All Together, Right Now

INTRODUCTION

The Beatles once sang, “Come together, right now…” It was a cry for unity in a world already spinning apart—an anthem of longing to belong, to find common ground again. Yet half a century later, that echo still rings hollow. We’re more connected than ever, but somehow more divided than we can remember.

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians offers a different kind of togetherness—one that doesn’t depend on slogans or sentiment, but on a Savior. He reminds us that Christ Himself is our peace—that in Him, the center truly holds. And that’s what I want to talk about today: how God brings all of us, with our differences and scars and stories, all together, right now, in Christ.

Not long ago, I watched an older couple at a café. The husband looked up from his coffee, sighed, and said, “You know, we’ve been married forty-seven years, and I still don’t understand her.”

Without missing a beat, his wife smiled and said, “Good. Keeps you humble.”

Everyone around them laughed, but I thought: that’s the church in miniature. We’re together, but we don’t always understand each other. Sometimes we rub; sometimes we rest. Yet we keep showing up—because something, or rather Someone, keeps holding us together even when we can’t hold ourselves together.

That’s really the story of Ephesians 1 and 2. Paul writes to a community filled with difference—Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free, men and women—and he says: “Christ Himself is our peace.” In other words, Jesus is the center that holds when everything else falls apart.

1. WHEN THE CENTER STARTS TO COME LOOSE

More than a hundred years ago the Irish poet William Butler Yeats looked at the broken world left by World War I and wrote words that still ring today:

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

He wasn’t writing theology, but he captured it perfectly. When people lose their center—when they stop hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit—the world spins itself apart.

Look around and you can see it again: politics that divide, families that fracture, faith communities that splinter. The center doesn’t hold easily anymore.

So here’s the question Paul answers: What keeps us together? What holds the family of God when personalities clash and opinions differ? He points us back to grace—back to what God has done in Christ.

2. THE MYSTERY OF REDEMPTION

Ephesians 1 opens with one long, breathless sentence in Greek—Paul’s heart spilling out praise:

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.”

Paul uses three Greek words to paint one portrait of redemption:

1. Agorazo — to buy in the marketplace.

2. Exagorazo — to buy out of the marketplace, never to be sold again.

3. Lutroo — to release or set free.

That’s the gospel in three movements. Christ entered the marketplace of human slavery—where sin owned the deeds to our lives—and He bought us with His blood. Then He carried us out of that marketplace and finally, He set us free.

Redemption isn’t just rescue; it’s release. God doesn’t purchase you to make you property; He buys you to bring you home. Think about that. We were not purchased as servants but restored as sons and daughters.

3. ADOPTION AND BELONGING

Paul keeps the thought going: “In love He predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ.”

In the ancient world, adoption was irreversible. A natural child could be disowned; an adopted child could not. Once your name was entered on the family register, it stayed there for life.

When you accepted Christ, you didn’t just join an organization—you joined a family that can never disown you.

I understand something about adoption because I watched it unfold in my own family.

When my parents were missionaries in Burma, our home was always full—four sisters, two brothers, and a steady hum of laughter, arguments, and hand-me-downs. My father was a doctor and my mother a nurse, both always giving more than they had.

Years later, after we’d left Rangoon, my father’s Burmese nurse married a British businessman and moved to England. Time passed, and one day the phone rang. Her husband had died suddenly of a heart attack, and now she herself was dying of cancer.

She asked my parents if they would take her little boy, Tommy.

A few weeks later, on a September afternoon, he arrived at JFK—small, clutching a teddy bear and a backpack. He went from being an only child to one of the gang overnight.

And though there was no shared blood, there was shared love. Tommy didn’t have to earn his place; he simply belonged. My parents didn’t just open their house—they opened their hearts.