Let us pray:  O Lord may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our rock and our redeemer.  Amen

Tearing Down the Walls

About twenty years ago, my phone rang, some time in the middle of the night.  I think that just about everyone knows the fear that comes from being awakened by a ringing phone.  Yes, sometimes it can be good news, the birth of a grandchild or a safe arrival after a difficult journey, but most of the time, good news can wait and it is bad news that comes in the middle of the night.

So, I have to admit that my heart was probably pounding, just a bit, as I picked up that phone.  Had there been an accident?  Had my mom’s frail health taken a turn for the worse?  Was one of my grown children in trouble and reaching out for help?  A thousand thoughts went flying through my head as I grabbed for the phone in the pitch dark.

“Mom, mom.” 

Yeah, Phil, what is it?”

“Mom, they’re tearing down the wall.”

“Wall, Phil?  What wall?”

Mom, they’re tearing down the Berlin wall!”

That late night, or early morning in November of 1989 was a momentous time for many people, not just my son.  But it was especially meaningful for Phil because he had traveled to Germany with his DY German class about 10 years earlier and their group had gone to Berlin and seen the wall.  The wall had been built in 1961, the year that most of them were born.  For all of their lives, that 28 mile long barrier was the most visible sign of a divided Europe. 

They were children of the Cold War and that wall said, “Keep out,” to those in Western Europe and perhaps even more powerfully, “Stay here,” to those in Eastern Europe.  It was us against them and the wall was a dominant symbol of Russia and an iron fisted block of governments, bent on maintaining power.  Even today, twenty years later, if you put Berlin into Google, the first match that comes up is Berlin Wall.

That wall however, was nothing new.  Walls have always been symbols of powerful rulers.  From earliest times governments erected a strong walls to keep their people safe.  Citizens lived inside the walls because of the protection that those walls promised.  Gates were closed and locked at night to keep marauders out.   Walls abound in the Hebrew scriptures.  Joshua fought at Jericho, and, thanks to the power of God, the walls came tumbling down.  Throughout Biblical times and on through history, walls literally determined who was in and who was out.  They included and they excluded.  Walls divided “us, from them.”

In the words of Robert Frost, in his poem “Mending Wall,”

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.'

“Something there is that doesn't love a wall, that wants it down.”

In our reading from Ephesians the author tells us about the way things used to be.  At one time you who were not Jewish were called the “uncircumcision” by those who were called the circumcision.  It was just another way of saying “us and them.”  And the author goes on to remind the members of this mostly Gentile church that they were without Christ and without hope and they were strangers to the promise of God’s covenant. 

Then he continues, “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near . . . for he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.  . . . that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two.”    Something, or Someone there is that doesn’t love a wall.

Like Joshua marching around the walls of Jericho, God has brought down the walls, in Christ Jesus.  But instead of just knocking down the walls of one city, in Jesus Christ, God is bringing down all the walls that divide Jew from Gentile, slave from free, and male from female.  As we heard in last week’s lesson from Ephesians, we have all been adopted into the family of God through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  He is our peace.  Through him we are all one new humanity.  The barriers have been taken down and we have been reconciled not only to one another, but also to God.

Through Jesus Christ the defining circle of who is out and who is in, is made bigger so that all of God’s people may be included.  Christ is destroying the lines between us and them.  Christ is making us all one -- all one family, all one community and all one humanity.

And yet, and yet, despite that message of inclusion that has been declared for two thousand years, we humans have continued to build wall, either literally or figuratively, to keep ourselves distinct from others.  We’ve continued to try to wall out enemies, we’ve tried to keep out different cultures, different races, and different ways of worshipping God.  We’ve tried to limit who was in and who was out based on our own ideas about gender, sexual orientation, or political agendas whether of the liberal or conservative kind.  We’ve said that Catholics and fundamentalists have their theology all wrong.  We’ve looked down on those who are newly arrived in this country or those who build McMansions down the road from us.  We’ve carefully designed ways of speaking and dressing that define us and when those mannerisms and styles begin to be picked up by others, we rush to change our ways. 

We say that the whole world is wrong except for me and thee, and sometimes I wonder about thee, or as one of my favorite cartoons states it, there are two monks walking down the road and one says to the other, “But Brother John, I really am holier than thou!” 

We humans, being human, have been eager to judge others and find them wanting.  We temporize.  “Yes, God, we know what you have said, but we’re sure that what you really mean is . . .. And then, we go on to ascribe our own favorite prejudices to God.  Ephesians, today just as much as when it was written urges us to look through God’s perspective that sees all humanity as God’s beloved adopted daughters and sons. 

As Virginia Ramey Mollenkott wrote, “The Holy Spirit calls us toward an all-inclusive attitude, a theology of the wind, a relationship to God and the world that does not try to make things easy by ruling out whole areas of human experience and whole groups of human beings."  (Imaging the Word, Vol.3, p.258.)  When one reaches out in God’s name, one does not dictate to God who is or is not acceptable to hear that word.

Instead, it was and is God’s intention that Christ is our peace and through Christ, hostility and division should be ended.  He reconciled those who were far off and those who were in the inner circle and gave us all access to God through the Holy Spirit.  In the words that we still use when we bring new members into the church, we “are no longer strangers and sojourners, but are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.”

 We, as the church, are joined; we are all part of one greater whole in whom it will please God to live.   It doesn’t matter about the walls, it doesn’t matter about the bricks and mortar, it doesn’t matter about the roof or the steeple, God will live within us.  And so, we need to look more closely at those whom we have named as other because they too are a part of this temple of God.  Our lives and theirs are brought together upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ himself as the cornerstone.

In our first reading for today, David wanted to build a house for the Lord.  But God said instead that he would build a house for David.  God promised David a kingdom that would be everlasting and a temple that would be built by an heir of David.  That descendent God declared, would build a house for God’s name and it would be the place where God would be pleased to dwell.  That is the temple that we all are a part of today.  It is the temple built not of stone or cedar, but rather the living temple of the living God.

We are all called to be a part of that sacred dwelling place, to be built together spiritually into a home for God.  All of us, our dearest friends, our most deluded enemies, the gay man and the Latina woman are called to be a part of the holy of holies, God’s own sanctuary. 

When we listen to the language of Ephesians it sounds as if the barriers are down and God’s temple is finished.  It sounds as if the kingdom had already come and Christ’s actions had already been completed.  The author declares Christ’s victory over the cosmos in a way that has not yet come to pass.  We know that we have not yet reached that place, but we can see the vision that God sets before us.  And seeing that vision makes the task of the church is clear.  We are called to be about the continuation of the work of reconciliation.  We are called to look closely at ourselves and root out the fear and prejudice that causes us to look down upon or exclude others. 

Just as Christ came to be our peace, we are called to bring that peace into the world.  Just as Christ came to bring unity and to heal divisions, so too we are called to work toward the day when all of us together can tear down the walls and become God’s Kingdom without end.