Sermon July 22, 2012

2 Samuel 7:1-14a

Psalm 89:20-37

Ephesians 2:11-22

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

“Vision of Unity”

Several years ago, I worked with a church renewal program which had as an article of faith that each and every church has all the tools it needs to thrive if only the church would choose to use them for the purpose they were given. As an illustration, they would show a covered wagon type vehicle with square wheels or no wheels where the round ones should have been or with the cover that could be a sail folded up instead providing a place where the Holy Spirit could move the church forward into the future God had given it to live. Often the items necessary would be stored inside the wagon so they would be broken or used up.

Part of what I really like about the ideas within this program was that it didn't claim to know what each church needed, but only that God had given each church the gifts and tools necessary to do ministry in the time and place where the church lived.

Yet within the conversations we would have, there were differences about how gifts should be used—and how and where people were willing to use them. There were differences of opinion about how the church could and should live—with some of the folks seeming to have the right answers or simply disagree with anyone who offered other answers or suggestions. In other words, if you didn't agree with them on each and every point, you must be wrong.

I have also experienced groups of Christians who have particular views of prayer, bible study, theological position or teaching, use of language, denominational identity or personal experience where they stood so firmly (or stubbornly) that no one else could ever be quite as completely right as they were themselves. There is nothing wrong with having a strong faith and yet it is something else to have one's own religious rules and regulations condemn another person's carefully and prayerfully considered way of life according to their study, prayer and experience of God, God's Holy Spirit and God's Son.

There are some incredible spiritual renewal processes in the world that have renewed churches worship experiences beginning with individuals and small groups. Yet sometimes, in our human weaknesses, some of those programs have people convinced that, unless another person experiences them in the same way, they just don't get what God is doing in people's lives and in the world.

In the letter to the Ephesians, the Pauline writer begins with a blessing—which was read in last week's worship. In part, this blessing invokes God as the Father of Jesus and uniting God of all creation—as Christ brought all creation into the plan of salvation and through Christ all of this was done, once for all. And it the first chapter of the letter, the recipients were told that this salvation was in effect from the beginning of time and came into fruition when Jesus came, teaching and living and dying and rising according to God's promise of redemption for all creation. Through this blessing, unity is proposed for all of creation because of what God had already done in creation and in and through Jesus Christ.

In chapter 2 of the letter, Paul reminds the listeners that before meeting and following Jesus Christ, they were dead because sin was the dominant characteristic of their lives. They lived, as do we all without Jesus' way of living, following selfish desires and self-focused goals only—with anger at obstructions our reaction to anything or anyone that makes us slightly unhappy. He continues that it is by the grace of God in Jesus that each person was and is given life because survival and self-focus is not longer the dominant characteristic or purpose. We can become, in this way, what God created us to be to begin with. And part of what we are to be is united with God and one another and with all of creation through the way of life and redemption of Jesus Christ.

Today's text applies this idea of unity to the specific situation of the people of the community or church in Ephesus. The Jewish followers of Jesus—who lived according to the covenant God made with Abraham and Moses, including circumcision—felt or acted superior to the Gentile followers of Jesus—who were not circumcised on the seventh day of their young, male lives and did not keep the law of Moses in the same ways.

The Jewish followers of Jesus, it seems from this letter were feeling superior to the Gentile followers and let them feel this way—they were the spiritual insiders that already knew the answers to all the questions. Or that's the way it seemed to some.

Many of us, in my experience, feel like or act like that kind of insider. If you or I have grown up within one congregation or one denomination set of understandings, you or I may feel like we have all the answers. I heard at one time or another, often meant with compassion, “I can't imagine how people live without knowing (Jesus, God, salvation, justification, pray, love, faith, etc.) for certain.” And while that statement is meant, I think, to say, “I couldn't have done it without my faith in God, Jesus, or without my church,” sometimes it sounds arrogant as if we have “IT” and no one else does.

Or maybe you've been on the receiving end of that kind of statement because this church and denomination doesn't teach from a doctrinal statement. That we are somehow suspect or not quite Christian because of it. Have you heard that?

In our defense, I would hold up these texts from Ephesians as evidence of the early church's wrestling with the same issues. I would lift up the universality of description, how Paul taught that Jesus brought two (or more) parts of humanity together instead of making one superior to the other. Paul taught that Jesus was about building a house where God's children could live together and not a ghetto where God's children were segregated or where they segregated others.

And in the spirit of peace, which this letter proclaims as a gift of Christ to the faith, “in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.”¹ In the body of Jesus Christ, God has brought all followers of Jesus together in spite of the differences we continue to proclaim within that body—and even within this body, this congregation.

Though we look to the day when unity within the body of Christ is made real, we also live within a world that likes to lift up our differences. Instead of pointing out how different we are, perhaps we can proclaim how we want the same goals. Poverty, hunger, homelessness, loneliness, depression, despair, uncontrolled anger, abuse, addiction and so many other conditions of humanity can be addressed with the compassion, grace, gifts, and love of Jesus Christ from within the church who carries out his ministry. I pray that we can leave behind the injuries that have been done to us by other Christians and Christian leaders and do the work that we still have to do. I pray that we can lift up the household of God that Paul says we have been given no matter how we might disagree on some things.

I pray with great hope that our vision of God's dwelling-place remains the vision toward which all of us strive—a vision where we see ourselves living and working with faith and with the hope that Jesus Christ has given us.

To the glory of God, God of promise to all of Creation. Amen.

1Ephesians 2:13-14