8th Sunday after Pentecost 7/22/12

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost 7/22/12 Text: Ephesians 2:11-22 Title: There He Goes; Knocking Down Those Walls Again! This morning I want to talk with you about our Epistle reading for today; Ephesians 2:11-22. It was written to a congregation that was having its problems. The Jews who had become Christians thought they had it right and the Gentiles which is everyone else but the Jews thought they had it right. It was causing great conflict within the congregation. As the name applies Paul’s letter was written to a Christian congregation in Ephesus, a major city of Paul’s day located in what is modern day Turkey today. Penny and I visited this city several years ago. In its day it was listed as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It had all the modern conveniences; flushing toilets, fast food, so you did not have to cook at home and could eat on the go, the third largest library in the world, and a huge temple where the religious could worship the goddess of the city Artemis, the goddess of fertility. Notice our reading for today starts with the word, “However”. This means that something was told the people before the part that we are looking at today that would make a difference in their lives, so it is critical to know what Paul was writing about before you can understand the text we are looking at today. So, I am going to take a little time to tell you what Paul had told the people before the reading that we have before us today. Paul had just got through telling them that before the Holy Spirit had given them faith in Jesus that they were dead in sin. In fact Paul tells them that Hebrew and Gentile alike were in opposition to God and under the control of Satan. There is no middle ground for Paul; you are either dead to sin or alive to Christ. Paul understanding of discipleship matches God’s understanding of discipleship. You are either with him or against him. You cannot be a part time disciple. He then proceeds to tell the congregation that they have been made spiritually alive through their union with Christ, for they have in their faith participated in his death and resurrection. He then tells them the wonderful truth; that it is, just as it is for us today, grace alone, not works that saved them, and thus us from God’s wrath. Paul knows how the sinful human mind works, so he finishes up this part of the letter with the warning that this grace from God does not free us from doing good works, for God before time has prepared works for us do. So now we get to the “therefore” at the beginning of our Epistle reading for today. Paul has clarified, as I have shown you that both Hebrew and Gentile are by nature enemies of God and that if had not been for the saving birth, life, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus that all would be dead in their sin. So, he tells them don’t boast about your salvation, as if it is something you have earned. Paul is telling the Christian Gentiles, that is, those who were not circumcised, for at this time only the Jews circumcised males, that they, as a people did not have the promise of the Messiah, as those, that is, the Jews had. It is like he needed to put, at least some, if not all of the Gentile Christians in their place, as he reminded them that their salvation came from the Jewish people, which in a sense it had, for Jesus was a Jew. You see, Gentiles were separate from Israel; they were without the law and without God. Despite this separation; here is the Good News, God revealed himself to them through Christ and called them to himself. In Christ what Isaiah had prophesied had come true because in his death Jesus produced peace, not just between humankind and God, but also peace with each other whether you are a Hebrew, that is a Jew or Gentile. In Christ Christian Jews and Gentiles are one because the body of Christ is one. There are no longer any grounds for hostility and division, no room for walls to be built. It is important here to know that the law and covenants that Paul is saying speaking of are not the Ten Commandments, but Mosaic law and covenants that pointed toward the Messiah and separated the Jewish people from the people that surrounded them. Jesus’ perfectly obedient life which led to his death on the cross fulfilled the Ten Commandments in our place and removed the need for the law and regulations that separate Jews from Gentiles. For in his death he made, as Paul says in the last half of verse 14, “one new man in the place of two, so making peace.” What Paul is saying that in Jesus’ death God took two separate groups of people, those who had the promise of the Messiah and those who did not have the promise of the Messiah and made them into one group of people; Christians. Paul in typical Mid-Eastern thinking then writes, “And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.” Paul here is not speaking of Jesus preaching peace to those who are a long distance off, as compared to those who lived in the area. He is simply restating what he had said earlier, Jesus is preaching peace, that is the Good News of the Kingdom of God to those who did not have the promise of salvation, just as he was speaking the same message to God’s chosen people, the Jews. He then goes on to say to them that in this unity, the making of one group of people out of two groups that they, just as we who believe and trust in Jesus belong to the household of God that is built on the true and trustworthy writings of the Apostles and the prophecies of the prophets of old who wrote about the Messiah, that is Christ Jesus who is the cornerstone of the Christian faith. He then finishes up saying that this one new group that Jesus made out of two is the temple of God, all by the power of the Holy Spirit. This was important, for there was a large sign near each door going to the inner part of the temple that read, “NO FOREIGNER IS TO GO BEYOND THE BARRIER AND THE PLAZA OF THE TEMPLE ZONE WHOEVER IS CAUGHT DOING SO WILL HAVE HIMSELF TO BLAME FOR HIS DEATH WHICH WILL FOLLOW. No foreigner; that meant that even the Gentiles that had wholeheartedly embraced the Jewish faith were still excluded from truly worshiping God. They, by the power of the Holy Spirit, with all other Christians were the new temple, for God now dwelt in them. Imagine for a moment how you might have felt, if after going through a time of learning God’s Word, professing your faith in God, being baptized, which all who were not Jews by birth, had to have done before they were able to be declared converts and then being stopped at the door and told, “You cannot come in, for you are not pure enough.” Yet that is done in many Christian congregations today, as they try to see who is more righteous by following the rules they have set up to build walls around their community. Walls they have built because they have added to God’s Word their own rules as to who is in and who is out. It is nothing new, for we see in the letter to the Romans Paul was addressing the same problem in Rome where the Christian community was struggling in their faith life, as some had begun to think that they were more Christian than others because of this or that. Paul writes, “3I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. 4 For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, 5 so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. In many ways we are as guilty as the Christians we looked at today, for we too want to come up with rules that define who is in and who is out. And in doing so, in clear defiance of God’s Word we continue to build up walls that not only threaten to separate us from God the Father for all eternity, but from our brothers and sisters in the faith who are not like us, or who do not worship the way we think God should be worshiped. We are all guilty of building those walls of separation. Yet God in his never ending grace will, after we humbly repent, knock down the walls we have built no matter how thick, how tall, or how secure they are, for his grace overcomes all prejudice, hatred, and most importantly our self-righteousness. Jesus in his birth, life, death, and resurrection knocked down the walls that separate us from God. He did it once and for all time when he called out from the cross those wonderful gospel words, “It is finished.” The peace the angels had declared to the shepherds has happened, for in his death he made peace between us and the Father and between us and our fellow brothers and sisters in the faith. The wall that separates is destroyed. We are at peace. Amen.