Tear Down This Wall

I was reading somewhere that today is the 25th anniversary of Ronald Regan’s famous speech at the Berlin wall where he challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”

President Regan giving his speech at the Berlin Wall 6/12/1987
from the National Archives: http://arcweb.archives.gov (ARC Identifier 198585)

Walls.

People like putting up walls.  There are the walls you can see and the ones you can’t see.

Many walls are physical walls designed to keep our enemies from attacking us.  The thing is that these kind of walls don’t often protect us.  Sure they may prevent enemies from getting in.  But they also keep us from forming relationships that might keep us from having enemies in the first place.

The there are the walls we put up in our lives so that people won’t know what we’re really like because we’re afraid if people knew what we were really like they would not like us.  The problem with these walls is that if people knew what we were really like, they might realize how much we’re alike and they might like us even more.

But worse than the walls to keep people out are the walls that keep people in.  The folks in East Berlin might have said that the walls we’re to keep people out but they were really to keep people in.  The leaders knew that if people could leave easily, many of them would and then there would not be much left to govern.

But the communists aren’t the only ones who do this. The church has often done a very good job of this.  People can get so accustomed to all the programs going on inside the church they forget how to relate to people outside the church.  After a while the people outside the church think of church members as a bit strange, and the church does not do a good job of communicating the good news of Jesus to those who need Him the most.

After the crucifixion of Jesus, the disciples were huddled behind locked doors.  They did not look like likely candidates for communicating the good news about Jesus. Jesus somehow had to go through the walls of that locked room.  He had to get inside to give them a message to go outside

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. Matthew 28:19-20 (ESV)

The church is not about staying—it is about going.

We in the church need to tear down the walls that keep us in just Gorbachev needed to tear down the walls that kept people in.

A few years ago I wrote a song about this:

Tear Down That Wall
© Edd RussellFresno, California 11/2006

You are a God without borders,
You stepped out from heaven for us,
You reached in the dark, lonely places;
Illuminated us with Your love

You tore down all of the fences
That kept us from coming to You.
You opened the doorway to heaven
When Jesus stepped into our lives.

But we’ve erected some fences
To keep all Your love to ourselves.
We hide Your light under a basket
So everyone stays in the dark.

We want to tear down that wall.
We want to tear down that wall.
We want to tear down that wall.
We want to tear down that wall.
Jesus help us tear down that wall.
Cuz we’ve got to tear down that wall.
Yes, we need to tear down that wall.
We want to tear down that wall.