It’s 750 BC. God’s people are in crisis. Enemies surround them. Their borders are shrinking, their armies are small, and their alliances are flaky. Yma o hyd – they are still there, but for how much longer? Isaiah gives his appraisal: ‘You are,’ he says, ‘like a shack in a cucumber field’ (Is. 1:8).
I minister in North East Wales, and the people I live and work alongside feel like shacks in a cucumber field; battered and shattered. Many people I deal with have been diagnosed with a mental health issue. A significant minority have problems with drink, and an equally significant number have easy access to drugs. Physically, they are either obese or obsessed with the gym. They are either unemployed because of ill health or overworked and ready to go on the sick. Those without work seem to find money to buy things that those who do work resent them for. Most are worried about the future, and few seem to have any hope that things could improve. They are like Jesus’ description of his own generation: ‘harassed and helpless, like a sheep without a shepherd’ (Matt. 9:36). What can we do to help them?
Defending our community
If I say we need to start thinking about building walls, you might recoil. Walls are bad. The Berlin wall separated loved ones for a generation, and in an increasingly divided world, walls might seem like the last thing we need. But hear me out.
Picture a castle. Standing outside a castle, even a tumbledown one like Ruthin or Flint, you get an idea of the obstacle they would have been to an enemy force. Largely impregnable, they stopped an enemy in its tracks, providing time for the people inside to defend themselves.
Our culture needs time to defend itself. Today, everyone has a phone that enables them to access pornography, gambling sites, and the kind of social media that makes them covetous, gossipy, angry and listless. Everyone can access news from around the world, which we are told informs us, but can leave us frightened and impotent, cynical and uncaring. Everyone can access these things all the time, and with notifications on, they can access us. We need walls to defend us.
A verse in Isaiah 58 resonates with me. Isaiah prophesied that God’s people will ‘rebuild the ancient ruins and raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings’ (Is. 58:12).
We need to start seeing ourselves as the one group in society willing to offer a defence, a safe space for our community.
Rebuilding walls
Walls offer more than mere defence from the enemy. Imagine standing in the great courtyard of Caernarfon or Caerphilly Castle on a summer’s day. There you will find shade to protect you from the sun. You will notice children running around, safe from the traffic outside. Somebody will be making money selling ice cream and coffee, someone else will be browsing second-hand books. An artist will be sketching in a notebook, and a holiday maker will be taking part in a guided tour. Castle walls don’t just provide immediate security from whatever is outside; they give those inside peace, and the time to think, to trust those around them, and eventually to thrive.
In a land of cucumber sheds exposed to cultural enemies and sinful elements, the church needs to start rebuilding walls, not to retreat behind, but to welcome people into. A place where they can get some peace and quiet, time to think, and then to thrive.
What might this look like?
Deprogramming one another
We could start by deprogramming one another. I was talking to a new Christian recently. She was telling me about a friend who had behaved inappropriately. She was very upset but kept caveating with the phrase, ‘No judgment.’ She had been programmed by the culture to believe that she was not entitled to judge her friend. In the end, I told her that her friend had behaved very badly and that it was OK to say so. We need walls to defend people from the prevailing half-truths that sweep through the culture and begin deprogramming people to think for themselves.
Defending one another
We need to be prepared to defend one another. The forces that batter these cucumber sheds are powerful. Addictive forces like pornography and gambling are incredibly easy to access and very hard to break free from. Drugs and alcohol addle people’s minds so much that by the time they get within our walls, they may never return to normal. Family breakdown has a devastating impact on children, shaping adult life. We need to build walled communities that give people time to make mistakes. People who have failed and been rejected will not trust us until they have tested us and found out that the kingdom is a place where it’s OK to not be OK.
Disciplining one another
We mustn’t be scared to discipline one another. We need our church communities to be places where grace is central and where we can not only sing but model the words, ‘Mercy and truth are all his ways, wonders of grace to God belong.’ It is OK to not be OK, but it’s not OK to stay that way. The reason there are so many cucumber sheds is because, as a culture, we tore down the defending walls and allowed sin to sweep across us under the flag of personal freedom. Now we see people burdened and miserable under its yoke. So while we can afford to be patient havens, we also need to begin the process of reordering, enabling people to thrive in God’s kingdom. Our walls give us time to help one another, to teach, rebuke, correct and train each other in righteousness.
Devote ourselves to one another
Most importantly, we have to find the strength to devote ourselves to one another. In Isaiah 58, Isaiah says that the people must ‘loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, set the oppressed free and break every yoke’ (Is. 58:6). Our cultural yokes are heavy and the effects are increasingly apparent in our towns, communities and families. Building up walls means building a community that protects people, speaks a deeper, richer truth to their heart, and models Christ to them. Yet, Isaiah doesn’t explicitly say any of this. What he explicitly calls for is for God’s people to share food with the hungry, clothes with the naked, and a home for the poor.
Will this save anyone? No. It is only by coming to know Jesus that anybody is saved. But the cucumber sheds are battered and shattered. Building walls, inviting people in out of the storm, and loving them is our religious duty and one powerful way of getting them in a place to hear the gospel.
Once inside our walls, people must be exposed to deep, profound, lasting love. We defend those we love. We discipline those we love. We declare truth to those we love. Then we will be known as rebuilders of broken walls.
