“Something there is that doesn't love a wall”
We
are wall builders.
They
take various shapes and degrees of visibility.
From
the Grants house on Charlestown Rd.,
I
walk down Stebbins Rd.
And
on my way down to the beaver pond
that
I love to visit,
I
notice walls intersecting the woods –
stonewalls,
some
places kept quite well over all the years,
Other
places disheveled.
I
notice places where the walls used to
clearly
separate two areas –
perhaps
mowing from pasture,
or
tillage from orchard?
But
I wonder about these walls.
They
speak to a time
when
this space was imagined differently –
and
used differently – than now.
With
deep enough snow,
one
would never be able to tell that these two wooded spaces are divided by a
wall.
There’s almost the same
mix of trees
on
one side as on the other.
“Something
there is that doesn't love a wall.”
In
our reading from Ephesians this morning
we
hear about a wall that has been broken down.
This
is not a benign wall
Like
the one that separated the poet from his neighbor,
The
one’s pine trees
from the other’s apple
orchard.
But
rather what’s called a
wall of separation
or
in another translation,
The
dividing wall,
A
wall that maintained not neighbors, but enemies.
It’s not a
physical wall, per se,
But
a social wall, a wall that was imagined and constructed through language and
through practices
of
distinction and separating.
It
was the social wall that kept Jews and Gentiles
from
fellowship with one another.
In
that time of history,
Jews
and Gentiles did not do much socially together.
They
did not share meals, they did not worship together,
The
two communities kept apart.
And
this led to a general suspicion and hostility
between
the two groups –
Walls
are by their nature
merely
ways of distinguishing space,
But
so easily they can become ways of keeping out
The
“other.”
Who
was this other?
The
word “Gentile” is the word
used
to
translate the Greek “ethnos”
Ethnos is the word
that is at the root of the words
ethnic
or
ethnicity
or
ethnocentrism.
It’s a word that
means “nation” or “people”
For
Jews in the Roman Empire,
the
nations, the peoples, the gentiles,
Were
“everyone
else.”
The
“other.”
There’s something
in this
that
continues to be very relevant for us today.
Well,
the wall-defying movement of the Spirit
invited
this “other”
Into
the covenant promise of God
through
the cross of Christ.
And
this was an unsettling spiritual reality,
as
it was an unsettling social reality.
It
was like spring come to the New Hampshire stonewall.
In
our time we still engage with the “other” in our midst.
The
“other” is the
person or community
that
is unfamiliar, strange,
Who
can so easily become feared
because
they are not known.
Recently
I was thinking about the origin of the term that some use in jest and derision:
“flatlander.”
I
was listening to an old Vermont dairy farmer
and
town historian named Euclid
talk
about how in the mid 19th century
folks
left their hill farms for the expanding western frontier – which was
flatter and more easily farmable.
And
suddenly a light bulb went on for me.
As
Euclid continued with the history,
my
mind got distracted with this thought.
These
folks who left towns like Acworth
in
the mid 19th century,
left
for flatter land.
And
those who stayed, toughed it out,
farming
these rocky hills,
Watching
as their neighbors abandoned houses and farms,
Leaving
much of the town vacant
over
the lure of greener pastures.
There
was a certain pride among the ones who stayed,
Who
toughed it out and farmed these hills.
And
perhaps along with it came some scorn
for
those who took an easier way.
Those.
Flat-landers.
Well,
anyways, regardless of how it came about,
Here’s a term you
hear now and again: flatlander.
A
term that over time came to be used for all of those who move here from outside
of Northern New England –
people
who are not so-called “natives”
I
can remember in 7th grade,
a
fellow student of mine at Vilas who lived in Langdon even calling our Walpole
peers we had gotten to know through NEHT, “flatlanders.”
I
scratched my head and thought:
“Walpole’s not that
much flatter than Langdon.”
But,
that wasn’t his point.
He
was using a term of contempt – a word for the “other.”
A
term constructing a social wall between us and them.
I
can’t remember if
I felt the sting of his words at that time.
But
I certainly could have.
I
am a flatlander, but I also somewhat grew up here.
I
feel the cross pressures of this wall very well.
The
movement of the Spirit witnessed to
in
the New Testament
through
Jesus and on into the stories
of
the early Christian community
and
the writings of Paul –
is
a work of making known the expansive love of God
beyond
the walls of temple and synagogue.
An
invitation to the nations to come
and
learn from Rabbi Jesus
and
become a new humanity in the way of the cross.
To
the surprise of many on both sides of the wall,
The
Spirit began to open the eyes of the nations
to
the love of God and to the way of Jesus.
The
Spirit acted like the spring in Frost’s poem.
“Something
there is that doesn't love a wall.”
The
Spirit, Paul says, by the cross of Christ
opened
up a new bridge of human community.
In
Christ, a new humanity is born as those who were thought to be beyond God’s covenant
promise,
those
who “once were far
off have been brought near”
(Eph
2:13).
The
wall that had kept the Gentiles
from
full communion with Jews
is
broken down by Christ
as
Gentiles are invited into the faith.
Have
you experienced the unsettling of walls?
Perhaps
you’ve
experienced walls breaking down
in
your heart:
Someone
you were sure
you
would never become friends with…
An
act of kindness like the thawing of spring
upsets
the well-defined wall
that
had been constructed in your imagination.
I
think of the historical walls in our nation.
Women
given the right to vote, Slavery abolished.
Walls
that had been built up
in
the laws and socialization of a culture,
Walls
that had shaped the way we see one another,
the
way we read the Bible,
Suddenly
and definitively undone, torn down.
I
remember Marvin, who was pastor here in the 90s,
sharing
with this church one Sunday
a
piece of the Berlin Wall that she had been given.
“Something
there is that doesn't love a wall.”
Now
we need walls, there’s no question
about that.
On
the cold New Hampshire winter days,
I’m thankful
for both woodstove and walls.
And
it is helpful to have the stonewall
to
measure where I should mow to.
And
we need walls in our imagination
in
order to distinguish different kinds of people,
Or
different places or things.
We
need boundaries and definitions to survive.
I
don’t think the
reign of God is absolute wall-lessness.
But
the reign of God consists primarily of a faith
that
is hospitable to the Spirit
who
challenges the permanence and certainty of our walls.
The
Spirit is that someone who doesn’t love a
wall.
The
Spirit in John’s gospel is
compared to the wind
that
blows wherever it listeth…
one
“hears the
sound thereof,
but
cannot tell whence it cometh,
and
whither it goes.” (Jn 3:8)
The
movement of the Spirit
into
which we have been called in Christ
is one that upsets our walls,
calls
into question the boundaries we are socialized with,
the ones that shape the
practices of who we eat with
or
who we would invite into our homes.
It
brings us into the faith of Abraham
who
learned the gift of being hospitable to strangers –
when
Abraham welcomed the three strangers,
they
gave him the blessing of God,
the
promise that his wife Sarah would give birth.
(Genesis 18)
Reflecting
on this story, the letter to the Hebrews says,
“Remember to welcome strangers in your
homes.
There
were some who did that
and
welcomed angels without knowing it.” (Hebrews 13:2)
The
grace of God has been given to us Gentiles,
in
the invitation to learn the story of Israel through Jesus
and
to find ourselves in that story
as
those who have been welcomed
by
God’s expansive
love.
Willie
Jennings puts it this way:
"We
[Gentile Christians] are those who have become lifelong learners and lovers of
others.
We
have entered the story of another people, Israel.
And
we enter as learners."
The
story of God’s grace and
love
that is spoken of here in Ephesians,
of
the joining of Gentiles to the story of God’s faithfulness is one that we learn
through reflecting on this person,
this
Jewish Rabbi Jesus
that
we have come to call Savior and Lord.
And
we become learners in his way,
Joiners
to his vision of a world remade
by
God’s grace and
peace.
And
we turn to the spring thaw of God’s resurrection love
To
soften our hearts to love even that
neighbor,
To
welcome even that stranger,
And
find the gift of new life and new human community,
The
blessing of becoming lifelong learners
and
lovers of others.
This
is the wall-defying life.
As
Paul put it,
Christ
“came and
proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near;
for
through him both of us have access
in
one Spirit to the Father.
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.”
(Eph
2:17-20)
When
we sing in Christ there is no east or west,
We
do not mean to say
that
compass directions are no longer valid.
But
that these geographic boundaries
are
not more definitive
than
the enlarged circle of God’s expansive covenant love.
And
this holds true for all of those boundaries
constructed
in human imaginations.
I
love the fact in Frost’s poem,
that
the neighbors come together
and
know each other as neighbors
in
the mending of the wall,
“good fences
make good neighbors” quips the
one.
How
can we respect the differences
and
what Marilynne Robinson calls
the
“utterly vast
spaces between us” –
and
yet without fear or hostility,
recognizing
each other as equally beloved of God?
By
faith we have entered into the story
of
God’s covenant
love,
Into
the experiential reality
of
God’s
wall-defying compassion.
And
we who were strangers to God and to one another
have
become friends and fellow lovers of God.
And
as we have been welcomed
into this beautiful belonging,
so
we welcome others.
How
is God’s love at
work
in
our hearts and in our community?
How
is the spring of God’s grace
unsettling walls for you?
May
God give us the grace to welcome
the
fresh air of the Spirit
who
longs to make all things new,
And
bring us into an even greater awareness
of
God’s boundless
love.
Amen.
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