I think it was John Lennon, one of the Beatles, who once observed, "Life is what happens while you are making other plans." That really is the issue, isn't it? Getting a fix on our lives. Getting hold of life. Being able to make it go the way you want it to go. And the trouble is that life just keeps on happening, or worse, just keeps on getting away from us, while we are working on the game plan. "Life is what happens while you are making other plans."
So the issue with life is not how tough it is or how busy it is. It is not how exciting it is or how much work it is. The issue with life is not even how long it is. The issue is how full of meaning life is. Not how full of stuff, how full of activity, how full of work or of play; maybe not even how full of people, but the issue with life is always how full of meaning it is.
That creates a problem for us. That frustrates us, because, even when we identify what our purpose is, we cannot always get it done. Barriers seem to leap up and stop us. Even when we know how we want to use our lives, even when we can clearly focus on where we want to go, we cannot always make it happen. Something blocks the way; some barrier looms large to prevent us from the goal of a meaningful life.
You know the old story, don't you, about the motorist who got lost on some back road, trying to find his way to a particular town? He'd strayed from the beaten path, and he had no map, so he did the next best thing. He stopped and asked an old farmer out in the field, "How do you get to 'Hicksville' from here?" The old farmer stopped and thought a minute, hemmed and hawed, and then said, "Well, there's the river road ... but no, the bridge is out. There's the farm-to-market highway, but they're rebuilding that. There's the old country lane, but at this time of day farmer Brown drives his sheep down that one. Face it, mister, you can't get there from here!"
It seems that's the way it is. Something is always a barrier to the kind of life we want. You can't get there from here. Life is what happens while you are making other plans, because there are barriers. Too many barriers.
I want you to hear today that there is a way to crash through the barriers. There is a means of breaking down the barriers that keep us from being what we want to be. Its name is Jesus. Jesus Christ, the risen Lord, has broken every barrier down. He makes a way where once there was no way. Because He rose from the grave, because He is alive, you and I can have a meaningful life. He will destroy the barriers.
I
For example, notice that one kind of barrier we face is simply the circumstantial barrier. One thing which keeps us from being all we can be is simply the circumstances in which we live: our wealth, our education, our family, the things we didn't choose, the accidents of life. Circumstantial barriers are the first things that block us; but the living Christ has a way of moving them.
When Mary Magdalene and the other women decided that morning to go to the tomb and anoint the body of the crucified Jesus, they knew full well the physical barrier that confronted them. They knew that a great stone had been rolled in front of the door to the tomb and that the stone had been sealed so that the body would not be disturbed. They knew that, and one of the gospels even reports their asking one another on the way, "Who will roll away the stone for us?"
They had a choice at that point. They could have decided to give up. Why beat yourself against a stone wall? Why not recognize that you are between a rock and a hard place? Why not just give up and take second best? We'll never be able to anoint his body with these spices; there's a huge stone there. Let's just turn around and go home.
But look at it! Even though they knew they couldn't move the stone themselves, they went anyway! They had a mission to perform, they had a task to do, and, even though they knew that the barrier was solid, that the odds were against their success, they went anyway. And their going was rewarded with the sight of a stone removed, a barrier gone.
There is a message here. The message is that when there are circumstantial barriers that seem to make it impossible for you to be what you want to be, go anyway. When there are insurmountable obstacles that block the way, and you cannot see the answer, go anyway. And the living Christ will open the way. The love of the risen Christ breaks down circumstantial barriers.
My attention has been focused this last several days on Michael and Heather Walker. Some of you will know them as the young people we in this church are helping to support during their missions tour in Uganda. I'm focused on them not only because of the birth of their child this past Wednesday, but also because word has come that their application to stay in Uganda for a third year has been approved.
Now when Michael and Heather started out on this missions business, the circumstances seemed utterly impossible. How were two young people, with practically no savings in the bank, with student loans to be paid back, with only a modest stipend from the Foreign Mission Board … how were they going to make it happen? How could they afford it?
All I can say is that they followed a formula as old as the gospel itself: they trusted the Lord and they told His people. Did you get that? It’s very simple and yet very profound: trust the Lord and tell His people. At that moment, you responded; our sister church up the street responded; some of their friends responded, so that two years ago we sent them to Uganda with this barrier broken down.
We do not need to moan and groan that we do not have the resources, we do not have the opportunity, we do not have the education, we do not have whatever it will take. These are merely circumstantial barriers. Circumstantial barriers may be the first things to block us; but the living Christ has a way of moving them. His love breaks every barrier down.
II
But now, its true, some of the barriers that hold us back are not merely circumstantial. They are deeper than that. Some barriers are social and cultural. Some barriers are attitudes that other people impose on us. Social barriers, cultural barriers, the invisible but nonetheless powerful attitudes which oppress us and rob us of opportunities. And they are much deeper than merely circumstantial barriers.
Two of our members, Hugh and Marilyn Brown, recently visited Germany. While they were there, Hugh got a chance to chip off for himself a piece of the old Berlin wall, most of which came down several years ago. But Hugh tells me that the attitudes between East and West are not broken down at all. The feelings of separation and mistrust are still there. Attitude barriers, social barriers, are much stronger than circumstantial barriers.
But I want to argue that when you live in and with the risen Christ, he will break down those social barriers too. His love breaks down every barrier.
The first person to encounter the empty tomb was Mary Magdalene, a woman. This woman hurried back to tell Peter and John what she had experienced, and what did they do? They ran off to see for themselves! Trust a woman's word? Of course not! Take at face value the report of a mere female? It just was not done. In fact, the witness of a woman was not even acceptable in court in ancient Israel. Women were gossips, it was said; women were notoriously unreliable. If Mary Magdalene reported it, the guys needed to check it out.
But I am telling you this morning that when you live in and with the risen Christ, He breaks down every barrier. And that means He breaks down the social and cultural barriers. He breaks down the attitude barriers that get in our way.
And so the text reports that Peter and John came and saw the empty tomb and then went home. They saw but they didn't see, and they went home. Mary Magdalene, however, stayed behind, and there in the garden, waiting for what God might do, trusting through her tears that God was going to make a way, to her the risen Christ appeared. To her the Lord spoke. It was a woman ... a mere woman, if you will, who was the very first witness to the living Christ. You see? He breaks down every barrier, every barrier, social barriers included.
Back in the late Middle Ages, when I was a college student, I can remember going to the opening orientation sessions for our freshman class. I was an engineering student in those days. At orientation our dean said to us, "I want each one of you here to take a good look at the person on your right and at the person on your left. Get a good look, because the odds are that only one of you will graduate. The rest will drop out or flunk out." Well, that was a sobering thought for any 17-year-old freshman, and so I took that look. On one side was a student my own age, enrolled in the same courses I was taking, but with two significant differences. She was black. And as I looked around the room, as nearly as I remember it, there were maybe, out of 300 freshman engineers, a dozen black men, and probably six or eight white women, but next to me the one and only black woman. Now the statistics said that one of the two of us would flunk out or drop out of engineering school. You can guess which one of us I thought that would be at the time, can’t you? But you can see the reality right now!
Oh, we are so easily caught by social barriers. We are captured by attitude barriers. But the truth is that in the living Christ, it is possible for boundaries of race and class and background to be broken down. In the living Christ, it makes no difference what attitudes you come up aga1nst; trust Him, trust the way He believes in you, trust the way He gives Himself to you, just as He gave Himself to Mary Magdalene, and He will make a way. He will!
"I serve a risen savior, He's in the world today; I know that He is living, whatever men may say." The risen Christ breaks down circumstantial barriers and He destroys social barriers; His love has broken every barrier down.
III
And I do mean every barrier. You see, in the last analysis it is not the circumstantial barriers which stop us. They can be overcome.
Nor is it the cultural and social barriers which block us. They too can be beaten.
But what usually stops us dead in our tracks are the spiritual barriers. The spiritual barriers, the emotional barriers are the highest ones of all. They are the strongholds which no one but the risen, living Christ can deal with. The spiritual barriers.
Shakespeare's Cassius says it in “Julius Caesar": "The ·fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings." The highest, strongest barriers to our success are not mere circumstance, nor the attitudes others impose on us. The highest barriers lie in our own spiritual health. It is our own self-esteem, our own emotional life. If we do not believe in ourselves, we will not succeed.
But this morning the great message of Easter is that once again the risen living Christ breaks down even these powerful barriers. Once again, if we will live in and with the risen Christ, His love will break down the barriers erected by our emotional and spiritual issues.
Look again at Mary Magdalene. It's all there. The kind of complex spiritual barriers she faced are found in every one of us too.
First, she was disappointed. Disappointed that the one whom she had followed and supported for many months had been killed. Like some of us who keep on trying to pour energy and time into jobs or marriages that just won't go anywhere, like some of us who wonder why we should keep on beating some old dead horse, Mary Magdalene weeps in the garden out of disappointment. Her persistence didn't seem to have paid off.
And then, in addition to being disappointed, Mary was troubled by her failure to understand. Things were happening around her that she could not grasp. She knew what she saw, an empty tomb. She heard what the men said, that Jesus was not there. But she felt out of it. She felt incapable of understanding it. Like some of us, I suspect like some older people, she felt life was just passing her by, and she couldn't make sense of it.
Disappointed, unable to understand, and, most of all, Mary Magdalene was resigned to defeat. Resigned to defeat. All she knew to do now was to carry away the debris her life had become. "Sir, tell me where you have laid the body of Jesus, and I will take him away." There is nothing pretty about a defeated spirit; when someone feels that her every effort, her best years, her finest gifts, have been given, but for nothing, it is devastating. A parent who sees all that sacrifice for a child who is now ungrateful. A husband or a wife whose partner just walks out, taking not only the bank accounts but also the emotional savings account. Pretty hard to feel successful in that kind of setting. Pretty devastating to be shorn emotionally and spiritually.
But a voice said to her, "Mary·. And she turned and said to Him, "Master". And in that moment she became whole again. She found her life affirmed, her spiritual barriers broken down. We hear her proclamation across the ages, "I have seen the Lord." His love breaks every barrier down, even the toughest of all, the spiritual barricade in our weary hearts. "I have seen the Lord."
Conclusion
Back in the early years of this century, a children's choir in a Philadelphia church enrolled a six-year-old girl whose voice and talent were soon recognized. By the time she was 13 her singing was gaining wide acclaim. It was obvious that with voice lessons she could become what the creator had equipped her to be.
But there were barriers, substantial barriers.
Some of them were circumstantial barriers. Her family was far from wealthy, and her father died when she was quite young. Voice lessons to develop her talent were very costly. What could be done to break down that barrier?
Other barriers were social; there were attitude barriers. To be both black and female in an America still recovering from the Civil War and reconstruction periods was not easy at all, a serious barrier.
And then the spiritual barriers. As her artistry developed, as her musical skills matured, she found few opportunities to perform. In fact, she had to go to Europe and leave behind everything dear to her just to gain a foothold in the musical world. It had to have been disappointing, it had to have been hard to understand, it could have been crushing.
But I want you to hear this morning that people who live in and with the living Christ trust him to break every barrier down. His love breaks down every barrier, no matter how firm. And so, trusting the Lord and telling His people, the members of Union Baptist Church in Philadelphia pooled their nickels and dimes and paid for her lessons, taking the risks that must be taken for barriers to be broken. A music impresario heard her sing in Paris in 1935 and booked her American debut in New York's Town Hall, taking a risk that this audience could go beyond prejudice. And most of all, she took the risk, the spiritual risk, of performing in one of the most caustically critical settings in the world.
Hear It now! People who live in and with the living Christ trust him to break down every barrier. To me it is no accident that it was on Easter Sunday in 1939 that Marian Anderson achieved her legendary triumph over many a barrier when she sang at the Lincoln Memorial. Nor was it an accident that it was on Easter Sunday 1965 that she concluded her career in the very Constitution Hall she had been denied before. And no accident now that it is just before Easter Sunday 1993 when Marian Anderson has crossed that last and strongest barrier of all to be with her Lord.
Jesus said to her, "Marian" And she turned and said, "Master". Her life, her voice, announce to us, “I have seen the Lord.”
TAPE
"Just as I am, Thy love unknown Hath broken every barrier down. Now to be Thine, yea, Thine alone, O Lamb of God, I come, I come.”
