Sermon Cloud

In the opening scene of the movie, “Saving Private Ryan” there is one of the most realistic depictions ever put on film, of the D-Day offensive on the beaches of Normandy. The German guns were embedded on the tops of the cliffs. The British and American troops were storming the beach. The naval cannon fire had missed their targets, and the paratroopers who were to come in from behind the guns, were blown and scattered all over the countryside. Many Marines died before they even got out of the landing crafts,

many more died on the beach itself or in the water. But by perseverance, determination and ingenuity, they finally climbed the cliffs and took out the German gunners. The beaches of Normandy were difficult and some gunner positions were as high as 170 feet above the beach. Yet, they eventually overcame the enemy, and by nightfall on June 6, they had gotten a toehold on France. It was the beginning of the end of World War II.

The cliffs were like walls that needed to be climbed, and though they didn’t come a tumbling down, the allies were able to surmount the obstacle.

Walls are such a great metaphor in life. And there are all kinds of walls that we encounter throughout our lives. Walls are often barriers that keep things out, that keep us out. And sometimes walls can be barriers that keep us in. Sometimes we have to attack the walls in our lives, and sometimes we try to hide behind them. Regardless of where the walls are in our lives, or whether they are the safety kind or the obstacle kind, I believe that God wants for us to live in a world with fewer walls of every kind.

Our job as Christians is to knock walls down. We should knock down the walls in society that separate us from our brothers and sisters, and we should knock down the walls we ourselves have erected, because in the end they only imprison us, they do not protect us.

The knocking down of the walls of the City of Jericho is just one more in a long line of miracles performed by God to give the Israelites the Promised Land. Before this episode in Jericho the people who inhabited Canaan had heard that God was with the Israelites. They had heard of their conquests, and they had heard that God parted the Jordan River to allow the whole of the Israelite people to enter into Canaan on dry ground.

The citizens of Jericho were greatly afraid of the Israelites and instead of fighting them, they cowered inside the protective walls of the city. It was Jericho that closed the city gates. It was Jericho’s residents that fortified the city against attack, and yet clearly they became imprisoned in their own fortification.

The Israelites, marched around the city, once per day for six days. They blew the trumpets, carried the Ark of the Covenant and processed around the walls each day. But on the seventh day, they marched around the walls seven times. And at the end of the seventh circle, the seven priests blew their rams horns as loud as they could. And Joshua commanded the people to shout and yell at the top of their lungs. And surprisingly, the great fortified walls, just crumbled and fell outwards.

Here’s a bit of interesting archaeological fact: the excavations of the ancient city of Jericho, have found that the walls of the city fell outward, not inward. Three different archaeological digs since 1909 have proven over and over that the biblical account is accurate. There was no sign that weapons or cannonballs, nor large boulders were slung against the walls. They fell outward. The question is: how did that happen?

Have you ever seen that film clip of the Takoma Narrows suspension bridge in Takoma, Washington.In 1940, four months after it opened, the bridge began to wave and waffle for over an hour before it broke up. The bridge was buffeted by a constant wind of 42 miles per hour. And the wind whipping through the wires hanging down from the main suspension cable began to sing. The reason why that bridge collapsed is known in science as harmonic resonance. When a certain frequency of vibration is matched by other vibrations in a similar pattern or sequence of oscillation the effect is amplified. In other

words, when you get enough vibrations all going along at about the same harmonic pitch, great destruction can occur.

This is a glass. We all know that if a strong soprano soloist can hit a certain note and sustain it, that a typical glass will shatter. Again it has to do with harmonic resonance. The singing at that pitch causes the molecules in the glass to move around so fast that it cannot hold together and it shatters.

Some scientists believe that is how the walls of Jericho were felled. The pitch and vibration of the rams horn trumpets, along with the shouts of all the Israelite people at once, at the top of their lungs, created such a harmonic resonance that the walls vibrated and collapsed. That the walls fell outward may be proof of this theory. God works some pretty crazy miracles in the stories of the Old Testament but this is one of the most interesting. Imagine knocking down heavily fortified walls without a single blow striking the walls.

Now, what we need in our own lives is faith to believe that the walls that get in our way can also be knocked down. We all face a variety of walls, barriers and obstacles in our lives. It takes faith, determination and optimism to become confident of our eventual success.

There are lots of walls that we face in the world. There are age barriers, racial barriers, educational barriers, gender barriers, ability barriers, and all kinds of snobbisms based upon how we dress, where we live, how much money we have, where we went to college, how we speak, the length of our hair, and many other kinds of factors that people think of to discriminate against us. We all know that barriers and walls exist. The question is: how do we knock them down? How do we overcome the walls that stand in our way of achieving what God wants for our lives?

The answer is that we are to do multiple things. First, of course, is to pray for God’s help. Calling on God to help us overcome these obstacles is the first and most important thing we can do. Second, we should ask God for the wisdom we need about this wall or barrier. If we find ourselves more and more strongly motivated to break down that wall, then God is urging us on. If over time, we feel like breaking this particular wall is less and less important, then God is leading us to let it go.

Let’s say you are looking for a job. Let’s say you are in line for a promotion but stupid excuses are holding you back. Let’s say you want to participate in a group or something that’s important to you, but you feel like you are being blocked or kept out. That’s when we should come against those walls with prayer, with kindness, with love and with a determination born of God’s spirit moving within you.

Sometimes it requires a lot of patience and perseverance. Sometimes it requires a lot of effort, doing some homework, learning the process, finding the crease, or figuring out how you can demonstrate your strong desire to get there. But God is always with us, and when we are convinced that something is in God’s will for our lives, then we should pursue it with full confidence that God can overcome every barrier necessary. There are now many examples of how walls came down by people working together to accomplish a positive end. Look at the peaceful revolution initiated by Mahatma Gandhi. It led to India getting it’s independence from the greatest colonial empire on earth. That same tactic worked to win freedom and equality in South Africa led by Nelson Mandela. And in the United States to win equality for Blacks and other minorities led by Martin Luther King, Jr., the same principles of non-violent resistance raised the level of consciousness in America until the majority demanded equal rights for all.

Barriers do come down. Walls do fall. Determination and faith, and the knowledge that God is with us will help us to overcome all of the unfair and evil walls in our lives.

BUT ... what about the walls we put up? Like the citizens of Jericho, we often put up walls around us to shut ourselves in. We think we are protecting ourselves. And these emotional or psychological walls prevent us from living our lives fully. They prevent us from being free, and they prevent us from getting to know other people who could bless our lives. We are so afraid of getting hurt, that we’d rather not engage with other people so we come across cold, fearful, isolated and aloof.

The same strategy for knocking down walls that have come against us, will work to knock down the walls we have built but from which we cannot free ourselves.

Fear of life and fear of others, and fear of the unknown is a terrible self-imposed prison. Jesus frequently came to those who were trapped in the prisons of self-doubt, of psychological and physical illness, and those imprisoned in patterns of self-destruction. Jesus wants us to be free of our fears. Jesus wants us to know that God loves us regardless of our past. Jesus wants us to be able to break free of these self-imposed walls, so that we can live life to the fullest, so we can know the love of God completely, and so we can experience the joyous life that God created each one of us to enjoy.

The same process is used. Begin with the recognition of the walls we have put up around us. Let us then pray that God help us to tear the walls down. Let us take little steps out of our shells. Let us come to church where there is a loving and caring community. Let us then participate in Bible studies or small groups that help us learn to trust in God. And then let us eventually get to the point where we can fully engage even with strangers, knowing that our safety, our protection and our peace come from God, not from the walls we have erected.

And so I say with Joshua as he instructed the people, and I say with President Ronald Reagan at the end of the cold war to Mr. Gorbachev: “Tear down these walls!” God wants us to remove the walls in our lives, and in our society that separate God’s children from each other, and which imprison and limit and prohibit the full realization of all that we could be. Amen.