On Building Fences
The Revd Deacon Polly Bowen
There is a saying that good fences make good neighbors. Perhaps that’s true, but sometimes it seems that the type of fence defines neighborliness more than the fence itself. Is it a hedge, a picket fence, a trellis with flowers climbing up, a stockade, cement blocks, barbed wire? Each conjures up a different image.
At my house we are pondering the practicality of different kinds of fencing – not to keep people out, but to keep our parapatetic dog in, in order to maintain peace with our neighbors. An invisible pet fence seems a likely solution, although we haven’t yet settled on it as the best option.
This is a problem that is miniscule in comparison with the problems the world faces in making – and maintaining – its fences. We build walls along our borders even with the still-vivid memory of “tear down this wall,” and we see bloody riots resulting from tasteless cartoons and photos of prison brutality. We constantly present “the other” with a double-bind situation, beckoning with one hand while the other hand wields a weapon. My current favorite author, Ann Fontaine, notes that the barbed wire of our rage is fencing out the love that we are called to share.1
This happens on a local level, too. Currently a friend is in trouble, and suddenly there is a fence between us. It is a fence that is wide and tall, and I struggle to find a way to reach beyond it. Some people condemn my friend, as though this new perception of him negates the camaraderie that has gone before. But I am not the only friend struggling to maintain fraternity with him, and I thank God for that.
I ponder the message of Jesus. He loved the worst sinners. “Go and sin no more,” he said. I wonder, did the forgiven sinner mend her ways without benefit of the legal measures of the day? We don’t know. We know only that Jesus forgave her, even before she professed any sorrow or remorse about her sin.
Which of us is willing to cast the first stone? In the case of my friend, there are many stones being cast, and I wish with all my heart that I could let him know that he has friends praying for him. Praying for him? Is that all we can do? Sadly, yes, at this time, for he is beyond our reach, secreted behind the legal fences that keep us out. When my head leads my heart, I know that this is right; others have been hurt by his actions, and the Law has its rightful place in the situation.
But it occurs to me that there is one more thing I can do. I can remind myself, and others, that when we did not know of his secret sin, we loved him. Dare we love him less now that we know? Which of us has no secret sin? Who among us does not occasionally wonder if our friends would love us less if they knew us as we know ourselves?
There is no hierarchy of sins. Venial? Mortal? These are man-made distinctions. Nowhere does the Bible tell us that one sin is greater than another. Following Old Testament law, Jesus reminded us of the two commandments: love God, and love your neighbor. TEN commandments, you say? No, two. All the rest is commentary. When we are loving God and our neighbor perfectly, all the rest falls into place; there will be no murder, no lying, no stealing, no coveting, no idolatry, no denigration of the elderly, no exploitation of the young, etc.
But which of us is able to love perfectly? Each of us has the capacity to do evil – my evil may not be my friend’s evil, and vice versa, but evil it is, without a doubt. Daily I repent, and my prayer is that my friend, too, repents. With God all things are possible, and when, through God’s grace, through prayer and repentance and atonement and whatever punishment the Law imposes, my friend returns to us, I pray also that the various communities in which I came to know him will rush to welcome him back.
I know that God loves him, and welcomes him already, and God’s love can melt the barbed wire of hatred and anger and disappointment. We have only to open our hearts, to reach across our fences, to walk through the gates of God’s love, and to extend that love to all.
1 Fontaine, Ann, Streams of Mercy:
