Spirit Soundings, October 31, 2014

“For Christ 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…So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.  In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.”(Ephesians 2:14, 19-22)

 “May The Walls Come Tumbling Down”

boringwall2It was a day in November 1989 when the images of a tumbling wall swept throughout the globe.  The wall that separated east and west Berlin was to be no more.  After decades, the Reagan-Gorbachev era marked the end of the cold war.  The ramifications of this were significant in more than the obvious way.  A new economy had to be conceived.  A new cultural reality would need to be shaped, with the hope that a once-divided people could be made ‘whole.’  Many believed it would be impossible for that wholeness to occur.  I can still hear President Reagan’s raspy voice – “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall.”   I lived in Italy at this moment and the excitement about a new era was palpable.

This moment was also personally significant for my husband Edward and myself. For years we had worked at bridging the relationships that had been fractured by that east/west reality that the wall had represented.  That had been our vocation, bringing together European leaders of differing political views with leaders in the USA, focusing on the challenges that transcended party politics – education, employment, creation of new businesses, infrastructure, and more.  The question for us was – what now? what next?

A stirring had begun to take shape that would take us back to our homeland.  Our ministry as lay-leaders at the American church in Florence was not insignificant.   We had found a bridge that brought together our many gifts.  After endless conversations and different considerations, we packed up and moved into Roberts Hall at Princeton Theological Seminary – a quaint and lovely two- bedroom apartment on campus.  With that move, we would embark on a journey that continues into today. The tearing down of the Berlin Wall also gave way to the tearing down of assumptions that we had about our sense of call.   As one way of life came to an end, we began to see new possibilities.  Isn’t this the way it often is?  A barrier comes down and new possibilities present themselves.  I’ve learned that as long as the barrier exists, it becomes almost impossible to see the possibilities that might be right on the other side.  So long as the barrier exists, it becomes difficult to see the light that is breaking in through the walls.

Significant historical moments make me reflect on their significance for me.  As I consider all the preparations for our next presbytery meeting, I find myself reflecting on this Ephesians text. I am struck by the power of the words – our wall is “the hostility between us.”  Hostility is a strong word – for me it implies an instinctual reaction that opposes anything that the ‘other’ might be thinking or doing.   There are no good intentions in the word hostility.  As a people of faith, the power of this text is not to be under-valued or glossed over like a ‘Pollyanna’ moment.  Jesus is our peace and has broken down the dividing wall between us.  Wow!  I can almost hear Jesus’ words to us saying “followers of me – tear down that wall.”  It is only by tearing down the wall that we can embody the hope of the Gospel in a world already divided by the many cultural gods of power, money, sex and more.

But how do you and I tear down this wall that not only keeps others out, but keeps us confined (often serving as a kind of prison)?  That’s the thing about walls – at first they look like they are keeping others out, but in the end, their result is often that they confine us to a way of life that is not fully free.  I don’t pretend to know the answers to the complexity of questions before us, but I’ve come to deeply believe that the walls between us must come down – stone by stone, one by one.  This is a slow process, for the wall is kept together by assumptions, hostility, and fear – woven together by a genuine concern and understanding for a faithfulness to the Gospel.  I have however also come to believe that if we are faithful to the Gospel, tearing down the wall is as much a part of our mandate as feeding the poor.

I find myself in a prayerful and reflective place about the challenges before us as a people of faith.  But my dear companions on the journey – there is something about a wall that is unnatural to whom we are created to be by the Creator of it all.  The poet Robert Frost says it well:

“Something there is
that doesn’t love a wall,
that sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
and makes gaps even two can pass abreast.”
 

May we allow the cornerstone and foundation of our very being to be the only structure that defines who we are and who we can hope to be – “built together into a dwelling-place for God.”   May all the other stones – walls and the like – come tumbling down.

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