(Image © Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash)
I can remember
Standing by the wall
And the guns shot above our heads
And we kissed as though nothing could fall
And the shame was on the other side
Oh, we can beat them for ever and ever
It’s funny how you can hear a song countless times but not properly take it in. David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’, quoted from above, is just such a song. These days it seems to be a go to song for big public events, much like Queen’s ‘We are the Champions’, yet I heard it recently and noticed for the first time this reference to a wall.
I knew that ‘Heroes’ was recorded in the mid to late seventies, a period when Bowie was living in Berlin so, I thought, could it be the Berlin Wall to which he’s referring? Turns out it was. The lyric was inspired by seeing a couple kissing under the watchful eye of armed East German border guards.
“I thought of all the places to meet in Berlin, why pick a bench underneath a guard turret on the Wall?”
Not Bowie, nor the kissing couple or the border guards could have imagined the speed with which the Berlin Wall would come down just a few years later and prayer, as part of a non-violent opposition movement, is often credited as being a major reason behind this. When we pray, we need to remember that our God is not a ‘might he?’ God but a mighty God for whom nothing is impossible.
Easter brings us face to face with that reality. Walls came tumbling down when God raised Jesus from the dead. The walls of death and sin and shame that can feel like impenetrable obstacles to a relationship with God were reduced to rubble.
The book of Ephesians puts it like this:
‘But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions … And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus’.
And Ephesians goes on to report another wall that was broken down through Jesus:
‘For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one [Jews and Gentiles] and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility’.
What are the obstacles or divisions that come to mind as you pray? Imagine them as those armed soldiers in their guard turret. Back then they seemed a cruel and permanent fixture but soon they would be gone. I pray that as you take heart from the resurrection, you may remember Berlin too. You’re in the hands of the God for whom nothing is impossible. You’re on the side of the same mighty God who raised Jesus from the dead. As for those forces on the other side, we can ‘beat them for ever and ever’.