BREACHING THE WALLS

Ephesians 2:11-22

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Every generation has probably felt that theirs was the most confused, and I formerly believed that mine really was. Confused about what we really need. On the one hand, we crave intimacy—to belong and be touched. At the same time, we push away from such closeness and we build walls between each other to shield ourselves from the world. Evidence for this confusion is so familiar that we’ve elevated that evidence to the level of culture—poetry and music.

For example, for those of you who came to cultural awareness before 1960, you have the poetry of Robert Frost and the idea that “good fences make good neighbors” from Wall-Mending Time presenting this struggle between intimacy and distance with a visible wall serving as the metaphor. The 1960’s brought us music, like Simon and Garfunkel’s I am a Rock and the 1970’s, groups like Pink Floyd spoke of those injuries and experiences that became “just another brick” in The Wall.

I said that I formerly would have argued my generation was the most confused but today you can have profoundly personal and intimate conversations with total strangers in chat rooms within the Internet’s anonymity. The walls are no longer visible, yet they are not mere metaphor, either. As the confusion has intensified so also the struggle—lyrics like those of the song, Hate Me, elevate the confusion between intimacy and distance to the point of anger and blame. The gap between what we say we want and what we seek continues. And we build walls to keep things the same.

This weekend we celebrated social and racial integration by marking the renewal of the provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1964. Perhaps we marked the celebration as a way to remind ourselves of the distance that still divides us. Perhaps we celebrated it to pretend the distance wasn’t as great nor the divisions as difficult. Nevertheless, the walls we build persist.

Those walls cut deeply into our lives. Husbands and wives fight, building walls of regret and blame with those little injuries and betrayals as the bricks and mortar. Children and their parents likewise build walls, using language and expectations to divide each other. How much we need to listen to Paul today as he writes to the Ephesians and to you and me.

How much we need to listen to Paul as he tells us that Jesus has breached the walls of hostility that separate us—both from God and from each other—and He now becomes the meeting place, where we meet God and one another face to face. This is exciting news in the face of our wall-building—that Jesus has breached the walls.

At once something in us—that which likes the walls—might be tempted to ask how Jesus might dare to breach our walls. We value our walls—they protect us and they define us. Paul has a word for us about our walls. He explains that the only wall that matters is the one that has eternal consequences—that’s the one between you and me and God. This wall is the result of the sin that has ruined us and our relationship with God. That happened in Eden.

Adam and Eve wanted to be like God and so took the steps of disobedience and choice. I wonder if Moses’ telling us that suddenly Adam and Eve’s awareness that they were naked might not be Moses’ way of saying how separated Adam and Eve felt from each other and from God. The intimacy was gone and separation and distance had taken its place and the struggle to regain began. The eternal consequence of being cut off from God is tragic and this tragedy has immediate impact.

Have you ever heard someone ask, “Why is God punishing me?” or “Where is God?” Maybe you’ve asked the same or similar questions. We crave intimacy and belonging with God and seek to breach the walls raised by sin. We already know from our own experience that we can’t—or won’t—breach the walls built between us and our fellow humans; how can we breach the wall that separates us from God? How can this wall be breached?

If you’re out this summer on your vacation driving across Missouri on Interstate 70, you’ll eventually come to the Kingdom City exit. You might well wonder as you look to the south why anyone would ever travel that way. Go ahead and turn south on US54 and go to Fulton, Missouri. Fulton, Missouri is home to Westminster College. Westminster College had its moment in the news just after World War Two as the Cold War was beginning.

I don’t know why Winston Churchill came to speak there, but in the course of his speech, he use the term “Iron Curtain” to describe that ideological walls the now separated the West from the Communist nations. This ideological wall became real in 1961 as the rulers of East Berlin built the Berlin Wall to keep their citizens in and the West out. You know that today in 2006, Berlin is a unified city and the wall is gone.

Some of that wall was moved to Fulton and Westminster’s campus. I think that it was Winston Churchill’s grand-daughter who was the artist who carved human being-shaped holes in the segments of the walls. Go to Fulton and remember that the walls of hostility that separated us during the Cold War are gone, but let those pieces of the Wall remind you of a greater peace.

I like the fact that the breaches in the Berlin Wall are human shaped. So also is the breach in the wall of hostility that separated us from God. Human shaped not because you and I figured out how to breach the wall and made it through, but because God breached the wall in Jesus Christ. In Jesus, the breach is healed as holy God and human flesh are joined together as the Word became flesh that dwelt among us. The intimacy lost in Eden is restored in Christ. Jesus’ Incarnation breached the wall of hostility.

Jesus completed pulling down the wall on His cross, through His resurrection and even, His ascension. On the cross He shed His blood to buy us back from the power of sin and with the death He died to sin in our place, He broke the power of sin to separate us from God. Human shaped breaches through which we have access to the Father.

His resurrection sealed the deal, showing that God has accepted Christ’s death and the breach is complete—the intimacy is restored. We are joined with God through the Body of Christ. Christ’s ascension brings another blessing—the Letter to the Hebrews tells us that Jesus has passed through the heavens—He didn’t leave His flesh behind, He ascended as He was born, man and God together. Human flesh is welcome in God’s presence. We are welcome in heaven. Truly the eternal consequences of the wall of hostility have been removed.

So, if the wall has been breached and it’s a done deal in Christ, are there immediate consequences—does what Christ has done eternally bear fruit in your daily living? Do your neighbors know? Do the people at work see a confidence and clarity of purpose in your living? Have the walls we build between each other been pulled down as well?

If not—and I wager that some of those walls still stand—why not? Remember that sin still clings and that it would still try to reclaim us for confusion. The problem is that we like our walls—we’re quite comfortable in our rooms and safe within our tombs. The walls we’ve built to protect ourselves from injury and intrusions from those around us become safe havens and also forts from which we can chuck rocks of accusation and judgment at others.

When I was a small boy of eight or nine, we lived in suburban Milwaukee. There was a lot of construction happening as the suburb was growing rapidly. Imagine what happens when small boys and piles of dirt come together. We built forts out of the piles of dirt and construction materials left behind. We played “army” which meant that we hid behind our walls and chucked stones at each other. Not a good plan, as rocks injure others. Parents got involved and that was the end of it.

The rocks we chuck at each other from behind the safety of our walls and the forts they become likewise harm others. God our Father intervenes. As He rescued us from ourselves by His actions in Christ, so also He rescues us again by pouring out His Holy Spirit into our lives. Remember back in Genesis when God breathed and Adam lived?

God breathes His Spirit again and we have new life. These words about what Christ accomplished become alive in our hearts and hands and actions. He punches human shaped holes in those walls we’ve built so we can pass through them and others can come inside and completes the community of the Church. The hymn we sang as our Hymn of the Day finds fulfillment—Christ is our One Foundation. Built on Him we have that “vertical” unity with God—the curse is undone eternally—and we have “horizontal” community with one another, undoing the curse and confusion between one another.

What does that look like? Instead of letting injury and betrayal serve as bricks to build walls, forgiveness and acts of kindness build bridges. Hands that would have been raised against the other now reach out in Christ’s name. Confusion is replaced by certainty as we live as the Body of Christ—not the old generations of society but a new generation by the Holy Spirit together with one another and with God.