Proper 11 , Year B (2012)
Martha Brimm
2 Samuel 7:1-14a
Ephesians 2:11-22
Mark 6:30-34,53-56
Holy and loving God, we lift up to your mercy and grace all who died or were
injured in the attacks in Aurora, Colorado this past week. We pray for their families
and friends. We also lift up the young man who carried out the attack and his family.
We pray for all who suffer violence and for those who engage in it to the hurt of others.
We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I’ve been thinking a lot about walls lately. Most likely that’s because I’ve
been shadowing two prison chaplains at Polk Correctional Institution to prepare to
serve as a volunteer chaplain. Polk is a maximum security prison in Butner and it
houses about a thousand young men, ages 19-25---most are 19-21. It is both an
intake and holding facility. After initial diagnostic testing, a man may be transferred
to another facility or held at Polk. In addition to general population and segregation
units, Polk also has a Supermax Unit, where men of all ages are held after
committing offenses while in prison.
Walls are the first things you see when you drive up to Polk: wall upon
wall---there are double chain-link fences topped with spiraled razor wire---the brick
walls of the guard house---the stone walls of the main buildings---the grey concrete
walls of the Supermax Unit. Inside the prison are still more walls: walls of glass that
define officers’ control centers, separate visitors from inmates, and eliminate all
privacy. In the Supermax Unit, there are metal doors that open only with large
metal keys--- locked doors within locked doors--- and narrow metal flaps in the
inmost doors that an officer unlocks to pass food inside. Officers approach these
inner doors carrying plastic shields in front of themselves. In the segregation unit,
metal bars enclose the stairs to the second and third tiers of cells because several
years ago a resident threw himself from the top of the stairs, headlong into the
concrete floor. In the segregation unit, in the general population dorms, and in the
administration building there are metal cages in the halls that serve as holding
places for inmates in transit to appointments or for cooling off tempers. Walls---they are everywhere here.
In the reading from Second Samuel for today we find King David in
conversation with the prophet Nathan, and the subject has to do with walls. David
says, “See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent.” God
had given David safety in the midst of his enemies and David had settled into a
dwelling paneled with precious cedar. Perhaps in this moment of respite from
battle, David has had time to consider the contrast between his dwelling and God’s.
The ark of God was in a tent while David lived in a house with solid walls. When I
first read this passage, I thought---how thoughtful of David to want to build a
permanent dwelling for God---but then I wondered why David didn’t think of
constructing God’s house before his own was built---At any rate, Nathan first encourages David’s plan. Then in the night, “the
word of the Lord came to Nathan: Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord:
Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the
day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving
about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the
people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel,
whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, "Why have you not built
me a house of cedar?" As the reading continues, it becomes clear that God does not
wish David to build a house, a temple for God’s name----that task will be for David’s
offspring. But rather God will build a house for David----but one without walls, a
dynasty. A note in the HarperCollins Study Bible (7.13, p. 446) points out that here
“the author is playing on two meanings of house in Hebrew---David’s house, or
dynasty, and the Lord’s house, or temple.” Notice also that the author is careful to
say that David’s offspring, undoubtedly Solomon, will build a house for God’s name,
thus avoiding the idea that God can ever be confined by walls, however expensively
magnificent. When David has heard God’s words as spoken by Nathan, he reacts
with praise and gratitude, recounting God’s deeds for Israel and, returning to the
subject of his own dynasty, prays that God may fulfill the promise forever.
David wanted to build a house for God. A generous impulse! How many
times do we have that impulse ourselves! To build beautiful walls to honor and
worship God. But might we also be trying to confine God to someplace we feel is
appropriate for God to dwell? Perhaps so that we can go to visit God when we want
to---- and have significant spiritual experiences----- and where God will stay when it
is not convenient for God to be around us.
Walls. They keep things out and they keep things in. They confine and they
protect. They divide and they include. Walls are built to last forever and yet against
all odds the Berlin Wall fell. Here in the US borderlands and in Israel/Palestine,
walls are constructed out of steel and concrete, fear and desperation. They are
painted with signs of peace and open windows and doors. Names of those who died
trying to cross over, around or under them are painted in broad strokes. Walls
honor war dead and provoke war. We can mean and do many things with walls.
Then there are walls built not of bricks, cedar or concrete----walls of hostility
and hate that divide just as effectively as material walls. These are the walls that
once divided Gentiles and Jews in the reading we heard from Ephesians. The author
reminds Gentiles that they were at one time “aliens from the commonwealth of
Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God
in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought
near by the blood of Christ. 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.” Jews and Gentiles have become members of the household of God, the church,
with equal access to God. It is in Jesus that hostility is broken and peace restored. In
Christ, the Ephesian Gentiles and Jews, along with us here at St. Joseph’s, are called
to be a spiritual dwelling place for God, defined not by walls but by God’s peace and
grace. “For we are what (God) has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works,
which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”
In the Gospel reading from Mark we heard that Jesus was beset by the
crowds seeking his healing presence. A commentator writing in Preaching through
the Christian Year (p. 352), points out that the crowd’s “presence and enthusiasm
leave Jesus and the Twelve no time to eat…; they anticipate Jesus’ destination and
run on foot to all the towns…; they arrive ahead of Jesus and wait for him…; they
stay with him until a late hour…. They are not only drawn to Jesus, but they are
driven by their own desperation, being like “’sheep without a shepherd…’” What is
Jesus’ reaction to this overwhelming neediness? He could have refused to deal with
them, building a wall between himself and the crowds, but he does not. Instead he
reaches out in compassion to teach and heal. Later after the crowd has been fed,
Jesus goes up on the mountain to pray.
As I shadowed Chaplain Eldridge and Chaplain Bullock at Polk, that place of
so many walls, I saw them reaching out in compassion, breaching the walls of
isolation and alienation. A few snapshots-----Chaplain Bullock speaking with a man
in the Supermax Unit, bending down to see him through the unlocked flap in the
metal door. He gives the man a book, exchanging it for one the man had read, and
their conversation is like that of friends. After a conversation with another man in
Supermax, this one in a visitation cell divided by a glass wall, with the man in
handcuffs and leg shackles, Chaplain Eldridge holds his hand up to the glass next to
the man’s hand and prays with him. In the segregation unit, Chaplain Eldridge
listens to a man through the crack in his door. There is a small window in the door,
but the chaplain cannot both see and listen to the man at the same time. It is hard to
hear over the banging and shouting in the unit, but the chaplain listens intently to
the man’s unfolding story of childhood abuse, pain, and hopelessness. The man says
he faces an eight-year sentence here and a life sentence in Virginia. He is nineteen.
Do the actual walls dividing chaplain from inmate fall during any of these
interactions? Of course not. But compassion and fellowship can reach past glass and
metal boundaries. God can work with the smallest grain of faith, a smile, a listening
ear, an act of forgiveness, a move toward reconciliation. And suddenly there’s a
crack in the wall. And walls can fall ----walls of alienation, isolation, and
hopelessness. And it is an amazing sight.
What walls have we carefully constructed or run into between ourselves and
God and between ourselves and our neighbors? The good news is that by the grace
of God those walls can come tumbling down. The good news is that in Christ, God
has already broken down all barriers that alienate and separate and calls us all into
the freedom of God’s household, to love and serve God and our neighbor.