Jesus, Destroyer of Walls--July 24, 2024

Jesus, Destroyer of Walls--July 24, 2024

"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. He 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, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it."  [Ephesians 2:14-16]

Jesus' purpose is nothing less than forging a new way to be human.  Anything short of that, any explanation of Jesus that is smaller in scope or lesser in significance than that, falls woefully short.  Jesus has come, the writer of Ephesians says, to gather all kinds of people together--Jews and Gentiles, "insiders" and "outsiders" alike--into a new kind of humanity, one that isn't based on sameness or uniformity, but on Jesus making peace.

To accomplish that mission, Jesus is relentless.  He will stop at nothing to end the hostility that tears us apart, including pulling down the barriers we build to separate ourselves into camps of "us" and "them." The Bible casts Jesus as the destroyer of walls--and even the "abolisher" of laws, rules, and commandments!--that have put us at odds with one another throughout human history.  In fact, according to these words from Ephesians that many of us heard this past Sunday, Jesus is like an executioner: "putting to death" not another human being, but our hostility toward one another!

That's strong language--and it's radical stuff, if you think about it.  It says that God in Christ is ruthless in pulling down all the ways we humans keep inventing to make SOME people "acceptable" and OTHER people "unacceptable," all the ways we divide ourselves up into gold-star-winning-worthy-club-members and shame-deserving-unworthy-outcasts.  Jesus has pulled the wall down--the wall that we set up in the first place, which we had first erected thinking it was God's will to build it.  Well, it wasn't.

Consider that for a moment.  When the writer to the Ephesians talks about Jesus having "broken down the dividing wall," he's talking about the line between Jewish "insiders" and Gentile "outsiders" who were now ALL welcome in the Christian community--and welcome as they were, not by having to pretend to be like the insiders and then failing at assimilating well enough.  And that division between Jew and Gentile was a religious, as well as cultural and ethnic, boundary.  For a very long time beforehand, the assumption was that the line between "in-group" and "outsider" was a divinely ordained boundary.   It was God--they assumed--who wanted to keep the good ones "in" and keep the bad ones "out."  It was God's commandments, they all believed, that kept the acceptable separate from the unacceptable.  And here, the writer of Ephesians just runs a bulldozer through that whole notion, and all the bad theology that had been used to prop it up and buttress it.  Or rather, it's Jesus himself who demolished that way of thinking as well as the division and hostility between Judeans and Gentiles, bringing both of these groups into a new kind of belonging in him.

This is what it means to belong to the people of Jesus: the frequently messy, sometimes frustrating, always more than a little outside of our comfort zone, commitment to welcome all the people Jesus has drawn to himself, even when you were used to thinking of some of them as "THOSE people" rather than "part of MY family in Christ."  If we have a problem with that, the writer of Ephesians says we need to take it up, not with the new faces we think of as different, but with Jesus himself, who is the one aiming the wrecking ball of grace at the border wall that had separated "us" from "them."

And this is what it also means: recognizing that in somebody else's eyes, you and I are the outsiders who they needed to make room for.  Chances are, if you are reading this, you come from a non-Jewish (Gentile) heritage, and if you and I claim belonging in the household of God, it is because somebody else made room for us and was willing to take Jesus' word on it that we have been brought into the household of God and the new humanity Jesus has made in himself.  Our only hope is for a God who knocks down the walls that had kept US apart before, and it comes with the inseparable recognition that this very same wall-demolishing God has now also welcomed others we deemed unworthy or unacceptable, too.  And again, if I have a problem with that, Ephesians tells me to take it up with the living God, not with the folks I didn't want to let into my little religion club.

On this day, then, there is good news of belonging: you belong in the people of God, not because of where you came from, what language you speak, or because you follow the rules (even religious rules!) well enough.  You belong because Jesus has removed the fencing and pulled down the steel barricades, in order that the Reign of God will not be a gated community but a house with many dwelling places.  And with that comes the additional good news that God has ended the old hostility that came from the lines we drew to separate "insiders" and "outsiders."  So somewhere out there, there is someone who has been told for a very long time, maybe by a very many people, that who they are or where they are from has made them forever unacceptable to God, and they are aching to hear that there is a place they belong.  You might just be the person Jesus has raised up to let them know that the walls have already come down as far as God is concerned.  You might just be the one to tell them, "We both have a place in the new humanity Jesus has created for us all."

Where might that lead you today?

Lord Jesus, pull down the barriers we keep trying to set up between one another--even the ones we have been trying to put up wrongly in your name--and gather us into the new humanity you have made in yourself.