“Us And Them”

“Us And Them”

Text: Ephesians 2:11-22

© July 23, 2006 by C. Edward Bowen

Back in July of 1913, on the 50^th anniversary of the Civil War battle at Gettysburg, surviving soldiers from both armies returned to those Pennsylvania fields to reenact one of key moments in that conflict – the attack known as Pickett’s Charge. Those veterans, who were now all old men, went that day and took up the positions that they and their comrades had taken five decades before – with the former Union soldiers situating themselves on the high ground among the rocks, and with the former Confederate soldiers lined up across the way, row upon row along the edge of a large, open field.

But when the re-enactment took place, an amazing thing happened. Just like 50 years before, those former Union soldiers rushed down from above while the former Confederate troops lifted up a battle cry and charged against them. But when those men met in the middle of that field, instead of doing battle against one another, the men stopped, threw their arms around each other, and wept.[1]

In part, they wept in sadness because at that moment they remembered all too well the suffering, death, and destruction that the divisions between them 50 years before had caused. But at that moment they also wept for joy because they realized just how precious peace is, how wonderful it is not to live as two people – as Northerners and Southerners, as Union and Confederate, as Yankee and Rebel, as Us and Them. Instead, at that moment as they wept for joy, they realized how precious peace is, how wonderful it is when we can finally come together and find a way to live as one people.

Rudyard Kipling has a short poem that goes like this: “All good people agree / And all good people say, / All nice people, like Us, are We / And every one else is They.”[2] Listen again to what Kipling is saying: “All good people agree / And all good people say, / All nice people, like Us, are We / And everyone else is They.” Do we see what he’s getting at? He’s getting at the fact that unfortunately there seems to be a tendency built into us to set up walls and divide ourselves from those who are different from us in some way. There seems to be a tendency built into us to gather ourselves together with other people who think and act just like we do, call ourselves We, and then point with an air of superiority and disdain at those who are different and call them They. But what today’s reading from the letter to the Ephesians invites us to do is to stop that. To stop thinking in terms of Us versus Them.

According to this passage in Ephesians, we need to stop thinking in those terms – in terms of Us versus Them – because if we really believe in Jesus, those kinds of categories don’t apply anymore. It’s like elsewhere in the New Testament where we are told to stop thinking of people in terms of them being Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, male or female (Galatians 3:28). In other words, instead of putting people into categories according to the nationality or their economic status or their sex, all that really matters is that we all belong to Jesus. All that really matters is that we are all people who Jesus loves, we are all people who Jesus died on the cross for.

But putting an end to Us versus Them thinking isn’t an easy thing to do – it’s never been easy. Back in 1871 some archaeologists were doing some digging in Jerusalem and they found a sign that used to be posted in the Jewish temple there, a sign that was probably posted in the temple around the time of Jesus. It was a sign that hung on the outside of a wall at the edge of the temple precincts, and it solemnly warned all Gentiles, all non-Jews, to not set foot inside the temple wall or else they’d be killed. In other words, the sign said: if you’re not one of Us, if you’re one of Them, stay out.

But Jesus’ first followers were guilty of the very same kind of thing. Maybe you recall the story in the Gospels where the disciple named John went up to Jesus and said, “Jesus, we saw someone going around, telling people about you and healing people. Should we tell him to stop, since he doesn’t follow us, since he’s not a part of our group?” (Luke 9:49-50) But Jesus essentially answered John by saying, “John, don’t you understand? We’re all on the same team. There is no more Us and Them. If that person is out there doing good works in my name, I’m glad about that.”

But sadly that Us versus Them kind of attitude has persisted across the centuries in various ways right up to our time. For instance, not so very long ago, in 1955, the governor of Georgia publicly demanded that the Georgia Tech football team forfeit its invitation to play in the Sugar Bowl game. The governor made that demand when he found out that the team Georgia Tech would be playing, the Pitt Panthers, had a black player, one young black man on the second-string squad.[3] But as far as that governor was concerned, there was absolutely no way that We – white people – were going to play in a game with Them – with a black person.

Or during that same era, when the first black person applied for enrollment to the University of Mississippi, authorities took the man and had him thrown into a mental hospital, claiming that only an insane black person would want to attend an all-white school like that.[4] In essence, the white authorities were saying, “This is our school. It’s for us. It’s ours. And there’s no way we’re going to let people who are different from us be here.”

But it’s kind of easy for us to look back across the years and in retrospect say, “How could people have been like that?” What’s more important – but what’s also more difficult – is for us to take an honest look at ourselves and our world and ask, “How are we doing that very same sort of stuff now? How are we pitting Us versus Them? How are we falling short of being the one people that Jesus wants us to be?”

In the passage from the letter to the Ephesians that we heard, it says that Jesus came to destroy the walls, to tear down the barriers that we keep setting up to keep Them away from Us. But in what ways do we keep right on setting up those walls? When I read these verses, what came to my mind right away is what’s going on with our neighbors to the south in Mexico. Now, I understand that there’s a need to protect the borders and to make sure that terrorists don’t sneak in. But is that really what all this hullabaloo about building a wall on the Mexican border is all about?

I have my doubts. I believe that at its heart the debate about that wall isn’t so much about national security as it is about Us versus Them. Just listen to the guests who are on the TV talk shows or the people who call into the radio programs – listen to the language they use to describe the human beings who live south of the United States. People call them illegal aliens, spics, wetbacks. And once you start doing that, once you start pointing at other people and labeling them as Them and calling them all kinds of names, it becomes easy then to mistreat them and not feel bad about it, because we start forgetting that they are human beings just like us, that they are people who Jesus loves just like us, that they are people who Jesus died on the cross for just like us.

After all, when we look back at the 1950s and 60s, wasn’t that exactly the same sort of thing that white people back then did to black people? White people called black people all kinds of horrible names – you know the names. And once they started doing that, it became so easy then to harass black people, to terrorize them, to kill them, to let them know that they weren’t welcome. That happened because people got into an Us versus Them mindset, and they refused to let go of it. And by doing that, white people back then blinded themselves to the fact that black people are human beings just like them, that black people are people who Jesus loves just like them, that black people are people who Jesus died on the cross for just like them.

Several years ago a white New York City police officer arrested a black man, beating him up rather severely. Later on at the station the two men ran into each other, and the police officer saw something that caused his heart to sink inside of him. What he saw was a small metal cross hanging from the man’s neck. All of a sudden, that officer thought no longer in terms of police versus suspect, or white versus black, but in terms of both of them being human beings, both of them being people who Jesus loved, both them being people who Jesus died on the cross for. And so right there in that police station, the officer apologized to the man for what he had done to him and told him that he too was a Christian.[5]

Us versus Them. That seems to be the way the world operates – Republicans versus Democrats, labor versus management, rich versus poor, even Christianity versus Islam. So often we just assume that that’s the way it’s always been and that that’s the way it always will be. But even if the rest of the world goes right on building those walls to separate Them from Us, if we believe in Jesus, we need to have the courage to stand up and say, “We’re not going to play that game anymore.” Because as far as Jesus is concerned, there is no Us and Them. Instead, we are one people – people who Jesus loves, people who Jesus died on the cross for.