Grace In The Midst Of Dividing Walls
Sermon
Sermons On The Second Readings
For Sundays In Advent, Christmas, And Epiphany
According to those whose job it is to know such things, it only takes three weeks to become blind to the presence of stationary objects in our everyday worlds. Hang a new picture on the wall, and one is likely to notice it for about 21 days. After that it has become part of the scenery. It simply doesn't leap into the foreground any more.
That's why it can be so hard to accomplish the simplest chores of housework before the arrival of guests. We've stopped noticing the screwdriver that's been sitting on the living room mantle for the last three months, or the pile of dirty shirts that has found a semi-permanent home at the end of the hallway. Housecleaning requires a new set of "eyes," eyes that are objective enough to see our surroundings as a discriminating guest would see them, not as we have become used to them.
Over a period of time that is a good deal longer than three weeks, people have become used to the barriers that separate them from their neighbors. We are surrounded and isolated by countless dividing walls, yet, unaided, we no longer have the spiritual capacity to see them. In many regards we have even come to assume that the way we experience the world, blind as we are, is normal.
Affluent Americans are used to being separated from lower income families. They don't work with them, worship with them, or go out of their way to attend the same parties. Blue-collar workers are used to a life apart from white-collar management. A wage earner may drive through the neighborhood of his employer, but hardly expect to be invited in for a barbecue. Protestants are used to being separated from Catholics. Pentecostal church members rarely cross paths with those in Orthodox congregations.
Likewise, most of us are used to a degree of separation from certain members of our own families. We don't communicate with them and they don't communicate with us, and that has come to seem normal. Anglos are used to their worlds not intersecting those of African-Americans or Hispanics or Asians. For generations the children in American homes of every color have tended to experience those of other backgrounds or nationalities in the most superficial ways -- through television sitcom stereotyping, stand-up comedy, and glances into the private lives of entertainment icons and sports stars. Conversations, working partnerships, and personal encounters are disturbingly rare.
It is the disarming yet gracious promise of God that if I am willing, God will give me eyes to see the world from the perspective of heaven. God will give me eyes to see that there are indeed dividing walls in my life, and that these walls are not God's creation. They are my walls. Furthermore by grace I am called to be a disciple of the one who specializes in the elimination of barriers, who delights in tearing down the walls that separate people from each other. On what principle does God do this? Christ claims lordship over everybody, including those on my side of the fence and those on the other side. His grace is available to everybody -- even before our spiritual blinders have been removed and we ourselves can see the foolishness of our separation.
The plain teaching of Ephesians chapter 2 is that God intends to vaporize such artificial barriers. Why, then, do so many would-be followers of Jesus find it so hard to get with this program? Why do we live as if it is normal to keep dividing walls in good repair?
One answer is that a majority of the human race flinches at the prospect of conflict or change. Over time we have established peace treaties on our own cherished sides of relational fences, and there is little passion for stirring things up. When faced with the challenge of addressing uncomfortable realities, people vote en masse to "keep the peace" instead.
In his book The Different Drum, psychologist and author Scott Peck makes a case that within all of us there is a God-implanted desire to experience authentic relationships. Deep inside we long for true community: for relationships in which we can express our real feelings, be accepted for who we are, and give and receive genuine love. But most of us settle for a pale imitation of the real thing. Peck calls this cheap substitute "pseudo community." Most of us are involved in marriages, family relationships, and friendships that hover safely near the surface. We hesitate to speak what is "unsafe." Open discussions about hurt feelings, frustrations, and difficult questions are rare. The underlying rule in pseudo community is: Don't rock the boat. Do what it takes to keep the peace.
Peck affirms that our dreams of living in true community can be fulfilled, but only if we are willing to leave pseudo community in the rear view mirror. There's a price tag attached. To enter true community we have to experience what Peck calls "chaos." Chaos describes the uncomfortable span of time during which one chooses to step out in faith -- unburying hurts, revealing hostilities, and asking the tough questions, all the while being entirely uncertain how those on the other side of the wall might respond.
Motorists who drive to Key West soon discover that the only way they can get their car to the southernmost tip of Florida is to cross the long series of one-lane bridges that link key to key. It doesn't matter whether or not one happens to be fond of bridges: if you intend to reach Key West, you will be crossing a great number of them. Likewise, the only path from superficial relationships that feature little honest sharing to relationships nourished by authentic intimacy is the path that demands we cross ever-higher bridges of trust.
For many Christians, whose Master excelled in the grace of dismantling walls, this is an exercise frightening even to contemplate. They huddle in the safety of pseudo community. A disturbing number of churches are relationally frozen, with little vision of a thaw. Within marriages, one partner may choose to reach out tentatively, groping to communicate a feeling or a hurt at a deeper level, only to be greeted with defensiveness or hostility as the pseudo peace of the relationship is suddenly challenged. Both partners may end up retreating and saying to themselves, "Building new bridges of trust isn't worth it! Our relationship is at least as intimate as any of our friends'. We should hunker down where we are and make the best of it." Some spouses ultimately take a darker turn and fuel their fantasies of the dream partner, the new mate who will ratchet intimacy to the highest level without all the accompanying pain of bridge-building -- someone who, of course, does not exist.
And so we go, maintaining a veneer of cooperation that camouflages our families, our workplaces, and our congregations. But every now and then the veneer is yanked to the ground, and suddenly the world can see that there are walls that divide us and fragile relationships that fail us.
Racial unrest boils to the surface of a community. Suddenly the veneer has been ripped off. Leaders of historic denominations move along warily with each other for years, doing their best to submerge deep theological rifts, until external societal pressures force the most sensitive questions to the surface. A half dozen ethnic groups in the Balkan Peninsula are forced to stay together in a pseudo community called Yugoslavia for most of a century. When the veneer is removed, dividing walls that are older than anyone's great-grandparents are suddenly in plain sight, while peace-keeping troops struggle to enforce the next new version of pseudo community.
But the best-intentioned, most aggressively enforced peacekeeping efforts are doomed to fail. We cannot keep a peace that does not exist, and there can be no peace -- not between races, or national governments, or theological sparring partners -- until the dividing walls in human hearts, not merely veneers, are brought down. The Apostle Paul, reflecting on the centuries-old antipathy between Jews and Gentiles in verse 14, proclaims Jesus to be the world's only source of hope for human reconciliation: "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."
Jesus is our peace. In what sense is this true? What Matthew affirms in his Gospel is that Jesus' death was accompanied by a significant change in the Temple in Jerusalem. The geography of the temple area was essentially designed to be a show-and-tell of theological, racial, and gender exclusion. At the perimeter was a sign that said, "No Gentiles beyond this point." Beyond the court of the women was a sign that said, "Males only." Entry to the holy place was reserved exclusively for priests. In the temple's interior was the most holy place, which was shrouded from view and from visitation (except once a year by the high priest) by a thick curtain. When Jesus died, the curtain was torn from top to bottom. There is little doubt that Matthew intended the reader to conclude that this was an act of God. Now, through God's own initiative, the doorway to the fullness of spiritual life is opened to everyone -- male or female, Jew or Gentile, clergy or laity.
What Jesus did once in history at the Temple, and accomplished spiritually for all time on the cross -- the eradication of dividing walls -- he calls us to live out day by day. Yet this glorious job assignment is hardly an easy one. I would much rather huddle in pseudo community with my closest friends than take risks. I will need new eyes to see the world the way God sees it, not the way I've always sliced and diced humanity. How will I ever reach out to people I don't understand, to those who have intentionally hurt me, to men and women of radically different convictions? How am I going to gain sufficient trust to cross all those bridges -- from my various levels of phony tolerance to authentic new experiences of partnership?
There's only one way. I will need to realize that Jesus Christ is Lord over their hearts and Lord over my heart at the same time. The walls that I have erected in my mind and the walls I have put up in my relationships are insufficient to keep the Son of God at bay. Paul, pondering the two groups of people who still have a hard time imagining they have very much in common, writes in verse 18, "For through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father." Paul knew that if Jesus could "have at" somebody's heart, that person or that entire people group would never look at others the same way. They would ultimately be compelled to see others as God does.
For many years Dr. Paul Brand served as a physician to the multitudes in India who suffer from Hansen's disease, more commonly known as leprosy. Over the centuries most cultures have erected insurmountable walls between those who are lepers and those who are not.
In a story told by Philip Yancey, Dr. Brand found himself one evening in an open courtyard that was packed with lepers. The air was heavy with the mingled odors of poverty, stale spices, and treated bandages. After a while the patients began to ask if he would speak to them for a few moments. Did the doctor have any encouraging words? As he looked over this gathering of "untouchable" human bodies, his eyes were drawn to their hands. Most of the hands he saw were drawn inward in the familiar "claw-hand" of the leper. Some had no fingers, some were just a few stumps. Many patients sat on their hands or otherwise kept them out of sight.
"I am a hand surgeon," he began. "So when I meet people, I can't help looking at their hands. The palm-reader claims he can tell your future by looking at your hands. I can tell your past. For instance, I can tell what your trade has been by the position of the calluses and the condition of the nails. I can tell a lot about your character. I love hands."
Brand went on, "How I would love to have had the chance to meet Jesus and study his hands." He described what it might have been like to see the hands of Jesus as a little one, childishly grasping in the earliest years, then clumsily holding a brush or stylus in school. Then came the rough, gnarled hands of Christ the carpenter, with the broken fingernails and bruises that inevitably come from working with a saw and hammer.
"Then," Brand continued, "there were his crucified hands. It hurts me to think of a nail being driven through the center of my hand, because I know what goes on there, the tremendous complex of tendons and nerves and blood vessels and muscles. You can't drive a spike through its center without crippling it. In that act Jesus identified himself with all the deformed and crippled human beings in the world. He shared poverty with the poor, and weariness with the tired -- and clawed hands with the crippled."
The effect of those words on the lepers was astonishing. Could it possibly be true that Jesus identified with them -- those whom no one else would touch? One by one the leprosy patients brought forth their hands and held them high for all to see, not ashamed at that moment that they were deformed and crumpled. For someone else, the Someone who had created their hands, had once known their pain, and even been resurrected with a body that still bore the imprints of those nails.
Jesus Christ is uniquely able to identify with every man and every woman who has ever breathed. There is no "leper" beyond the touch of his love. He is Lord over everyone who has ever been afflicted or misunderstood, and his grace is freely offered to every person who has ever brought pain to us.
Jesus is Lord over the man who betrayed your trust you when you were young, from whom you've been separated by a wall of bitterness. He is Lord over the boss who gave to somebody else the promotion that you deserved. He is Lord over the doctor who made the critical mistake. Jesus Christ is Lord over the people who don't share your faith or your enthusiasm for it. He is Lord over every division of opinion or experience or background that we have ever known. What is grace in the midst of dividing walls? It is the assurance that even while we have remained entrenched on our side of a barrier, Jesus has declared us worthy of being his lifelong learners, and has dispatched us to be wall-removers in every part of the world.
At the 1996 Promise Keepers gathering of 42,000 pastors in Atlanta, an assembly that represented myriad different church groups and denominational affiliations, author and pastor Max Lucado stood at the speaker's podium and made a simple request. "On the count of three," he said, "would you please shout out loud the name of the group or tradition or church body of which you are currently a member? One, two, three ..." Those present voiced their affiliations. Some were fortunate. All they had to shout was "Methodist" or "Presbyterian." One fellow rattled off "The Church of God of Prophecy Incorporated." What everyone heard echoing through the Georgia Dome was an undifferentiated blob of sound.
Lucado followed with a second request. "On the count of three," he said, "would you please shout the name to whom you have trusted your heart, your soul, your ministry, and your entire spiritual future? One, two, three ..." And there rose, in unison, the sound of just two syllables that filled the entire dome: "Jesus!" In the memorable moment that followed there was absolute silence -- as if the leaders of God's people were suddenly struck dumb by the realization that perhaps they have more in common than first assumed. Perhaps the walls can fall down after all. For around that name, the name of the One who dares to share his grace with those on both sides of our most unyielding barriers, we have more in common right now than we have often allowed ourselves to dream. In Christ alone, by his immeasurable grace, there is power to turn dividing walls into dust.
That's why it can be so hard to accomplish the simplest chores of housework before the arrival of guests. We've stopped noticing the screwdriver that's been sitting on the living room mantle for the last three months, or the pile of dirty shirts that has found a semi-permanent home at the end of the hallway. Housecleaning requires a new set of "eyes," eyes that are objective enough to see our surroundings as a discriminating guest would see them, not as we have become used to them.
Over a period of time that is a good deal longer than three weeks, people have become used to the barriers that separate them from their neighbors. We are surrounded and isolated by countless dividing walls, yet, unaided, we no longer have the spiritual capacity to see them. In many regards we have even come to assume that the way we experience the world, blind as we are, is normal.
Affluent Americans are used to being separated from lower income families. They don't work with them, worship with them, or go out of their way to attend the same parties. Blue-collar workers are used to a life apart from white-collar management. A wage earner may drive through the neighborhood of his employer, but hardly expect to be invited in for a barbecue. Protestants are used to being separated from Catholics. Pentecostal church members rarely cross paths with those in Orthodox congregations.
Likewise, most of us are used to a degree of separation from certain members of our own families. We don't communicate with them and they don't communicate with us, and that has come to seem normal. Anglos are used to their worlds not intersecting those of African-Americans or Hispanics or Asians. For generations the children in American homes of every color have tended to experience those of other backgrounds or nationalities in the most superficial ways -- through television sitcom stereotyping, stand-up comedy, and glances into the private lives of entertainment icons and sports stars. Conversations, working partnerships, and personal encounters are disturbingly rare.
It is the disarming yet gracious promise of God that if I am willing, God will give me eyes to see the world from the perspective of heaven. God will give me eyes to see that there are indeed dividing walls in my life, and that these walls are not God's creation. They are my walls. Furthermore by grace I am called to be a disciple of the one who specializes in the elimination of barriers, who delights in tearing down the walls that separate people from each other. On what principle does God do this? Christ claims lordship over everybody, including those on my side of the fence and those on the other side. His grace is available to everybody -- even before our spiritual blinders have been removed and we ourselves can see the foolishness of our separation.
The plain teaching of Ephesians chapter 2 is that God intends to vaporize such artificial barriers. Why, then, do so many would-be followers of Jesus find it so hard to get with this program? Why do we live as if it is normal to keep dividing walls in good repair?
One answer is that a majority of the human race flinches at the prospect of conflict or change. Over time we have established peace treaties on our own cherished sides of relational fences, and there is little passion for stirring things up. When faced with the challenge of addressing uncomfortable realities, people vote en masse to "keep the peace" instead.
In his book The Different Drum, psychologist and author Scott Peck makes a case that within all of us there is a God-implanted desire to experience authentic relationships. Deep inside we long for true community: for relationships in which we can express our real feelings, be accepted for who we are, and give and receive genuine love. But most of us settle for a pale imitation of the real thing. Peck calls this cheap substitute "pseudo community." Most of us are involved in marriages, family relationships, and friendships that hover safely near the surface. We hesitate to speak what is "unsafe." Open discussions about hurt feelings, frustrations, and difficult questions are rare. The underlying rule in pseudo community is: Don't rock the boat. Do what it takes to keep the peace.
Peck affirms that our dreams of living in true community can be fulfilled, but only if we are willing to leave pseudo community in the rear view mirror. There's a price tag attached. To enter true community we have to experience what Peck calls "chaos." Chaos describes the uncomfortable span of time during which one chooses to step out in faith -- unburying hurts, revealing hostilities, and asking the tough questions, all the while being entirely uncertain how those on the other side of the wall might respond.
Motorists who drive to Key West soon discover that the only way they can get their car to the southernmost tip of Florida is to cross the long series of one-lane bridges that link key to key. It doesn't matter whether or not one happens to be fond of bridges: if you intend to reach Key West, you will be crossing a great number of them. Likewise, the only path from superficial relationships that feature little honest sharing to relationships nourished by authentic intimacy is the path that demands we cross ever-higher bridges of trust.
For many Christians, whose Master excelled in the grace of dismantling walls, this is an exercise frightening even to contemplate. They huddle in the safety of pseudo community. A disturbing number of churches are relationally frozen, with little vision of a thaw. Within marriages, one partner may choose to reach out tentatively, groping to communicate a feeling or a hurt at a deeper level, only to be greeted with defensiveness or hostility as the pseudo peace of the relationship is suddenly challenged. Both partners may end up retreating and saying to themselves, "Building new bridges of trust isn't worth it! Our relationship is at least as intimate as any of our friends'. We should hunker down where we are and make the best of it." Some spouses ultimately take a darker turn and fuel their fantasies of the dream partner, the new mate who will ratchet intimacy to the highest level without all the accompanying pain of bridge-building -- someone who, of course, does not exist.
And so we go, maintaining a veneer of cooperation that camouflages our families, our workplaces, and our congregations. But every now and then the veneer is yanked to the ground, and suddenly the world can see that there are walls that divide us and fragile relationships that fail us.
Racial unrest boils to the surface of a community. Suddenly the veneer has been ripped off. Leaders of historic denominations move along warily with each other for years, doing their best to submerge deep theological rifts, until external societal pressures force the most sensitive questions to the surface. A half dozen ethnic groups in the Balkan Peninsula are forced to stay together in a pseudo community called Yugoslavia for most of a century. When the veneer is removed, dividing walls that are older than anyone's great-grandparents are suddenly in plain sight, while peace-keeping troops struggle to enforce the next new version of pseudo community.
But the best-intentioned, most aggressively enforced peacekeeping efforts are doomed to fail. We cannot keep a peace that does not exist, and there can be no peace -- not between races, or national governments, or theological sparring partners -- until the dividing walls in human hearts, not merely veneers, are brought down. The Apostle Paul, reflecting on the centuries-old antipathy between Jews and Gentiles in verse 14, proclaims Jesus to be the world's only source of hope for human reconciliation: "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."
Jesus is our peace. In what sense is this true? What Matthew affirms in his Gospel is that Jesus' death was accompanied by a significant change in the Temple in Jerusalem. The geography of the temple area was essentially designed to be a show-and-tell of theological, racial, and gender exclusion. At the perimeter was a sign that said, "No Gentiles beyond this point." Beyond the court of the women was a sign that said, "Males only." Entry to the holy place was reserved exclusively for priests. In the temple's interior was the most holy place, which was shrouded from view and from visitation (except once a year by the high priest) by a thick curtain. When Jesus died, the curtain was torn from top to bottom. There is little doubt that Matthew intended the reader to conclude that this was an act of God. Now, through God's own initiative, the doorway to the fullness of spiritual life is opened to everyone -- male or female, Jew or Gentile, clergy or laity.
What Jesus did once in history at the Temple, and accomplished spiritually for all time on the cross -- the eradication of dividing walls -- he calls us to live out day by day. Yet this glorious job assignment is hardly an easy one. I would much rather huddle in pseudo community with my closest friends than take risks. I will need new eyes to see the world the way God sees it, not the way I've always sliced and diced humanity. How will I ever reach out to people I don't understand, to those who have intentionally hurt me, to men and women of radically different convictions? How am I going to gain sufficient trust to cross all those bridges -- from my various levels of phony tolerance to authentic new experiences of partnership?
There's only one way. I will need to realize that Jesus Christ is Lord over their hearts and Lord over my heart at the same time. The walls that I have erected in my mind and the walls I have put up in my relationships are insufficient to keep the Son of God at bay. Paul, pondering the two groups of people who still have a hard time imagining they have very much in common, writes in verse 18, "For through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father." Paul knew that if Jesus could "have at" somebody's heart, that person or that entire people group would never look at others the same way. They would ultimately be compelled to see others as God does.
For many years Dr. Paul Brand served as a physician to the multitudes in India who suffer from Hansen's disease, more commonly known as leprosy. Over the centuries most cultures have erected insurmountable walls between those who are lepers and those who are not.
In a story told by Philip Yancey, Dr. Brand found himself one evening in an open courtyard that was packed with lepers. The air was heavy with the mingled odors of poverty, stale spices, and treated bandages. After a while the patients began to ask if he would speak to them for a few moments. Did the doctor have any encouraging words? As he looked over this gathering of "untouchable" human bodies, his eyes were drawn to their hands. Most of the hands he saw were drawn inward in the familiar "claw-hand" of the leper. Some had no fingers, some were just a few stumps. Many patients sat on their hands or otherwise kept them out of sight.
"I am a hand surgeon," he began. "So when I meet people, I can't help looking at their hands. The palm-reader claims he can tell your future by looking at your hands. I can tell your past. For instance, I can tell what your trade has been by the position of the calluses and the condition of the nails. I can tell a lot about your character. I love hands."
Brand went on, "How I would love to have had the chance to meet Jesus and study his hands." He described what it might have been like to see the hands of Jesus as a little one, childishly grasping in the earliest years, then clumsily holding a brush or stylus in school. Then came the rough, gnarled hands of Christ the carpenter, with the broken fingernails and bruises that inevitably come from working with a saw and hammer.
"Then," Brand continued, "there were his crucified hands. It hurts me to think of a nail being driven through the center of my hand, because I know what goes on there, the tremendous complex of tendons and nerves and blood vessels and muscles. You can't drive a spike through its center without crippling it. In that act Jesus identified himself with all the deformed and crippled human beings in the world. He shared poverty with the poor, and weariness with the tired -- and clawed hands with the crippled."
The effect of those words on the lepers was astonishing. Could it possibly be true that Jesus identified with them -- those whom no one else would touch? One by one the leprosy patients brought forth their hands and held them high for all to see, not ashamed at that moment that they were deformed and crumpled. For someone else, the Someone who had created their hands, had once known their pain, and even been resurrected with a body that still bore the imprints of those nails.
Jesus Christ is uniquely able to identify with every man and every woman who has ever breathed. There is no "leper" beyond the touch of his love. He is Lord over everyone who has ever been afflicted or misunderstood, and his grace is freely offered to every person who has ever brought pain to us.
Jesus is Lord over the man who betrayed your trust you when you were young, from whom you've been separated by a wall of bitterness. He is Lord over the boss who gave to somebody else the promotion that you deserved. He is Lord over the doctor who made the critical mistake. Jesus Christ is Lord over the people who don't share your faith or your enthusiasm for it. He is Lord over every division of opinion or experience or background that we have ever known. What is grace in the midst of dividing walls? It is the assurance that even while we have remained entrenched on our side of a barrier, Jesus has declared us worthy of being his lifelong learners, and has dispatched us to be wall-removers in every part of the world.
At the 1996 Promise Keepers gathering of 42,000 pastors in Atlanta, an assembly that represented myriad different church groups and denominational affiliations, author and pastor Max Lucado stood at the speaker's podium and made a simple request. "On the count of three," he said, "would you please shout out loud the name of the group or tradition or church body of which you are currently a member? One, two, three ..." Those present voiced their affiliations. Some were fortunate. All they had to shout was "Methodist" or "Presbyterian." One fellow rattled off "The Church of God of Prophecy Incorporated." What everyone heard echoing through the Georgia Dome was an undifferentiated blob of sound.
Lucado followed with a second request. "On the count of three," he said, "would you please shout the name to whom you have trusted your heart, your soul, your ministry, and your entire spiritual future? One, two, three ..." And there rose, in unison, the sound of just two syllables that filled the entire dome: "Jesus!" In the memorable moment that followed there was absolute silence -- as if the leaders of God's people were suddenly struck dumb by the realization that perhaps they have more in common than first assumed. Perhaps the walls can fall down after all. For around that name, the name of the One who dares to share his grace with those on both sides of our most unyielding barriers, we have more in common right now than we have often allowed ourselves to dream. In Christ alone, by his immeasurable grace, there is power to turn dividing walls into dust.
