Pentecost 11B – July 19, 2015 July 18, 2021
Ephesians
2:11-22 & Mark 6:30-34, 53-56 Panzer
Liturgical Chapel
He is our Peace
I thought when I decided to preach a series on our
epistle texts there might be questions… turns out the first one came as we were
leaving church last week. Why not preach on the whole epistle – why leave out
large portions? Those are important and worthy of study, too – right? Worthy of
study – absolutely, and I will refer to some of those passages as we work
through the letter. The verses we read earlier are the chosen ones for today.
That leads to the natural question of who chose these texts in the first place.
We use the Revised Common Lectionary in worship each
week. Broken into a three-year cycle, the lectionary attempts to touch all of
the major stories of the Old Testament, t
he themes of the letters to the early
church, and the Jesus story as recorded in all four gospels. The lectionary that
we use in our service is the same one used by many churches in our own
traditions. It is the product of painstaking work begun by Protestant church
leaders in the Consultation on Church Union in 1974, mirroring the lectionary
that came out of the 2nd Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic
Church in 1969. The readings have changed a little over the years, but since
1994, many congregations, both Catholic and Protestant, have heard the same
lessons read each week, an exercise meant to display a measure of unity in our
identity as the church of Jesus Christ, together.
So, this week, we skip over some of chapter 1 to
focus on this passage from Ephesians 2. It’s a little unfortunate that we
receive this chapter divided the way it is because it is also good to see these
22 verses as two halves of a whole. It’s a reminder that none of what we have
now as chapter and verse in the Bible was written that way. It was narrative,
like a good book. It was conversational, a teacher encouraging and molding students
to a new way of life and thinking.
In the first 11 verses, Paul speaks of the vertical
nature of our faith. While we are tied to our pasts by the things we have
messed up, once we are in relationship with Christ, they do not define our
future. Because of God’s mercy, we get to turn over to a new page and begin
again. The rich mercy of God brought us to new life through the life, death,
and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And because of that, we are connected to God
through Christ. This vertical relationship is the very definition of grace. God
took our sin-dead lives and made us newly alive in Christ, all on his own, with
no help from us. Through faith, we become God’s great accomplishment. We are
God’s forever. But that doesn’t mean something isn’t required of us.[i]
Once we have accepted the gifts that God gives us in
the process, we now have new responsibilities. We are citizens of a new
community. And this community calls everyone who shares these faith gifts to be
a part of our new tribe. People who were once our enemies are now not just
friends, but brothers and sisters in faith. There’s nothing in this covenant
that requires us to believe in or experience God and Christ the same ways.[ii]
For the Christians of Paul’s day, this meant that
Jews, who had been taught that they were God’s chosen people, and Gentiles, who
had been considered outsiders, even un-chosen, were now in the same family. Talk
about seismic change. It was a source of great debate and disagreement for much
of the books of Acts. And Paul spent most of his time teaching this new model
of community, as shown in the volume of letters he penned and inspired.
Our gospel lesson gives us a clue to this new
reality. Jesus continues his journey in the regions outside Jerusalem. In both
Jewish and Gentile communities, he teaches and preaches, and heals without
distinction to prior religious affiliation. Everywhere he went, even when he
was trying to get away for a little rest and respite, people followed because
they knew that he could change their world. And in verse 34 it says he had
great compassion for them and began to teach all who would listen and heal all
who had need.
Today’s verses 11-22 in Ephesians give us the
horizontal dynamic of our Christian identity. Faith in Christ does not just ask
us to change our way of thinking and believing. It asks us to change the way we
think about one another – about how we think of everyone. And we can only do
that with Christ as our peace. Our ability to love one another – to love our
neighbor as ourselves – is not dependent on our ability to love. We can’t do
that by ourselves. Our ability to truly love others is a gift we receive from
God.
The Hebrew bible tells the story of how the Jewish
community depended on the Law to define their behaviors. It was developed in
the beginning to help people get closer to God. Over time, the law became the
focus of the relationship, and strict adherence to the law became the
definition of what it meant to be a good Jew. Jesus changed all of that. He
tore down the wall that we used to keep each other at a distance. Instead of
getting bogged down in fine print and footnotes, he asked us to start fresh,
depending on him and then on one another. New day. New journey. New family. One
church.
This is not easy. We don’t do a great job at
rejecting division – in the church or the world. We defend our own beliefs by
defining what faith should be like for everyone. It’s as if different or
opposing views call our faith into question. In fact, we are very good at
defending our faith identity to the exclusion of others, even if it puts their
life and faith into question.
Look at the news and we see all the places where we
allow division to define us. And this grieves God. Instead of putting Jesus’
crucifixion in the past, it keeps it right before us and sets up barriers to
accessing the new lives that Jesus sacrificed for us. We give in to our fears –
fears that the gifts of our past will crumble around us – fears that our hopes
and dreams for the future will never be fulfilled. Our inability or
unwillingness to step into a brave new future is evidenced by all the walls we
have erected.
Drive a few hours from here and we can see the remnants
of the Berlin Wall. Expand our vision and we can see the broader Iron Curtain
and fear that remains in some communities because ideas of democracy and
community are such a challenge to the imagined security of the past. Current
walls in Israel and between the US and Mexico seek to make inviolate divisions
between communities that previously were connected. Even a railroad track or a
highway that cuts through a community can separate people who used to think of
themselves as one town or city. And the ways we label people as “other” say as
much about us as it does about them.
Jesus says, “No.” We are no longer strangers to one
another. We are no longer enemies. As members of God’s tribe, God’s household,
we are all built into the foundation of everyone who came before with Jesus as
the Cornerstone. He defines who we are. And this is not something that happened
in the past. It still happens every day. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul writes that
our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit… not just swirling around us like
a mighty wind, but living in all of us. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul says that we
all have a purpose and that we are not created to be alike, but with different
gifts - on purpose - for building up the Kingdom of God.
Before Jesus came, the Temple in Jerusalem was not
only the religious heart of the nation, but also the pollical, social, and
cultural center of Jerusalem. People remembered that Israel’s God has promised
to live there – it was in some ways the place where heaven and earth met. But
Paul turns that idea upside down. In these last verses of the chapter, Paul states
that the living God is building a new Temple - not of stones and mortar, but of
human beings. God’s dwelling place is no longer a building – instead, it is a
community of people who allow God to take up residence in their hearts – and
always becoming something new.[iii]
The Sagrada Familia – the famous Gaudi Basilica in
Barcelona is one of the most famous churches in the world, and is still a work
in progress, its cornerstone laid in 1882 – it might be completed in our
lifetimes. I hope you can see it, because in my experience, it is one of the
most exquisite buildings I have ever seen inside, and even in its perpetual
construction state, I felt drenched in the Spirit as I stood in the glow of its
stained-glass windows and highly arched ceilings. In its completion, it will be
glorious, but even now, with scaffolding dotting both the interior and exterior
construction, the Spirit is at work in the building itself and in the work of
the congregation who worships there each week.[iv]
We are also a work in progress. Our progress and our
failures are simply a snapshot of any day in time – the real question is are we
moving forward? Do we allow the peace of Christ to be a defining principle as
we live out our faith as individuals and as communities gathered for worship
and work?
The real test might be in how we understand this
kind of peace. We often think of peace as calming, soothing, comforting… but
I’m not sure that is what Paul is talking about. Sometimes Jesus’ peace comes
in like a wrecking ball, asking us to tear down – destroy – and eliminate the
barriers and walls that separate us – just like Jesus did. For Jesus, it wasn’t
an easy battle. Jesus became the enemy of the religious community and they did
everything they could to weaken his message of unity and hope. Ultimately, it
took death – everything he had to give – his life poured out for us. But he did
it. He came in like a wrecking ball and got wrecked in the process. And because
of that love, the walls came down. In the stillness of an open tomb, everything
was made new.[v]
Our
task is to receive Jesus’ gift of peace, and welcome both the comfort and
disruption it brings to our lives. Jesus’ peace comes to us in an endless cycle
– peace for the courage to encourage change – peace and trust that disrupts the
walls already built and discourages the ones that get erected in their place –
and peace to sit amid that change, knowing that if we don’t help bring the
unity that Jesus inspires and demands, we will never know what peace is all
about.
Our
hymn of the day proves that words written over 230 years ago can still mean as
much today as they did when they were written. We don’t know the name of the
author, just that they were published in a collection of hymns from Carter Lane
Baptist Church in London in 1787. I guess if I had to preach a sermon in five
verses, this would be it.[vi]
1 How
firm a foundation, you saints of the Lord,
is laid for your faith in His excellent Word!
What more can he say than to you he has said,
to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled?
2 “Fear
not, I am with you; O be not dismayed,
for I am your God, and will still give you aid.
I’ll strengthen you, help you, and cause you to stand,
upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.
3
“When through the deep waters I call you to go,
the rivers of sorrow shall not overflow,
for I will be with you, your troubles to bless,
and sanctify to you the deepest distress.
4
“When through fiery trials your pathway shall lie,
my grace, all-sufficient, shall be your supply.
The flames shall not hurt you. I only design
your dross to consume, and your gold to refine.
5 “The
soul that on Jesus still leans for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to its foes.
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake!”
Thanks
be to God! Amen.
[i]
James Howell, James Howell's Weekly Preaching Notions, “What can we say July
18? 8th after Pentecost, July 1, 2021, http://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/
[ii]
Paraphrased from The Message by Eugene Peterson, Ephesian 2
[iii]
NT Wright, Ephesians Bible Study, IVP Press, pg 21.
[iv]
James Howell, ibid.
[v]
Derek Weber, He Is Our Peace, UMC Discipleship Sermon Series – Geared Up For
Life - https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/worship-planning/geared-up-for-life/eighth--after-pentecost-year-b-lectionary-planning-notes/eighth-sunday-after-pentecost-year-b-preaching-notes
[vi] https://hymnary.org/text/how_firm_a_foundation_ye_saints_of
