Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
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Ephesians 2:11-20
One in Christ
11Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— 12remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
14For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, 16and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
19Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.
This passage was the listed gospel reading one day last week, when I was out of the office and had re-posted some Reflections from the past for your consideration while I was gone. But it seemed to me that what Paul had to say in this passage was so important – and so central to my understanding of what Jesus meant to express in his life and teachings – that I decided to jump back a little in the lectionary to think about it with you today.
The heart of the passage, it seems to me, is what Paul had to say in verses 12 and 13: “remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
You might remember that on a number of occasions over the last year or two, we’ve revisited the idea that’s known as “religion-less Christianity.” That’s based on the understanding that a religion is a set of rules and practices that people follow to make their god like them – or bless them in some way. Those rules and practices also mark the members of the religion. In a sense, they set up a wall between the righteous people – those on the inside of the religion – and everybody else.
But our understanding is that in Jesus, God eliminated the “religious” aspects of his relationship with humankind. Instead of depending on their own righteousness in following the rules and practices of the Law of Moses, those who follow Jesus were invited to depend on God’s grace – God’s un-earned favor. We are not able to be righteous enough to earn a place in God’s heavenly kingdom. In his gracious love, God has caused faith to arise in our hearts and minds, leading us to follow Jesus and share in his family relationship with God.
We no longer need to worry about being “good enough” to make God love us. He has shown us by his death on the cross that he already loves us as much as it’s possible to love us.
In this passage, Paul also points to what God has done in Jesus to tear down the walls that separate the religious people from everyone else. From the moment of his birth in this world, Jesus became the agent of a process in which walls were torn down between Jews and gentiles, between male and female, between saints and sinners, between clean and unclean – and most importantly, between sinners and God.
In the Christmas season just passed, we remembered that God called unclean (and probably criminal) shepherds to the birthplace of his Son. God drew gentile Magi – practitioners of another religion – across the wilderness to worship him. Before Jesus began his ministry, walls were falling down.
And when that ministry did begin, Jesus acted again and again to make a way for the rejected and the marginalized to come into God’s household. Sinners, prostitutes, tax collectors, foreign soldiers, Samaritans – Jesus broke down the walls that God’s people put up to keep them out. And when the religious people complained, Jesus said they were the reason he was in the world.
And that’s the reason this passage is so important I wanted us to go back and think about it today. Because Paul is making exactly that point to his readers in the gentile city of Ephesus: that although they were once understood by God’s people to be outsiders, in Jesus they had now been brought into the household of God.
It should probably be said that throughout its history, one of the greatest sins of the church has been its insistence on trying to put back up the walls Jesus tore down. Establishing rules and regulations and telling people God would hate them unless they obeyed them all. Excommunicating people who didn’t do the practices the right way or who questioned the authority of the church. Burning people at the stake if they wrote or said the wrong things, or committed terrible sins like translating the Bible into English.
Maybe the greatest challenge the church of Jesus Christ has today is casting off its obsession with religion, with judging and condemning those who don’t keep the rules, with rejecting the “unclean” and the “unrighteous” and putting up walls to keep them away. In this, I think, the world sometimes understands the spirit of Jesus better than those who claim his name.
But Paul has been trying to make that point for 2,000 years – to his readers in Ephesus, and to those of us who read his letters today.
Let’s pray. Lord, protect us against religious thinking – against relying on our own righteousness and putting up walls against those we consider sinful. Help us instead to rely on your grace and join you in tearing down the walls that would keep others away from us, and from you. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
(The listed readings for today are Psalms 123 and 146; Isaiah 44:9-20; and Mark 3:19b-35. Our readings come from the NIV Bible, as posted on Biblica.com, the website of the International Bible Society.)
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