Gifts of Grace: Belonging

Unity

How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!

It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron's beard, down upon the collar of his robes.

It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.

Psalm 133

This is part 5 of a sermon series on Ephesians. Among the themes of Paul’s letter is the theme of community. Although the word "community" never appears in Ephesians in the NIV, nevertheless the sense of God building his community of the saints is a strong current through the entire epistle.

Last week ("Gifts of Grace: Rescue") I quoted Mark Buchanan who said that our gospel is too small. Is it possible that one of the reasons why our gospel is too small is that our sense of community is too small?

Where is your community a community of one?

Where is your community a community of the chosen few?

What is your community trying to exclude?

What community is trying to exclude you?

In this election year, community is part of the national dialogue:

Immigration: What do we do in the U.S.—or in Maine—with people who are, on the surface, not like us?

Gays: How are we to interact with groups that historically have been demonized by the church?

Healthcare: What is our responsibility—one to another—in matters of personal choice and responsibility?

Ecology: How are we called in live in relation to other species? Are we no more important than an endangered species? Have we been given dominion to protect endangered species?

National and Global Poverty: If America is blessed as a nation, how are we called to bless others?

National Security: What is our responsibility to work with other nations instead of working unilaterally?

These are neither trivial, nor hypothetical, issues! Some of these issues will drive the voters in November. The candidates’ answers to these issues have the potential to change not only the communities and nation in which we live, but change our understanding of what it means to be a community.

Ephesians 2

Commentary

v11 Being uncircumcised, the Ephesians were marked as "outsiders" and "unclean" by the Jews.

v12 Not only were the Ephesians social outsiders to the Jews, the Jews would have considered them outside of God’s promises as well. How were the Jews as well as the Ephesians without hope? How were they different?

v13 Belonging—inclusion—comes only through Christ. Specifically, inclusion comes through the blood of Christ.

v15 "Abolish" is not a good translation here’ "nullify" is probably better. The law has not been destroyed; rather it has been rendered inoperative, legally null & void.

The "one new man" has two meanings: (1) both Jews and Gentiles now live vicariously through the life that Jesus lived, the death he died, and the new life to which he was raised. We can live as Christ did, because of what Christ has already done. (2) the one new man is redeemed humanity living in Christ’s Spirit.

v19 "Citizen" is a key word here. A citizen is charged with the continued well-being of the community. Jewish and Gentile Christians are to work for the well-being of all.

v21 Calvin says of this verse, "All who are fitly framed together in Christ are the temple of the Lord. There is first required a fitting together, that believers may embrace and accommodate themselves to each other by mutual intercourse; otherwise there would not be a building, but a confused mass."

v22 The tense here is ambiguous, but I think it is supposed to be a command, concluding v21, i.e.: "[Therefore] in him also be built together into a dwelling of God in Spirit."

Application

Early Jewish Christians would not have considered themselves to be a new religion; rather, they thought of themselves as "fulfilled Jews." Having recognized Jesus as the Messiah, they were doing what any "enlightened" Jew would do. The uptopian image of the early church in Acts 2:42-47 notes that the Jewish Christians continued to go to temple.

For these early believers (who referred to themselves as Jews, not Christians, by the way) Gentiles were still outsiders. In Acts 11:1-17, Peter broke the mold by baptizing Cornelius and his family. Although the church in Jerusalem accepted the principle of Gentile believers (Acts 11:18), the first real community of Gentile believers popped up far from Jerusalem, in Antioch (Acts 11:19-21), and curiously Paul was a leader in this first Gentile mission. Why Antioch and not Jerusalem? Could it be that a Gentile church needed space? [1]

Certainly there are theological considerations to whether Gentiles (or Jews for that matter) can be Christians. What is the purpose of the levitical laws for Christians? If Gentiles can still live as Gentiles, what is the point of the law? It is easy to see passages like today’s (which mentions the law & circumcision) as a theological statement. However, many great church battles are social, not theological, at their roots. Gentile customs were repellent to Jews, and Jews customs were bewildering to Gentiles. Could it be that the real message of today’s passage is a call to get along?

When we are reconciled to God, we have no basis for not being reconciled to each other. We can argue that another group has the wrong theology, yet they are near & dear to God. We can argue that others still have sin in their lives, but that is to build up the wall of hostility by looking at the speck of sin in their lives and ignoring the 2x4 of sin in our own lives. We can argue that the exercise of faith, the spirituality, of others is wrong or shallow, but such arguments are rarely the way of peace.

Christ rendered the levitical law null & void. That law had been given to the Jews. But behind that law is the law of love, previously given to larger groups. When God first calls Abram (Gen. 12:1-3) his 1st act is to bless all nations through him; the law of circumcision only comes later (Gen. 17). When God first makes Adam, his 1st act is to make humans in his own image (Gen. 1:27) as beings capable of love & forgiveness. If the first human sin is a failure to love & honor God (Gen. 3:8-12), the second is the failure to love & honor each other (Gen. 4:8-10). Dividing walls of hostility come in many colors—some are tradition, law, & orthodoxy.

Points to Ponder

If we are like Jewish Christians, set in our ways, who for us are like Gentile Christians? (Gays? Certain ethnic groups? Certain economic groups? Certain age groups?) Do they really have to be just like us?

I think that presidential election is showing us a cultural trend towards building community by seeking justice for every individual in the community. Where/how is this Biblical?

End Notes

1 - Fuller Theological Seminary’s Ray Anderson makes just this point in An Emergent Theology for an Emergent Church. Acts 11:26 says disciples began to be called Christians in Antioch. Perhaps in far away Gentile Antioch they didn’t get the memo that believers of Jesus were just "born again Jews." Where do we need to give new believers space?