JOHN UPTON from the


President


CHRIST Is our Peace


Recently, I have had opportunity to be with the Asia Pacific Baptist Federation at their 8th


Congress in Kuala Lumpur,


Malaysia, and a chance to visit with the European Baptist Federation (EBF) at their annual Council meeting in Elstal,


Germany. In preparing to speak at these events I was reading Ephesians 2 where Paul was addressing a conflict between the Jews and Gentiles in the church. He said,


“Christ, our peace, has made us one, he has destroyed the dividing wall.”


After reading that passage I acknowledged what I have always


known, that we humans are specialists in building walls. On my travels for the BWA I have seen some pretty famous ones we have built. There is Hadrian’s Wall in North England built by Romans to keep out the Scots. It was 73 miles (117 km) and much of it is still standing after all this time. There is the notorious Berlin Wall. I joined a busload of the EBF community, led by EBF President Hans Guderian, to tour the place where the wall stood dividing the East and the West. There is the Israeli Wall alongside and inside the West Bank, barbed-wire, concrete, and 470 miles (756 km) long to contain the Palestinians. And on the southern border of my own country there is a double fenced wall stretching some 700 miles (1,126 km) from San Diego, California, to El Paso, Texas, to keep Mexicans out. And you know, don’t you, that when astronauts orbit the earth they can see only one thing with their naked eye that gives evidence of human existence. Know what it is? It is the Great Wall of China. It is all you can see up there of us. It is like our signature across the planet – a wall. Then there are those walls that may not be so huge to the visible


eye, but are just as real. I mean walls like racial walls, cultural walls, political walls, economic, educational, generational, international, regional, tribal, religious, and, of course, denominational and theological walls. We are spectacular at dividing and sub-dividing and sub-dividing again into more and more little pieces. It is wonderful that we are different. The problem is that over and


over our differences turn into divisions and divisions into exclusions. So, we live in these bizarre and damaging isolations. We even do this in our families and with each other. If there is


something about you I’m not sure I like or I’m not sure I trust, a little wall in my heart goes up. Hostile words and actions are not even required. Silences build up. Year by year, brick by brick, the walls go up.


The strangest of all are the dividing walls we build within ourselves


so that parts of ourselves are actually blocked off from other parts of ourselves. This leaves us conflicted and paralyzed and frustrated. “I want to give a better gift, but I have needs, too.” “I want to forgive them, but I have my pride.” To be honest, the walls inside us and the walls outside of us are all inseparable. My prayer is that there is something within us that doesn’t like


walls and knows they are not good for anyone. Paul says it is the work of Christ within us that wants walls to come down. “Christ is our


JANUARY/MARCH 2013 31


peace, who has made us one and who has broken down the dividing wall.” I love this image that the love of God in Christ is like a cruciform hammer crushing downward to break through the division between us and the Divine, breaking through to destroy all divisions between us. It turns out the disconnect between each of us and within each of us is rooted in our disconnect with the Divine. Christ demolishes both dimensions. Many of us couldn’t take our eyes off


of the television in November of 1989 when a party broke out in Berlin with young people dancing on top of the Berlin Wall. There were thousands and thousands hammering at it with their chisels. Gates that were locked for so long were opening. There were millions of people streaming into the streets with so much singing and laughing and weeping. Enemies and strangers were embracing one another like long-lost friends. It wasn’t hard to see him that night, Christ, leading the dance on top of a doomed wall turning enemies and strangers into new friends.


Christ has summoned us to this kind


of work. Christ is our peace. He is making us one.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32