Gracious and loving God, may only your Truth
be spoken and only your Truth be heard ☩ in the name of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
A few weeks ago, in preaching on the subject of generosity and giving, I recounted the story of a pastor who, instead of saying “Praise God from whom all blessings flow” when the collection came forward, said, “God, this is what we think of you.” And while that may be true in some sense, the grace of God is that regardless of what we think of God, God shows us unrelenting grace, mercy, and love. Well, today the topic isn’t giving or money, but rather relationships and reconciliation. And that statement might also be a helpful one for this topic; when it comes to how we treat God’s children, that is, one another, we are saying something like “God, this is what we think of you.”
This
is actually a tougher message than when it relates it to money. To be honest, I’m
not sure why money is considered such a sensitive topic, it’s just a tool to
measure economic activity. Of course, I understand how money has become an idol
and wielded power over us in ways that it shouldn’t, but it’s a relatively easy
fix – just live more simply and give money away. But building relationships
that reflect the mercy and grace of the Gospel? That’s much, much harder. It
would mean holder fewer grudges, which are some of our most valued possessions.
It would mean being deferential, humble, and slow-to-anger, not values that
gain us attention or authority in our society. It would mean telling the truth,
even when it is inconvenient. It would mean hearing the truth, even when that
means we have to change our minds and admit we were wrong. It would mean being
united without demanding uniformity, something that seems nearly impossible in
a world that seeks to divide in so many ways. Yes, having our relationships
reflect the grace of God is a challenge.
Division
is something that is wreaking havoc on us right now. We are divided about mask-wearing,
on election results, on the climate crisis, on how to teach the history of race
in schools, on the proper way to read Scripture, and I’ve heard that Major
League Baseball is strongly considering implementing the universal designated
hitter next season. Whether it’s trivial or serious, we are fractured to the
point where we get our news from different sources, we worship at churches that
align with our political views (talk about putting the cart before the horse),
and we tend to associate only with people who have similar worldviews. And when
we run into conflicts with people, we quickly describe them in terms that allow
us to further divide ourselves – “Oh, well, you know, she is an anti-vaxxer,”
or “Well, you do know who he voted for in the last election.”
In his Letter
from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King named the reality that that “We
are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of
destiny.” Well, that garment is tearing at the seams. Or, as St. Paul put it, “Now
you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” The Church is being
torn limb from limb, and we’re doing it to ourselves.
So when we hear in
Ephesians that “For Christ Jesus is our peace; in his flesh he has made both
groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility
between us” it sounds like the salvation that we so desperately need. The sort
of virtues that I named such as humility
and honesty weren’t fully seen in even the most devout of saints. So while we
might not be able to have peace through our own devices, the good news is that
Jesus is our peace. As we heard “For he is our peace.” Not “If you follow him
you’ll have peace,” not “He will give you peace,” not “He will be your conflict
negotiation specialist.” Jesus is our peace. In his very flesh and by
his very blood, Jesus is our peace.
The passage that
we heard today began with the word “Remember.” So what is it that we’re
supposed to be holding in mind? Well, if we go back earlier in Ephesians, we
remember that last Sunday we heard that “God chose us in Christ before the
foundation of the world… and destined us for adoption in the Beloved… and we
were marked with the seal of Holy Spirt as a pledge of this inheritance of
grace.” And earlier in chapter two, we read that “You were dead through the
trespasses and sins in which you once lived… but God, who is rich in mercy, out
of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our
trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved.”
We remember these
things – that we were stuck in our sinful ways with no alternative, no way out,
no way to live by a different story. But through Jesus Christ, God has adopted
us and brought us into the kingdom of grace – meaning that we now know that the
way of love is the way of life, that forgiving our enemies is possible, that in
losing our life we gain it, that death is not final. Remembering this
transforming message of grace, we are ready to hear “Remember that you were at
that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and
strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the
world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near
by the blood of Christ.”
We have all been
brought together through the love of Christ which was most clearly and fully
seen at the Cross when he gave his life for the life of the world. I sort of
think of Jesus as something like a great hostess. Jesus comes to all of us,
regardless of how far off we might be. No matter our past, no matter our
doubts, no matter our insecurities, no matter our imperfections, Jesus comes to
us and says “I’ve prepared a seat for you at the banquet of God.” And then he
brings us there and gives us a seat at the table. And at that table, we’ll find
all sorts of people – some of whom we might be very glad to find there, others
we are surprised to see, and still others whom we’ve never seen before. But
Jesus brings us all together to feast at the meal prepared with his very blood.
The word in this
passage for this idea is “commonwealth.” That’s a word I wish was more a part
of our vernacular. The idea is that our wealth is held only in common with one
another and that we’re all in this together. It’s the same blessing in having a
Book of Common Prayer. The gifts of God do not belong to us individually or in isolation,
but rather are held in trust for the good of all. This sort of communal
thinking is so vital to resting in the peace of Christ.
The idea of having
a personal relationship with God is a modern phenomenon. Our ancestors in faith
understood that faith was always communal and relational. It doesn’t mean that
we don’t have an individual relationship with God, but it’s never limited to
that. The whole “me and Jesus” mentality is destructive to the faith and makes
us “far off” from the Body of Christ. The faith of Jesus is about us, it’s
always in the plural. The plural doesn’t negate the individual, rather it
transcends it and invites us into something bigger than ourselves. If we do not
receive with gratitude that Jesus brings us to the table of beloved community
that is filled with all sorts of people, we will miss out on the salvation and
peace of God.
This is how Jesus
is our peace – he breaks down the walls that separate us so that we can be together.
Ephesians mentions that he has broken down the dividing wall, a reference to an
actual wall in the Temple in Jerusalem that separated the various courtyards
that were for Jews and non-Jews. We heard that “through the Cross, Jesus has
created one new humanity in place of two, thus making peace and reconciling us
and giving us all access to the one Spirit, making us all members of the household
of God.” All of those categories that we use to divide ourselves have been
abolished and Jesus has become our peace.
Yes, maybe she
voted for Trump and he for Biden. Perhaps she is transgender and he thinks that
is unnatural. He wants a major federal investment in infrastructure and she would
rather that money be spent on the military. I’m not saying that these questions
don’t matter, but they aren’t what determines whether or not someone is worthy
of respect, dignity, or relationship. What matters is that for each and every
person, Christ’s blood was shed. That grace is what unites us and is our peace.
We can and will disagree on many things, but it doesn’t change the fact that
Jesus Christ loves us all, has redeemed us all, and has given us all a seat at the
banquet table of God. Again, turning to Martin Luther King, he said that “we
must learn to live together as beloved community or perish together as fools.”
Either we are united in Christ, or it all falls apart.
This is why the
icon project that we are embarking on matters so much. You’ve hopefully read in
our weekly emails that we are commissioning seven icons to be placed in the
church, which will be followed up with a second phase in the chapel. Icons are prayers
written not with letters and words, but with lines and colors. They are
artistic depictions of Biblical events and saints, and this project intends to
not only add more beauty to our space, not only to allow us to come together in
a generational project, but this is primarily about remembering that the dividing
wall has been broken down by Christ.
The simple truth
is that the faces in our stained-glass windows, while beautiful, are overwhelmingly
white. And that’s fine for saints such as Alphege or Hilda who were
Anglo-Saxon. But most everyone else is portrayed in a way that denies the
wonderful diversity of God. And so we are commissioning icons that depict
saints who were African-American, such as a former Suffragan Bishop of North
Carolina, Henry Delaney, and a member of this parish, Elizabeth Duncan Koontz.
There will be an icon of Manteo, the first indigenous person to be Baptized in the
Western hemisphere in the Church of England, showing the growth of the Church across
boundaries. There will be an icon of William Wilberforce, who fought against
the British slave trade for his entire career in Parliament. There will be an
icon of our patron, St. Luke, showing him in the way that someone from
modern-day Turkey would have likely appeared. And there will be two large icons
on the back wall – one of the Transfiguration of Jesus, an event that shows us
the importance of the Jewish roots of our faith, and one of the Day of
Pentecost, which really is a celebration of beloved community as enabled by the
Holy Spirit.
This project
matters immensely because it testifies to the household of God of which Jesus
brings us into. It is a house where all are welcome, all are valued, and all have
a place. This effort shows our commitment to beloved community, not just in
word, but in practice. We recognize that this is not our church, it is God’s.
So these icons will make it clear that the dividing wall has been broken down and
that all people have been brought together through the grace of God. It is our
hope that whoever walks through the doors of this church will find themselves
in these icons and windows and know the grace and peace of God to be the
cornerstone of their lives. Jesus is our peace and gathers us all at the banquet
table of God’s love.
The way we live with one another truly matters. How we fight and disagree matters. Not only because it has real impacts on people, but also because it is a testimony to the uniting power of the Cross of Christ. Are our divisions more powerful than the blood of Jesus, or is the love of Jesus stronger than those things that divide us? How we relate to others says something about what we think of God. Jesus said, “By this they will know that you are my disciples, that you love one another.” May it be said of us, “Look at how they love each other.”
