JESUS AND THE ALIENS

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I've always liked today's second reading, from Ephesians (Eph. 2:13-18).

It refers to the way that Christ has united the Jews and the gentiles into one body. As you read it, notice the imagery: "you who once were far off" refers to non-Jewish Christians, and the "dividing wall of enmity" refers to the low wall in the temple area that separated the "court of the Jews" from the "court of the gentiles." Notice, too, the references to unity, reconciliation, and peace:

Brothers and sisters:
In Christ Jesus you who once were far off
have become near by the blood of Christ.

For he is our peace, he who made both one
and broke down the dividing wall of enmity, through his flesh,
abolishing the law with its commandments and legal claims,
that he might create in himself one new person in place of the two,
thus establishing peace,
and might reconcile both with God,
in one body, through the cross,
putting that enmity to death by it. 
He came and preached peace to you who were far off
and peace to those who were near,
for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.

This reading seems very apt in our world today, where so many people think in terms of us versus them, and where anyone who is different from me is automatically a foe.

One of the very early computer games involved shooting at "aliens." The implication of that story line always bothered me -- "an alien" meant "an enemy to be eliminated." The word "alien," of course, originally meant simply someone or something "different," for example, a person from a different country. I always felt that the computer game amplified a second, negative meaning: for the kid playing the game, "aliens" were threats that needed to be shot at and killed. 

At the time, I was living and working, as I still do, in a city filled with African Americans and immigrants, people who are different from the predominant White culture. Maybe it was just me, but I felt that the idea of shooting "aliens" subconsciously implied that ideas or people that are "strange" or "foreign" are automatically not to be tolerated but must be fought off and even elimated. 

I had a professor at Columbia Teachers College who once asked his class "What is it that makes some people say "Your ideas are different from mine, therefore I must kill you?" That was in 1971. His question seems more pointed today than ever.

Lots of places on the New Testament offer a vision of a world in which divisions and enmities are overcome by the grace of Christ's suffering and death at the hands of people to whom his ideas posed a threat. 

I just noticed that I wrote a similar post five years ago. We would all do well to read the above passage from Ephesians more than just once every third year.

Let us pray for this fractured country of ours, and for the entire world, and especially for people who are so terrified by "alien" ideas or people that they say and do terrible things. Let us pray, too, for the victims of this kind of unchristian thinking.