The people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery; they have oppressed the poor and needy, and have extorted from the alien without redress. And I sought for anyone among them who would repair the wall and stand in the breach before me on behalf of the land, so that I would not destroy it; but I found no one.
We continue with God’s pronouncement against, well, everyone it seems. The people of Ammon, Tyre, Samaria, Jerusalem, Edom, Moab, Philistia, Tyre… The people have oppressed the poor and needy and extorted the needy – all bad things indeed. God continues that he’s seeing someone to repair the damage, and stand in the breach, and he found no one.
This morning, I’m thinking about what it means to stand in the breach. In this imagery, God sees that the wayward people have destroyed the wall between themselves and God. God’s prepared to destroy the land because of the evil, and God recognizes a breach has been created by the people intended to be protected by the wall. This is powerful imagery.
We protect ourselves in our towers, souls, walled cities, gated communities. Then we ourselves behave in ways that create breaches or holes in that same protective place. We are then surprised when the protection is toppled. It turns out, we cannot wall ourselves off to God or to our neighbor, at least not effectively or permanently. God is obviously on both sides of the wall, knows our innermost selves. Such barriers are equally impotent to guard ourselves from our neighbors. Maybe for a while, the walls hold. At least until someone from the inside creates a breach, or when someone beyond the walls becomes stronger than our attempts to erect the walls.
Whatever the cause, the walls we build – internal or external – end up vulnerable, with holes where the ‘other’ can enter. Here is the important role of the breach-stander. I imagine this as someone willing to go right into that hole that was created, either by us or by outside forces, and just stand there. There is some repair work to be done to be sure, but it is repaired while standing in the breach.
My current world doesn’t contain many walled cities or fortified castles. But there are plenty of breaches between us and God, breaches we’ve created. Humanity has treated people deemed ‘the other’ in a way that does not reflect God’s love – immigrant, refugee, orphans, people of color, people of other cultures and classes, other religions. There is a breach between those who’ve behaved badly, and their God creator. Breach standers put themselves right in that place where the badly behaved have created chasms between themselves and God, and breach-standers try to repair that breach.
In the current climate, this is an interesting role. This isn’t so much about righting the wrongs against the aggrieved. That clearly needs to be done. But I understand this notion to be more about standing in front of the oppressor, and standing between them and the God who’s displeased about that behavior. Clearly, the oppressed warrant care and love and restoration to wholeness. But from this section in Ezekiel, I understand that someone from the oppressor’s side of the wall needs to be wiling to stand in the chasm created.
As people of privilege, we are called to that hard work. We are called to see where our people’s behavior, attitudes, historical complicity have created or opened up wider the breachers between us and God. Yes, we’re called to repair it, but first we’re called to stand there. Just stand there in the hole, acknowledging its existence and the role we played.
It’s so much easier to instead go about helping the widow, the orphan, the poor, rather than acknowledging that our community created the breach to begin with. Doing is easier for me, than to acknowledging my role in the breach to begin with. Today, I want to spot the breaches I’ve helped create, or perpetuate. Today, I want to be a breach-stander.
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