“Oh, the house of denial has thick walls and very small windows

and whoever lives there, little by little, will turn to stone.”

– Mary Oliver

 “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall…”

– Robert Frost

Beloved of God,

One of the great motivations for us to move forward with our plans to “refresh” our sanctuary and narthex with new carpet, paint, lighting, furniture, and windows, is to make our building space and facilities match the bright, vibrant and welcoming nature of our community.  Phases 1 and 2 of this project call for us to focus on spaces within the building, but conversations will inevitably lead us to evaluate the outside of our building as well—the face we project to the neighborhood and community beyond our doors.

We’ve done quite a bit in recent years—via God’s Work-Our Hands projects, patio events, raingardens and cisterns, Tiny House build, ramps, little library, solar panels, HUB work—to give neighbors a view into the priorities of this congregation that gathers at 39th and Thistle.   When we replace the westside narthex windows (Phase 2) with ones which are more energy efficient and which allow us to visually connect with the world outside our building (and visa versa), we’ll be taking another step toward seeing our mission more clearly.  That mission to “venture beyond ourselves” (Vision Statement) calls us to always be looking for ways to connect with the people and world around us; ways to join in the work God is already doing there.

While we’ve been moving forward with our facility plan, the news cycle in the greater world has been dominated by conversation about the need—or not—for a wall along the U.S. Mexico border.  Poet Mary Oliver, who died last month, reminds us that walls not only separate people and things, they damage the souls of those who erect them. (See excerpt of her poem above.)  The next line of her poem reads: “In those years I did everything I could do and I did it in the dark— I mean without understanding.” Entrenched positions put blinders on us from which there is no escape.

During this Season of Light we are called to follow Christ beyond our personal or corporate entrenchments. To remind us how difficult this can be, as February begins we hear the story of Jesus’ sermon in this hometown of Nazareth. At first, the community seems to welcome his message – proclaiming liberty to captives and letting the oppressed go free sounds perfectly fine to them.  But the ensuing conversation devolves into an argument about insiders and outsiders and the next thing you know, the hometown crowd is ready to throw Jesus over the cliff!

St. Paul, who planted many congregations throughout the Mediterranean world and who struggled to help them grasp the implications of being grafted into Christ, spoke powerfully about the importance of reconciliation, which at its heart is about breaking down barriers so relationships can be restored. In Ephesians he writes: “For Christ is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups (Jew and Gentile) into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.”  And in 2 Corinthians Paul testifies to the God “who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.”

In his poem, Mending Wall, Robert Frost takes us with him as he and his neighbor go through their annual process of “setting the wall between us” which weather, man, and beast have breached. In the middle of this exercise, Frost wonders aloud why they do it.  “Good fences make good neighbors,” comes his neighbor’s reply.  And Frost challenges: “Why do they make good neighbors?  Isn’t it where there are cows?  But here there are no cows.  Before I built a wall I’d ask to know what I was walling in or walling out, and to whom I was like to give offence.  Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down.”  In the end, Frost concludes of his neighbor, “He moves in darkness as it seems to me, not of woods only and the shade of trees.”

A good deal of the opposition Jesus experienced in his ministry—including in his hometown—had to do with how he pushed the presumed boundaries of God’s circle of care outward, so that it encompassed those whom law and tradition had walled out.  When at his crucifixion the curtains of the Temple are torn in two from top to bottom—the last wall between God and humanity is breached.  But we human beings are good at building and maintaining walls and fences.  And so the work of erecting them in locations both new and old continues ad nauseam.

Yet, however much we find ourselves tilting toward the task of erecting or reinforcing barriers that would divide, Jesus shows us—and great poets remind us—not to mindlessly accept the convention of wall building, but to bend will and body instead to the task of their dismantling.

Peace,

Pastor Erik