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The Bishop's Journal
November 2000
MOVING THE FENCES
In the darker days of the 1940's three prisoners of war escaped from their
prison camp. One of them was seriously wounded in the escape. By day, the
other two hid him as best they could and carried him on their shoulders
through the night. At last they came to a tiny French parish church. The
parish priest, seeing their desperate need, led them to a safe retreat but the
wounded man grew weaker and when morning came he was dead.
It had been a long companionship and the two who remained wanted their friend
to be properly buried so they asked the old priest if they might have a plot
in the cemetery at the rear of the church. The kindly man shook his head.
"Your friend was a Protestant," he said gently, and then explained
that only Roman Catholics could be buried in the consecrated ground. With
regret he said that he didn't make the rules, he could only obey them.
"But we could put him over here, just outside the little fence," he
offered invitingly. The dead man's friends agreed. It was better than nothing.
The simple funeral was held, but still the old priest seemed strangely
dissatisfied.
The next morning, at first light, the men were ready to be gone, but went for
one last look at the place where they had laid their friend. But to their
amazement, everything looked different. The grave which had been outside the
fence was now within. How could this be? It only took a moment to realize what
had happened. Sometime during the night the old fence had been taken down and
rebuilt further out.
It was then that the old priest appeared, smiling somewhat sheepishly.
"Your friend could not be buried inside the cemetery," he explained.
"That's the rule. But I don't know of any rule that says you can't move
the fence! And if, in doing so, we are joined with one more child of God,
doubtless the good Lord will smile with understanding."
Jesus, too, was a fence mover who continually pushed his followers to define
the breadth of God's embrace ever more widely. Much to the consternation of
the professionally religious of his day, Jesus portrayed the realm of God in
amazingly broad terms, describing a community of rich diversity that included
some startling combinations of people: men and women, Jews and Gentiles,
Samaritans and Romans, rich and poor, religious and non-religious. It was a
hard and deeply challenging message for his listeners to hear.
The same is true for us. Our natural tendency is to envision the kingdom of
God with a zero sum mentality where someone's gain necessarily means someone
else's loss. Hence, broadening our definitions of who is in and who is out
means giving up a sense of our own exclusivity - our own specialness. We fear
that if God's embrace is defined too widely, it will mean, by necessity, that
we are going to end up losing something.
Jesus challenges us to grow beyond that mentality. The divine economy doesn't
allow for zero sums. God's grace knows no limits aside from those of our own
making or choosing. And while the church has chosen, at different points in
it's life, to emphasize various aspects of what the kingdom of God might look
like, within this time and context I believe that we are being called to be
particularly mindful of that kingdom's radical expansiveness. I believe that
we are being called to go beyond the safety of our comfortable definitions of
who is in and who is out and to follow the light of Christ's presence to
whomever and wherever that light might take us.
Moving the fences: it's a task that we are all called to play a part in today.
And inasmuch as we try to respond to that call, we become partners with God in
bringing the kingdom of heaven to fuller expression.
The Rev. Michael J. Pryse,
Bishop
