Walls

Hey yall, As I said earlier my name is Ty and I’m the Chaplain here at Wilderness. Earlier this summer after Nate, Kristin and I talked about how we should preach from the summer themes, I’ll be honest, this passage from Ephesians was last on my “lets preach on this” list. I remember reading it for the first time and thinking “Circumcision… Perfect. What am I going to do with this?”. Well, here we are… You, me, and a passage about circumcision, so let’s try to break this down. If you remove the word circumcised from the passage, you’re left with two groups of people, with an invisible difference, being told that they are unified due to the sacrifice of Jesus. A very simple, but beautiful concept and honestly, when Paul was writing his letter to the Ephesians he probably could’ve summed that point up without ever mentioning their history of being known as the “uncircumcised”. So why include it? What importance does that distinction hold…? I believe, that Paul believed, it served as something that was also invisible… A wall. Before the days of Jesus, Hebrew tradition outlined that a circumcision brought an individual closer to God. A procedure created and orchestrated by humans, resulted in this invisible wall going up between humans and God, and if you wanted to reach the other side of this wall, you had to endure the end of a knife. Those left on the other side (enter the Ephesians) were beyond God’s love. So, with all that in mind, it becomes a very powerful moment when Paul writes that Jesus “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.” One humanity. No walls. If we’re being real with each other, in today’s society it’s hard to avoid discussions about “walls”, both metaphorical and tangible ones. Reflecting on this reality, as well as this passage, left me wondering “what else does God say about walls?” Well, here’s what I found! Fun fact: There are 58 verses in the bible that refer to walls. Of these 58, 35 of them are merely descriptions of walls. If you’re wondering, the answer is yes, I scrolled through 35 verses describing various walls. Walls around cities, vineyards, and temples, made of everything from wood to metal or a combination of the two. Some of them guarded, some unguarded, some with armies marching to them. All in all, nothing of what I would consider substance. There is a common theme though, God is never explicitly calling for these walls to be built. These 35 verses are all praising materialistic aspects of them, but I believe God calls us to do more then appreciate a wall… So, I turned to the other 23 verses to try to find my answer. The remaining 23 offer up walls in a metaphorical sense and its here, where I believe the substance is. The first common theme among these is that these metaphors are always about separating things, either people from people or people from God. The second commonality, and main difference between the first 35, is that these 23 walls, whether metaphorical or tangible have explicit calls from God to be taken down. It’s from these verses that we get 2 of our readings for today. We briefly touched on the Ephesians passage, but I want to shift the focus to the scripture in Joshua: The story of the Walls of Jericho. Admittedly, this passage has never felt right to me and I struggled with my thoughts on it regarding this sermon. Here’s a real quick recap of the story in case you aren’t familiar with it. Joshua was leading the twelve tribes of Israel to the land promised to their ancestors by God and along the way they encountered the city of Jericho. Jericho was fortified on all sides by massive walls, no one entered or left the city without permission. Before they arrived, Joshua had a vison and was instructed to march around the walls for 7 days in silence, the only noise being trumpets blown by the priests. For 6 days, Joshua and crew marched around the city once a day, on the 7^th day however, they marched 7 times and at the end of the marching and trumpet playing, they yelled. Their cries were followed by the Walls of Jericho tumbling down. Great story so far right? Well, what comes after the crumbling of the Walls is what I find troubling. Joshua and the Israelites stormed the city and killed every person and animal in it. The only people spared were the family of Rahab the Prostitute because she had safely hidden some of Joshua’s spies. This passage troubles me because it leaves me with more questions than answers. Why would God perform this miracle of leveling the Walls, only to have its consequent be a massacre and a city left in ruin? The easy answer is, “well the land WAS promised to Joshua and his ancestors” but personally, the God I’ve grown to know is a God of love and grace, not one of utter domination. That last little part about God being a God of grace is where I started to find my answer. We have earned God’s grace because of the sacrifice Jesus made. Not only that, but as Paul states, we are made into one humanity by it. The people in the Jericho story were viewing the world through that “us and them” lens, the same lens that saw the Ephesians as “the uncircumcised “. The lens that builds walls. Ephesians 2: 3-5, just a couple verses before the passage we heard today reads “All of us once lived among them in the passions of the flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved.” I believe that those words clearly outline the difference between Joshua and Paul. Joshua had the city of Jericho at its most vulnerable position and he laid ruin to it. Imagine how different that story could have been if Joshua and Israelites, instead of leaning into wrath, leaned into love the way Paul invites the Ephesians to do. Imagine what the world could look like today if everyone did… I want to wrap my message up by quoting one of my all-time favorite Ted Talks and the reason I included the Good Samaritan reading today. These quotes come from “The Political Power of Being a Good Neighbor” by Michael Tubbs. If you don’t know who Michael Tubbs is, you’re probably not alone, but he was born and raised in Stockton California, and became the youngest black mayor ever as well as the youngest mayor ever of a city with over 100,000 people, all at the age of 24. In his Ted Talk, he talks about how he used his knowledge of the Good Samaritan parable to make policies that resulted in a 30% reduction in violent crimes in Stockton. Due to being worried about talking to much I selected two parts of the speech that stuck out the most for me personally. I printed out a transcript of the speech for anyone that wants to read the whole thing, obviously a 10/10 recommendation from yours truly.  I love this first quote because, like Paul did, I think Mayor Tubbs does a good job of naming an invisible wall in society that a lot of people refuse to consider. It reads “So, after four years on city council, I decided to run for mayor, realizing that being a part time councilman wasn’t enough to enact the structural changes we need to see in Stockton, and I came to that conclusion by looking at the data. So, my old district, where I grew up is 10 minutes away from a more affluent district. And 10 minutes away in the same city, the difference between zip code 95205 and 95219 in life expectancy is 10 years. Ten minutes away, 4.5 miles, 10-year life expectancy difference, and not because of the choices people are making. Because no one chooses to live in an unsafe community where they can’t exercise. No one chose to put more liquor stores then grocery stores. No one chose these things, but that’s the reality” Mayor Tubbs goes on to talk about how in that 4.5-mile difference there is a 30% difference in unemployment rate and a 75,000 dollar difference in income. Now, he never mentioned anything about a wall… but it sure seems like there a 4.5 mile one long separating those two districts. He ends his speech by referencing a conversation he had with Bob Singleton, one of the original members of the Freedom Rides. The conversation went like this “(Singleton) said ‘I was arrested on April 4,1961. Now why is that date important?’ And I said ‘Well, you were arrested, if you weren’t arrested, we wouldn’t be on this bus. If we weren’t on this bus, we wouldn’t have the rights we enjoy.” He rolled his eyes and said ‘No, son.’ He said, ‘On that day Barack Obama was born.” And then he said he had no idea that the choice he made to restructure the road would pave the way, so a child born as a second-class citizen, who wouldn’t be able to even get a cup of water at a counter, would have the chance 50 years later to be president. Then he looked at me and said, ‘What are you prepared to do so that 50 years from now a child born has the chance to become President.’” That conversation between Mayor Tubbs and Mr. Singleton is so powerful to me.  I believe that the image of restructuring a road, serves the same purpose as the image of tearing down a wall. It calls us to make the path for our fellow humans easier and obstacle free, which in turn allows them to reach their full potential. It allows US to reach our full potential. With this in mind, I want to leave you with a thought and a challenge.  First and foremost, our God is not a God of walls. Our God is a God of bridges and roads. We are called to tear down the walls that divide our society and our world, not build more of them. Similarly, when those walls start to fall on a personal level and the person standing across from you is potentially at their most vulnerable moment, are you going to be Joshua or are you going to be Paul? Are you going to leave that person in ruins or are you going to show them the grace and unifying love expressed in the letter to the Ephesians? As you leave from this place, whenever that may be, I hope you remember to be a bridge, because the world doesn’t need any more walls. Thank you.