There has been a lot in the news these days about building a wall between the United States and Mexico.
Believe it or not this is not a new idea.
It was a huge issue during the time of the Apostle Paul in the first century of the Christian era. It may not have been about building walls of bricks and mortar along national borders, but building walls of separation was nonetheless a hot issue for the first century Jewish Christians.
Allow me to explain.
Saint Paul is known as the Apostle to the Gentiles. In other words he understood his calling from God to take the Gospel message to the non-Jewish people of his world.
Most of the first generation Christians were Jews. Jesus was a Jew in fact. Christianity sprouted out of the Jewish tradition. This is why it is often referred to as the “Judeo-Christian” tradition, and rightfully so.
In Paul’s world humanity was divided between two major people groups: Jews and non-Jews. These non-Jews were known as “Gentiles” (that's us folks). Any Jew living during the time of Jesus or Paul viewed the world as being divided between these two groups of people.
Over time the Jews began to think of themselves as God’s special chosen people, separate from the rest of the world or the Gentile world. Certain barriers (walls) were put into place within the Jewish Law that ensured that this perceived divinely ordained division not be compromised.
Paul mentions this in his letter to the Ephesians when he states clearly the intended effect of Jesus’ death:
“For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us” (2:14).
Then Paul goes on to say that Jesus’ death intended to “reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it” (2:16).
This in fact was the Apostle Paul’s major insight into the meaning of Jesus’ death on the Cross. The Cross became an instrument of global reconciliation in Paul's mind.
A good way to describe reconciliation is to see it as building bridges between diverse groups of people. Why?
Because unlike walls, that divide people from one another and create hostility between diverse people, bridges connect people.
Many will remember the Berlin Wall that was erected at the outset of the Cold War. The wall became a dividing wall of hostility between the East and the West. Germany thus became a divided nation separated by a wall erected for the most part out of fear and paranoia (see image above).
Yet building such dividing walls is how the world operates when it feels threatened or when it senses immanent danger.
The Berlin Wall was finally torn down when the Cold War ended and Germany was reunited as one nation. Families were reunited. Old acquaintances were resumed. New friends were made. New relationships were created. A new identity was created. Reconciliation between East and West Germany became a new reality.
When the Berlin Wall came down the world did not end. All the fears and paranoia that motivated the building of the wall in the first place turned out to be more perception than reality.
The world is going to build its walls. There isn’t a whole lot we can do about it. Building walls, either metaphorically or literally, is the result of imagined fear and paranoia.
But Christians have a much better model for maintaining and sustaining human relationships:
We build bridges that connect rather than walls that divide.
For Paul Christ became our peace once the dividing wall that divides is taken down. Peace will never become a reality as long as we continue to erect barriers and walls that divide us rather than bridges that connect us as human beings.
We all share in a common humanity. Our differences are only magnified by the walls that divide us.
Let us pray for more bridge-building in our world. As Christians we certainly can model this method in spite of all the walls that go up around us (metaphorically and literally).
Be a bridge builder!
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