“Letter to the Ephesians: Christ Has Broken Down the Wall” Eph 2: 11-22

 In seminary we sang this song by our musician and choir director, Mark Miller, that went like this “Christ has broken down the wall. Christ has broken down the wall. Let us join our hearts as one, Christ has broken down the wall.”

That hymn has been playing through my mind all week as I’ve been reading this text from the letter to the Ephesians. Paul is writing to a Gentile church that is being told that they are not good enough by some folks because they are not Jewish. So Paul needs to put a few things straight. Chiefly, that there is no longer any distinction between Jew and Greek, because all of that has changed in Jesus.

Paul needs to direct this part of the letter in particular to the Gentile believers because for so long they have been called “uncircumcised.” Now to our modern ears, that may just seem like a fact. Jews were circumcised and Greek’s weren’t. But this was a slang word used by Jewish people when referring to the Greek’s that meant pagan. 

Paul calls this slang term and its meaning out - saying that yes, Gentiles were once far from God, but that isn’t who they are any more because of the blood of Jesus Christ.

Oh friends, how often do we get caught in this trap? We refuse to see people as who they truly are, we only see them as they once were. When we are in this place we say hurtful things and act in damaging ways. We can cause so much pain.Case in point, that Paul has to write this section of the letter at all - reminding the Gentiles who they truly are in Jesus Christ.

When I was in seminary I took a class inside of a state correctional facility. The class was part of a pilot program to bring religious education to women and men on the inside. However, there were some rules. One, we did not refer to any of the women we interacted with as prisoners. Instead, we called them inside students and we were outside students. Second, we could not ask what crime they were charged with. Now normally this would come out in the course of our conversations. You may say, Michelle, those seem like really odd rules, but they had a purpose. So we would truly get to know our classmates, like we would in any other class setting. And friends, it was transformative. These rules helped us shift our mindset to not label these women and men by their crimes, but instead to see who they were because of the blood of Jesus Christ. 

While this particular example is an extreme example, we continue to put people into boxes in their every day lives as well. Have you ever heard of cardboard box testimonies? Essentially you take a piece of cardboard and write on one side how the world sees you or labels you and on the other side how Christ sees you. I’ve done this in various settings, and every time it brings me to tears. Because these are truly things that people have heard said about them and they have to set all of that aside in order to step into the truth of who they are in Christ.

For the Jews, such a devise label was used to make themselves look better. It became a mark of pride, similar to “at least we aren’t like those gentiles.”  But that isn’t what God meant the covenant to do - to divide and make one group of people look down upon another. So Christ came to bring completely new life, including a new relationship to God, and new citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven.

If this was the cardboard testimony challenge, for these folks one side would say “uncircumcised” and the other would say “child of God.” In the word of Christ Has Broken Down the Wall: “We’re accepted as we are. Through God’s love all is reconciled. We’re accepted as we are.”

This was something that Christ alone could do. Jesus is the only one who can take two groups who are hostile and in opposition and bring peace. Have you ever been part of mediation?  For years I was a peer mediator and took classes on how to bring such approaches to the church. But mediation will often fail if people cannot arrive at common ground. For those of us who place our hope and trust in Christ he is our middle ground. He is what draws us together, the source of all peace. But even when we say that with our lips, we don’t always live it out in our lives.

Instead, we put up these walls that divide us. One of those walls is sin. Now when I say that often the first thing that people will think of is how someone else has sinned against them and how that created a wall. But brothers and sisters, we also sin against other people. Probably a lot more than we realize. Sometimes we may intentional hurt another person, other times we may not even realize what we have done, but that sin divides us from other people, people whom God created and loves.

Another wall is tradition. This was a big one for the Ephesians. Folks were coming and telling them that they weren’t really part of the covenant because they weren’t circumsized. The tradition of circumcision actually blocked the truth of the Gospel! Tradition is not a bad thing, but we need to be humble enough to not let it block us from the new thing that God is doing. Both tradition and new things are spoken about throughout scripture and we aren’t to pit one against another, especially because of our preference or to make ourselves look superior. In those instances, the tradition can become a wall in our hearts and lives.

A third wall is the law. Rules are not bad, brothers and sisters, but when we care more about the rule or law, than the author of the law, it can cause us to stray. Paul reminds us that we can never be saved by the law. In fact, all who seek for salvation through following the rule of the law will be disappointed, for we are incapable of keeping the law in our sinful selves. We are need of one to come and bring forth a new way of being - knocking down these walls in our lives. And that can only be Jesus Christ.

Jesus took those walls, and instead invites us to come to an understanding that he is the foundation and cornerstone of our faith. What’s the difference? Walls divide and foundations give us a firm place to stand. The cornerstone marks and holds together instead of becoming a stumbling block. In this way, Jesus is both the pioneer and perfecto of our faith and the one who can reconcile us to God and each other.

If we take this teaching to be true - that Christ came not to divide as the world divides, but to bring us together as members of the family of God, then how are we to change? How can we step aside from our behaviors that bring harm and be people who point to the abundant life of Christ?

It’s not just about not building walls, friends, its repenting of the hostility that causes us to build them in the first place. Here’s the thing, you may not like everyone in the family of God, but some day, the believer that you like the least, is going to be standing beside you praising God in glory. So let us make the Kingdom of God that is to come, be made known in the Kingdom of God that is already here amongst us in how we speak about one another and treat one another.

That becomes markedly easier when we examine our own hearts and speech. When we take time to remember when we, too, were once far from God and how Christ has changed us. We wouldn’t want to be held captive by who we once were, so why would we do that to anyone else? And once we realize this in our own lives, we ask God to give us the Peace of Christ in our speech. 

The peace of Christ isn’t just a nice greeting. It’s the peace that unifies us under the Lordship of Jesus. In my own life, that means praying that God helps me see people as he sees them. I have hundreds of colleagues in this Annual Conference. Now, I by no means known everyone, but I make it the desire of my heart to be able to say something true and positive about each person and their ministry that I do know. That doesn’t mean that we always agree or that I don’t get frustrated, but it reminds me that they have a purpose in God’s Kingdom, which helps me keep my heart in check.

We live in a world, brothers and sisters, that is all about building walls. But, in the words of Mark Miller, as the children of God, “We will tear down every wall, because Christ has broken down the wall.” Amen.