No Divisions - Ephesians 2:11-22

In ancient Great Britain they built Hadrian's Wall, in China there is the Great Wall of China, there are lesser known walls in Peru and Turkey, for 50 years the city of Berlin was split down the center.  To avert any thought that this is only stuff that happens in the past, today there is a wall along the border of the Western Bank of Israel. In case we think it is something that only happens “over there” or somewhere “far off”, there is much talk in our nation right now about creating a wall along our own southern border. Throughout history people have built walls. Walls make us feel protected, they make us feel safe. They let us know who belongs and who does not. They separate Us from Them. We build these walls telling ourselves that we are just protecting ourselves. Because on some level we believe the “them” we are trying to keep out, if they ever breech the wall, will do us harm.

But the only walls we build are not only the ones we build with stone or wood, with brick and mortar, cement and barbed wire, we build walls in our minds, with our words, with our actions, with the rhetoric we uphold, the institutions we support, and the injustices we ignore. We allow ourselves to be duped by stories of protection and well-being, about safety and what is for our own good. We tell ourselves that “they” are different from us; that those people are not like us, they think differently, they act differently, their lifestyle and their view of the world is so fundamentally different from us that there can be nothing that can breach the divide, there are no bridges to be made, there is no way we can ever trust them. Sometimes, even when we fundamentally believe the divisions to be wrong we turn a blind eye to them because we do not believe there is anything we can do to change them.

Rhetoric of hatred and intolerance, obvious and blatant, racism which we all oppose, stand beside the institutional and underlying mechanisms in which we all participate that uphold the divisions in our country. But this is not a problem that simply exists in our country. It is easy to get so caught up in the story we have here in the US, and we forget that racism and prejudice is not something at which we alone excel.

In Romania we encountered racism between the general populous of Romania and the Roma people who are sometimes called gypsies. This racism has been practiced throughout Europe for over a 1,000 years and is so entrenched in the society, that a missionary friend of mine who brought his two adopted daughters, who were born in India, with him, were often stopped in the street because of color of their skin, eyes and hair, and told that they needed to be careful, because even if they adopted those girls at birth, a Roma child will grow to steal from them by the time they were two.

The Catholics and the Protestants until very recently were killing each other in Ireland for centuries. And even when we went to Canada, which I have often thought was a place that was untouched by the racism we experience here in the US, we encountered a prejudice against the French that still manages to baffle me. Even without walls of stone, brick or wire we build walls between ourselves keeping out those who are different than us and gathering all those who are like us within so that we can all feel safe and secure together.

In Israel, at the dawn of the very first century, when Jesus walked the streets of Jerusalem, and later when the apostles taught in the synagogues and the town gathering places, the Jewish population did much to separate themselves from outsiders, specifically from Gentiles, who were basically anyone who was not born Jewish. In the temple there were three courts. The innermost court was for Jewish males. The one outside of that was for Jewish females. Outside of these two courts was the court of the Gentiles. By the name you would think this was the place for unbelievers, but that is not so. Unbelievers were not allowed within the temple courts at all. The court of the Gentiles was reserved for non-Jewish believers, sometimes called God-fearers. Even once they came to believe in the one and only God of the universe, even when they lived as God called them to live, and worshiped the Lord our God alone, they were still unworthy to worship alongside of Jewish believers. They were believers, but they were still outsiders, still not good enough. Gentiles, no matter their devotion to God and to the people of God, could never be good enough. They would never be allowed to worship fully; never be fully included; they would always be on the outside.

Very early on, the Church declared that believers were believers no matter where they came from, whether they were circumcised or not. Jesus healed the Jew and the Gentile, the faith of Peter was set alongside of that of the Syrophonetician woman. The early church took Jesus' inclusivity to heart and declared that all believers were equal, that all believers were accepted and adopted, were all a part of a united body, equal in the sight of the Lord. In Galatians Paul tells us, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” In Christ all were equal, there were no dividing wall that allowed only some to enter and kept others out. Jesus came to break down the walls that divided Jews and Gentiles so that everyone no matter their nationality, social status or gender could be accepted as a member of the body of Christ.

As humans, we may be good at building and making walls, but Christ is good at demolishing them, rendering them useless, uniting all in his name, bringing together people of different nationalities, different races, different socioeconomic levels, and all genders. No matter what kind of divisions we can make between ourselves, Jesus draws us all unto himself and in himself we are made one, united in our love of God and our belief in Christ.

Jesus, through his death and resurrection basically erased the dividing walls in the temple. Jesus declared that in Christ there was not one place for the included and another for the excluded. In Christ all are called equally and all are accepted equally. As believers we are called to live in peace with one another, no matter who the “other” is. We are to live lives that reflect the love and acceptance demonstrated in Christ's life, death and resurrection. We are to love everyone equally, as Christ loves, we are to accept equally as Christ accepts. The inclusivity of salvation is lived out in our lives, in how we treat our fellow human beings. Jesus is not about walls, Jesus is not about division. Jesus is not about keeping us separated one from another. Jesus loves, Jesus accepts, Jesus calls all unto himself and desires for us all to be united in him, for we all are called to accept salvation, to be children of redemption, to live out our adoption as Children of God. Jesus came to tear down the walls in our lives, in our society in our world and unite us all in his name.

Our lives are surrounded by walls, we live amongst the walls, they are all around us and we are so use to them, they have become invisible to most of us. We may know they are there, but we are able to ignore them, allow them to go unseen because so often they make us feel comfortable. They make us feel safe. Even when we look up and actually look at them, and see them for what they are, we feel overwhelmed and feel as if there is nothing any one of us can do to rid ourselves of them. They are too thick, too big, too entrenched in the ground on which we walk, and too much a part of the infrastructure which builds our world. It seems as if there is no way to remove them all. We accept them as a part of the way the world works, sometimes we even tell ourselves that they help society to run smoothly. 

Ultimately, these walls are there because of and are built because of fear, and as a wise green puppet once said, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Walls and divisions, no matter how benign we want to convince ourselves they are, are built because of hate and fear. And although we may not be adherents of the gospel of Yoda, his words are in line with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There is no room for fear and hatred in the lives of believers. As believers we are admonished in 1 John 2:9-11, “Whoever says, 'I am in the light,' while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness. Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates another believer is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go, because the darkness has brought on blindness.” There is no room for hatred in the life of a believer. No one who claims to love God, can hate another, and because walls and divisions are ultimately tools and emblems of hatred. We are also not a people who build walls and barriers for any reason. In fact as followers of Christ and people who take the call of scripture, such as the one before us this morning, seriously we are to be people who break down the walls and the dividing lines.

As Christians there is no room for dividing walls in our lives. Walls are built to keep others out.  We may tell ourselves that the walls are built to keep us safe.  Those on the other side are out to destroy us, to hurt us, to tear us apart. They are against us. By building walls we are declaring that we, who are on the inside, are right and those on the outside are wrong. We are making ourselves out to be inherently good and the other to be inherently bad.  We are against them, they are against us. And each time we do something, say something, or contribute to the stories of division and hated that our society tells, we are deepening the divide between us, strengthening the animosity, making the gap bigger and the gorge deeper. Whenever we participate in these stories, we are enforcing hatred and distrust; we are showing ourselves to NOT be of Christ.

As we walk through this maze of walls in which we live, we need to begin by examining the walls we ourselves have built. The ways we have sided ourselves with all the Us'es and separated ourselves from all the them's. What walls to do we uphold because they feel safe, because they separate us from other people? What ways do which we see them over there as clearly wrong and evil, and ourselves as clearly good and right? In what ways are we allowing our fear to build hatred in our lives that will ultimately lead to suffering, our own as well as that of others? In what ways are do we allow prejudice to weedle its ways into to our lives? We need to begin by looking up at those walls we have built in our minds and in our lives and begin to remove the walls we ourselves have built from the garden or walls in our own lives.

Our lives, as Christians, as believers, are lived without walls, without division, without hatred. Jesus tells us in John 13:34-35 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”  As believers we cannot participate in the systems, the rhetoric, and the belief structures, the institutions in our society and in our world which build up the walls between us. Instead it is our divine calling to love one another and to join with Christ Jesus himself in breaking down the walls, healing the divides and bridging the gaps that are built all around us. Where ever there is a gorge we are to be the bridge. Where ever there is a wall we are to be wreaking balls. Wherever there is a gap, we are to work to draw the two sides together. Wherever there is a wound we are to be the sutures that encourage healing. We are to be a people of peace and unity, bringing healing to our world, to our society, to our country wherever and whenever possible. So that whoever is far off may be brought close and so that where there was once two peoples there will now only be one. Let us join together and tear down the walls, break down the divisions, and destroy the fences. Let us create one where there used to be many.