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July 19 2015
Healing
2 Samuel 7:1-14
Ephesians 2:11-22
By Rev. Dr. Janet Macgregor-Williams
West Milford Presbyterian Church
The world is full of walls. There are walls everywhere, fences, partitions, and
ingeniously constructed barriers—all aimed at keeping something or someone either in
our out. Walls in our homes divide one room from the next, we build fences to mark off
my yard from your yard, we build walls along side the highway to confine the noise of
traffic, and in Israel we build walls that divide neighborhoods. But I am reminded of the
words of the poet Robert Frost who wrote:
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 Ephesians we read that Christ has “broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility
between us.” It’s difficult to understand how this can happen, especially today, when
hostility appears to be ingrained in our society. But we know that we have helped to
build walls of hostility. We’ve built many of them not out of bricks and mortar, but out of
the raw material of sin and division. Over the last six months we have seen many of
these walls exposed, from racial prejudice, to immigration; from political parties to right
here in our own community.
In Biblical times the walls were built around circumcision, those who had been
circumcised pitted against those who had not; so it was Jews were pitted against
Gentiles. We see this same battle going on in the Middle East today, between those
that are Jewish and those that are Palestinian. We are reminded that all walls serve a
purpose, but not always the purpose of God.
Paul challenges the early church to tear down the walls that divide, much in the
same way we heard Ronald Regan say “Tear down this wall” 28 years ago in Berlin.
Two years after Regan’s speech the wall that many thought would never came down
was torn down. The two hallmarks of Paul’s ministry were evangelism as he planted
churches through out the Mediterranean, and tearing down the walls that divided Jews
and Gentiles, circumcised and uncircumcised. It was not easy, but he knew that it was
of God.
I must say that as one of those “Gentile converts” I am grateful for the work and
words of Paul. Not only am I not Jewish, but I didn’t grow up in a church, so I truly
stand before you today as an outsider; and yet as Paul says, we are united in Christ, for
we have built our lives on the same corner stone.
Many of you know that I have taken up quilting in recent years. I enjoy taking
straps of fabric that don’t fit together and put them together to make a pattern. Out of
these scraps I can create blocks and sew those block into one quilt, creating something
beautiful that can bring warmth to someone else. Recently I was helping someone
make a quilt, she was sharing with me her anxiety about cutting into the fabric. I tried to
explain to her that it is only fabric and if you don’t cut it, you can never make a quilt.
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The same can be said of human relationships. If we are not willing to take the
risk and be vulnerable, then we will never know the joy of lasting friendship. Or as
Tennyson put it: “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
Tearing down walls is risky business, but oh so rewarding.
There are several times I have seen the walls come tumbling down, and it gives
me a glimpse of that spiritual dwelling that God is making, not built with bricks and
mortar or human hands. Here are several examples:
 My first church was a multi racial and cross cultural congregation, with
members from Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Barbados, Jamaica, as well as the United
States. We learned from each other’s cultures and explored what it means to live
together as brothers and sisters in Christ.
 Faith in Action, here in West Milford is another example. It was great to
reach out to the community, but the most amazing part from my perspective was
to see churches come together across denominational lines. So often we get
caught up in debating theology, and forget that it is Christ who brings us together,
not divides us.
 This week, as we hosted VBS, we used curriculum and decorations that came
from Echo Lake Baptist Church (a relationship that grew out of Faith in Action).
The children who came represented about four different churches in our
community. Once again it was exciting to see how we could put aside those
things that divide us and remember that we are all part of God’s family.
 We see this even within our own denomination and our own church. As
Presbyterians we talk about being a connectional church, that we don’t go it
alone but are connected. So many of our decorations from VBS are being
passed on to yet another church to use. And I am reminded that when we
celebrated our Bicentennial eight years ago, we talked about our two daughter
churches; both Oak Ridge Presbyterian Church and Ringwood Community
Presbyterian Church were founded by members of this congregation, as they
sought to reach out and share the gospel.
We see it again our reading from Samuel. We love to build churches, but God doesn’t
dwell in buildings, God dwells in human lives, as we seek to serve God with all that we
do and are. So it is we hear the words of Frost again:
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
God has given us the gift of unity, building the kingdom of God. Maybe our vision of
heaven should be a great big family reunion, in which we discover brothers and sisters
that we never knew we had. When we tear down the walls that divide, we might just
find a little bit of heaven in the here and now.
Today, as we come to a service of healing, we seek God’s healing for body, mind
and spirit. We seek wholeness in health and in our life together.