Jeremiah 1:4-10
This scripture was read at my service of ordination. My path to ordination was not an easy one. I had the misfortune to be part of an association that, at that time, had a resolution banning the ordination of “self-avowed, practicing homosexuals.” After graduating from seminary, I spent a year—at the request of the association and the conference leaders—traveling around the state, telling my story. I spoke at men’s gatherings and women’s gatherings and clergy gatherings and all-church gatherings. I was told, to my face, “You may be gifted, and you may even be called, but you are not fit for ministry.” I finally was able to get ordained not because I changed people’s minds, but because of our church polity or structure, and a loophole that meant if they denied me ordination, they would have to deny it to every candidate for ordination that year. Basically, I got ordained on a technicality! (I’m not sure I told the pastoral search committee that!)
I had spent a year trying to convince everyone that I was fit for ministry, that I was worthy of the call. Then, as my ordination date grew closer, I was faced with the enormity of the task of pastoring, and suddenly I wanted to yell: “No, wait! I’m not worthy!” Not because I am a lesbian, but because I’m so very human. To me, being a pastor is an honor. Who could be worthy of the honor to marry you, to baptize your children, to sit with you in the hospital or stand before you at the graveside.
So I chose this scripture for my ordination service. I found comfort in the idea that prophets of old, such as Jeremiah, also were fearful about the task set before them. I found comfort in hearing, “Do not say I am only a boy” or “only a girl” or “only a human.” This scripture reminded me that God would go with me, and God would use me, in spite of my failings.
But I didn’t use the last portion of our assigned text for today in my ordination service. I didn’t like the idea that God might appoint me “to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” I liked the “build and plant” part, but not the rest. Why would I want to be appointed to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow? And why was there twice as much destruction as construction?
I think it’s because we have built so much that needs to be torn down.
We build walls between us and others—walls that keep us at a safe distance; walls that protect us from prying eyes; walls that are built with fake smiles to keep others from seeing how much we hurt. We build walls and then wonder why we feel so alone.
We build walls in order to compartmentalize our lives, with soundproof doors so that the different areas don’t mix. Within our hearts and lives we have a walled-off work area, a family room, maybe a small courtyard out front for charity work, and maybe even an itty bitty prayer closet in the back. But when we keep the different areas of our lives separate, we become less than we could be. We become fragmented when our room for family is too small. We become burned-out when our charity is not informed and empowered by our faith. We become emotionally sterile if our spirituality and our sexuality are not viewed and experienced together.
We build walls within our very souls, separating us from our own deepest self—walls that cut us off from our own feelings; walls that keep us from looking at our own truths; walls that separate our vague dissatisfaction from our ability to name our desire for more. We build walls and then wonder why we can’t feel.
It’s no wonder our passage from Jeremiah calls for twice as much destruction as construction. We have built so many walls.
I’m not talking about boundaries—boundaries are good and healthy and keep us safe. I’m talking about things that separate us unnecessarily, unfairly, to our detriment and the detriment of others.
It’s part of the human condition, I suppose, because part of the human condition is getting hurt. We get hurt, and we add a brick. We lose a dream, and we add a few more. We grow afraid that others won’t like us if they really knew us, and before we know it, we’ve added another wall.
And then there are the walls we build between us and God. We build them for a variety of reasons. Often it’s shame—feeling ashamed of who we are or what we’ve done. Or it’s fear—fear of God’s judgment or retribution. Or it’s distrust—not sure of what God will demand if we get too close. Or it’s pain. Something bad happens—some loss or trauma—and we blame God for causing it … or at least not stopping it. And up goes the wall.
A friend of mind—I’ll call her Karen—told me once about how her older siblings were raised with a very different view of God and religion than she was … because of how different their mother was by the time Karen, the last of five, came along. Her mother’s first two children were fine and healthy, but her third child had a rare auto-immune disease—so rare that she was only the fourth child in the U.S. to be diagnosed with it. She spent a year and a half in the hospital. As she was finally getting better, the fourth child came along. When that child was two years old, she was diagnosed with leukemia. She died two years later, at age four, when my friend Karen was only 1 month old.
Karen’s mother was furious with God. She wanted nothing to do with anything that had anything to do with God. So while Karen’s oldest siblings grew up going to mass every Sunday with the family, Karen remembers walking to church alone when she was eight because there was no way in heaven or hell her mother was going to attend. Karen’s mother built a wall, a wall made of anger and grief and pain, a wall that took many years to come down.
It did come down—Karen told me her mom ultimately came back to God—but I don’t know how it happened. I’m not sure if Karen knows how it happened. After all, there are no bulldozers for tearing down the walls of the spirit—or if there are, they are so painful that we would never ask for them. Most of the time, walls have to be torn down brick by brick, stone by stone. And they usually will not come down without our permission.
I am reminded of Robert Frost’s famous poem called “Mending Wall.” People most often quote the line, “Good fences make good neighbors,” suggesting that we can be good neighbors only when the walls between us are steady and sure. But that is the opposite of what Frost was saying in his poem. Listen to this excerpt.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. . . .
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each. . . .
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbours? 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.”
There is something in us that doesn’t love our walls. Sure, we think we need them. We think we want them. We think we need their protection. But our souls do not love a wall. Our souls long for human connection, the knitting of our hearts so that we stay strong together and unraveling is our undoing. Our souls long for connection with God. Something there is that does not love a wall.
I can’t help but think of the Berlin wall, which divided the city and the country for nearly thirty years. Those in power didn’t actually intend to tear it down. They wanted to ease the strain of refugees fleeing to Czechoslovakia, and so they agreed to open the gates, including those in Berlin, to facilitate the movement of refugees. Later that day they added a provision for round-trip travel. But the man who made the announcement wasn’t part of the conversation and didn’t understand all the implications. He just read the announcement and erroneously said it was to take effect immediately. That night a news anchor said, “This is a historic day. East Germany has announced that, starting immediately, its borders are open to everyone…. The gates in the Berlin Wall stand open.”[1] And then they had to. East Germans began gathering at the wall, demanding that the border guards open the gates. After many frantic phone calls, “It soon became clear that no one among the East German authorities would take personal responsibility for issuing orders to use lethal force, so [without threats of violence] the vastly outnumbered soldiers had no way to hold back the huge crowd of East German citizens.”[2] Finally, at 10:45 pm, the guards opened the checkpoints and people began flooding in. “Soon afterward, a crowd of West Berliners jumped on top of the wall, and were soon joined by East German youngsters. They danced together to celebrate their new freedom.”[3]
The East German rulers had thought that wall protected them and their people; but it only held them captive. It is difficult to believe that today, we have so many leaders who have not learned from the past. Once again, politicians talk about building walls to keep us safe. We know better. We know that walls do not hold the answer to our fears.
Whether we are thinking of the metaphorical walls we build, or the political and national walls we think will save us, there are three important things for us to remember.
First, the call of God is upon us all. We all are prophets and we all have been appointed to pluck up and pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, that which separates us—walls of bigotry and xenophobia, walls of racism and Islamophobia, walls of national pride and personal shame. We are called—and appointed—to tear them down.
Second, although pickaxes come in handy, never underestimate the power of freedom’s dance. Walls may go up to the sound of marching boots, but they give way to dancing shoes.
And last but not least, never forget: The risen Christ has a habit of walking through walls. So if you think you’ve built a nice strong wall between you and God, you might want to look beside you.
Amen.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.