I received a couple of Summer Sermon
Suggestions about walls. One was on the Wall of Nehemiah and the other was on the
Wall of Separation between Church and State - two different types of walls.
I’ll do the Church-State one at a later date. I looked at the Nehemiah story
and immediately Robert Frost’s famous “Mending Wall” came to mind. I could not
get it out of my mind. I wanted to quote a few lines from the poem, but I could
not choose which lines to take out. So I decided reading the whole poem for
you. It is certain worth our time to listen to it, probably worth more than
everything else I have to say about walls this morning.
READ ROBERT FROST’S MENDING WALL,
which was originally published in 1914 as the first poem in his book North of
Boston
Someone asked me to preach on
Nehemiah’s wall and the meaning of that story for today. Nehemiah was a Jewish
exile who served as the cupbearer to Persian King Artaxerxes in the fifth
century BC. The Jewish nations of Israel and Judah had been destroyed, and the
city of Jerusalem had been destroyed along with the temple. Some of the Jewish
exiles had returned to the land of Israel about 90 years earlier, but not much
reconstruction had taken place. When Nehemiah heard from a visitor to Jerusalem
what bad shape the city was still in. he was moved to do something about it. Nehemiah,
had a position in the Persian royal court as cupbearer to the king. That
position was more than just being a waiter and testing the king’s drink for
poison by tasting it himself. He was also a sort of advisor to the King, who
had the ear of the king and was trusted by the king. Nehemiah asked Artaxerxes
if he could return to Jerusalem to rebuild the city. The book is about that
rebuilding effort.
I have preached on this book before
during my ministry. Normally when
preachers interpret Nehemiah we interpret the physical wall he built as real
but also representing something more. And of course Frost’s poem is also
metaphorical. He is not just talking about the stone wall at his farm in Derry,
NH. He is obviously has something much bigger in mind. So today I want to talk
about walls.
1. I will start with Nehemiah’s
wall. Before Nehemiah rebuilt the wall of Jerusalem he clearly asked what he “was
walling in or walling out, and to whom he was like to give offense.” Nehemiah
was trying to restore the capital city to the way it was before it was
destroyed by the Babylonian armies in 587 BC – one hundred and fifty years
earlier. He saw the surrounding peoples of the land – the Samaritans and the
Ammonites - as enemies that he was trying to wall out. And he – and Ezra – who
is from the same time frame (and in fact the earliest Hebrew manuscripts
combine the books of Ezra and Nehemiah into one book) wanted to wall in the
people of Israel not only by a city wall but also by the Jewish Law. A couple
of chapters before this in the book of Ezra the Jewish men were forced by Ezra to
divorce and separate themselves from their non-Jewish wives and children. The
purpose of this was clear. It was to restore the Jewish ethnic, religious and
political identity. It was to bring the Jewish people and state back from the
brink of extinction.
But something there is that doesn’t
love a wall, that wants it down. I know that walls are necessary in this dangerous
world that we live in. People lock their doors for fear of intruders. We secure
our national borders in fear of illegal immigrants and terrorists. Even modern Israel
has built a new wall. I have not seen it. I have been to the Holy Land several
times, but I have not been back since 2000, which was the 3000th
anniversary of the establishment of Jerusalem by King David. Since the year
2000 Israel has built a wall between the state of Israel and the West Bank – or
Palestine - to prevent terrorist attacks. When I did a semester of sabbatical
study in 1991 at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute, we lived on that border between
Israel and Palestine, just a couple of miles outside Bethlehem. We used to walk
unhindered and unnoticed across that border freely without ever seeing a
soldier present. We could not even tell where the border was. Now there is a
huge wall and roadblock with an Israeli security checkpoint there. It makes me
sad to think about it, and I don’t want to see it. There is something in me
that does not love a wall.
I know that some walls are
necessary. I know they were necessary for Israel then and maybe now. If
Nehemiah had not built that wall and if Ezra had not done those reforms, today there
might not be a people who distinguish themselves as Jews. They would have gone
the way of the Ammonites and Moabites and all the other ancient peoples of the
land of Canaan and become absorbed into the populations of the other peoples of
the region. Then there would have been no Jewish lineage that would have given
birth to the Messiah, Jesus Christ. God had a plan to use the Jewish people to
accomplish his plan. Nehemiah and Ezra were part of that plan. So the wall of
Nehemiah had to be built to reestablish the nation and people of Israel once
again. Walls are necessary sometimes. But there is something in me that does
not love a wall.
More importantly there is something
in God that does not love a wall. In the NT we see God tearing down the walls that
Ezra and Nehemiah built – physically, ethnically, and spiritually. The OT is
about building walls; the NT is about tearing down walls. Both are necessary in
God’s plan for history. As Ecclesiastes sways, “To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under
heaven: …. A time to break down, And a time to build up; …. A time to cast away stones, And a time to
gather stones.” In Nehemiah and Ezra’s day it was a time to build up the
walls. In Jesus’ day it was the time to tear down walls. That is what our NT
passage is all about.
In Nehemiah’s day he and Ezra were
building a wall between Jew and Gentile. Jesus tore that wall down. Paul
writes: “11 Therefore remember that you,
once Gentiles in the flesh—who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the
Circumcision made in the flesh by hands— 12 that at that time you were without
Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the
covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now
in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of
Christ. 14 For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken
down the middle wall of separation….” The NIV translates that last verse
this way: “For he himself is our peace,
who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing
wall of hostility.” In using that term Paul was referring to a very
specific wall located in the temple courts. In fact archaeologists have found
the inscription posted in that wall warning Gentiles not to cross that wall
upon penalty of death.
The Jerusalem temple had a series
of courts. The outermost court was known as the Court of Gentiles. Beyond that
court only Jews could go. And a sign – written in Latin and Greek - was posted
on the wall to warn Gentiles not to go any further into the temple under
penalty of death. The Romans even permitted the Jewish authorities to carry out
the death penalty for this offence, even if the offender were a Roman citizen.
The engraved block of limestone which held that inscription was discovered in
Jerusalem in 1871. It is currently in the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul,
Turkey, which is where I saw it. It is in Istanbul because Jerusalem was part of
the Ottoman Empire when the stone was found.
Our epistle lesson says that Jesus
broke down that religious wall of separation between Jew and Gentile. Not
physically, although he did take the physical action of driving the money
changers out of that Court of the Gentiles. And later Jesus predicted that God
would destroy all the wall of the temple. But most importantly Jesus broke down
that wall spiritually. He broke down ethnic and racial barriers. Galatians 3:28
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there
is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all
one in Christ Jesus.” We see this happening during Jesus’ three years of
ministry when he reached out to Samaritans – the Samaritan woman at the well
and the Samaritan leper and told the story of the good Samaritan. These were
exactly the same people that Nehemiah and Ezra were walling out. We see it in Jesus’
dealing with Roman soldiers, one whom he declared to have more faith than
anyone in Israel. After the death and resurrection of Jesus we see the walls of
division come tumbling down one after another in the Book of Acts, as the
church embraced people from all racial and ethnic backgrounds. And in Acts the
Church got it most opposition from the Jewish priesthood and synagogue leaders
who did not want those walls broken down.
According to Paul those Gentiles who
were “aliens from the commonwealth of
Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise” were brought inside the
wall and inside the covenant with God. “But
now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the
blood of Christ.” There are no illegal aliens in the church. There are no
strangers. There are not two different types of people – insiders and outsiders.
Paul says “For He Himself is our peace,
who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having
abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained
in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making
peace."
2. There is another wall that was
broken done in Jesus Christ. That is the wall between God and all people. The
very next s say: “and that He might
reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to
death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and
to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to
the Father.”
There was a wall of separation between
man and God. Scripture calls it sin. Theologians talk about estrangement,
alienation, and words like that. Call it whatever you want. We have become
separated from God, and that is the cause of suffering in our lives and human
evil in the world. There is a need to reconnect with God. There is a need for reconciliation. This
passage says that this reconciliation was accomplished and this wall of
separation was broken down through the cross. The Cross opened up a gap in the
wall, which in the words of the poet “even two can pass abreast.”
The Gospel of Matthew depicts this
in a dramatic symbolic moment when Christ died. It says that at the minute
Jesus died, “Then, behold, the veil of
the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the
rocks were split.” At that moment the wall of separation between God and
man was broken. This verse says that the veil of the temple was torn in two
from top to bottom. This is referring to the veil that separated the Holy of
Holies, the innermost sacred part of the temple where God was said to dwell,
from the outside world. Only once a year did the Jewish High Priest pull back
that veil and enter the most Holy Place in order to offer a sacrifice for sin
on the Day of Atonement. When Jesus died that veil of the Holy of Holies did
not just draw back momentarily for a human priest to enter. It was torn in two
– from top to bottom, meaning that God was doing it from heaven. The Holy of
holies was permanently opened to all of humankind. The Holy Presence of God
flooded into the world because the Final atonement for sin had been offered on
the Cross. The veil of the temple had been removed by Christ. Within a few
years the whole temple building would be torn down at the hands of the Roman
armies at the direction of God – not one stone left on another just as Jesus
prophesied. This was to demonstrate historically that the temple was no longer
needed. The only thing left today of that Jerusalem temple is the retaining
wall of the Temple Mount. It is called the Western Wall or the Wailing Wall, and
it is the holiest site to Jews today.
The wall between man and God has
been torn down by Christ. We have direct access to the Presence of God. We are
united with God through Christ. That is the spiritual reality that we find
ourselves in today. There is nothing that anybody has to do to bring us closer
to God than what Christ did. We are reconciled to God. All we need to do is accept
that by faith.
3. That brings me to a third wall.
That is the wall in the human heart. The only wall that now remains is in our
own souls and minds. We have hardened our hearts until the walls of our hearts
are as thick as any stone wall. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.
That someone is Christ. That is why he tore it down. He has done that work at a
great price to himself. Now all we have to do is take down that last remaining barrier
inside us. Actually it is more biblically accurate to call this inner barrier a
veil, rather than a wall. A veil corresponding to the temple veil.
In 2 Corinthians Paul talks about
the veil that lies over people’s minds that prevent them from seeing the glory
of God in Christ. He says that people’s minds are blinded even when they are
reading scripture. Then he says, “16
Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 17 Now the
Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 18
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord,
are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the
Spirit of the Lord.”
The wall was broken down by Christ.
That was the hard part. Now is the easy part. Now there is only a veil, which needs
to be pulled back. This as a veil between our hearts and God, between our own
stubborn self and the God who resides in us as Holy Spirit. All we need is have
the courage to take down that veil – rip it from top to bottom. Open up that communion
with God. Then the last barrier will be down. Something there is that doesn’t
love a wall. That someone is Christ, and hopefully that someone is also you and
me.
No comments:
Post a Comment