Sermon: Breaking Down the Wall

Rev. Bryn Smallwood-Garcia
Congregational Church of Brookfield (UCC)

7th Sunday After Pentecost
July 19, 2009

"Breaking Down the Wall"

Ephesians 2:13-22

Prayer:  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our minds and hearts gathered here this day be acceptable in your sight, Oh Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer.  Amen.  

Pastor Jen preached last week on Ephesians, which as she said, may or may not have been a letter from the Apostle Paul.  Still, it does sum up many great teachings at the heart of our Christian faith, like the practice of peacemaking.  I love the enthusiasm in this passage – its preaching here on the peace of Christ.  To preach on peace, you know, is kind of tough – how to keep you all awake – because peace sounds so churchy, so warm and fuzzy, all puppies and pussy willows.  By definition, “peace” sounds like the absence of all conflict – which doesn’t sell movie tickets, as people who make nature documentaries will tell you.  Conflict, things blowing up – that fills the seats!

The truth is making peace is an exciting job – one that calls for a Savior strong enough to have “broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us,” as Ephesians says.  So Peacemaker Jesus is a real action hero, right?  To my knowledge the only movie heroes who break down walls are Superman and the Incredible Hulk.  I’m sure the people hearing this letter read in the 1^st century there in Ephesus – on what is today the west coast of Turkey – were as blown away as a any kid sitting on the front row of one of those movies.  It was hard to imagine anyone able to break down the dividing wall of hostility that had grown up rapidly between Jews and Gentiles back then. 

And yet, Ephesians says Jesus “proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; ¹⁸for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. ¹⁹So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.”  This was a shocking idea back then – when only a few elite men had Roman citizenship, when it was universally assumed that these select few were superior to everyone else.  Busy seaport towns like Ephesus were full of diversity, of many races and classes, but they were not accustomed to mingling, much less considering themselves part of a single nation or, God forbid, a single family. 

Paul, as one of those elite Roman citizens, was following in the way of Jesus by continuing to aggressively proclaim the breaking down of the walls between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female in the creation of Christ’s church, his living body.  And if you don’t believe this idea is still shocking today, try hearing it this way:  if we are no longer strangers and aliens, but rather citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, then the border fence of the Law has come down, and all of us, whether native-born or illegal aliens, have been granted full citizenship.  Not only that, we have been fully adopted into one family, as God’s beloved children.  Our “open and affirming” statement proclaims this unity, and is an outgrowth of the motto of our United Church of Christ, which quotes Jesus’s prayer for us in John’s Gospel, “that we might all be one.”  We still today are called to bear witness to this prophetic peacemaker Jesus.

So for us today, this text still has a powerful message of reconciliation – we human beings still need Jesus to break down the walls that lie between us, and between us and God.  What we proclaim each Sunday in church is that Christ’s message of love is more than greeting card poetry – it’s the good news of Resurrection, our living hope in the power of the Holy Spirit to actually bust things up, to make a difference in the world – as the stone at the door of the tomb was shoved aside that first Easter morning.  The Prince of Peace is a God of action.  Just listen to all the action verbs here:  “¹⁵He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances”; in his courageous act of going to the cross, Jesus was “putting to death” all hostility; as he ^“proclaimed peace” to the whole world.  This is vigorous work, this peacemaking – but the spirit of love and justice is powerful when God sets it loose in people.  Many of us have seen miracles of wall-breaking take place before our very eyes.

You may be old enough to remember the lunch counter sit-ins that began in my hometown, Greensboro, NC, on February 1, 1960 – an act that was often proclaimed as the “breaking of the color barrier” in the segregated South.  For those of us a little younger, it’s hard to forget the worldwide euphoria of November 9, 1989, when Berlin erupted into an all-night block party and the people of East and West Berlin wielded sledgehammers and jackhammers and every other kind of backyard implement to literally “tear down the wall” as President Reagan had earlier told Mr. Gorbachev to do. 

A girl who identified herself as “Zarina” told this story to the BBC about that night: “I was 13 at that time and didn't realise what was going to happen on the 9th of November.  We lived …where a checkpoint was to cross to the east.  The wall was right behind our back garden. We went to bed as usual and got woken up by our mom at some point of the night. The first thing I noticed was loud cheering.  I got up to look out the window and just saw people running past, jumping up and down and crying and laughing. For weeks after the 9th people would stand by the gates and cheer on every East German car that came through to the west. It was an amazing event to have witnessed and I still can't believe this happened right outside of our house. I will never forget that night.”[1]

Christians each Sunday come to remember and bear witness to the miracle of Easter, when the wall of Christ’s tomb was breached.  And the power of Christ is still today breaking down the wall of human hearts – as the Holy Spirit shakes apart the race- and gender- and class-bound Kingdoms of this World.  Because it is so shocking, and counter to the ways of “this world,” you can see why this Ephesian vision of church was resisted then, and why it continues to be resisted today.  Christ’s work of peacemaking is exciting, but it also sounds dangerous.  As much as we love to watch conflicts unfold and get resolved on stage or screen, most of us prefer to avoid conflicts in our daily lives.  But Ephesians reminds us that to be a Christian is not to buckle down and make ourselves do the hard work of building Christ’s church; it is to so receive the gift of God’s love that we can become that spiritual building that Christ calls his “body.”  In this way, the peace of Christ flows in and through us, so we can gracefully embody Christ in our church. 

Do you catch the difference here?  Jesus Christ – not us – is the action figure. He is the subject for all those action verbs.  Christ breaks down the dividing wall in human conflict.  The Lord abolishes the law and creates in himself one new humanity.  In Ephesians, we read that “the household of God” is “²⁰built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.”  Hear the passive voice?  Our church is built by God, and not vice versa.  We don’t build a church for God – church work is not barn-raising.  Church is something God builds in us, when we are willing to place our full trust in Jesus Christ, the strong cornerstone of our faith’s foundation.  Ephesians says, “²¹In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; ²²in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”  When we allow Christ to break down the walls around our world-hardened hearts and to dwell fully inside us, we allow peace to come inside us and to live in and through us. 

One last thing:  the Lord who knows us and loves us completely is also amazingly patient with us – more patient by far, I think, than we are with ourselves.  In the book of Revelation (3:20), in calling us to repent, the risen Christ says, “Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you.”  Thank God, he does not really break down the door like a Hollywood action hero – kick out the jams and let himself in, shouting, “Freeze, sinner!  Repent or die!”  Jesus is the Good Shepherd, who leads with love and not force.  In other words, we are given free access – but it remains for us to take the steps to move ourselves in through that hole in the wall that Christ broke down for us. 

It’s sad that we so often don’t take advantage of the gift of new life in Christ, even as it is freely offered.  Even in Berlin after the wall came down, one West Berliner, David Kreikmeier, told this story.   He had family in the East who his family often visited.  In fact the very day the wall came down he had been over to the East to visit his aunt.  The excitement broke out over dinner – everyone left the table to get to a TV or radio or down to the checkpoints to see what was happening.  There was a spirit of jubilation no one would ever forget.  But – here’s the thing – ironically, he remembered later, he said these days – now that there is no wall – his family (East and West Berliners) visit each other lesss frequently than they did before!  And he says, “I know that my family is not the only one that meets each other less frequently now that there is nothing to stop us than when the Wall was up!”

We can’t be like this, can we, so careless about our reconciliation in Christ?  Remember, people of faith, you are “no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.”  Take advantage of the breach in this wall that Christ has made for us.  Come through it to new life.  The grace of God sets us free.  Thanks be to God for this Good News.  Amen.

Ephesians 2:13-22

¹³But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. ¹⁴For 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. ¹⁵He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, ¹⁶and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. ¹⁷So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; ¹⁸for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. ¹⁹So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, ²⁰built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. ²¹In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; ²²in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.