Sermon, Sunday 19 July: 'Breaking down the walls'

1^st READING: Psalm 23

2^nd READING: Ezekiel 13:9-16

3^rd READING: Ephesians 2:11-22

SERMON ‘Breaking down the walls’

let us pray:

May the words of my mouth and the meditations 
of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight 
O Lord our strength and our redeemer… amen.                                           

‘He is our peace… who has broken down every wall.’                                                       

…For most of this week, I’ve had that verse from Ephesians in my head, 

along with a picture – 

it’s good to have something in there at least!

Early last year, I had the opportunity to travel to the 

Holy Land on a study tour with a group of students from New College. 

It was an amazing time: an odd time.

Lots of sights, sounds, smells that were unfamiliar, and yet,

strangely familiar too, as stories from the bible came to life in my head. 

Our group was spending a couple of days in Jerusalem, a city built of stone:

a place where ancient faiths mingled uneasily,

a place of narrow gates, old walls. 

We were walking near the wall known as the ‘Wailing Wall’,

watching observant Jews draped in prayer shawls busy at their devotions.

I was reminded of a photo I’d seen a couple of years before:

a close up of some of the stones in that wall -   

ancient, crumbling, limestone;

big stones;

stones that had expanded and contracted in the heat and in the cold -

the heat and cold in turn creating cracks.

And there, stuffed in the cracks –

were pieces of paper – prayer notes. 

Notes of hope and notes of fear,

notes of love, notes of anger,

notes of life and notes of death,

stones telling prayer stories,

stones with notes…  eloquent in their silence.

It’s a simple photo, and yet, in its very simplicity,

it holds within it such contrasts:

the tiny bits of prayer on crumpled paper - so very fragile, ephemeral...

and the huge stone wall - strong, solid, ancient.

Strength and fragility combining:

a stone wall with cracks and paper prayers….

I’ve been thinking about other walls this week:

There are so many walls…

The Great Wall of China;

The Berlin Wall;

Hadrian’s Wall;

The boundary fence between the USA and Mexico;

The Rabbit-Proof-Fence in Australia – and the film of the same name, 

which was about indigenous kids taken away from their families 

to be placed with white families…

The walls of the Warsaw ghetto – to keep people in;

The large concrete wall zig-zagging its way around parts of Israel – to keep people out;

The world… is full of walls.

Everywhere we go, there are fences, gates, partitions, 

and other ingeniously constructed barriers—                                                           

all aimed at keeping something or someone in, 

and keeping something or someone else out. 

I’m reminded of the lines of quiet protest about walls 

in Robert Frost’s poem ‘Mending Wall’:

‘Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down.'

Walls are useful.

We need walls:

walls in our homes to protect us against wind and rain;

walls to keep livestock safely in and predators out - 

though sometimes keeping the livestock in can be a challenge -

it’s quite something to see the occasional cow leap a wall and 

race off down a track, as I did the other week while I was sitting in the wee car! 

Walls to help us separate spaces and improve organization and efficiency.

But it doesn’t take much to understand that walls, 

both literal and spiritual, can lead to grief, division and even violence:

racial walls, religious walls,

political and ideological walls:

concrete, limestone, barbed wire, brick,

bible, torah, koran.

And it doesn’t take much of a jump to realise that when it comes to walls,

we face a dilemma, a paradox:

when we wall people or things out, we wall ourselves in -

hold ourselves captive to our fears both real and imagined…

and then we hear the words:

He is our peace, who has broken down every wall...

In Ephesians we read that Christ has "broken down the barrier of enmity."

The church in Ephesus was faced with a problem – 

a division brought about due to religious ritual, 

and the clash of culture and tradition - namely, differing views on circumcision.

There was the ‘in gang’, those who were circumcised;

And there were the folks on the edge,

who didn’t fit in,

who weren’t circumcised and who weren’t about to be, either.

The inner group thought of them as outsiders, aliens, strangers, foreigners.

There were cracks in the relationships between the members in the church at Ephesus.

Strong walls had been built:

tall walls which stopped them from coming into the fullness of God’s hospitality.

All walls serve a purpose,

but not all walls serve the purposes of God

And the writer of Ephesians was at pains to stress that this had to stop,

that this shouldn’t be the case –

that in Christ, there were to be no divisions.

That the work of Christ was to turn strangers into friends,

to invite the aliens – the foreigners inside - from a place of exclusion,

to a place at the table in the household of God,

and that the process of reconciliation was a process 

where walls of separation,

of division and dissention,

were cracked,

broken down,

dismantled

in and by Christ,

peace-bringer and wall-dismantler.

These days, watching the news, it can feel like hostility is the default position

when it comes to how we live and relate to one another.                                                           

Faced with a relentless stream of bad news stories -

of wars, of terrorism, of neighbourly disputes,

it can be very hard to imagine how we even begin to go 

about the work of peace and reconciliation,

of breaking down walls.

And then, there’s the small but important matter of perspective: of where we stand. 

Perspective and power shift depending on what side of the wall we’re standing on.

Let’s be blunt: in the ongoing discussions about immigration, 

I’m someone who looks at this from the perspective of being one of

‘those foreigners’!!

I’m rather pleased the Government hasn’t thrown me out as yet.

But the side of the wall we stand on colours our view of the ones standing

on the other side:

And back to the Holy Land for a moment:
Just ask the Jewish "settler" about the Palestinian "squatter"…

differentiations… divisions,

demarcation lines drawn.

it’s a very human thing, this building of barriers.

And in our own lives, there will have been times when 

we’ve helped to build walls of hostility:  

within our families,

amongst our friends,

with neighbours,

with collegues at work. 

We’ve built walls with folk we’ve both known and not known –

people holding differing political views,

people not considered to be from our culture,

even people in the church.

Church communities have been torn apart with arguments about which bibles

to have in the pews…

or whether or not to actually have pews;

or about worship style: traditional or less-traditional worship? 

Noisy or contemplative?

Or who may, or may not, be a Christian.

What about the walls between Christian groups?

The growth of more and more denominations as

Christian brothers and sisters form splinter groups 

convinced that theirs is the only way to follow God?

The scandal of divisions, splits and infighting that flies 

in the face of Jesus' high priestly prayer for unity and oneness? (John 17)?

Such troubles in the body of Christ are a sign 

not necessarily of diversity but of division. 

Used as excuses sometimes to score points, perhaps?  

They compromise the church's witness and grieve the Holy Spirit.

Walls…                                                                    

We've built many of them, not out of bricks and mortar, 

but out of the raw material of sin and division. 

Then we've cemented them with the mortar of name-calling, 

labeling and prejudice – all ways that effectively dehumanise 

those who are different, those seen as ‘other’….

All walls serve a purpose, but not all walls serve the purposes of God.

In light of this, how should we ‘unpack’ our text from Ephesians chapter 2? 

This is where I see a connection with the Psalm this morning:

It is so, so easy to be busy -

to get caught up in a cycle of endless activity

in our busy, fast-paced world.

Maybe walking away from the circus of our lives for a while,

and allowing ourselves times of refreshing, 

allowing ourselves to be led by still waters,

allowing ourselves to quietly trust and give thanks 

and ensure that God is the still, peaceful centre in our lives,                      

would help us to find a place of peace from which we can then begin to work for peace. 

Thomas a Kempis said:

‘First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also bring peace to others.’ 

And Christ, the peace-maker, the peace-bringer is the foundation of our peace –

reconciling ourselves to God,

reconciling ourselves to ourselves…

reconciling ourselves to others. 

The peace described here is not just a ceasing of conflict

 or the absence of violence.

Here unity, peace and hope are not things at all; they are a person.

Christ is our peace;

in his flesh he has blurred the differentiation and demarcation 

and has broken down the dividing wall. 

In Christ's death on the cross,

peace has been achieved and hostility has been crucified.

Peace is not necessarily the absence of noise:

Jesus is the God-human wrecking crew, 

that demolishes the walls that divide 

and who gifts us with unity, peace, and reconciliation.  

Peace in this case is less the absence of noise and more

the sound of walls cracking and crumbling and falling down

and of rubble being cleared away and of paths being made,

and doors being flung wide open.

Peace is not necessarily the absence of noise…

it’s the sound of building work –

the work of building relationships grounded in Christ the cornerstone.

Donald Hilton, a writer and minister in the URC, once said that:

‘the Church is meant to be a laboratory of peace, 
a parable of the Kingdom, a sign of contradiction among the nations,

a place of welcome amidst the sectarianism and xenophobia 
of the surrounding society, a community of praise.’

Ironically, as those brought into the household of God,

we live in a dwelling place with God that doesn’t have walls,                                                        
a place not made by human hands:

we worship a God who is uncontainable;                                            
a God beyond walls… 

The Church is not made of bricks and mortar but of flesh and blood;

built on the foundation of Christ the cornerstone,  
who reconciled us with God, 
and we carry on with the work of reconciliation.

The work of reconciliation happens when we decide 
to speak with a member of our family who we’ve fallen out with, 
and who we’ve not spoken to for a long time;

It’s when we stand in solidarity with those in our society who are oppressed

because they are different…

It’s when we support projects which give people in local communities 
opportunities to have fun together and to build relationships between villages  – 
and I’m thinking of the such things as our new community choir, 
or our parish lunches, 
or in the wider world, of small acts of saving stamps for the work of World Mission

or supporting Sujitha, the child we sponsor as a community.

The writer to the Ephesians says:

‘yours was a world without hope and without God’

Our task is to be reconcilers, as Christ reconciles:

To be bringers of hope to the world;

To be reminders that God is in the world…

To use our prayers to widen the cracks in the walls;

To see and to help the peaceable kingdom come –

To serve the Prince of peace…

for he is our peace,

who has broken down every wall.  Amen