Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

By the Rev. Dr. Calvon Jones
Assistant Minister/Director 
The Memorial Church of Harvard University

(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Sept. 29, 2024)

August Wilson, one of America's greatest literary playwrights, talks about the danger of fences, walls, and dividers. In his play and later film entitled Fences, directed by Denzel Washington, the main character is Troy Maxson, who continuously is seen building fences throughout the play. Troy believes that building fences will give him power and control. Troy believes that the fences will remove the bad people from his life and home. He builds the fences with the hopes that these high-mounting dividers will guard his soul, calm his fears, and protect him.

However, these high towering fences and structures do the very opposite. The more the character Troy builds the fences, the less protected he is. The more he builds fences, the more he sinks into despair. The more he builds fences, the more corrupt his spirit becomes. The more he builds fences, the more dysfunctional his family becomes. Troy never reaches a place of hope, peace, and love because he built fences instead of doors and bridges. He built fences but never built a gate.

The writer August Wilson, in his play, asked the world to create and build gates of love. One important fact is that August Wilson signed all of his letters, "May all of your fences have gates." Beloved, when we gaze into world history, particularly Christian history, we see a painful truth. We have been obsessed with walls and fences. Over the past 2000-plus years, Christian history shows that we have loved walls and fences more than tables of love, doors of welcome and hospitality, and inclusion. We have been obsessed with power. We erect fences and walls around the holiest of holies in order to hold on to power and status. We are master craftsmen of walls.

Over centuries, the church utilized the Bible to build walls, to grasp more power, resources, land, wealth and control. In the words of Gadot Pina, "Our beliefs written in stone have become the building blocks for these thicker and taller walls. We lay them on the foundation of our fears using mortal made from a mixture of deliberate ignorance and unconscious bias." We have built walls and fences that keep out the marginalized, the oppressed, persons who are different. We have built these walls to preserve some manufactured sense of protection and social status, historically steeped in whiteness and a fear of the other.

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In the New York Times article entitled Scaling The Wall in the Head, Professor Costica Bradatan, states, "Walls and fences are built not for security, but for a sense of security. The distinction is important as those who commission them know very well what a wall or fit satisfies is not so much a material need as a mental one. Walls protect people not from barbarians but from anxieties and fears, which can often be more terrible than the worst vandals. In this way, they are built not for those who live outside them, threatening as they may appear, but for those who dwell within."

Walls and fences are built to serve varying reasons, and they indeed serve different purposes, but their function is always fundamentally the same. To create divisions, to prevent people and ideas from moving freely, and to weaponize differences. We celebrate those who get in and frown upon those who are not allowed entry. We celebrate and honor fences. We love exclusivity. We love to separate ourselves, but the irony is that our lives are built around these fences. What historic church do you attend? What exclusive club are you a part of? What exclusive school do you attend? And as a result, the stranger, the outsider, the foreigner is not welcome. It is the belief that my way is the right way, the way we have church, the way we talk, the way we sing, what we wear and what we do. This hegemony and status quo is what confers relevancy and status.

This brings me to my text today. I tell you, I did not want to preach on this text. Can I be honest? Today's text is a difficult one. Jesus said some of the most painful and grotesque things. Jesus utilizes gross images of mutilation and threats of eternal damnation in hell to wake us up today. "Tear your eye out, tear off your hand for if you offend any little one or if you are a stumbling block, it is better for you to have one hand or one foot than to enter into the fire with all of your body parts." Jesus's language is very gruesome and morbid, and a bit unsettling. However, I think that we have to fully exhume and examine this literary corpus in order to get to what Jesus is really saying underneath it all. There is something very fundamental in this text today, and I don't want us to miss it. Maybe Jesus wants us to be bothered by this language. Maybe Jesus wants to get our attention, but I'm going to get to that in a bit.

Last week, earlier in this chapter, the disciples argued about which one of them is the greatest. Jesus responds that we must be last and we must become a servant. Jesus says, "Whosoever welcomes a child, the least important person in antiquity, also welcomes Christ himself." Jesus invites the disciples and all of us to become as a child. Jesus says all of this while holding a child in his arms. And in today's gospel, as Jesus says these grotesque things, I want you to see that a child is in Jesus's arms. He says these things, trying to get his disciples to understand that the kingdom is about servitude. However, the disciples are yet obsessed with power and control. They see a man casting out a demon in the name of Jesus, and they want to condemn him because he is not a part of their social group, or should I say social club.

The disciples are still fighting over who is the greatest, and Jesus turns back to the image of the child. The little ones are not only children but those who we exclude with our man-made fences. The powerless, the unhoused, the refugees, the demonized, the ostracized, and often marginalized. Jesus says, "Do not exclude this man who is casting out a demon." He then goes on to deliver some very stark images. Jesus commands his disciples to not be a stumbling block, for it is better for you to welcome the stranger and little ones than to enter into the fire. Please know that Jesus loves parables, exaggeration and hyperbole, but I cannot ignore how this text has been utilized throughout Christian history to demonize people. I cannot ignore that people have used this text to harm so many people and they have missed what Jesus really was saying. They have missed what this meant in the original Greek.

It is important to note here that Jesus's words are written in Greek, and the word that is translated as hell is a Hebrew name called Gehenna. Gehenna was a place outside of Jerusalem where they burned trash. It was also a place recorded in Second Kings where King Ahaz of Judea sacrificed his children to the Canaanite God. In other words, Gehenna was a place of child sacrifice. And I think that Jesus is using this as an exaggeration not to deem people to a literal place of hell, but he wants to highlight the importance of welcoming children and the little ones. I think that Jesus makes this reference not to send listeners to hell but to remind his disciples that we are to think about the most vulnerable, God's little ones. The focal point here is not a place of eternal damnation but the importance of welcoming the stranger. We certainly should not take this text literally. Jesus uses this harsh imagery about plucking your body parts off as a way to emphasize how important it is to choose the little ones over our obsession with power.

Beloved, our brick-and-mortar should be love. Our fences must have gates that swing on the hinges of radical love and kindness. Jesus calls us not to be a stumbling block. He calls us to remove fences. True discipleship is one that builds bridges of love and not walls of hatred. True discipleship is when we welcome God's children and his little ones. Remember that there is no wall or fence that is thick enough or long enough or high enough or deep enough that Christ cannot scale. We must have the courage to lay aside the need for power and control and become as a child, and then the words of August Wilson, "May all of your fences forever have gates."

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