One of the things I have always like about being here in Clayton is the small town, family atmosphere. I moved around so much when I was young that I don’t know anyone I went to kindergarten with; I hardly even know most of my relatives. But here... We have multiple generations sitting right here in these pews. Most of you don’t have to travel for more than a few hours to see your nieces and nephews and grandchildren. It’s an exception, rather than the rule, to have to travel across country to see a brother or sister. Which, of course, makes family reunions a whole lot easier on everybody.
One thing about family reunions, though... As the old saying goes, you choose your friends, but not your relatives. Almost everybody has a black sheep or two ... the crazy aunt in the attic or the ne’er-do-well uncle, the sleazy brother-in-law or the embarrassing ex-wife. But hey - what can you do? they come with the package. They’re family. And if an outsider tries to intervene in a family quarrel, you better watch out! They’re likely to close ranks immediately and turn together to defend their own. Blood is - as they say - thicker than water.
But Jesus tells us that there is something more important than being related by blood. Matthew tells us that when Jesus was speaking to the crowds and his mother and brothers wanted to see him, Jesus said, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" And pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother." [Mt 12:48-50]
Blood is thicker than water. But Paul tells us that the blood that matters is not ours - not our common ancestors, not our genetic heritage, not even a shared cultural or legal identity. The blood that makes the church a family is Jesus’ blood. Because whoever believes that Jesus is the son of God becomes the child of God as well, and in the vows we make at our baptism we acknowledge that we know that to be true. “...to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God." [Jn 1:12] But of course that’s easier said than done, isn’t it. How can you love someone you don’t even know? And there are an awful lot of people out there who are Jesus’ sisters and brothers whom we don’t know. And I’ve got to admit it - there are a whole lot of people out there who are Jesus’ brothers and sisters whom we don’t particularly like, either. But we still have to love them. “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child.” [1 Jn
5:1 ]
Now this is no new thing. From the very earliest days in the church people divided themselves into “us-and-them”. In Jerusalem it was between the Hebrew-speaking Jews and the Greek-speaking Jews. But when the persecution began, they suddenly discovered that they were all in the same boat together. The next great divide was between Jews and non-Jews. And this rift was a whole lot tougher to mend.
Now, by the time Paul was writing this letter to the church at Ephesus, the basic matter of whether or not Gentiles could become followers of Jesus without being circumcised and obeying all the food laws had been decided. But having the Jerusalem Council proclaim official policy didn’t make it a whole lot easier in the local congregations.
Most of us know that in Jesus’ day the Jews and the Gentiles were like oil and water. They just didn’t mix. It’s not that they just didn’t like each other. It’s not that they just didn’t understand each other. It wasn’t simply a failure to communicate, or fear of the unknown, or any of the ways we commonly explain away hostility between groups. No, the rift went deeper than that.
Part of it was that the Jews had always thought they were special, because God had chosen them out of all the people of the world to belong to him. They had a special relationship with God, and they treasured it. They had hung on to their distinctive ways of thinking and living at some considerable cost, and they weren’t about to share that special status with anyone who hadn’t paid their dues.
But it went even deeper than that. You see, the Jews thought Gentiles were unclean. They really believed that if they hung out with Jews, ate with them, let them into their homes, that they would lose their special relationship, their access to God.
What they had forgotten was that the whole point of God’s choosing them in the first place was to bring the whole world into a right relationship with him. The whole point of choosing the Jews to be a special people was to witness to the power and goodness and wisdom of God so that they would understand and be ready when the Messiah came.
But it was really hard to understand that the time had come for the barriers between Gentile and Jew to come down, and it was even harder to do. Paul was in prison in Rome because his work to bring Jews and Gentiles together had made him so many enemies that the only way he could get out of Jerusalem alive was to appeal to the Emperor. And it really discouraged the new Christians with whom Paul had shared the gospel - the good news - that they, too, could belong to God’s family.
I suspect that many of them were tempted to give up this trying to get along and have separate churches for Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians, don’t you? It’s much easier to say, well, People worship better with other people like them, people with the same background, the same culture and language and worship styles. And of course to some extent that’s true. It’s easier to find common ground, to build a church family, to worship and fellowship and minister with people who are like us. That’s what the church looks like in most of the United States.
There are Korean churches and Hispanic churches, black churches and white churches, rich churches and poor churches. And that’s all very well if God’s only purpose in sending Jesus to die for the world was to make sure people were worshiping the right God. But that’s not his only purpose. And that’s why Paul is absolutely unwilling to compromise on this core issue. God’s plan was to build a whole new kind of people, out of two formerly irreconcilable opposites, joined together to become a holy temple in which God himself would live. And God’s
purpose was to put us on display.
Earlier in Chapter 2 Paul introduced the idea that we are God’s showpiece. God ‘s idea in creating this strange new thing called “church” was “so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” [v. 2:7] In that context the idea was that the world would know what he is like by the way we treat one another. But in this chapter we have an even more astonishing purpose. We are not playing just to the crowd, but to heaven itself. The church is God’s way of proving to all the spiritual forces who arrayed against him that they haven’t won, that they can’t win, they cannot succeed in making hate and mistrust and division the ruling principle of the world. When people who by all ordinary standards should be shunning one
another actually become one, “the wisdom of God in its rich variety [is displayed ]to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”
Jews and Gentiles isn’t where the great divide is these days, of course. It’s Jews and Muslims, and to a lesser extent Muslims and Christians, where the friction is threatening to blow things apart. But in this country the huge divide for the last several hundred years has been racial. I’ve been told that South Jersey still struggles with the culture change that has made dividing people up by color both morally and socially unacceptable. In an odd sort of way, our delay in understanding that echoes Paul’s recognition that in former days people didn’t understand God’s purpose. “In former generations this mystery was not made known to humankind, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: that is, the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” [Eph 3:5,6]
Well, we all know better now. Thank God. It displeases God to see his people dividing themselves up in little subgroups, with each one thinking they’re better than the other, for whatever reason. We know better. But do we always act better? It’s human nature to divide ourselves up into little groups called “us and them.” If it’s not race then it’s language or education or economic status or life-style or even how long you’ve lived in the community. But this is not what God wants from us. His eternal purpose for the church is to show both the world we can see and the world we cannot that the blood of Jesus Christ is the strongest binding force in the universe. It is our sharing in the blood of Christ that ensures us that nothing can separate us from the love of God, and it is the blood of Christ
that bonds us into one family - crazy aunt in the attic and all. We are all related by blood. Divisions among us wound Jesus Christ himself, and shame God before his enemies.
This congregation is known for its warmth, its love, its welcome. But this does not happen automatically, because it’s easy. This comes only as we intentionally remember that we are something more than a group of people who believe the same thing. We are God’s statement to the world that the love of Jesus Christ, and the blood he shed for us, can build a temple fit for God to live in, and big enough for all people to find shelter.
