Tear Down That Wall

It was Christmas day, just before I graduated from high school (dating myself here, I know), when I opened a gift from my parents and found inside a small chunk of concrete. Yes, concrete… not coal, but concrete (I must have been a really bad kid). With it was a certificate of authenticity indicating that it was a piece of the Berlin Wall.

Construction on the Berlin Wall began on August 13, 1961. Originally it was a barbed-wire fence before it eventually reached the point of becoming the formidable barrier most people recognize which separated East and West Berlin. Interestingly, in the Soviet Union the wall was called the “Anti-Fascist Protective Rampart.” An icon of the Cold War, it stood for 28 years until November 9, 1989 when East German officials allowed people to freely cross the border into West Berlin. In the days and weeks which followed, many chipped, hammered and pounded at the wall to take home a piece of Cold War history.

This is how I came by the lump of concrete sitting on a shelf in my office. Some forward-thinking person bought multiple sections of the wall on the East Berlin side. The sections were then imported to America, broken up, boxed with certificates of authenticity, and placed on sale in department stores in time for Christmas. It has always struck me how such a symbol of Communism could be shattered and then distributed all over the world by capitalism.

Every time I think of the Berlin Wall and remember watching the fall of it on television, I think about the soreg. The soreg was the low wall that surrounded the temple in Jerusalem and kept the non-Jewish Gentiles from entering. In fact, archaeologists have discovered inscriptions written in Greek stating: “No foreigner is to enter the barriers surrounding the sanctuary. He who is caught will have himself to blame for his death which will follow.”

In Ephesians, we find that even though we were once cut off from God (“…without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (2:12)), for the Christian there has been a change: “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (2:13). Paul continues, “For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity (2:14-16).

That “middle wall of separation” mentioned in verse 14 is the soreg. We are separated from God no longer, and all who follow Christ as the only Savior and as God Himself are now united in the same family. No more walls, no more soreg. No matter what we look like, how we dress, how much money we have in the bank, or what side of town we call home, as Christians we are part of the same body, the Body of Christ. Since this is the case, what keeps us apart?

Back to Germany…

Now, years after the fall of the wall, there are still people who focus on the cultural differences of East and West Germans. A 2004 poll indicated that 12% of East Germans and 25% of West Germans wished the Berlin Wall still snaked through the city, cutting the groups off from each other. This view is referred to as “Mauer im Kopf” (“The wall in the head”).

Even though the physical wall that separated them is gone, there is still a mental barrier when they think of each other. Maybe sometimes, as Christians, we’ve got “the soreg in the head.” If God tore down the wall, what gives me the right to build it again… even if it is in my mind?