“Let's Be Realistic”
Scripture Reading: Ephesians 2:11-22
Sermon Transcript for July 23, 2006
By Pastor Bob Coleman
The poet who wrote that (Ephesians 2:11-22) had a divided life. He had a barrier that had been there so strongly earlier in his life that he actually had a different name, called Saul. He understood the setting of this Scripture now better than ever before, but he didn’t understand it previously. He saw the world divided into two groups and it was supported by the Scripture that he was very knowledgeable about, very educated. As far as Paul and other Jews of the day knew the world was two camps—those who were the chosen and the Gentiles, the rest of the world. Two groups separated by God’s plan and purpose. Jews and Gentiles clearly the two! You were one or the other. Jews were the special chosen people; all others were not under God’s law. Now, in truth there were sub-groups in the church. There were women, because if you see how the temple was laid out, there was a temple court area for women only. There were those who were clean ritually and unclean. There were those who were righteous and not even though they were Jews.
Something like the church today if you think about it. Those who were saved and those who were really saved and those who were really, really special people who were saved! Think about it, the language we use sometimes. We put up barriers just like Saul and the church did then, the people of God did. But here Paul says “Remember that at that time, you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise without hope, without God in the world.” But what God was intending to do and continues to intend to do is to restore the world, to take away those divisions and those barriers, the things that human people build up and separate ourselves, the things that we contrive on our own. And the evil force of the world, it seems, always gleefully dividing and separating and putting brother against brother, people against people. God restates in this passage the original plan that is now completed in Jesus Christ. Paul describes God’s ministry of reconciliation to bring divided humanity—Jews and Gentiles, the whole world—into one new humanity in Jesus Christ. Some say God did a new thing in Christ, new to us, but it was a completion of what God had in mind all along.
And moving on Paul says, “But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations.” Yes, we can look at this and we should apply it to ourselves today. You know it’s kind of a challenge between us in our world, one is that which we can explain and one is that which is mysterious and unexplainable. God’s plan is fairly clear, but also how it gets accomplished is something of a mystery. Those who are first-time attendee’s might say, “Well, they have this all the time.” The people who have been here before say, “What in the world is he doing today? He’s got this thing hanging up and blocking the altar.” I did it for a very express purpose. Sometimes we put up barriers between ourselves and God and we think we can not get through them. Or even worse, we’re on the other side, back here, where its mysterious and we have the inside information and we know what truly is going on around here. But those who are on the other side of the curtain, well, they are just left out. But the peace that Jesus brought to us was taking that barrier out of the way and saying, “Whatever was put up before has not been right.” It’s clear and true that all now have access to God. The altar symbolizes God for us. It is God who is present now for all people to accomplish the plan that God had in the first place. And Jesus is the culmination of that. And it is around Jesus, not brought into the world purposely to divide the world, but to unite the world. Not to have two separate groups any more of those chosen and those who are saved and those who are not but to have one humanity in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Now you can take this if you want to you can apply it only to the laws of the Jewish faith and say, “Well, now those in that setting are to be open to at least the Gentiles and let them be a part of them.” Or, you can do it today and say, “Well, now what that means is within the Christian context there is not to be any barriers.” And that would be true. Or you can take this and apply it so universally that as broadly you would say is that there is no need to even tell anybody about salvation because they are all saved anyway in the act of Jesus Christ. But the exception, and the real interpretation here, is that what God is offering is a gift. A gift of access to the presence of God, a gift of knowing of the peace and the grace and the love of God in and through Jesus Christ so fully embodied and so fully presented. It’s a gift that God gives fully and completely now not to just some chosen group, not just to the Christians, but to all people.
Now the deal with the gift is, of course, what if you threw a birthday party and you invite friends and you anticipated that they would bring gifts. And they bring you all of these wonderful gifts nicely wrapped up. And at the door you say, “Well, I really don’t want your gift.” Now this person has done a lot of work thinking about you, what kind of gift would “they” like to have? And they do a lot of work in preparation and they bring that gift to the door and then you refuse their gift. What kind of hospitality or love is that? And in a sense that is what people do with the gift of God in Jesus Christ that is to make them new people and to make them whole people is to save them and give them peace and grace. And people turn down that gift all of the time.
So the dividing point isn’t God separating out other people, we separate ourselves from God. If you do not know you are saved by God’s grace, how can that be effective at least in that setting? In Verse 15, Paul goes on and says, “His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.” In the presence of Christ, there is never meant to be hostility. In the presence of God, there is never meant to be, in God’s plan, hostility. God is telling us that no one is now separate from another, any others. We are not to see ourselves divided into, “Well, we are the inside group and they’re the outside. We’re the good people; and they’re the bad people.” We are all to be one humanity in the purpose of God’s creation. And it is in the cross that’s put to death that hostility.
God intends the gift of peace for all people not for just a few select. God’s bold initiative took away that barrier, that division, that curtain between the Jews and the Gentiles. It would also take away the one between the Greeks and the Barbarians. It also takes away the one between us and strangers and foreigners and aliens. For in Verse 17 Paul said, “He (Christ) came and preached peace to you who were far away (that means seeing yourself distant from God) and peace to those who were near (to God). For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.” God is declaring at this point there is not to be, in God’s world and in God’s plan, strangers, aliens, foreigners, anyone in God’s world separated out. “Consequently,” Paul says to emphasize it, “you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” You could take this passage to mean those who accepted the gift are now the inside group and they are included as the special chosen. And that the division of those people has been abolished and that would be true. But I think today we need to consider all the aliens, foreigners, strangers to be taken away in this plan of God.
No, all of us are to be brothers and sisters created equally in God’s sight in the image of God. The difference is not God’s separation. It’s only in those of us who have received and will not let forgiveness be a part of our lives and those who have not received the gift of forgiveness at all. We need to be open and welcome to all. But let’s be realistic! We’ve got some real characters out there. We have people who are out to destroy us or others. We have those who wish to rage war against the people of God in the name of God. We have those who are out to destroy culture because they see it as evil.
So what I would say to you is, if a stranger comes into your midst, are we to accept them regardless? Not if they have dynamite strapped around them. Not if they have evil intent in their heart. Of course not! That would be allowing evil to have its way with the innocence. There is that moment of protection. But on the other hand, what are we saying to the rest of the world when we ourselves, in the body of Christ, do not get along, when we bicker and complain and fight and have open warfare of Christian against Christian?
The sticking point for us today is reality that we live in a world that is broken, we live in a world that is still filled with evil. Jesus was aware of this. That’s why He said in Matthew 10:16, “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” If all people would receive the gift of peace of the heart and mind of Christ, we would have a different world. If all people would receive the gift of salvation, we would have a different world but we would still be playing, in this day and in this age, with evil in our heart, and the evil of human nature that wants to divide and conquer and be hostile. People today, no more than any previous generation, have chosen peace as a way of life for all. So we live in an imperfect, hostile world. And it is realistic to be wise when strangers come to hurt and to harm. But it is also realistic to pray for peace, to work for peace, to hope for peace definitely in our own relationships, in our own church, in our own body of Christ, in our own nation. Wherever we can have that influence, it is very realistic. It is what we are called to do—to welcome the stranger, the alien, the foreigner in God’s understanding that they are all created in the image of God.
You and I must be the people of peace, the body of Christ. We must be the people of peace in our communities and in our world. Grace United Methodist, by its own name, must be a body of peace and grace and clearly we are to take down the barriers among us that we have constructed so that we might enter into a loving, righteous relationship with the almighty creator, savior, and sustainer in the world.
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