| “MOVING THE FENCE” John 15:9-17; Ephesians 2:8-22 Olivet Covenant Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, PA © Rev. Linda Jaymes, 10/4/2009 World Communion |
Today is the first Sunday in October, celebrated as “World Communion Sunday” in many churches around the world. It
actually started out as a Presbyterian observance back in 1936 and by 1940 it had become an international and
interdenominational event, adopted by other Protestants worldwide. The purpose of World Communion is to help us remember
and emphasize our unity in Christ, and look beyond the things that separate us—things like race, ethnicity, culture and tradition.
On World Communion Sunday what often comes to my mind is the way things were when I was in high school in the late
1960’s. In northern New Jersey, at least, it was a time when Protestants of different denominations hesitated to step through
the doors of each other’s churches. There was a fair amount of discomfort surrounding the idea of ecumenism at that time and
a suspicion that whatever those Moravians or Methodists or Congregational churches were doing was probably very weird.
They probably thought the same about us Presbyterians!
And so it was a very big deal in 1967 or 1968 when the churches in my town gathered for an ecumenical service one
Sunday evening. If I remember right, the service was actually held at my high school—something that is probably illegal in this
day and age. In any case, I remember how the choirs of those churches came together to produce a powerful and inspiring
sound (it’s interesting that I don’t remember the sermon!) and the service ended with both choir and congregation singing “Lift
High the Cross,” a hymn I had never heard before that night and which moved me in a very profound way. I think that
ecumenical service went a long way toward breaking down barriers between Christians in my town.
Something else that often comes to mind when I think of World Communion is another hymn, entitled, “The Day Thou
Gavest, Lord, Has Ended.” 1 It’s usually used as an evening hymn and it begins by telling the story of the Sovereignty of God,
the God who gives us each day, brings each day to a close, and keeps us while we sleep.
The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended,
The darkness falls at Thy behest;
To Thee our morning hymns ascended,
Thy praise shall sanctify our rest.
In the next three verses, however, the emphasis shifts to thanksgiving for the Church around the world; particularly the
concept that while we may be sleeping or resting, somewhere in the world the Body of Christ is awake and watchful and at
work:
We thank Thee that Thy church, unsleeping,
While earth rolls onward into light,
Through all the world her watch is keeping,
And rests not now by day or night.
It continues,
As o’er each continent and island
The dawn leads on another day,
The voice of prayer is never silent,
Nor dies the strain of praise away.
As our day draws to a close, it says that
The sun that bids us rest is waking
Our brethren ’neath the western sky,
And hour by hour fresh lips are making
Thy wondrous doings heard on high.
Finally, it paints a picture of the glorious fulfillment of the Church:
So be it, Lord; Thy throne shall never,
Like earth’s proud empires, pass away:
Thy kingdom stands, and grows forever,
Till all Thy creatures own Thy sway.
In its poetic way, this hymn reminds us that the sun never sets on the Church of Jesus Christ, something that we act out in a
very visible way by participating in World Communion each year. It is awesome to consider that the Sacrament of the Lord’s
Supper will be celebrated by Protestants in every time zone in the world today, and we are taking part in that celebration.
Beyond the celebration at the Table today, World Communion is a reminder of the ecumenical nature of the Church of
Jesus Christ. We have brothers and sisters all over the world who share our faith in Christ and who are at work to make his
kingdom come in their little corner of the world. These are people who may not look like us or think like us or worship like
us—in fact, some of them are as different from us as we can possibly imagine. But because they believe as we do; because
their faith and hope for eternity is in Jesus Christ, we actually share a stronger, more significant bond with them than we do
with many of our American countrymen and women. Christ breaks down the barriers that separate or divide us on the deepest
levels, and in Christ we are drawn together and held together by the Holy Spirit, a supernatural bond that even the powers of
darkness cannot sever.
But apparently, this Christian unity, a unity that transcends the differences between people, is something that every
generation of the Church needs to understand and embrace in its own time and incorporate into their lives. In today’s scripture
passage from Ephesians Paul reminds first century Christians that regardless of whether they came from a Jewish or Gentile
background, through faith in Christ they were one in the Lord. Paul even says that Christ’s “…purpose was to create in
himself one new man out of two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the
cross, by which he put to death their hostility.” (Ephesians 2:15b-16)
Paul was trying to teach the church that although the message of the Gospel was delivered first to the Jews and then to the
Gentiles, in Christ the playing field is now level. Cultural, ethnic and racial differences are not erased, but in the church there is
no hierarchy in which one cultural or ethnic or racial group is above or better than another or is more favored by God. All are
equal in God’s eyes. No longer are Jews the insiders and Gentiles the outsiders. Through faith in Christ, everyone is an insider,
with equal opportunity or access to God the Father through God the Son. When Jesus Christ broke down the walls that divided
Jews and Gentiles, a whole new citizenry—the New Israel—was created; God’s people were no longer held together by the Old
Covenant spelled out in the Law of Moses but by the New Covenant, sealed in Christ’s blood, shed on the Cross. The result of
this New Covenant is a whole new kind of “nation” held together by faith and by the Spirit instead of ethnicity or anything else.
And figuratively speaking, this new nation is meant to be a “Holy Temple” in which God will dwell, by his Spirit.
This is quite a magnificent vision of what the Church is meant to be. I hope that as we celebrate Communion this morning
we will take a moment to ponder the magnitude of what Jesus has done on the Cross—not just for us as individuals or even for
us as a church here on this corner—but also for believers all over the world who are connected to us through faith. In Christ,
we are part of a world-wide family that has been adopted by God the Father and we are related to one another by blood—the
blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, poured out on the Cross for the forgiveness of sin.
Unfortunately, I think you’ll agree that although our adoption in Christ is complete and secure—we might say that our
adoption papers were signed in Christ’s blood—we have a long way to go before this international and interdenominational
family we belong to is everything God wants it to be. It is one thing to accept the concept that we are part of Christ’s family—
the worldwide Body of Christ—but it’s quite another to live together as members of that family from day to day. Actually, I
think we would admit that it is easy to love our brothers and sisters in some church in Zambia or Australia or Mexico or Brazil
or Scandinavia. It’s easy to get along with people from a distance! It’s even easy to get along with them when we visit them
on mission trips or vacations or when they visit us while they are studying or vacationing here. But I suspect that if the way
we get along with each other in our own churches is any indication, we probably wouldn’t do much better with our
international brothers and sisters if we had to live with them over the long haul, either. Our Wednesday Night Bible Study has
been discussing just how difficult it is for families to “get it right,” and that applies whether those families are biological or
ecclesial.
The reality is that if we are going to really be the Body of Christ, we have to keep working at being the kind of family He
died to create. And the most powerful and effective way to accomplish that is through a simple four-letter word: LOVE.
Jesus Himself tells us—commands us, in fact—to love each other the way He loves us. Granted, it’s a tall order, especially
when Jesus spells out the ultimate demonstration of that love as laying down our lives for each other. That’s the kind of love
Jesus has for us, and He calls us to love in the same way. So right up front we need to face the fact that it’s not going to be
easy. This love takes commitment, perseverance, endurance, sacrifice, humility, forgiveness and so much more. But this kind
of love is our most direct route to the Kingdom of God. In addition, when we take seriously the Lord’s command to love
others in this way, Jesus considers us not just family, but friends. And though our world will try to tell us otherwise, the
ultimate, most precious thing we can seek after in life is intimate friendship with Christ, friendship born out of obedience to his
command to love each other.
There are some days when it is fairly easy to be obedient to that command, days when the people around us can be
downright lovable. But there are other days when it seems almost impossible to love others. Thankfully, on the days when we
fall short of demonstrating that love there is mercy and forgiveness waiting for us; all we have to do is go to the Lord and ask
for it. In fact, we do that every time we come to this Table. And thankfully, Jesus is always ready to give us a fresh start as
well as the power to try again.
Sometimes even our best efforts to love the difficult people in our lives come to naught. That’s when we have to
remember that Christ never gives up on us. On the Cross, He loved us enough to die for us while we were still sinners, and He
still loves us when we’re not lovable now. His love is unconditional, and ours must be, too. We cannot love only those we like;
those who earn or deserve our affection or those who are just like us. We cannot even draw a line in the sand and love only
those who are part of the family of God. The truth is that some people who belong to God’s family have not received their
adoption papers yet, and it just may be that God plans to use our demonstrations of love as a way of delivering those precious
“documents.”
I read a lovely story in one of my commentaries 2 about a priest in France during World War II who came up with a very
creative way to break down a barrier that prevented him from loving as Christ commanded. His story reminds us that even in
the church, we can get stuck thinking the way the Pharisees did, and love others only sparingly and grudgingly, instead of to
the fullest measure of love, which Christ commands and demonstrates.
During the war, apparently, some French soldiers, along with their Sergeant, brought the body of a dead comrade to a
French cemetery to have him buried. Albeit with great gentleness, the priest had to tell them that he was required to ask if the
comrade had been a baptized adherent of the Roman Catholic Church. The soldiers, unfortunately, did not know what the
status of their dead comrade was, and so with great sadness the priest had to tell them they could not bury him in the church
graveyard. So they took their dead comrade and buried him just outside the fence.
The next day they returned to make sure that the grave was in order but to their astonishment they couldn’t find it. Search
as they might they could not find any trace of freshly dug soil. Totally bewildered, they were just about to leave when the
priest came along. He told them that his heart had been so troubled by his refusal to bury the dead soldier in the graveyard that
he had gotten up in the middle of the night and with his own hands had moved the fence so that the body of the young man
who had died for France was now inside the boundary of the graveyard of the church.
On the Cross, with unconditional love and compassion, Jesus moved the fence for us. In fact, Jesus removed it
altogether, the fence of sin separating us from God. Through his sacrificial death and resurrection He has made us a part of his
worldwide family, and He is asking us to be in the fence moving business as well, breaking down any barriers that separate
people from Christ and from each other. As fence movers, our job is to love others as He loves us, and keep moving the fence
until He comes again. Let us pray.
1. Words: John Ellerton, A Liturgy for Missionary Meetings, 1870. Queen Victoria chose this hymn to be sung at the 60th anniversary of her reign in 1897; it was also sung at the
ceremony when Britain returned control of Hong Kong to China in 1997. Music: St. Clement, Clement C. Scholefield, written for this text, and appearing in Church Hymns with
Tunes, 1874.
2. Barclay, William. The Daily Study Bible Series: Ephesians. Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1975, 115.
actually started out as a Presbyterian observance back in 1936 and by 1940 it had become an international and
interdenominational event, adopted by other Protestants worldwide. The purpose of World Communion is to help us remember
and emphasize our unity in Christ, and look beyond the things that separate us—things like race, ethnicity, culture and tradition.
On World Communion Sunday what often comes to my mind is the way things were when I was in high school in the late
1960’s. In northern New Jersey, at least, it was a time when Protestants of different denominations hesitated to step through
the doors of each other’s churches. There was a fair amount of discomfort surrounding the idea of ecumenism at that time and
a suspicion that whatever those Moravians or Methodists or Congregational churches were doing was probably very weird.
They probably thought the same about us Presbyterians!
And so it was a very big deal in 1967 or 1968 when the churches in my town gathered for an ecumenical service one
Sunday evening. If I remember right, the service was actually held at my high school—something that is probably illegal in this
day and age. In any case, I remember how the choirs of those churches came together to produce a powerful and inspiring
sound (it’s interesting that I don’t remember the sermon!) and the service ended with both choir and congregation singing “Lift
High the Cross,” a hymn I had never heard before that night and which moved me in a very profound way. I think that
ecumenical service went a long way toward breaking down barriers between Christians in my town.
Something else that often comes to mind when I think of World Communion is another hymn, entitled, “The Day Thou
Gavest, Lord, Has Ended.” 1 It’s usually used as an evening hymn and it begins by telling the story of the Sovereignty of God,
the God who gives us each day, brings each day to a close, and keeps us while we sleep.
The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended,
The darkness falls at Thy behest;
To Thee our morning hymns ascended,
Thy praise shall sanctify our rest.
In the next three verses, however, the emphasis shifts to thanksgiving for the Church around the world; particularly the
concept that while we may be sleeping or resting, somewhere in the world the Body of Christ is awake and watchful and at
work:
We thank Thee that Thy church, unsleeping,
While earth rolls onward into light,
Through all the world her watch is keeping,
And rests not now by day or night.
It continues,
As o’er each continent and island
The dawn leads on another day,
The voice of prayer is never silent,
Nor dies the strain of praise away.
As our day draws to a close, it says that
The sun that bids us rest is waking
Our brethren ’neath the western sky,
And hour by hour fresh lips are making
Thy wondrous doings heard on high.
Finally, it paints a picture of the glorious fulfillment of the Church:
So be it, Lord; Thy throne shall never,
Like earth’s proud empires, pass away:
Thy kingdom stands, and grows forever,
Till all Thy creatures own Thy sway.
In its poetic way, this hymn reminds us that the sun never sets on the Church of Jesus Christ, something that we act out in a
very visible way by participating in World Communion each year. It is awesome to consider that the Sacrament of the Lord’s
Supper will be celebrated by Protestants in every time zone in the world today, and we are taking part in that celebration.
Beyond the celebration at the Table today, World Communion is a reminder of the ecumenical nature of the Church of
Jesus Christ. We have brothers and sisters all over the world who share our faith in Christ and who are at work to make his
kingdom come in their little corner of the world. These are people who may not look like us or think like us or worship like
us—in fact, some of them are as different from us as we can possibly imagine. But because they believe as we do; because
their faith and hope for eternity is in Jesus Christ, we actually share a stronger, more significant bond with them than we do
with many of our American countrymen and women. Christ breaks down the barriers that separate or divide us on the deepest
levels, and in Christ we are drawn together and held together by the Holy Spirit, a supernatural bond that even the powers of
darkness cannot sever.
But apparently, this Christian unity, a unity that transcends the differences between people, is something that every
generation of the Church needs to understand and embrace in its own time and incorporate into their lives. In today’s scripture
passage from Ephesians Paul reminds first century Christians that regardless of whether they came from a Jewish or Gentile
background, through faith in Christ they were one in the Lord. Paul even says that Christ’s “…purpose was to create in
himself one new man out of two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the
cross, by which he put to death their hostility.” (Ephesians 2:15b-16)
Paul was trying to teach the church that although the message of the Gospel was delivered first to the Jews and then to the
Gentiles, in Christ the playing field is now level. Cultural, ethnic and racial differences are not erased, but in the church there is
no hierarchy in which one cultural or ethnic or racial group is above or better than another or is more favored by God. All are
equal in God’s eyes. No longer are Jews the insiders and Gentiles the outsiders. Through faith in Christ, everyone is an insider,
with equal opportunity or access to God the Father through God the Son. When Jesus Christ broke down the walls that divided
Jews and Gentiles, a whole new citizenry—the New Israel—was created; God’s people were no longer held together by the Old
Covenant spelled out in the Law of Moses but by the New Covenant, sealed in Christ’s blood, shed on the Cross. The result of
this New Covenant is a whole new kind of “nation” held together by faith and by the Spirit instead of ethnicity or anything else.
And figuratively speaking, this new nation is meant to be a “Holy Temple” in which God will dwell, by his Spirit.
This is quite a magnificent vision of what the Church is meant to be. I hope that as we celebrate Communion this morning
we will take a moment to ponder the magnitude of what Jesus has done on the Cross—not just for us as individuals or even for
us as a church here on this corner—but also for believers all over the world who are connected to us through faith. In Christ,
we are part of a world-wide family that has been adopted by God the Father and we are related to one another by blood—the
blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, poured out on the Cross for the forgiveness of sin.
Unfortunately, I think you’ll agree that although our adoption in Christ is complete and secure—we might say that our
adoption papers were signed in Christ’s blood—we have a long way to go before this international and interdenominational
family we belong to is everything God wants it to be. It is one thing to accept the concept that we are part of Christ’s family—
the worldwide Body of Christ—but it’s quite another to live together as members of that family from day to day. Actually, I
think we would admit that it is easy to love our brothers and sisters in some church in Zambia or Australia or Mexico or Brazil
or Scandinavia. It’s easy to get along with people from a distance! It’s even easy to get along with them when we visit them
on mission trips or vacations or when they visit us while they are studying or vacationing here. But I suspect that if the way
we get along with each other in our own churches is any indication, we probably wouldn’t do much better with our
international brothers and sisters if we had to live with them over the long haul, either. Our Wednesday Night Bible Study has
been discussing just how difficult it is for families to “get it right,” and that applies whether those families are biological or
ecclesial.
The reality is that if we are going to really be the Body of Christ, we have to keep working at being the kind of family He
died to create. And the most powerful and effective way to accomplish that is through a simple four-letter word: LOVE.
Jesus Himself tells us—commands us, in fact—to love each other the way He loves us. Granted, it’s a tall order, especially
when Jesus spells out the ultimate demonstration of that love as laying down our lives for each other. That’s the kind of love
Jesus has for us, and He calls us to love in the same way. So right up front we need to face the fact that it’s not going to be
easy. This love takes commitment, perseverance, endurance, sacrifice, humility, forgiveness and so much more. But this kind
of love is our most direct route to the Kingdom of God. In addition, when we take seriously the Lord’s command to love
others in this way, Jesus considers us not just family, but friends. And though our world will try to tell us otherwise, the
ultimate, most precious thing we can seek after in life is intimate friendship with Christ, friendship born out of obedience to his
command to love each other.
There are some days when it is fairly easy to be obedient to that command, days when the people around us can be
downright lovable. But there are other days when it seems almost impossible to love others. Thankfully, on the days when we
fall short of demonstrating that love there is mercy and forgiveness waiting for us; all we have to do is go to the Lord and ask
for it. In fact, we do that every time we come to this Table. And thankfully, Jesus is always ready to give us a fresh start as
well as the power to try again.
Sometimes even our best efforts to love the difficult people in our lives come to naught. That’s when we have to
remember that Christ never gives up on us. On the Cross, He loved us enough to die for us while we were still sinners, and He
still loves us when we’re not lovable now. His love is unconditional, and ours must be, too. We cannot love only those we like;
those who earn or deserve our affection or those who are just like us. We cannot even draw a line in the sand and love only
those who are part of the family of God. The truth is that some people who belong to God’s family have not received their
adoption papers yet, and it just may be that God plans to use our demonstrations of love as a way of delivering those precious
“documents.”
I read a lovely story in one of my commentaries 2 about a priest in France during World War II who came up with a very
creative way to break down a barrier that prevented him from loving as Christ commanded. His story reminds us that even in
the church, we can get stuck thinking the way the Pharisees did, and love others only sparingly and grudgingly, instead of to
the fullest measure of love, which Christ commands and demonstrates.
During the war, apparently, some French soldiers, along with their Sergeant, brought the body of a dead comrade to a
French cemetery to have him buried. Albeit with great gentleness, the priest had to tell them that he was required to ask if the
comrade had been a baptized adherent of the Roman Catholic Church. The soldiers, unfortunately, did not know what the
status of their dead comrade was, and so with great sadness the priest had to tell them they could not bury him in the church
graveyard. So they took their dead comrade and buried him just outside the fence.
The next day they returned to make sure that the grave was in order but to their astonishment they couldn’t find it. Search
as they might they could not find any trace of freshly dug soil. Totally bewildered, they were just about to leave when the
priest came along. He told them that his heart had been so troubled by his refusal to bury the dead soldier in the graveyard that
he had gotten up in the middle of the night and with his own hands had moved the fence so that the body of the young man
who had died for France was now inside the boundary of the graveyard of the church.
On the Cross, with unconditional love and compassion, Jesus moved the fence for us. In fact, Jesus removed it
altogether, the fence of sin separating us from God. Through his sacrificial death and resurrection He has made us a part of his
worldwide family, and He is asking us to be in the fence moving business as well, breaking down any barriers that separate
people from Christ and from each other. As fence movers, our job is to love others as He loves us, and keep moving the fence
until He comes again. Let us pray.
1. Words: John Ellerton, A Liturgy for Missionary Meetings, 1870. Queen Victoria chose this hymn to be sung at the 60th anniversary of her reign in 1897; it was also sung at the
ceremony when Britain returned control of Hong Kong to China in 1997. Music: St. Clement, Clement C. Scholefield, written for this text, and appearing in Church Hymns with
Tunes, 1874.
2. Barclay, William. The Daily Study Bible Series: Ephesians. Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1975, 115.
