“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; and makes gaps even two can pass abreast.”
"Something there is that doesn’t love a wall …” So speaks the poet Robert Frost, reflecting on the ravages of a New England winter at the boundary between his farm and his neighbor’s farm. The frosty earth kept heaving up and toppling the stones. "Something there is that doesn’t love a wall."
Let me tell you today a tale of two walls. Two walls, two cities, and two men.
One wall stands as the boundary between the Temple and the city. One wall in the city of Jerusalem marks the boundary between the sacred and the secular, between the house of God and the world of everyday life. This wall, next to the Gate called Beautiful, props up every day a man with a need.
Behind this wall are said every day the words and psalms of praise, offered to a God of justice, mercy, and redemption. Yet this wall keeps outside a man whose disability makes it impossible for him to worship, a man whose poverty makes him distasteful to those inside the wall.
This wall protects the house of God and the people of God from intrusion.
But, remember, "something there is that doesn’t love a wall." "Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, and spills the upper boulders in the sun; and makes gaps even two can pass abreast."
The other wall, in the other city, is the boundary between the city itself and the desert. The other wall, the wall of the city of Damascus in Syria, is designed to protect its residents from war. That wall is a mighty fortress, or so its builders intended, and it, like the Temple wall in Jerusalem, seems to provide a haven of safety. The wall of Damascus is high and firm, a sure desert shield against the desert storm.
But that wall has also the capacity to confine. It is capable not only of keeping out the intruder, but also of confining its residents. And so, in this tale of two walls, two cities, two men – behind the wall of Damascus there is a man named Saul who has managed to get himself into trouble. And that wall threatens to confine him and make life very, very dangerous indeed. That wall stands between Saul and the freedom to follow the will of God as he sees it. That wall, like the other wall, keeps some out, but also keeps others in.
But remember, remember, "Something there is that doesn’t love a wall." "Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, and spills the upper boulders in the sun; and makes gaps even two can pass abreast.”
Can there be any doubt this morning that we live in a world which builds walls? Walls are meant to separate; walls are meant to hold people away from other people. We think they are meant to protect, and sometimes they do. But more often than not, the walls men build confine and imprison those who build them.
War is such a wall; it builds barriers in the minds of people, so that they can no longer see the enemy as a real person. War builds barriers in the heart, so that we begin to treat a battle as if it were a football game, and announce the score ever so often. War is a confining wall. And this morning many of us, I suspect, feel as though we can scarcely breathe, so confined are we.
Racism is such a wall. Racism builds walls between people. Racism constructs elaborate apartheid systems, thinking that those on one side of the wall can be protected from enemies, real or imagined, on the other side, just because they are different. But racism is a confining wall, because it means that your life and mine are impoverished if we have no way to share with and live with one another. Dr. King reminded us that none are fully free until all are free. Racism is such a wall.
What are the people of God called to do about these walls? What will God’s people do with such barriers? Look with me again at the tale of two walls – two walls, two cities, two men.
At one of the walls, the wall of the Temple, one man waits to go inside the wall. But when he does, he creates a firestorm of complaint and criticism.
At the other wall, the wall of Damascus, another man must escape the plots and the hatred of others, and so he waits to go outside that wall.
Two walls, two cities, two men.
I
At the wall of the Temple in Jerusalem, somebody’s comfort zone got violated. Someone who was broken and incomplete got healed and got inside, and that threatened somebody else.
What an irony that there in Jerusalem, where Peter and John met the lame man at the Beautiful Gate at the Temple wall – what an irony that just inside the people of God thought that they had created a sanctuary, a place where the work of God could go on uninterrupted. And yet the work of God was to be done just outside the Temple, where a man in need had cried out day after day for something that would help.
Can you just imagine the anger and the frustration felt by the Temple officials? They knew the man was there; they had practically stumbled over him every day on their way to offer sacrifices and to sing psalms. They had on some occasions given him money and on other occasions ignored him. And by now he had become a fixture. They hardly even saw him any more, he was more or less a part of the woodwork, a slight blotch on the Temple wall. And they thought they had done for him all they could do and should do. His was a closed case, and he was where he belonged, outside the wall.
And so can you imagine their anger when Peter and John took the lame man seriously? Can you understand their frustration when the man jumped up and ran into the Temple, praising God and singing? I can. I can understand it. They felt guilty. They felt upstaged. They felt betrayed. And they were angry at Peter and John; "By what power or by what name did you do this?"
You see, the problem is that the church so easily builds walls. We are in such a hurry to create a nice, comfortable niche in which to do our thing. And when Christ-followers come along and do ministry, real ministry, ministry that cures and heals and touches a life, right outside the walls, we get upset. We have created for ourselves a fairly comfortable, safe little church here, and some of us are going to get scared when the world of poverty and disease and pain and just plain craziness is brought in here, right in the walls of Takoma’s Temple.
But remember, remember, the world of need lies just outside the walls. And most of all, remember, "someth1ng there is that doesn’t love a wall.”
II
However, at the wall of Damascus there is a man who wants out. And it’s important to know why he’s being put out.
Off in Damascus the newly minted preacher Saul, once the persecutor of the church, once the scourge of Christians, has become the pioneer proclaimer of the Gospel. Once the man who could be counted on to make life miserable for the believers is now discrediting the priests and the synagogue. Once again the religious establishment is on the run. Once again, the good folks, the nice folks, the solid folks, are upset, this time so upset at Saul that they plotted to kill him.
But in a quaint little touch, the Book of Acts tells us, his friends put old Saul in a basket and let him down through an opening in the wall, so that he could be on his way out in the desert. While the world goes to hell in a handbasket, so to speak, the bringer of good news is driven out in another basket. And Saul is driven out, pushed out, by the good folks.
I see another irony. How strange that the desert, the wilderness, where enemies lurk and where danger prevails, should be thought less dangerous than the city where God’s people have been at work. How ironic and yet how realistic that sometimes the only way to deal with sickness in the house of God is to leave it and strike out into the uncharted wilderness of the desert. Sometimes churches lose their best and their brightest because they simply will not break out and serve where they are needed.
You see, the sickest churches I know are the churches that turn in on themselves. The sickest and most distasteful churches I know of are the ones which are concerned only about their own survival, only about how many members they have, about how many dollars they take in, about how many dollars they can avoid spending. Churches which build walls soon self-destruct, for they do not understand that the life of the church is always, always, extending outside the walls.
I tell you, the surest way for us to fail is to play it so safe that those of our number who have some energy and who have some creativity will feel that they are no longer welcome. The most terrible thing that could happen to us in the year ahead is that we will try to make this church a prison, confining some folks who see a world of need. And if we confine them, we will lose them and we will push them out. They’ll go over the walls, and well they should, for in the heart of God, something there is that doesn’t love a wall, and the mission of Christ has often been fostered by those who felt they were no longer welcome in the established church and just had to leave.
In Damascus, God’s missionary ran up against the proverbial brick wall. But remember, always remember, "something there is that doesn’t love a wall".
III
My hope and fervent prayer for 1991 is that we will extend the walls, risking criticism and misunderstanding, but being faithful to the call to compassion.
There are a whole lot of barriers we are going to have to look at this year. There are many walls I hope we will confront. And to do so we will have to risk criticism.
I cannot spend much time on specifics this morning. Rev. Arnold has already provided you with some of them, and we will develop the possibilities much more clearly on Wednesday night. Let me just mention, however, two or three things which seem to be priorities for us.
Outside the wall of our Temple there are an awesome number of families whose life together is hurting. We can make a difference. We can do some things that will say to them, "In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, stand up and walk". We will get some criticism, because someone will say, "You are meddling in private matters. Don’t cross that wall.” But I believe the healing Christ wants us out there.
Outside the wall of our Temple there is still a climate that sets off race from race and culture from culture. Martin Luther King spoke in one of his writings about seeing the world as a neighborhood, not as walled cities and sealed off fortresses which give people the illusion that they are protected from other folks. I’d like to see us look behind and beyond those walls and see what we can do to bring this community face to face with one another. We of all the churches here ought to be the church that brings diverse peoples together. We, because of our history, of all the churches ought to be the one that could bring together the poor and the middle class and the yuppie and the gentrifiers and all the rest. Sure, someone will say, “Look, I like the church just the way it is. Let’s keep the walls high.” But I believe we can extend that wall, or else run the risk that some of our most creative folks are going to jump over it.
Beyond that, there are many other things. I’d like to see us use our walls, our literal walls, those five houses there, to embrace and protect somebody. We use those walls to provide income for ourselves, but we must do better than that. A great church pays its own way rather than siphoning off monies it could be using to extend a warm and caring embrace to others.
I’d even hope we could become a church that extends its walls well beyond this immediate community and begins to embrace a whole world – a whole world – with warmth and love and a caring gospel. I’d like to see us break out into the world with its issues, its wars and rumors of war, its struggles and its pain, and I’d like to see us make a difference.
Can we get involved in the issue of war and peace? Not without risking criticism; that’s touchy. Can we deal with life issues, everything from gun control and capital punishment to abortion and living wills? Those are tough items, and somebody is going to get nervous, no matter how we deal with them. But I just cannot help but feel that had the Christian church risked more criticism, had Christians been more forthright and therefore more compassionate, maybe there would not have been the greed and the oppression that led us plunging into war this week.
In this coming year, in the power and in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, we are going to say to somebody who hurts, "Stand up and walk." In this year of "extending the walls", because we serve Him who was crucified and who suffered outside the walls of the holy city, we are going to suffer some criticism and we are going to bear some hostility. In this year, as we continue to redevelop this church, we are going to understand that the walls we’ve put around ourselves for our protection are confining us, and we’re going to reach outside of them, venturing into the desert with the refreshing good news.
For "something there is that doesn’t love a wall." "Something?” I know what it is; I know who it is. It’s a creator God who has made of one blood all nations to dwell on the face of the earth; it is He who doesn’t love a wall. It is Christ, who in his own body on the cross has broken down the wall of partition between us; it is He who doesn’t love a wall. It’s the Spirit who calls us to strengthen our stakes and enlarge the bounds of our habitations; it is He who doesn’t love a wall.
