never heard of it I ended up in the middle of Indiana and people say oh yeah sure I've got a cousin in Percasy and furthermore I had the last name Miller so I spent the first two weeks in the cafeteria explaining no I'm not your cousin anyway I entered this community and in short time I became an abaptist enough that no longer the main line understanding I had a call to ministry that was you sort of announced you're going to seminary you're going to get your church and you're going to run your church's programs no it had to be discerned in community but something else was happening in the men and I church at that time was called charismatic renewal and I was also touched by that and because of that you couldn't say that you were testing a call to ministry the Lord had to reveal it my wife Mary and I became youth sponsors and one day I got a call from the pastor saying they would like to meet with me the elders and pastor wanted to meet with me it's very what does it mean in a Mennonite church for the pastor and elders want to meet with you I have no idea we met and they wanted to know if I had ever considered a call to ministry so immunity what do you do at that point but applied a MBS got that what do you do at that point you apply to a MBS thank you it's a little bit like Samuel saying here am I Lord just the same thing you just felt the form now so then some things happened where I discovered it wasn't without spot blemish or wrinkle what do we do because those who seem spotted and blemished and wrinkled are so unnerving to this church that I loved so at least the one in my mind that I loved so much so long journey places I've been has been have been named fall 2009 I arrived here and begin teaching I had the great joy of joining those who had been my teachers Ben Olin burger Mary shirts Ted and Gail Gerber Coons others who I knew I hadn't studied with Daniel Scopani Walter Swatsky others and it was like my really here and I was the youngest member of the faculty there are now six who are younger than I am yeah anyway that first year was really hard I was amazed I came back out of pastoral ministry to this community of scholarship and learning and I found I discovered that my colleagues mumbled I'd sit in faculty meetings and it's like these erudite scholars those would taught me didn't raise their voice loud enough to be heard my students were so soft-spoken I would say would you repeat your question please would you please repeat your question would you repeat your question didn't help much I guess it was my night humility I came back from my second year and lo and behold over the summer my colleagues on faculty had stopped mumbling they must have spent all summer like democratism the shore with a mouthful of stones learning to talk students found their voices and my health insurance paid for this not that they're mumbling and soft-spoken had anything to do with me huh the problems always out there fix them the first past before us is here and I want to tell you about four hearing aids that I have been given that were far more effective than this one and this one's pretty darn good so don't make any wrinkling noises with your papers because it drives me insane and do not let Janine Bertie Johnson go to the desk can't Judy's story in the middle of 1980s I was director of the voluntary service program for men I board of missions and I've been drinking in and a baptism in how we watch over one another accountability these things became they were not part of the tradition I was from it was a deeply live-in-let-live kind of thing the call to discipleship when Bonhoeffer wrote about cheap grace I was sure he had seen my background and I was meeting with Judy who was a viasser you were meeting over lunch in a public place and I knew that Judy had been coming involved in a dating relationship that was okay we'd become liberal in BS by those days but I knew the person that relationship that relationship was in anything but recovering alcoholic and I was deeply concerned what would this mean for her how could she wasn't gonna be a healthy relationship so we covered the things we were supposed to cover in our meeting and I put my pen down and I in my careful caring trying not to be a hierarchical all those things just that Judy I know about the relationship and I just like to talk with you a little bit but I have questions if this is a very going to be a very healthy relationship at that moment her eyes flashed with fury her fist came down on the table and she said healthy relationships I'll tell you about healthy relationships healthy relationships were taken out behind the barn by my uncle and cousins and I won't repeat the deleted expletive that followed in terms of what they did to her and she said and then it was my responsibility to forgive them and to keep quiet less their reputations the harm now when her fist at the table my coffee come jumped about that far off the table a quick glance over my shoulder indicated that I was not imagining things every eye in the place was indeed on us and where I came from you didn't talk about such things and you did talk about them you certainly didn't talk about them out loud in a public place and I lost my composure I still haven't gotten it back you see Judy became a hearing aid because all of a sudden in the moment what became clear was all of the things that in my life had conspired to bless and release and open doors family church schools local government every one of these said go you can do it go we'll give you opportunities every one of these had functioned exactly the opposite in her experience and now the question became would I let there be batteries in this hearing aid or would I need to turn it off to silence I don't know why Judy trusted me she extended a gift of grace I was in a position of power I was male I represented the church I was an ally with all of these things yet she still took the risk when I returned to pastoral ministry a couple years later and served in a co-pastor it after two years I sat down and took an accounting at one point found I was spending a fourth of my time as a pastor working with survivors of abuse and except for one of them the others had all been raised in Christian families many of the Mennonite families how was this happening they became amplifiers to my hearing aid and began to give response to preaching I silly me I asked them to do that and they did and said if you hear me saying things that continued to fund abuse those kinds of things that are right 90% of the time but in that 10% what they do is they serve to silence and do harm they would point those things out you will come to a text in a little bit that I learned to read differently because of the questions they brought second was a sermon response this isn't nearly so long the story this was one of those days and you've all of you who preach you know what those days are like you are really good it's one of those days when everything is hitting on all cylinders if you had been there you would have shown Peter Ropp on the day of Pentecost you know his trifling how many thousand come on you know you're good and you know it and people are coming out and reading you at the door and they're telling you that and then came Liz she took my hand looked at me and she said well you blew it today I look at her and say do you want to say more I've been taking seminary classes already that one only cost me about fifteen hundred dollars in tuition worth every penny of it do you want to say more nobody ever told me that the answer could be as a matter of fact yes she's everyone who walked in here today off of whose backs everything had rolled you just gave a little bit more to roll off and everyone who came in today carrying the weight of the world you just gave a little bit more weight have a good day and she right no you can't do that you can't leave me with that and I know about her problem this reason this reason I could dismiss her and I fumed and I fumed finally Monday I had the courage to go back to the church get the tape fun Monday evening I had the courage to put the tape in the tape recorder and I listened I have not prepared a sermon since but she is not with me to whom am I addressing who am I my comforting who am I challenging the bus ride to Decatur I did my doctor of ministry Columbia theological seminary one month after 9 11 I had a class flew flew down to Atlanta hardsfield airport took the Marta the high-speed train out as far as it went to the end of the line and then I caught a bus from there to the seminary Decatur it's 9 30 10 o'clock on a Sunday night I don't know my way around very well yet in Decatur so that so that when the bus opens the door I I sit up near the front so I can see out and hopefully see things look familiar everyone else gets on the bus look around and I'm the whitest thing on the bus I'm the only white one on the bus I'm not used to being the minority on the bus that's that's not the world I inhabit and I thought okay no problem I will just hunker down here I'm here to learn great theological truths and I had a long day of travel thank you let me be invisible and the guy across the aisle African-American young man in a loud voice says so what do you think about what's been going on this is a month after 9 11 I didn't ask him to clarify I thought I knew well my fear my deepest concern is that out of our outrage and hurt and fear we will set in motion actions that will only increase the cycles of violence the guy from the back of the bus in a loud voice that man is that right and I got my wish I became invisible because the conversation opened up on the bus between everyone else who were African-American giving this amazing social analysis of what was taking place and why 9 11 took place and I'm saying you're kind of dumbfounded the next morning on campus I hunted out will Coleman professor of social ethics African-American scholar I said will this happen last night he kind of smiled and he said well you're one lucky white guy he said folks who are oppressed who have a history of oppression understand why a 9 11 could happen and they have a very intricate conversation going on but those folks are also bilingual and those folks aren't having that conversation in front of you very often for whatever reason you were given a gift of grace last night they granted you their ears they became hearing aids that we Mennonites we people of peace who obviously we're gonna stand against a march to war weren't the only ones and ours was ideological theirs was more sociological understanding the dynamics and they became my teachers on that bus ride lastly I want you to know the trust of the Bose McLean Bose McLean grew up in South Texas Anglo the very religious family his father was a missionary on the Tex-Mex border worked in a boys school he taught preacher Bo attended the schools there when I arrived and started past as a pastor in state college Bo was a member of University Mennonite Church but the third week there I was there he came up to me one day and said Dave you know I have lunch together I said yeah I'm trying to get around to everyone in the congregation it'd be great so I'll treat you he names a place we met that week and we sit down to eat and those sort of filling with his fork and he sets it down said I want you to know something I am homosexual and I want you to know my story and Bo went on to tell growing up in a very religious family where he felt loved and he learned to love Christ in the church yet he said I was never quite right I didn't fit in like the rest of the guys at the boys school so he said I learned to trade as a printer and I went to work for our denominational printing house as a printer I still didn't fit in someone gave me the name of a therapist in a church counseling center who worked with me I noticed his one hand trembled a bit and he apologized he said that started after after several treatments of electroshock therapy that was part of what was going to correct me finally the therapist said Bo this is either going to kill you or you need to get out of here if I were you I'd go to New York City and get lost we don't have anything to offer you and so Bo went to New York City to get lost he found another printing job and he said he was printing some of paper and in it there was this ad for a new church that was starting in New York City a metropolitan community church and Bo showed up became one of the founding members an active member of the church when he retired his nephew was a member of University Mennonite Church and he'd been down to visit a number of times and the congregation had always received him well and so he retired there they've received him as a member several years before I got there Bo arrived in state college and helped found the local P flag chapter parents and families of lesbian and gays now they simply go by P flag now it's all of the letters and I don't know how many people Bo helped keep from committing suicide I don't know how many family relationships he helped to heal I do know that Bo did the work of Christ and Bo extended trust to me and I wasn't clear as a scribe I wasn't clear on the tradition and the old and the new I knew I saw the work of God in him I knew that I the Christ certainly called us to justice how much further than that I don't know I never spoke to condemn but I never spoke to freely welcome I thought to probably carry out a benevolent do not ask don't tell yet Bo still trusted me one Sunday morning before worship he came up to me he said Dave I've been battling an eye infection all week and he said my eye dries out and I blink a lot and he said I just want to let you know how you're preaching if you see me winking at you I'm not making a pass he trusted me that much died suddenly the heart attack I met at the emergency room with his nephew and then following the wishes he had written up co-lead a funeral with the pastor of the Metropolitan Communities Church from New York City what you're doing is I don't understand it doesn't fit my category but captives are being set free persons who would be undergoing electroshock therapy are not doing parents and children are being reconciled and set free from shame so I'd like you to turn in pairs you're gonna have two minutes in your pair each has two minutes I want you to share in two minutes a story of someone who has been your hearing aid turn okay I need to call you back sorry we will be doing this again I promise you so you know you can keep keep talking you'll have the same conversation partner when neo-anabaptist and a Baptist African American theologians others come together on an abaptism almost everyone discovers that humility is among those things that have characterized this anabaptist movement there are some incredible expressions of humility in the Mennonite Church that's my second point my first point however is that I found that Mennonites really hate to be wrong they really really hate to be wrong it's almost as though their salvation depends on being right it's almost as though grace doesn't exist all right in fact I often thought that maybe you know it was too bad that we should have gotten John Hausman remember the great British actor John Hausman used to do the Smith Barney commercials I thought we should get him to do a whole series campaign of evangelism for Mennonite Church the Mennonite Church we get our salvation the old-fashioned way we earn it we don't believe that with our lips in our confessions but boy we do in our behavior the first time I officiated at the Lord's Supper to Mennonite Church I made the stupid mistake of saying come to this table with joy and after this man came up to me afterwards said I've never heard the word joy used with communion before I said why not because I might be eating and drinking unworthily and so why we think we are being humble what we really are saying is we don't believe when Jesus says I have earnestly desired to keep this Passover with you I have earnestly desire before I suffer to share this come to this table I see it happen it makes conversations hard between students in classes when we get on touchy issues like race and a person of color it lays themselves out sometimes in anger sometimes eloquently and the white students sit there you can see it in their eyes I don't want to say the wrong thing I don't want to say the wrong thing maybe I can quote Dr. King you know so they're sitting there struggling and they say nothing and the student of color hears so I'm not even important enough what I said is not important enough to engage folks guess what we're going to get it wrong do you repeat after me we're going to get it wrong second we might need to be forgiven by persons of color by women in which case we will be honoring them as priests you see when I take the risk of getting it wrong and the other person can correct me they become my teacher if I need to be forgiven they become my priest I decenter me and here all along I thought I was being humble I didn't want to say anything hurtful I didn't want to do anything to me no I didn't I wanted to maintain control there have been courageous experiments among Mennonites that have changed major things in our society CPSers went into mental health institutions during World War two and came out and changed the way this country the way North America looked at persons who were mentally ill they didn't go in with a grand strategy they didn't pre-plan oh we have an idea if we say no to war they'll send us into these then we can demonstrate to them we've got a mission strategy here folks guess what the most effective ministry strategies aren't usually not pre-planned in a boardroom they happen out of a simple act of seeking to follow Jesus and all of a sudden Jesus is hey over here and here's another chance oh you think that was hard come here you're not gonna do this one without my spirit and then we've got a certain spirit but we've learned we've become more sophisticated thank God we said for Washington office so we can lobby now I believe we should have that office as a place of bearing witness and speaking for those with no voice so don't hear me wrong on that but it's not because we're gonna say look we can produce this many signatures it's rather here's a demonstration plot and all of a sudden cities and states that are bankrupting themselves start to say we can't afford another prison is there another option of Victor Fendham reconciliation you know something about that and the powers come to learn even if it's only out of their own self-interest it's in that following after so that we are reminded it's not because of our goodness but what the Spirit of God gives us the grace to have happened through us the privilege of what we did not know how to do we received the gifts of others I remember I was gonna say about that point I might even go up there and look time is running short and the important thing to say the other thing about humility and let's be clear about it it's not about stifling positive ego development or confidence in children you don't teach humility when the cup is already empty humility is learned when you think your cup is full and you know it all and you understand that you know you don't preempt confidence awareness capacity those are good things so conversation to then you got two minutes each how has humility functioned in your experience you may name a gift you may name a shadow okay how has humility functioned in your experience one story go one back I'm losing control okay if you could come back please thank you this is a good reason to stay for lunch you've got conversations you need to carry on we are going to have a very short course 15 minutes in missional hermeneutics we are going to be making our way briefly through Ephesians 1 through 3 that's not verses that's chapters folks I'm teaching this the same way Millard Linde used to teach everything in the Pentateuch after Genesis 12 okay hermeneutics we have to remember and teach our congregations when we pick up the New Testament we are picking up the documents of an illegal religion in a hostile empire and like those folks on the bus in Atlanta the New Testament is bilingual and I'm not making an argument for taking New Testament Greek that's not a bad idea will it I'm sorry I didn't I'll make you proud of me in a moment but we are picking up the documents so that the speech of persons is so located in that empire that it's bilingual it understands the speech of the dominant power of the empire and enters into conversation with it and subverts it and delegitimates it problem is we live post constant time when the church has been allied with power so we read these documents as though they are theological treatises speaking eternal truth that undergirds our position of controlling the society they are all about breaking control the greater chasm I want to suggest to you however I know there's a whole issue of the problem of history in biblical studies I want to suggest to you the problem isn't history its social location I happen to spend time up at Union Seminary in New York City not known particularly as a bastion of taking the Bible real seriously and centrally through other seminaries that seem to do that better however I was with the students in the poverty initiative and they said guess what we've discovered as we move closer to the poor all of a sudden the Bible sounds relevant these ancient documents are no longer so long ago and far away they sound strikingly contemporary that's why I say the problem is not so much a distance of years but a distance of dollars and power so the book of Ephesians begins with this wonderful blessing we're not going to get into the question of authorship it was either written by Paul or another later Apostle by the name of Paul so we'll settle it that way for now okay I know the arguments and I know there's good reasons there are all kinds of intricate things but for us at this point it's in material what is important is that we come up here that this we're given this long treatise that that Calvinist love because they find the whole doctrine of predestination laid out here and Arminians just kind of avoid this section here because we don't know what to do with it it talks about all this foreknowledge stuff and all this stuff and say what does it do with our our will and everything else but hold on both this is not a treatise about predestination Arminians take a deep breath you're not threatened by it on that score instead this is an answer to the proclamation that Caesar is Lord and that the world is held together by the genius of Caesar and that history that matters begins with the founding of Rome so now we're said ha it goes back to this before the foundation of the world huh something more significant than Rome is here we have he destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ according to the good pleasure of his will to the praise of his glorious grace he freely bestowed on assistant given you have to earn this you have to buy your citizenship you've got top redemption that was blood and then here here's the point the key point I want to snow with all wisdom and insight he made known to us the mystery of his will plan according to his good pleasure he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to gather up to unite all things in him in heaven and on earth that is throwing down the gauntlet that says Caesar holds everything together the logic and folks you know one of the main instruments Caesar uses to unite all things what war yes but fear worship the cross if you have not read James Cohn's cross in the lynching tree you must James Cohn's holds that North American Christians will not understand the cross until they understand the lynching tree Jesus death was nothing unusual it happened thousands of times in fact during times of revolution it happened to thousands of times in a day they were running short on wood on which to impale people over 3,000 at the time of Spartacus if we live in the first century in imperial city we are approaching on one of the major roads to the city if we are fortunate you will be coming up to the gate of the city and we will see some posts in the ground if we are unfortunate there will be people impaled on those posts with the charges above their heads oh they didn't just do that to Jesus this is a means to say to you when you go past if you step out of line we have a seat reserved for you and it's not in the business section well maybe it is the business section anyway we won't go there this is how Caesar unites the empire so the author here oops other direction other direction thank you sorry we forgot one thing here at the end of this first chapter the apostle wants to strengthen the church and what does he say he offers a prayer that you may know that there's a power working in you and God put this power to work in Christ when he raised Christ from the dead the cross loses its finality the cross is not the end it is not the victory the resurrection is the victory that says Caesar may be painful but he's ultimately powerless death which is Caesar's instrument is not the last word and that same power is that work within you only thing is we believe that we earn our salvation secretly we don't need to be saved we are going to do this ourselves maybe some work for us to do here folks second wrath I came to this study because of the complaints of survivors our congregation they talked about divine child abuse you know why is God so angry and it's really interesting well I hope you can see from there it's there's Greek up here thank you for your teaching and the question is whose problem is wrath now first and foremost I want to say that the concept of the wrath of God is well attested in Scripture what things evoke God's wrath abuse of the poor forgetting the widow the orphan and the alien unjust scales unjust treatment of your laborers all those things evoke the wrath of God and we trivialize it as a generalized disposition as though she too bad that Jesus didn't come today because all Jesus would have had to do was give God Prozac and then he wouldn't have had to go to the cross God wouldn't have been so angry but what if wrath is the human problem not God's problem the Greek says that we are techno who say or gaze the first edition of the NIV went so far as translate this objects of wrath that is a possibility it is equally possible that what is meant here is that we are wrath filled children so it's not that it's God's wrath directed to us it's that we like the rest of them have been part of this system we've been caught up under the spirit of the power of the air we have been included in this and we are wrath filled and the logic rhetorically here the next line hold it theos but God who is rich in mercy it's not God is schizophrenic God is wrath filled but God is also this yes God does experience wrath at injustice but here the issue is that we are wrath filled but God who is rich in mercy answers this by Jesus saying this is your instrument of wrath huh okay turn it on use it now we're going to show you that it doesn't work it's not final it's not the last word control is broken the question is are we objects of wrath in which case God must be appeased or are we wrath filled children who must be delivered from our bondage to the logic and nature of wrath now it's proposed to you that the logic that is set forth here is it's our problem of wrath that is cut loose on Jesus wrong way we've been given the sermon by Jonathan Edwards I got to read in my English class when I was a junior in high school sinners in the hands of an angry God holds you over the pit of hell and despises you it was fun Jonathan Edwards locating the problem of wrath in God rather than in humanity allows an easy separation of Christian ethics from soteriology one may in this model easily claim to be reconciled to God that is freed from God's wrath while simultaneously discom dismissing the commands of Jesus to love one's enemies one can claim to be saved by the blood of the lamb while preparing to shed the blood of one's fellow human beings if however the cross stands as remedy not to God's wrath but our own then such separation is untenable to deny Christ remedy to our wrath is to deny the saving power of the cross we are being saved from our wrath and it's logic in the way it infects everything so now we are told as this argument goes on that what God has done is broken down the wall of hostility between us this is between Jew and Greek I want to talk about this just for a moment it had just hit me recently and I went back was this thing that Jews were taught male Jews were taught to pray daily called the 18 benedictions I've been able to document it goes back at least to the time of the count of Jamia other reports say no it goes back already to the time of Ezra which would mean the Jews of the New Testament would be familiar with this including in this 18 benedictions that males are to pray every day is that I thank God that I was not born a Gentile a slave or a woman the reason I thank that is because as a male I have extra requirements in the law and God blesses me and gives me more rules than they have that's what the apology say I'm just happening here he saying the wall of hostilities can come down but good devout Jews who are part of this church daily have been rehearsing their formative practices I thank you God that I was not born Gentile I was not born a slave I was not born a woman I was not was not born I was not born and for further evidence that was contemporary with this moment I submit the evidence of Paul's words in Galatians there is therefore neither Jew nor Greek slave nor free male nor female Paul answers each of those three benedictions and silences them you are not to be formed by that mentality because it deforms you and it deforms the people of God and the reconciling work we're running short on time here and jewels get nervous three and a half minutes so we're not going to have a conversation about the hostility between us instead you're going to see my grandson okay what you don't see up there is where Paul goes from here after we learn that there's this new body this new person created by this reconciling work right then we are told what is the mission of the church Ephesians 310 what is it man that's gonna be a memory verse to make known the manifold wisdom of God to the powers and principalities according to the book of Ephesians the only witness the church has is its unity and its reconciliation that is it the we don't overcome the powers by getting more votes getting somebody else elected we do get together because see that the powers of the cross can pacify but it cannot reconcile the powers don't know how to do that because the powers are all about doing things via power and instead he says therefore it is given to the church to make known the manifold wisdom of God when these enemies are reconciled I will eat when I read of churches leaving separating themselves for the sake of the mission because what is the mission precisely to love those we have liturgically been formed to despise to thank God that I am not a woman slave or Greek Gentile and if we think for a moment well it's only limited to those three first century we were told in the very beginning of this book I hope you are paying attention what God is doing in Christ is what uniting all things things we don't know how to unite I don't know how to do it I don't know the people that I love on both sides of this divide whose lives have been a witness to me on both sides of this divide but I do know this that in a society that is spending billions of dollars on advertising of the logic and hate so that the foxes and MSNBCs can make more money over our or gay our wrath God is saying I'm thinking down in Jesus the wall of hostility guess what the same power in him is in you you don't know how to resolve this good so now my glory will be made manifest in you it will be my work I will accomplish this and you may be sitting together with people and there's still enmity there you know it's there so when your co-worker say how can you go to church with those people saying you know what we don't know we don't know how to fix this but we do know this the power of Jesus is at work within us and he has promised that that same power that raised Jesus from the dead will reconcile us we don't have to make it happen Jesus will do it if we will allow it but we can't allow it by walking away from each other we can't allow it by calling each other's names we can't allow it by taking heirs of superiority or taking out ads against one another in the paper and the press and each one of you who's a pastor no goes right through your heart when you see the body whom you have served the Lord suffer to divide this was an exercise in hermeneutics this is simply those things that they teach in seminary it has no practical use except the very last thing and there's only one way I can do this because of the last gift that the apostle gives is this for this reason I bow before and I'm gonna say who were father and are there problems with that but understand the context he does not say Lord which Caesar claims he says father there is a genetic relationship between whom every family on heaven and earth I bow my knees before the father from whom every family on heaven and earth takes its name and then he's gonna say I pray that God is going to fill you with the love that you cannot control or contain it's beyond your knowing so every time you get to that place saying we don't know how to make this work God be praised because we're about to learn something God be praised because this is the moment we will say pour out your spirit upon us oh Lord so this is what we are left with this is that to which we are witnesses and may God empower each of you in your congregations and those of you who may be here who are at opposite ends of the spectrum will you please embrace one another before you leave here today and commit yourselves to seek that power that raised Jesus from the dead and to stand in awe and wonder what will happen amen to God be the glory