Again this week the lesson from the Epistle is most likely an early Christian hymn. What did the early church sing about? They sang about the possibility of peace and reconciliation that was now available to the whole world through Christ. In this hymn, we have word pairs showing the contrast between “then,” the time before Jesus came into the world, and “now.”
Then they were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel
Then they were strangers to the covenantThen they had no hope
Then they were without God in the world
Then they had no access to the Father
Now they have been brought near
Now both groups are one
Now the dividing wall is gone
Now the hostility is no longer
Now they are all a new humanity through him, one body, reconciled to God, with Christ himself as their cornerstone
These are powerful words and images for us to hear today. They point us to our eternal hope that one day there will be peace on earth and good will toward all people. One day, there will no longer be categories of people signaling division: no longer slave or free, woman or man, Gentile or Jew or Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist, straight or gay, black or white or yellow or brown. One day, some day, the peace that is in Christ will reign.
We need to sing this hymn of hope in our world today, because we live in a world that is all about walls and barriers, insiders and outsiders, privileged and unprivileged. In some places, such as the holy lands of Israel and Palestine, there are literal, physical walls that separate the Palestinians from the Jews.
What walls, invisible or physical, are in your community? Can you talk about the separations? Can you look beyond the more obvious signals such as skin color, class, and religion and talk about the barriers in your community or your congregation that hold people back from becoming fully a part of the neighborhood, the classroom, the Sunday School group, or the church? What can you do to begin to tear down those walls in the name of Jesus Christ?