Derek Russell
Contributing columnist
A few days ago, I returned from a trip with my wife to Scotland. We saw a lot of things that made an impression on me, but one thing that I noticed throughout the trip was the walls. There were walls and boundaries in almost all the places that we went. For instance, out in the countryside, there were long stone fences that divided property to keep someone’s sheep, goats or cows in the designated pastures. You could see the stone fences run right up a mountainside. We also visited castles all throughout the country, and all of them had thick defensive walls to keep raiders and enemies out. One particular castle boasted solid rock walls that were ten feet thick in places that could withstand bombardments of cannon balls from land or sea. There were also walls inside the castles themselves to keep common people away from the king or queen, earl, duke, or lady. It was a mark of status or prestige about how close you could physically get to the man or woman in charge. Some were not allowed in the castle at all. Some could get into perimeter rooms but no further. Some were granted access to an audience room where they could interact with the king or queen. If you were of the highest status, you would be shown honor by having access to royalty in their bedroom chambers as they were preparing to go to sleep!
We also visited grand cathedrals and chapels that were hundreds of years old. Almost always, there was a wall that separated the common people (kept to an area known as the nave) from the choir and clergy (the choir or chancel areas). In one ruin of a family chapel near the city of Oban, we could see in the rock walls indentations where the dividing screen hooked in on either side of the chapel, separating commoners from the members of the nobility and the clergy. Walls weren’t just walls, erected for marking property or used as shelter or defense. Walls were used to establish and reinforce a social pecking order. If you were important enough, you were granted access. If you weren’t, the walls (and sometimes guards) were there to keep you out.
One of the many revolutionary ideas in the New Testament is about the abolishing of dividing walls in Christianity. According to the Gospel of Matthew, at the very moment that Jesus died on the cross, the dividing curtain in the temple that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple was torn from top to bottom. The symbolism of that moment is important: through Jesus’ death, humanity can now approach God with boldness when we repent of our sins sincerely and with humility. An intermediary priest is no longer necessary because Jesus himself acts as the High Priest who offers a once-and-for-all sacrifice for sin. The writer of Hebrews reflects on this arrangement in 6:19-20: “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever…”
Not only was the barrier between God and people destroyed by Jesus’ sacrificial death, but the barriers between different types of people in the Church were also destroyed. The Apostle Paul writes to the church in Galatia that by virtue of being baptized into the name of Jesus Christ (repentance of sin is implicit in that action), people are now “clothed” with Christ. Division between Jewish believers and Gentile believers figured prominently in the early church as well as barriers between genders, races and social status. Even so, Paul writes that in the Church, “[t]here is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (3:28) It is not that these distinctions are actually erased. You do not cease to be a man or a woman, a Jew or a Gentile. Paul is saying that the significance of these distinctions is swallowed up in terms of establishing a pecking order because all are in need of God’s grace through Jesus Christ and all have received such grace when they repented and were baptized.
Likewise, to the church in Ephesus, Paul emphasizes the unifying action of Christ’s death between the groupings of Jews and Gentiles within the church that sometimes were in friction with one another. “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility” (2:14-16). Catch the irony of what Paul is pointing out: the cross, an instrument of torture and death, became the means by which people were given life and peace with God and with one another because of Jesus’ action on our behalf.
So, what does all this mean? Simply this: there is no place for walls of hostility and division in God’s Church. What matters is repentance for sin and acceptance of Jesus’ salvation and Lordship. If someone is “in Christ,” then it does not matter if they are a king or a beggar, a master or a slave, a man or a woman, someone brought up as a Jew or a Gentile. The walls and barriers erected by humans are shown to be flimsy artifices, however thick and impenetrable they may seem. The walls fall down in ruins as we join ourselves with Jesus Christ and with others who believe in his name.
Derek Russell is pastor of the Hillsboro Global Methodist Church. He loves Jesus, family, dogs and football.
