Jesus, Destroyer of Walls

Jesus, Destroyer of Walls--January 8, 2018

"For he [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." [Ephesians 2:14]

Funny--if you ask the apostle to picture a monument to what Christ has done, he envisions a broken barrier, a wall pulled down so that it can no longer keep people apart. If you asked the first generations of Christ-followers what their faith was all about, they would have said (and in fact, did say, here in Ephesians, among other places), that it was like God had razed to the ground the old walls that kept "outsiders" out and separate from "insiders."

That was the vital issue for the early church--were the "outsiders" really welcome, or did the "insiders" have control over keeping "those people" out and away from the grace of God?  The early church deeply wrestled with this question, especially as what began as a homogenous group of Jewish believers from the same land, language, and culture began to see more and more non-Jewish (Gentile) faces showing up in their gatherings.  There were some who were deeply suspicious and afraid of these new folks arriving.  They raised concerns like, "But our traditional way of life will be lost if we start letting in these outsiders--they don't all speak Hebrew (well, they didn't either, anymore--it was Aramaic by that point, even for people who lived in Judea), and they don't eat the same kinds of food!  They have different values and different cultural backgrounds!  They aren't following our traditional religious laws!"  The insider group was afraid, perhaps understandably so, that things would change if there were a whole bunch of new Gentile folks allowed to be followers of Jesus without first adopting all the practices and values and traditions and laws of Judaism.  They were worried that they wouldn't all assimilate into the "insider" way of doing things. (Surely no Christians today would take such a position... right?)

And here was the conclusion--the truly amazing and wonderful conclusion--that the early church arrived at (it is recorded in the Bible itself, beginning in Acts, as a matter of fact): "outsiders" were welcome to be followers of Jesus as outsiders, and the "insiders" were allowed to belong still, too.  But there would be no blocking the "outsiders," not with an official "No Gentile" policy, and not with requirements that you had to learn and keep all the practices of Judaism (like keeping kosher, or observing the festivals, or male circumcision), either.  Outsiders were no longer going to be kept out from the insiders, or from Christ.  As our verse from Ephesians put it, "the dividing wall" had been "broken down," never to be put back up again.

Why?  What made this kind of radical change possible?  Well, in a word, Christ.  Christ had made the decision that his new community was going to include insiders and outsiders both.  Christ had decided--and guided his people to live into the decision--that outsiders were not required to learn the language or culture or practices of the insiders in order to belong.  Their belonging didn't depend on that baggage or the requirement of "sameness." It depended entirely on Christ's own claim to insider and outsider alike.  It depended on the grip of Christ to bring "outsiders" into the same space as the "insiders," with the wall that had kept them out now razed to the ground.  Any insiders who were afraid or anxious about what would happen if a whole bunch of outsiders came in all of a sudden would have to take it up with none other than Christ himself.

That amazes me.  Honestly.  The idea of including these outsiders as outsiders wasn't a matter of a committee vote, or a mere demographic shift.  It wasn't the insiders saying, "Well, we need new blood around here, so let's allow some of the riff-raff to come in in a trickle so we can make them be exactly like us." It wasn't a bishop's decree or a resolution passed in parliamentary procedure with Robert's Rules of Order.  The New Testament itself says that none other than Christ, "in his flesh," had made the two groups, insiders and outsiders, to become one... even while they held onto their differences. 

"In his flesh" is a curious phrase.  Jesus, the actual historical human being who walked around Palestine in the 1st century, was of course biologically Jewish--one of the "insiders."  And yet the writer of the Ephesians sees that there in the physical human life of Jesus wasn't just a representative of one ethnic group versus another, or one language group versus another, but all of humanity.  In the life of Jesus God took on all of humanity--insiders and outsiders both, people at the center of attention and power and people on the margins, with no boundaries of race, gender, wealth, class, or language holding ultimate power to separate.

That means that the decision to take down the wall--to "break" it down, actually, using the language of Ephesians here--comes from none other than God, the same God who took on humanity in the person of Christ.  If you don't like that decision, there is no higher court to appeal to.  You may not like the hymnal in your congregation--you can take it up with the worship and music planners, or the pastor.  You may not like the color of the carpet or paint in the lobby--again, you can always voice your complaint to the property committee.  You may not like your pastor--go for it, and complain to whatever body appoints or oversees your pastors, whether bishops or boards, superintendents or sessions.  But if you have a problem with being a part of a community that accepts "insiders" and "outsiders," your problem is with Christ himself, according to Ephesians.  If I have a problem with letting in "outsiders" without the pre-condition that they all adopt the traditions, language, and customs of the "insiders," then my problem is with Jesus, who made that call.  If we are afraid that letting all these "outsiders" in will mean we lose our comfortable "insider" status, then we should take it up with none other than the living God, who, in the human flesh of Jesus, has knocked down the old border wall that divided humanity into "insiders" and "outsiders," and who has brought us all into one.

That's why when the first followers of Jesus pictured what their faith in Christ was all about, they pictured a wall that had been knocked down forever, and streams of outsiders being welcomed in as outsiders by none other than Christ himself.

May we be able to rejoice like those first Christians did, at the barrier-breaking ways of the living God.  May we rejoice... and no longer be afraid.

Lord Jesus, we thank you for having brought us who were outsiders in to belong in you.  Let us offer that same welcome to the outsiders waiting to be told they belong in you still today.