Lenten Service, March 17, 2004
(Jimmie Johnson)

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall that wants it down.” Gospel writer Mark didn’t read Robert Frost, but I’d like to believe Frost read Mark. Mark says that when Jesus was coming up out of his baptism, “he saw the heavens torn apart” (Mark 1:10). Matthew and Luke commenting on the same scene say: “the heavens were opened” (Matthew 3:16 and Luke3:21). Mark, being Mark, is insistently more graphic in his language. He says the heavens were torn apart, ripped. In Greek the word is schizo. It means “to split” or “to rend” or “to tear down.”

Mark is doing theology here rather than historical reporting as if the event could be a video clip on the 5 o’clock news. Mark believes the buffer zone between heaven and earth, between God and human beings is torn, ripped. Or, using the metaphor of Robert Frost, Mark says that the wall between God and humanity is knocked down in the coming of Jesus. Whatever else Christmas, Holy Week, and Easter mean: they mean Christian faith declares God doesn’t love walls. God wants them down.

The other place Mark uses this word schizo, “to tear” or “rip” is in chapter 15 of Mark’s gospel where there is the description of the crucifixion. Again the scene is intended, at least I believe, as more theology than history. Mark says when Jesus died on the cross, “the curtain of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.”

It is as if Mark has put parentheses around his whole gospel. He puts schizo, “tear, rip,” at the beginning, and he puts it at the end. He wants us to believe that the whole story of Jesus is all about God tearing down dividing walls, ripping apart the barriers that divide us from God and each other.

In the gospel of Mark, which is the primary gospel for the church this year, we would do well this Lent to recognize “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down.” So in the spirit of Lent and an honest preparation for Holy Week and in a clear acknowledgment of the fact, “Thou art dust, and to dust you shall return,” let us ask ourselves: “Are we as congregations in the Body of Christ, are we specialists in the construction of walls or in their removal?” If we are on our way to dust, why think walls are important?

I remember a heated discussion with members of another congregation. Some representatives on the committee were nervous about my beliefs, not all but a few. One lady in particular carried the flag that furled the news that there are two kinds of people in the universe: the saved and the damned. She kept thinking I needed some help with my beliefs so that I, too, would buy into such a two-tiered understanding of the universe: the “in” and the “out.” Finally, I looked her in the eyes and asked: “How many people have to be in hell for you to feel safe?”

The gospel of Mark says, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down.” “The heavens were torn open, the curtain in the temple separating the holy from the lesser was ripped.” That something is the power of God set loose in the world in the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It ripples into a ground swell through the whole gospel of Mark from chapters one to sixteen, tumbling down the walls of fear, of prejudice, of hatred, of division.

So Jesus reaches out and touches and touches and touches every kind of person that human structures, human prejudice, human blindness would isolate, ostracize, or wall off as a child of God. And, in reaching out to touch, in that act of solidarity with excluded people, Jesus, rather than confirming their exclusion, shows that Jesus draws such a one into the family of God.

Jesus was “wall tumbling,” “leper touching,” “sinner loving,” “stranger welcoming” because there’s something about the transforming grace of God that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down.