Boundary Stories

Exodus 20:1-17

March 4, 2018

Years ago I read a report about a simple study that captured something quite profound. Researchers observed the behavior of kids on play spaces at parks and schools, and they found that when given the same amount of space in which to play, kids behaved differently if there was a fence around the space. If the space was unfenced, kids tended to stay closer together and closer to the middle of the space. If the area was fenced, kids tended to use all of it in their play right out to the fence-line.

To me that simple research suggests several profound truths. First, people want or need boundaries. Moreover, we find greater freedom with boundaries than in their absence. Absent clear boundaries, we tend to create artificial ones that keep us closer to the center than we need to be.

Wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, the people of Israel needed some boundaries. In our text this morning, God provides them in the form of the commandments.

The text begins with these signal words: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no others gods before me.”

These words tell the people who they are, where they come from, and how they shall hold fast to that identity. They are God’s people. They were enslaved, but now are free. They shall hold onto that by their faithfulness to the One who brought them up out of the land of Egypt.

And, though it is not part of this specific text it is its entire context, they will hold fast to this identify and this faithfulness because this story also tells them where they are going: to the Promised Land.

This is the heart of the Exodus story, and the heart is about the boundaries. To have a circle you have to know where the center is but you also have to know about the edge, the periphery. It’s the same in community: you need to know what draws you together, and you need to know what marks the limits.

Of course, it’s a whole lot simpler with a playground fence than it is with a community. Finding the center and testing the limits are never simple when you are talking about dynamic human relationships, and when you posit God as the center, well then it’s pretty clear that we’ve left the playground and gone someplace with far different limits.

In fact, limits is probably not the quite right word here, for defining the edges of community is never precise and constantly being negotiated.

Our congregational history underscores this. When we did a congregational timeline back in January, many of the key points along the line were precisely points at which the community was negotiating fundamental boundary questions that mark, ultimately, who is included when we say “us.”

All of those negotiations are boundary stories.

I ran across a fascinating boundary story in the congregational timeline exercise that we did a decade ago with Joyce Mercer, who was then a professor of congregational studies at Virginia Theological Seminary and now does similar work at Yale Divinity School. In that narrative, the late Karen Kimmel – whom many of us knew and loved – recalled the election of Ron Bookbinder to serve on session in the early 1990s. Sorry to out you as “old” Ron!

Speaking of out, though, Ron was the first out, partnered gay man elected to serve on Clarendon’s session, and, as far as I know, the first such person elected to serve on the session of any Presbyterian church in the commonwealth of Virginia. It was ecclesiastically disobedient at the time, and the Rev. Madeline Jervis could have faced disciplinary action in the judicial system of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The larger church had clearly defined who was in and who was out when it came to serving as an ordained officer within the system, and gays and lesbians were out. The struggle over ordination that marked the first half of my almost 15 years here was a struggle to define the circle of the larger church with respect to precisely such circumstances.

For Karen it was also a point of self-declaration. In the timeline, she said to Joyce, “I had come to Clarendon [years earlier] but I had never joined the church. [At the congregational meeting when Ron was elected] there were nominations from the floor to supersede Ron. I couldn’t vote because I wasn’t a member. I got to count the votes and the next Sunday I became a member.” It’s one thing to count the votes; it’s another thing altogether to cast one.

Defining the circle involves declaring who we are. It involves saying, “here I stand, I can do no other.” It also declares, “I stand with these folks and together we are a people defined by the circle we stand within.”

That’s not quite right, though, because putting it in terms of “here I stand” implies something fixed and permanent. If there’s anything the Exodus story and, indeed, the arc of scripture as a whole, tells us it’s that the people – however defined in any given moment – are always moving. As they move – whether physically, as is often the case, or metaphorically, as is always the case – as they move they encounter other people. In these encounters the edge of the circle is always contested and must constantly be redefined.

From the call of Abraham to leave his land and his people to go to a land that God will show him, to the Exodus from Egypt and wondering in the wilderness, to the Exile in Babylon, to the journeys of kings and prophets, to Mary and Joseph taking the long way home, to Jesus turning his face to Jerusalem, to Paul carrying good news to the Gentile world, and straight on down to our time, the people of God have been a journeying people following that first and still central utterance, “I am the Lord your God you shall have no other gods before me.”

The center is a clear mystery: the God whose holy name, revealed to Moses in a burning bush, is “I am who I am, and I will be who I will be.” The mystery of God at once compels and defies every effort at a systematic theology, thus the center must always be a mystery.

If the center of the circle – any circle – is a mystery – is, in fact, mystery itself – the periphery will never be clear and certain. It will always be contested and subject to negotiation.

And, most important when we move beyond the metaphor to the community of the church, the periphery will be contested precisely by those on the outside.

Now, as the story from our own timeline also suggests, those who have made clear choices and commitments to the community are empowered – we have the votes. But we are empowered by our commitment to a mystery that is defined precisely by its commitment to those on the margins.

Get that? The community of the church is defined by its commitment to a God who is committed not only to the church but also to those beyond its current circle. If we take seriously the insights of liberation theology – a theology grounded precisely in the Exodus story – if we take that thinking seriously then we’ll go a step further and say that the church, in its affluent North American context at least, is a community defined by its commitment to the God who has a preferential option for those outside its doors – that is to say, to the poor.

What that means for us, for the church at Clarendon in 2018, is simple: if we want to be the church then we have to look beyond the church to become the church. As we are, in this loving, lovely, and comfortable circle, we are insufficient.

God is calling us beyond ourselves. God is calling us beyond the idols we always tend to construct: the idols of comfort and complacency; the idol of tradition; the idol of unity that excludes diversity; the idol of security in the face of an unknown future being called forth by a God of deep mystery.

That God remains the center of our circle, and that God has declared what marks the boundaries in a set of guideposts for community relations and human interaction. Jesus, when asked about the commandments, reduced them to two essentials: love God – the center of the circle – and love the neighbor – the one who resides at the circle’s edge.

This I believe: if we, as the community of the church, remain committed to that center we will inevitably be drawn out beyond the circle’s edge. That’s just how God is – a mystery always on the move compelling us to live always into richer and deeper boundary stories. Let’s go explore the boundaries, shall we. Amen.