When boundaries become walls

Yet another eccentricity from the Church of England.

Yesterday I was privileged to conduct the wedding of Mark and Becky at St Mary’s Church, Whitewell, a lovely whitewashed church outside Whitchurch in the Diocese of Chester. What makes St Mary’s unusual – if not unique – is that this Church of England church is actually situated in Wales, in the county borough of Wrecsam no less.

Clearly, there must be some history here.

Rather like the northern boundary of Christ Church, Aughton, where I was vicar. This follows the line of Hurlston Brook, which actually cuts through part of the graveyard of Ormskirk Parish Church – meaning that part of their graveyard is in our parish. I was always tempted to erect a sign on our bank: Welcome to the parish of Christ Church.

Again, there is history here, as shown by the brook’s ancient name: Mere Brook. This comes from the Old English gemǣre, meaning boundary. It suggests that this boundary goes back many centuries, quite possibly to before the surviving medieval church at Ormskirk. We’re talking about a landscape whose history stretches back perhaps a thousand years.

And staying with the theme of strange Anglican boundaries, for eight years I was vicar of St John the Evangelist, Thornham with Gravel Hole, between Rochdale and Middleton. The curious thing was that neither Thornham nor Gravel Hole was actually in the parish. They were both in the parish next door.

Which just goes to show how important our histories are – even, or perhaps especially, in the small details.

I’ve always been fascinated by boundaries – which seem to be part of human nature. It’s not simply that we like drawing lines on maps; there seems to be some instinct in us to separate us from them.

I’ve just finished listening to the most recent podcasts from The Rest Is History, in which Tom and Dominic have been telling the story of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Boundaries, some very local and going back centuries, could so easily become flashpoints for conflict. At the worst moments, simply being on the wrong street, or being identified with the wrong community, could put someone’s life in danger.

Which sadly leads us to the continuing conflict in the Holy Land, where questions of land, borders, security, identity and history are intertwined with terrible human suffering. Again, the lines we draw can become enormously important – sometimes matters literally of life and death.

Of course, boundaries themselves are not necessarily wrong. We need them. Countries need borders, homes need fences and even the Church of England needs to know where one parish finishes and the next one begins. The difficulty comes when a boundary ceases simply to tell us where something ends and starts telling us who belongs and who does not.

That is where the Gospel becomes challenging.

Jesus was remarkably good at crossing boundaries, even crossing Samaritan territory when going to Jerusalem, rather than going the long way along the Jordan boundary.  That in itself tells us so much. 

In fact, Jesus made a point of including Samaritans, speaking at length with a Samaritan woman at Sychar, even to the surprise of his disciples. When someone asked him, “Who is my neighbour?” they were asking him about boundaries, between them and us.  This, of course, prompted the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Above all, it is at the cross where Jesus destroys every barrier – everything that separates us from God and from one another. As the apostle Paul marvels (in the Message tranlsation):  ^“The Messiah has made things up between us so that we’re now together on this, both non-Jewish outsiders and Jewish insiders. He tore down the wall we used to keep each other at a distance.” (Ephesians 2:14)

He continues: “Then he started over. Instead of continuing with two groups of people separated by centuries of animosity and suspicion, he created a new kind of human being, a fresh start for everybody.”

This means that in the Kingdom of God there are no boundaries.  That sounds like a good idea but in practice we may well find it unsettling.  

So when the apostle rejoices out:  “In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free,” (Colossians 3:11) we may well have problems finding ourselves in fellowship with the Scythians with their reputation as people from the remote edges of civilisation—rough, foreign and barbarous.

A lovely quote from Samuel Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, who spoke at my daughter’s book launch: “The church isn’t an enclave whose boundaries we patrol; it’s a dynamic meeting place where we’re all guests.”

We should value our history and understand the boundaries which have helped to shape us, but never allow them to become walls. After all, a Church of England church can apparently find itself in Wales, part of Ormskirk churchyard can find itself in Aughton parish, and a church called Thornham with Gravel Hole can manage to contain neither Thornham nor Gravel Hole.

Perhaps that is not a bad picture of the Church at its best. We may need our parish boundaries, our maps and even our signposts, but the Gospel is always calling us across them. For at the foot of the cross there is finally no us and them – only people equally in need of grace, and equally welcomed by God.

As Archbishop Desmond Tutu put it so simply: “My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.”