...tearing down our fences

*this writing was tapped into being in the year 2008, but seemed timely when I stumbled across it.
-laca.

So brothers, sisters, praise his name who died to set us free

From sin, division, hate and shame, from spite and enmity!

In Christ there is no east or west --- he breaks all barriers down;

By Christ redeemed, by Christ possessed, in Christ we live as one.

“Good fences make good neighbors,” says the New England neighbor in Robert Frost’s Mending Wall. And probably at some time in all of our lives, we may have been tempted to quote him; when the neighbor’s grass reaches knee-high, when the next-door yard is full of tiny plastic ride-on toys and lots of screaming toddlers falling off them, maybe when your neighbor gardens in a bikini that would have been close-fitting several years and pounds) back. We even like the idea of fences and walls to keep certain groups of folks separated from others; them, and us.

In this text we sing that Christ came to break barriers, to minimize what separates us, to set us free from the things that hold us back from unity. And there is something a little scary about tearing down fences, something a little out-of-control about ending our human-constructed divisions. Jesus says we’ll just have to trust him for that. “Something there is,” Robert Frost said, “that doesn’t love a wall.”

Here’s to a tear-down, coming soon to a neighborhood near you!

...doesn't love a wall

Nothing in height or in depth
which befriends or befalls us,
nothing in life or death
which forbids or forestalls us,
nothing can limit the love of our saviour, Jesus.
---John L. Bell, 1998

 "You must be this tall to ride this ride." "You must be born after this date to _______ (play in this league, enter kindergarten, see this movie, buy beer)." "Sale price: $2.99. Limit 4." "Whites only."

Oh, we humans love our limits. We love to put them on others --- what are rules, really, but limits imposed on society? Sometimes with good reason, sometimes for no discernible reason at all, we hem others in with lists of rules --- the 'thou shalts' and 'thou shalt nots' (we especially love the 'thou shalt nots'!) --- like bright strings of barbed wire keeping cattle contained in a field.

The funny thing is, we also seem to like to set limits on ourselves, or to let someone else set them for us. If there are no rules, we would have to invent some. Something about staring out across that open prairie scares the daylights out of us. Like the neighbor in Robert Frost's Mending Wall, we murmur under our breath, "Good fences make good neighbors," and keep on stacking stones to divide us from limitlessness.

Because it is our way, then, to set limits, we fail at comprehending a limitless God. Because it is our way, we spend our energy stacking stones at what we perceive to be the limits of God's powerful love. "Good fences make good neighbors. Good fences make good neighbors. Good fences make good neighbors." We spend our waking hours stringing glinting, razor-sharp barbed-wire at the edge of our conception of the limits of God's mercy.

And all the while, God stands, smiling, one step over the fence. One step beyond our limits. Because nothing can separate us.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall...