Ephesians 2:11-22; Matthew 28:16-20
“So that God might create in God’s self one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace.” So says the author of the letter to the church in Ephesus, and so begins the second of four sermons on readings from the letter to the church in Ephesus!We started out last week by looking at what it means to live into the promise of salvation that is “Sealed in the Spirit of God.” We talked about finding our salvation in the understanding that God’s love and forgiveness are based on God’s choice to love us and to include us in the work of God to “gather all things into God.”
Everything we do is in response to the one thing God did through Jesus Christ. Reject it. Accept it. Ignore it. Celebrate it. Whatever you do, it is in response to what God has done, and God had it in mind to demonstrate love and forgiveness from the beginning of all things. Last week’s readings reminded us that Jesus promised that the gift of the Holy Spirit would follow him, and the letter to the Ephesians said that the gift of the Holy Spirit, which had already been given at that point, was the guarantee, the stamp, the seal of God’s love on our hearts.
Faith traditions vary on this idea of the Holy Spirit, but we (in the Reformed tradition) tend to think of the Spirit as the indwelling presence of God. There is nothing special about you or me that makes us a better vessel, it’s just that our faith in what God did through Christ Jesus for all of humanity helps us to be aware of the active presence of God in all of creation.
That’s about where we left off last week, with the presence of the Holy Spirit and the promise of Jesus to give us peace, “not as the world gives.” This peace, the peace of God, encourages us to do two things: let not your hearts be troubled, and don’t be afraid. (John 14:27)
Sometimes that’s easier said than done, right? I think that’s why I like to add Philippians 4:7 to the mix. “The peace of God, beyond understanding, will guard your hearts in Christ Jesus.” This peace is not a rational process. It is an experience of unity with God that gives the hope of unity with one another. This peace guards our hearts. It guards our interior lives so that our exterior expressions – our actions and relationships – can be filled with the peace of God.
What does that look like, though? I ask because I have to say that I have come to realize in recent years that I was raised with an idealized understanding of peace. It’s not my parent’s fault. I’ve probably done the same for my children. What I mean is that I have always thought that we lived in a state of peace, apart from those times in which we have had to respond to the violence of other nations, yet our nation has been involved in wars and military conflicts more than it’s been without them.
It’s not just about military conflicts, though. What I am saying is that I grew up learning about the end of slavery but not about the impact of the 13th amendment that allows the use of the incarcerated for forced labor. I grew up experiencing the very real presence of God in places like Montreat – just as my eldest certainly did this past week – without hearing the way that facility was once used as an internment camp for Asians. I grew up hearing about Affirmative Action and Minority Business Loans, but I did not hear about redlining in real estate, generational poverty, disproportionate sentencing for people of color, unfair lending practices (especially for black farmers), and the systemic and intentional history of dismantling black-owned and operated businesses, communities, and voting rights.
That’s not just part of our history. It still goes on today. I’ve never questioned any of these things or thought of them as a challenge to “peace” because I simply did not know they existed. I grew up thinking of Martin Luther King Jr. as a martyred hero that everyone loved, only to find out that he was seen by many as a divisive and polarizing figure. I did not even know about his “poor people’s campaign” until it was restarted some 30 years after his death. Somehow, there is still a need to talk about systemic racism, the impact it has on poverty and inequality, the ecological devastation that comes from an economy that is only concerned with making the wealthy wealthier, and the profiteering of the military-industrial complex that thrives off of global unrest – of which we are a contributor as a warring nation.
Now, what does all this have to do with the letter to the Ephesians? Well, for one, the focus of today’s reading is about the peace of God that has already conquered the divisions between us. In verses 11-13, the letter talks about the union of Jews and Gentiles into one people. While this sounds like two groups that are totally unrelated to our context today, it’s really much more than that.
Within the Jewish faith at that time there were Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots – and those were just the people in charge. Gentiles included Pagans who worshiped nature spirits and regional gods, Hellenists, and pretty much anyone who was not Jewish. To say the Jews and Gentiles became one was essentially to say that God gave the invitation to “All Y’all.”
Verse 13 tells us that Christ himself is the presence of peace, meaning that he is the one who makes it possible for us to have peace with God and one another. Verses 14-18 tell us that Jesus broke down the divisions between us and God so that all have the same access to God. That may sound like a no-brainer to you if you have been raised in the faith, but for those who have not, I can’t imagine how it makes any sense at all.
For one, why would God limit our access to God’s love to Jesus? For another, if Jesus tore down the divisions between us, why do we keep building new ones? Well, as to the first question, God’s love is without limit, but our capacity to understand it, receive it, and respond to it is always limited by the reality of being finite, limited creatures. Jesus entered into that same limited state so that we may know of God’s active presence, always. The problem is that we are still limited. We can’t help but to want to make the most of what we have, so we do what we can to protect our time, our resources, and the people we name and claim as next of kin. That’s not a bad thing, but it is how the lines get drawn and the barriers built, even though God had something else in mind.
The beautiful thing is that what God has in mind is the way things will always move. In the words of Dr. King, “The moral arc of the universe is long, and it bends toward justice.”
These issues that have plagued us from our beginning as a nation are not political issues. They are moral issues. They are channel markers that tell us where the shoals are that threaten to tear holes in our boat and they are reminders that we are, in fact, all in the same boat together.
Sometimes we get it wrong, but often we get it right. I believe this weekend was one such moment. I got a call Friday night advising me that they were taking down the statue of General Mouton from outside the courthouse at 11 a.m. on Saturday and faith leaders were invited to come and pray for healing and reconciliation.
Having previously spoken out for the removal of this symbol of sedition that glorifies the Confederacy and its articles which explicitly claim negro slavery as God’s intention, I was thankful to be included in this event. A few faith leaders were asked to pray as the cameras rolled, then we moved over to let the crane take the spotlight. We continued to offer prayers from the sidelines, though the crowd was not interested in us at all.
One pastor called for the manifestation of God to be known. Others prayed that we can move forward from this place in peace. Then a young, Latina woman in a t-shirt and shorts asserted herself in the crowd of black and white clergy in suits and tribal gowns, and I thought, “Here comes the presence of God.”
Then God spoke through her about the need to recognize each other as created in the image of God. God spoke through her as she claimed this moment as an opportunity for reunion and healing for the fractured Body of Christ which is the church.
That’s what the peace of God looks and sounds like, folks. It looks and sounds like someone who does not look and sound like me or you becoming part of the conversation about how we can be the hands and feet of Christ.
In the letter to the Ephesians, we are told that God has put hostility to death, yet somehow we seem to keep resurrecting it. The answer will never be found in the leveraging of power. It will only come when we can be built upon Christ as the cornerstone of our faith.
Then we will be built into a Spiritual Dwelling Place without walls or programs or preachers, but instead made of hands that offer healing and hope in the midst of the moral failings of our institutions. Then there will be no doubt in what God has done for us through Christ, and there will be no doubt in what we must do for one another in response to the love and mercy we have received.
Then we will make disciples of all nations and baptize them in the name of the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of all that is, was, and shall be – not through our good and right Reformed Theology but through our good and right response to the love we have received – and all to the glory of God!
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