Once Far off ... Brought Near by the Blood of Christ (Eph. 2:13)

Sunday, October 5, 2017

            Two Satursdays ago, I took a shovel to a weed patch.  Hiding under that invasive overgrowth is good dirt, ripe for a garden.  But the green blanket of nuisance is covering it, so I took to digging.  Forty-five minutes later, good dirt smiled through and said to me, “Fill me with your seeds.  Flowers.  Vegetables.  Greens.  Let beautiful and delicious things grow here.”  I dragged three cans full of weeds to the curb for pick-up, went in the house, cleaned up, and began folding the mountain of clean laundry that needed to be put away.

            The weeding wasn’t done.  I was just done weeding.  I picked it back up yesterday. I got more done but still wasn’t finished.  Again, I went inside to fold Laundry with college football on in the background.  Fold the laundry.  Put it away.  Rinse.  Repeat. It’s a lot of work to maintain a home.  It’s good work.  A blessing.  But still, a lot of work.

            “We are no longer strangers and aliens,” Ephesians 2:19.  We are no longer cut off from God or the people of God.  The verse continues, “We are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.”  I mentioned three weeks ago that we would talk about HillSong as “the household of God.”  Our aim is to maintain this household so that all who come feel welcomed and feel at home here. 

            However, after setting that goal, I did a message about grace.  And then last week’s message was about how the Christian view of reality is more hopeful than any other.  In essence, that too is a message about grace.  Why so much emphasis on grace when the end in mind is to build up the household of God? I think people are scared of God; scared of what it will mean for them to be too close to God. 

            The question for reflection in your bulletin is “what, specifically, makes it hard for you to draw near to God?”  It’s unhelpful to be generic with this question. 

What make it hard to draw near to God? I ask.  Sin, you say.

That neuters the question.  You say, well sin is what cuts people off from God, so the answer must be sin.  It’s logical.

Yes, I respond, but which sin? 

Drinking to excess? 

Abusing power? 

Living in paralyzed fear when God calls us to bold faith? 

Living in affluence surrounded by need when God calls us to extravagant generosity? 

By saying “sin is what prevents anyone from coming close to God,” we avoid naming our individual, specific sins that prevent us from drawing near to God.  Church goers love condemning sin in general and especially love damning sins that don’t tempt them.  We don’t like it so much when talk of sin turns to our sins and thus to confession.  We have to confess things we have done, sins we have committed that hurt people and serve to separate us from a relationship of closeness and trust with God. 

Verse 13 says, “You who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”  I have seen people sit in the sanctuary as far back as possible during worship.  If we moved the back wall 15 further back, they’d be grateful.  Because up front is where the communion table is; up front is where the baptismal pool sits.  The big cross high up on the wall is up front.  That’s too close to God.  That’s terrifying. 

Why is it hard to draw near to God?  Before we can begin doing our part to maintain the household God has constructed in Christ at work in the hearts of people, before we can live as God has invited us to live, we have accept God’s invitation to come close.    That means we have to be honest with ourselves and about ourselves.  We’re sinners.

Twelve step programs get this right.  Hi, my name is Rob, and I am an alcoholic, or, I am an addict.  Stark honesty is essential.  What would church be like if every week, we began by going person by person, beginning our worship in raw confession.  Hi my name is Rob and I am sinner.  I am saved by grace, but though the Holy Spirit of God lives in me, still this week, I have sinned against God and against people.  How different would church be if instead of worrying about our “Sunday best” we live in confessional honesty?  We cannot draw near to God unless we do that.  If we do that God draws us into a bear hug of forgiveness and love.  Verse 13 says, “We’re brought near by the blood of Christ.”  That blood was shed for the forgiveness of sins.  Sins are covered and forgiveness received as we confess, as we come to God with our full selves, as we are.

What comes between us and drawing close to God?  Fear of standing before the Holy One exposed in our sin. 

Another question that must be faced as we prepare to join our hearts with one another and live in the house God built as the household of God is this.  What new thing is God doing?

            Hear the language in Ephesians 2.  “At one time you … were called the uncircumcision.”  “Remember that at that time you were without Christ … having no hope and without God in the world.”  The view from Ephesians is that to be without God is to be without hope.  Those addressed were without hope.

            However, that changed.  “Remember at that time” yields to the language of verse 13.  “But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”  Something happened.  Something changed.

            This change occurs at two levels in Ephesians.  First, the individual is cut off from God by sin, but through Jesus’ work on the cross, the death sin brings is shouldered by Jesus.  So the individual is saved from death, saved for life.  Salvation! 

We saw this in Greg’s life.  He came to know himself as a new person, forgiven by God.  His baptism gives witness.  His baptism is public, a statement made before the entire church.  He is lowered under the water, dead in sin and buried.  But we don’t leave him under the water.  He is raised just as Jesus rose from death in resurrection.  Greg is raised to new life.  It’s the story of everyone who comes to God in confession and repentance.  Each person’s journey is unique, but we are united in our baptism.  What is god doing?  God is saving individuals.

            What else is God doing?  Reconciliation!  We are united in baptism.  Whatever may have previously divided groups of people is removed.  Race.  Ethnicity.  Social class.  Place of birth.  Country of citizenship.  It doesn’t matter what divides us because that division has been removed. 

            What is God doing? 

·         Saving individuals from death. 

·         Eliminating the divisions that come between groups of people. 

·         Building a house – a gathering of people into a family, the household of God. 

In Ephesians, the specific division is between Jews who follow Jesus and Gentiles who follow Jesus.  Ephesians existed as theological writing in the late first century when the church was a couple of generations old.  This is Jewish-Gentile tension had several decades to evolve into an ongoing institutional sickness that weakened the entire church.  One of the main reasons Ephesians was important as a letter is the profound statement of 2:15-16.  It says God [created] “in himself one new humanity in place of two, [reconciling] both groups to God in one body through the cross.”  This action put to death hostility. 

            Why is it hard to draw near to God?  Because of the specific sins you and I commit.

            What is God doing?  Saving people from sin and death, bring together groups who were hostile to each other.

            A third question: what hostility among us is bring broken down?

            Possibilities include the tension between white people who live privileged in society and non-white people who have to contend in society with privileged persons; also, the tension between people who deny there is such a thing as white privilege and those who insist it is an evil that plagues our culture; also, the tension between conservatives and liberals.  These and many tensions would divide us, but they cannot when we live in Christ because, he, “Puts to death the hostility” (v.16).

            Practically speaking, what does this mean?  It means your stand is not that important and cannot be what defines your relationships. 

Where do I stand on gun control? 

Where do I stand on birth control? 

Where do I stand on immigration? 

Where do I stand on tax reform? 

Where do I stand on big government v. small government?

Where do I stand on race relations?

            If, as I went through these questions, you thought of where you stand on each issue, you’re missing the point.  The first thing and the last thing is am standing in Christ?  Am I one forgiven, full of the spirit, ready to love, ready to forgiven, and ready to welcome my brother or sister, even the one who is opposite of me on all these issues?  Am I so grounded in Christ, I won’t run to Facebook to list all my stances in confrontational way that puts people with opposite views down because I know doing so will bring pain to my brother or sister?  I might post my ideas, but not in a way that demonizes people with other ideas.

            Facebook can be an arena of dialogue.  And it is OK to have opinions and hold them passionately.  But for the sake of who we are in Christ and for the sake of being a household that welcomes in people, all kinds of people, will I make it a spiritual discipline to show restraint in my language, in my use of social media, and in my expression of my passionately held views?  I will make sure that whatever I say is said in language colored by love and fragranced by Christ. 

            If you know that I love you no matter what your views are or who you voted for and if I know you love me no matter what my views are or who I voted for, then we can talk, laugh, shout, and cry together in our agreement and our disagreement because we are united in Christ.  If I trust you to be sensitive and not use language that hurts me and to apologize when you have hurt me, and if you trust me to be sensitive and not use language that hurts you and to apologize when I have hurt you, then we talk.  About anything.  The hostility has been broken down.  We are ready to work together to maintain the household of God.

            Jesus accomplishes a lot on the cross, more than we often acknowledge.  We know about the individual’s experience of grace.  Salvation is a work of the cross.  But so too is the work of reconciliation.  Groups welcoming each other – groups previously hostile to each other – is as important to God as the experience of individuals.  Salvation and reconciliation are both important.

            And so, we pray. 

In prayer, think about the group in society today that is the object of your hostility.  You don’t like liberals.  You don’t like people who post of Facebook.  You don’t like supporters of our current president.  You don’t like supporters of our previous president.  Think about the object of your hostility.

            Now confess sins hostility has led you to commit. 

Maybe you will need to go to someone and confess how you have thought hurtful thoughts about them or done hurtful things to them. 

If someone comes to you confessing, give them the grace you want God to give you.  Let this be a time where our hearts are wide open before God.  As church family, may we together pray, asking God to rain down grace, forgiveness, and healing.  We also want God to do some wall-busting.  O God destroy the hostilities that arise and divide us. 

In upcoming weeks, we’ll go deeper in Ephesians as we examine how we live as the household of God. 

This morning we pray for an in-breaking of the Holy Spirit.  May the Lord draw us together – to one another.  May the Lord provoke us to full-bodies, raw, honest confession.  And in that confession, may we accept God’s invitation to come close to Him.

AMEN

One Humanity (Ephesians 2:11-22)

Sunday, September 14, 2015

            Well … it has happened again.  This week a story was shared with me and it got me very upset.  A man in Minnesota was waiting for his kids to get out of school.  The school meets in a business park of some sort.  While he waited someone harassed him.  A nonviolent conflict ensued, police were called, and he ended being tased. 

            He had not broken any law.  He was a man waiting to pick his kids up from school and he reacted negatively as you or I would to being harassed for no reason.

            He is black.  All the officers are white.  Much of the confrontation was recorded.  I heard and watched it.  I was upset.

            This is the place where real life, your life and mine, and the Bible and the Holy Spirit of God collide.  It all comes together.

            How many more times in our country must a black person be assaulted by the police who are supposed to protect us?  I read of someone who had been an American citizen for 4 decades.  She moved from Miami to Georgia and someone posted on Facebook, “make sure you bring your flag.”  The reference was to an unfortunate phrase, “Would the last America to leave Miami please bring the flag?”  The inference is that people who look like Cubans, whatever that means, are not as American as white people. 

            Then there is a video, a farce, where a white man, a jogger, sees another jogger, a woman with Asian features, in the park.  Both are stretching.  He says, “Hi,” and she responds.  Then he says, “Where are you from?  Your English is perfect.”  She says, “San Diego.  We speak English there.”  He says, “No, where are you from?  Where are your people from?”  He proceeds to ask dumber and dumber questions. 

            Then she turns the tables on him.  She asks this white guy, “Where are you from?”  He names an American city and she says, “No, where are your people from?”  He says, “Oh, well, I am just a normal American.”  But she presses him until he says, “England, I guess.”

            Aren’t we all just normal Americans?

            When I led a youth group in Arlington in the late 90’s, nearly every kid in the group was either Hispanic or Sudanese.  The Sudanese were actually born in Sudan or in refugee camps in Kenya or Egypt.  Every single one of those tan skinned Latino kids were born in Arlington, Virginia.  How much more American can you be?

            But they didn’t see it that way.  If they discussed a friend at school they might say, “She’s American.”  I’d say, “What do you mean?”  They’d say, “You know, white.  Not Spanish.”  I though not Spanish.  These kids had parents who were Costa Rican and Argentinian and Salvadorian, but some of the kids, Hispanic kids, could barely speak Spanish themselves.  Yet in their minds, a normal American is white.

            Sometimes,  I will meet a person who is Asian or Hispanic.  I will ask, “Where are you from.”  I ask the same question upon meeting someone who is white or black.  It is a way I show interest in the other person.  I want to connect.  Regardless of what they look like, I expect to hear “I am from Detroit or I am from Wilmington or I am from Georgia or I am from St. Louis.”  I see the other as American, but she responds, “I am Korean.”  She doesn’t trust that I see her as American.

            Why should she?  If she has been hit with subtle prejudice or outright racism over and over, why should she believe that this white guy will be a nice one who sees her as a beautiful human being, who wants to celebrate her uniqueness, who wants to hear her story?  Why should she believe my good intentions?  She’s been hurt too many times by people who look like me.

            In the case of the Hispanic youth group kids this is a matter of self-identity.  In the comedy video, it is how we see others.  In Miami, it is a matter of some people deciding that individuals who they think “look Cuban” and probably want to be in this country so much they fought to get here are somehow less American looking than those who had the fortune to be born here.  For the black man who was tased in Minnesota, it is a matter of extreme embarrassment in front of his kids and the unsettling reality that he cannot trust the police to be for him.  In the case of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the racism that plagues us as a people turned out to be deadly. 

            I said earlier, this where real life, your life and mine, and the Bible and the Holy Spirit of God collide. 

            Ephesians 2 is seen against the backdrop of divided people.  Those called “the circumcision,” the Jews were distinct.  Jewish males were circumcised.  Gentiles males, all men who were not Jewish, did not get circumcised.  Jewish people lived by the Law of Moses.  Those who were not Jewish did not live by the law.  The Jews observed Sabbath.  Perhaps this distinction was the oddest to the Gentiles around them.  Why don’t the Jews work today?  Everyone else does?  What makes today so special?

            These distinctions marked the Jews as separate, holy, the people of God.  But they also marked all non-Jewish people as being not included in the people of God.  Gentiles were vile, unclean, and cut-off.  The division was as dramatic and pregnant withthe danger of violence as are the divisions between people in our country today. 

            It cannot be so for we who are “in Christ.”  Paul would not tolerate two churches – a Gentile Church and a Jewish one.  He insists that in Christ Gentiles are “no longer strangers and aliens but citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (2:19).  Were Paul to step onto the scene today, he’d tell churches that divisions are antithetical to the Gospel.  Even if our worship styles are different, we are to be one.  Even if my grandparents persecuted your grandparents, I am to confess and repent, and you are to forgive.  We are to be one in Christ.  Even if our peers don’t seek unity and love, as followers of Christ you and are I commanded to seek unity and love in Christ. 

            In Ephesians 2, Gentiles by virtue of being Gentile are separated from God.  “Remember,” we read in verse 12, we who are Gentiles, “were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”  However, in Christ, by the blood of Christ, we are now brought near.  Jesus, is our peace.

            This word peace is central.  I specifically wish individuals in law enforcement would have the inner drive to seek peace and the imaginative creavity to find peaceful solutions to conflicts.  I am sure in a confrontation a policeman feels disrespected.  And if they don’t respect him, he will lose the authority he needs to do his job.  I am sure that’s how he feels.  It is hard.  There is pressure.  I am sure he feels he must show his strength in order to be respected by. 

But, the effort to project strength is resulting in policemen and policewomen doing awful things like shooting unarmed teens and tasing Dads who wait to pick their kids up from school.  I wish more people wanted peace and worked for it.  In Ephesians 2, the word peace is mentioned in verse 14, 15, and twice in 17.

            Jesus is our peace.  “In his flesh, he made both groups into one and” broke down the dividing wall of hostility.  We cannot stop others from hating or giving in to fear.  But we can offer a new story.  We can help break down the wall of hostility through prayer and acts and words of love which include a willingness to listen as others tell the stories of when they were wounded by racism.  With humble patience we listen as much as the other needs us to listen.  What better act of love is there than to value another by affirming his worth as we listen to his story?

            We have to keep faith in Jesus at the center of this because He is our peace.  Without him driving our words, any steps toward peace come up short.  I know religion is a source of division in the world, but that is bad religion, religion built on the destruction of other.  In Christ, our posture is open, humble, inviting, God-focused, Spirit-powered, and aimed at love and unity. 

            This is why Ephesians 2 is so intent on destroying circumcision as a qualifying mark.  This is why Ephesians 2 insists in verse 15 that Jesus has abolished the law.  In the Sermon on the Mount, we see Jesus as the fulfillment of the law and it is true.  Everything the law intended to accomplish in creating people who worship God and live with each other in peace is accomplished in and through Christ.  So in that sense, Jesus in fact fulfills the law completely.  But when the circumcision and the law are markers that identify some people as insiders and others as outsiders, then law and circumcisions no longer serve God’s purposes.  In that sense, Jesus does away with the distinctions. 

Therefore we see in verses 15-16 that Jesus “creates in himself one new humanity in place of the two, making peace and [reconciling] both groups to God in one body through the cross.”  The next verses insist that Jesus proclaims peace and peace means that we all have access to God.

In Christian faith we see this in Baptism and Communion.  Baptism tells a story that ends with an invitation: I was a sinner, I died in sin, Jesus rose from death, and because I am in Him, I will rise from death; and you can too if you receive Jesus into your life and follow Him.  He came that everyone who believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life as children of God.  Communion is a share meal and the only requirement for coming to the table is the willingness to acknowledge sin and our powerlessness to defeat sin.  We come to the communion table as everyone comes to it: dependent on God for everything.

Our one humanity is not homogenous and I would not want it to be.  In other letters, Paul brags about his own Jewish credentials.  He is a Jewish man, not an everyman.  In Ephesians 2, he does not want Jews to stop being Jews.  He is not in search of the generic disciple.  There is no such thing.  Our relationship with God is always particular, always personal.  There is no general Christianity.  Christianity is always the story of you, an individual, walking with Jesus, living as his disciple.  It is even inaccurate to say, “The story.”  I cannot tell “the story,” but I can tell my story.

The world becomes beautiful when we hear one another’s’ stories.  I will never say, “Well, black people and Hispanics and Asians and whites – we’re really not all that different.”  We are.  We are beautifully different, but united in Christ. 

I pastored in Arlington for 9 years and I got into a group of friendships with single people or young couples prior to having kids.   Once kids come along and grow into school age you don’t hang out with friends very often.  Everything in life is geared toward baseball practice and orthodontist appointments and PTA meetings.  By the time it is all done each day, you can’t go out to clubs or sports bars.  For one thing, you’re too tired.  For another, it would be irresponsible to leave the house with your children in bed asleep and go out for beers. 

But, years ago, I did have that life and I had my crowd.  We’d go out to eat at Dupont Circle or go to movies in Adams Morgan.  One of the guys in that crowd is married to a woman who is not Caucasian.  I say it that way deliberately because for years, I did not know her ethnicity.  And I was scared to ask.  She is very outspoken, politically far, far to the left of me, and I thought if I ask, “What are you,” fiery laser beams would come out of her eyes and pierce my skull.  So I didn’t ask.

We were part of the same circle, though.  We all even traveled to Honduras together in 2004 when one of our group married a Honduran woman.  So I was around her a lot.  I now don’t remember the conversation, but I remember her figuring out that I had no clue about her ethnicity.  She liked that I didn’t know and that she knew I was uncertain of how to ask.  After teasing me a bit, she finally told me she was Korean.  She had been adopted by a Caucasian family in Ohio.  They had 4 boys and her mother wanted a daughter badly.  So they adopted a Korean girl.

If you go deep enough with people and listen long enough, you get past the uncomfortable issues that plague our world, like the race conversation.  People will find you are safe and they can share their stories with you.  And they do because we all want to share our stories.  And when they do, then the race conversation is no longer uncomfortable.  It is beautiful.

Janessa and I were friends and so when Candy and I were getting ready to adopt, I could talk to her.  I could ask, “Now you are an adult.  What is it like, your relationship with the parents who adopted you?  What do I need to do to make sure my children will want a relationship with me when they are grown?”  And she helped me. 

Maybe it sounds like I am way off topic here.  I have been discussing unity in Christ especially among people of different races and I have wandered off on this tangent about my old crowd in DC.  But this is the point! Janessa and I remained as white man and Korean woman, but as we listened to one another and came to that safe place in friendship, we became something more.  We became brother and sister in Christ, people who listened to one another’s stories and helped each other. 

This is the other story, the alternative narrative.  Ferguson, Missouri is a reminder that there’s a lot of hate in the world.  The body of Christ has another story to tell – the story of the gospel bringing us together, making us one. 

AMEN