Tearing Down Walls

Sermon

This is one of those weeks when I asked myself why I chose this particular passage, but there was something that resonated deeply for me with these words of Paul. The text both grounded me, reminding me that through Christ all things are possible, and the text challenged me, urging me to see that Christ has already torn down all the walls of hostility between peoples.

But really, there is something quite appealing about walls of hostility coming between me and people I think are wrong and mean and cruel. When the wall is up, I don’t have to deal with them. I don’t have to read their signs, or hear their chants, or watch their shenanigans. When the wall is up, I don’t have to face their humanity or their belovedness in the eyes of God. Which makes me think that in so many ways, Christianity is more aspirational than practical. We’ll get back to that.

Let’s take a look at the context in which this letter and these particular verses were written. Scholars don’t agree if the apostle Paul or someone else wrote this letter, but for today, I’m going to say that Paul was the writer. He was writing about a very specific issue faced by the Jesus followers: did non-Jewish Jesus followers, Gentiles, have to first become Jewish, that is, be circumcised, before they could become part of this new Jesus movement?

Remember that in the early days, the followers of Jesus weren’t trying to create a new religion. They believed that Jesus was the promised messiah of their Jewish faith, and so what they were doing was a fulfillment of the promises made long ago. What we call Christianity was born out of Judaism.

So when non-Jewish folks wanted to follow Jesus too, there was some tension. Paul makes things clear. To follow Jesus, one did not need first to be circumcised or even raised in the Jewish tradition. All are included in this new thing, because Jesus, by the very act of his giving up his life, broke down the barriers between Jews and Gentiles. Period.

(I must add, as an aside, that circumcision itself is divisive, since it leaves women out of the equation [thankfully]. We’ll assume that Paul meant to include Jewish and Gentile women as well.)

Paul is talking about unity here, about unity that does not erase identity but allows different groups of people to come together as a new thing. He’s also talking about inclusion, who gets to be a part of this. And he’s talking about hospitality, with the extraordinary end of this unity and inclusion creating a home for God. As one commentator put it, “Three themes intertwine through this passage, linked by multiple metaphors of unity. First, those who were estranged from God have now been brought into the covenant. Second, they are united with those who are already part of God’s covenant. Third, this unity brings peace where there was no peace. These themes culminate in the purpose of this union: to create a holy dwelling place for God.” (Karen Chakoian, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3, p. 254)

I look around the world today, I look around the United States today, and I wonder if we will ever unite and create a home for God. The rancor in our discourse is awful.

Let’s take Portland for an example. The conversation around housing for the unhoused, and sweeping camps, and making sidewalks accessible, and health hazards from human waste and needles, and compassion for the mentally ill, and unaffordable housing, and treatment for those with addictions—man oh man.

The state of unhoused people in Portland is a humanitarian and health crisis, and those who respond with compassion and generosity are just as vilified as those who respond with practical and stringent solutions. It’s not everyone who responds that way, of course, but those loud and angry voices get played over and over again on social media, and they drown out the voices of those who are willing to unite, despite differences in approach, in order to bring some resolution to the crisis and some aid to those who are suffering.

When a lone gunman tried to assassinate former President Trump, the usual suspects went to their usual corners. People appalled by gun violence pointed to yet one more example of need for sensible gun laws. People who broadly interpret the second amendment pointed to the need for more folks to be armed to protect themselves. Republicans blame the Democratic administration for shoddy work by the Secret Service. Democrats mock people at the Republican National Convention wearing bandages on their right ears in solidarity with the former president.

How’s your blood pressure right now? Let’s all take a deep breath.

You might understand my dilemma with this text. It feels like not even Jesus can tear down the walls dividing his followers from one another when it comes to things political these days. Because we all dig in. We see something we think is wrong or unjust or cruel, and we can’t imagine spending our time with the people perpetuating the wrong, the injustice, the cruelty. We know that we will never change their minds, just as we know they will never change ours. The problem appears intractable.

And then the problem becomes a theological and spiritual one. If we believe the walls that divide us cannot be torn down, are we saying that Christ is powerless? Are we saying we don’t believe? Or is the Bible, and Christ’s teaching, merely aspirational and never attainable?

I’m really worried about the election in November, for all sorts of reasons, and I am not looking forward to the next few months and the national discourse about things. I read a commentator I don’t agree with, and I can feel my pulse quicken and a snappy retort come to mind. But I have to acknowledge that if the election does not go the way I want it to, I will be mostly okay. I am a privileged, educated, white woman with a savings account.

But I do worry about people who are already living on the edge. I worry about how our rancorous discourse will make them even more anxious. I worry about policies that will hurt the poor. I worry about women keeping autonomy over their bodies. I worry about violence against immigrants and refugees and anyone who looks different. I worry about whether I want the dividing walls to come down. I think some of you share my worries.

Then I remember what a wise person once told me: worry is a misuse of the imagination. And I remember something Dorothy Day once said. “What is the sense of our small effort? [We] cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time. A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words, and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel helpless. There is too much work to do.”

When the dividing wall feels too big, when it looms too large, imagine that it is made of bricks. There’s the brick of insult and the brick of ancestors. There’s the brick of gossip and the brick of lies. There’s the brick of apathy, and the brick of anger, and the brick of violence. There are several bricks of fear. Those walls of hostility were built not in one great go, but brick by brick, hurt by hurt, hate by hate.

But if Paul is right, that’s not the way the wall comes down, brick by brick. Christ has already done the dismantling; the bricks have turned to rubble, maybe into gravel that begins to create a road to a new place. Paul tells us that God acting in Christ has already broken down the dividing walls and that Christ has become our peace. He is our peace. Our peace.

As Samuel Wells reminds us, “True peace is not the absence of conflict, but the transformation of destructive tension into dynamic creativity, the turning of the competition that presupposes scarcity into the compliment that assumes abundance, the emergence of thankfulness in place of resentment, and the retelling of a story that ceases to believe stray elements can or should be written out of the script.” (A Nazareth Manifesto, p. 51)

And as Bishop Desmond Tutu once said, “God saw our brokenness and sought to extricate us from it—but only with our cooperation. God will not cajole or bully us, but wants to woo us for our own sakes. We might say that the Bible is the story of God’s attempt to… bring us back to our intended condition of relatedness. God was, in Christ, reconciling the world to God. God sent Jesus who would fling out in arms on the cross as if to embrace us. God wants to draw us back into an intimate relationship and so bring to unity all that has become disunited. This was God’s intention from the beginning. And each of us is called to be an ally of God in this work of justice and reconciliation.”

So I suppose the call in this text from Ephesians is to commit ourselves to the work of living into the reality of Christ’s peace. Maybe that will look like committing to justice for Palestinians. Maybe that will look like staying engaged in the conversation about how to diminish homelessness in Portland. Maybe it will look like listening to those we oppose, and trying to understand them, and even if we don’t like them, aspiring to love them.

May that which was once a wall now become a path to something better, not just for us, but for all.

To the glory of God.