Walls Come Tumbling Down (Preached at Arlington Street Church, 1994)

Something tells me that this text would not be included in our Sunday school curriculum.

Jericho lost its walls some three thousand years ago. Archaeologists digging at the site say that the city had stone walls as high as this church, twenty feet thick, some shout.

Some of you may have visited a walled city. There is Quebec City, a beautiful city perched high on cliffs overlooking the St. Lawrence River. Its old fortifications and walls are now a tourist attraction. Tourists walk along the ramparts and look down on the fields where young men from the British Colonies once died attempting to storm Quebec City.

No, we don't build stone walls to defend our cities any more. And runaway slaves looking for their "promised land" are not camping outside the gates blowing their trumpets.

So let me ask you: Do you feel safe? Do you feel at peace?

Many people don't. Many people today feel very vulnerable, exposed to attack. Many of us sense deep in our bones that we can be attacked at anytime. We know from looking at television and reading newspapers that human communities experience violence and mayhem. Violence is close at hand. The instinct to build walls, to erect defenses is just as strong now as it was for the fathers and mothers of Jericho when they saw the Hebrews on the horizon.

There is more sentiment for peace now €¦ but there is no movement for peace.

It would be interesting to reflect on what our various forts look like. Think of yours. Do you think of the physical aspects-the bolted and secured home? the alarm system?

Or is your defense a set of psychological precautions?

Do you visit some neighborhoods in the city, but not others? Do you talk to some people but not others? Do you watch some television, but avoid most television?

I know that I have my set of defenses. I remember the bully child, only a little bit older than me. But what a difference two or three years make to a child, who would slap me and taunt me. I remember the gang of children-fourteen or fifteen year olds-that beat me and robbed me while I was waiting at a bus stop at 10 p.m. one night. I had just come from a meeting to address youth recreational opportunities. I remember the splint across my nose-the gift of an outraged young man who didn't like outsiders coming into his Italian neighborhood. I had come to celebrate a religious festival, the feast of St. Anthony.

Being assaulted causes one to take precautions, to become wary of young men on street corners or gangs of kids late at night. I could build my life around my defenses, making them stronger and stronger until I lived in an illusion of safety. Do you have a set of defenses that you call peace? Have you gone into your own personal fort? Has that become your way of responding to a violent world?

The Hebrew prophet, Jeremiah, complained of false prophets who cried peace, peace! €¦ but there was no peace.

And there is no peace unless we become peacemakers. For the most part, we don't think about it. We want to believe in the sanctity of our defenses. So we call our walls peace. But there are the wars and rumors of wars. Bosnia. Ireland. Palestine. Boston

And violence is all around us. The news reports of killings, fights, domestic disturbances. In North America, violence has become institutionalized. We human beings live and try to realize our hopes in the context of social structures-themselves based on the use of lethal force.

Remember the song. Give peace a chance. We wish and pray for peace. We have peaceful sentiments.

There is more sentiment for peace now, more sentiment than there has been in generations. There is, I firmly believe, more world wide desire for peace now than there has been at any time in the twentieth century. But there is no movement for peace. We are not organizing for peace. The leaders of the nations are not grasping this moment in order to build a secure and lasting peace. The educators are not seizing this moment to work for peaceful attitudes between people who are different.

Why aren't we moving toward peace? Let me suggest one reason. We have come to accept organized, institutionalized violence as a given. We accept wars and preparation for war as beyond our control-"out there," something alien to us. We see our various defenses as solutions. We hope and pray that our walls will hold, that our own ramparts will not be breached. But we do not see how we can organize for peace.

Now many will protest. We must have our defenses, they say We must defend ourselves and our community. War exists, crime exists, violence is out there. We need a strong defense. We are taught that it is foolish to dream of ending war, and to dream of ending institutionalized violence. Much less organize to change the rule of violence.

Let me argue the contrary. It is foolish to continue to try to live with institutionalized violence. Humanity has lived behind walls too long. We are called to work to end the structures that cause war and violence. But what are these structures?

Institutions are not things, €˜out there' €¦ they are social arrangements we human beings have created. €¦ They are only stable because we all collectively recreate them.

Let us imagine for a moment. Picture in your mind the institutions of violence. What pictures do you get? Until recently when I thought of institutions of violence, they were all €˜out there.' The military, international terrorists, the industrial complex of munitions and defense, the police, television and movies and comics, organized crime, the gun lobby. Round up the usual suspects.

Indeed those are institutions of violence, but there was something missing.

Me. You. I had seen the institutions of violence only as "out there." I did not see how I acted and how you acted to institutionalize violence. Now I am beginning to see how we are involved. Now I am beginning to understand how we perpetuate violence.

In working with others on the problem of institutionalized racism, I encountered a definition of institutions that revolutionized my understanding. Let me share it with you.

Institutions are relatively stable social arrangements and practices through which our collective actions are taken.

Again. "Relatively stable social arrangements through which our collective actions are taken."

This was a big breakthrough for me. I realized that institutions are not things, €˜out there,' but that they are social arrangements we human beings have created. They are stable because they arise from us. We are trained to sustain them, and we train others to sustain them in return. They are stable because they are based on the habitual ways we relate to one another. They are only stable because we all collectively recreate them.

We-you and me, humanity-act repeatedly to form these patterns. We internalize the psychology of the institution and in our day-to-day living. We reproduce institutions. Good institutions: like church and community and family, and our institutional ways of recreating education, schooling; good institutions like neighbors helping neighbors, and country fairs on a summer day. Also bad institutions: institutions of abuse and destruction. The whole complex of horrors that make up racism, sexism, homophobia, nationalism, class exploitation, war and violence are the ways we collectively and habitually relate toward one another.

Our walls-those psychological habits of defense erected for protection-are institutions of violence. Our defensive responses are "habits of the heart" that reproduce and perpetuate violence.

"Perhaps," writes Jim Wallis "we are coming at last to see that our most deadly enemy is fear."

Too frightened to try peace, we build up our walls. We create and recreate hostile ways of acting toward one another. Out of our defenses, we perpetuate violent division. That leads to more violence.

Wallis, who is a well known and respected Christian activist, has dedicated his life and ministry to witnessing an alternative to fundamentalist reaction. The magazine that he edits is called Sojourner. It is the main journal of North American Evangelical progressives-a journal opposing the attacks on women's health clinics, war mongering, homophobia, and the wall building of fundamentalism. Sojourner's doesn't build walls. It speaks to the concerns of the fundamentalists. It reaches out beyond the walls with love and reason based on an understanding of the deep justice seeking message of the Bible. Jim Wallis believes that our hostility-arising from fear-"has wired the earth for genocide." We cannot conquer this enemy; nor can we beat this foe, for it is ingrained in our souls.

We can only be delivered from it by love in the form of trust.

Wallis asks "are we capable of receiving the gift on which our cure depends. Are we capable of acquiring the courage to trust?"

It seems to me that Unitarian Universalist churches have a special contributions to make. People would like to move beyond their walls. But until they feel safe, they will cling to their defenses. Instead, we need to build institutions of peace. People won't give up their defensive walls until they have learned -really learned-

I have come to believe that the grass roots-concerned people who organize-are the real vehicles for change in the vital work of overcoming divisions and creating a world community of peace with justice.

Let us seek to build a better way of relating. Let us seek to build communities of relationship that go beyond violence: communities such as this congregation that can nurture non-violent, affirming relations and an understanding that helps us to transcend our borders, to move beyond the walls that divide us. Out of our congregations can come many, many peacemakers.

I have no confidence in the ability of governments and political parties to organize and give expression to the peace process. At most, they can channel such sentiment. After much thinking over my life time of peace activism, I have come to believe the grass roots-concerned people who organize-are the real vehicles for change in the vital work of overcoming divisions and creating a world community of peace with justice.

We need congregations like this one dedicated to giving peace a chance. Our congregations can become violent-free zones, members covenanting to work for non-violent solutions through conflict resolution and other skills. Our congregations can become safe congregations that work pro-actively to address domestic violence and child abuse as part of their ministry to families.

Violent ways of being in the world are learned, and they can be unlearned. We can help people move beyond their walls.

he challenge facing our Unitarian Universalist churches is a challenge of vision and purpose. It is also moving beyond our defenses and beyond our fear. What if Unitarian Universalists were known as the people who not only advocated the goal of "world community with peace, liberty and justice for all," but also as the people who worked for it, and lived it in their lives-lived as if that goal was their passion. Imagine if there were many communities of peace throughout our planet building stable relations of love and trust, nurturing peacemakers.

Our Unitarian Universalist heritage asks us to go beyond our walls and borders. Ours is a gospel of transforming love that calls us to bind up all brokenness and overcome all division. And to that call, let us answer, Amen!

A sermon by the Clyde Grubbs, Arlington Street Church €“ Boston, MA
March 6, 1994 - Sometimes it is good to review what I was thinking and preaching back a decade ago. I haven't changed my mind, but I might not develop the point as much as I did in "Walls" now a days. I do more suggesting, and less explaining.