At week's end, let’s skip to the epistle reading appointed for Sunday, from Paul’s beautiful letter to the church at Ephesus. This section discusses reconciliation between two factions of Christians who were estranged and becoming more so. Anyone concerned about the alarming divides in American Christianity will note the parallels.
The primary tension afflicting the earliest churches, according to what we read in the book of Acts and Paul’s letters, was between those Jewish Christians who came to faith through Jesus’ Jewish disciples in Judea, and the growing number of Greek and Roman “Gentile” Christians converted through the missionary journeys of Paul and his associates. Paul tried to navigate the conflicts, getting the Jerusalem leadership to back off their demand that Gentile believers be circumcised before baptism, and encouraging the Gentile churches to give generously toward those afflicted by the famine in Judea. But tensions remained; Christ’s body has never in human history been truly one.
In this letter, Paul addresses Gentile believers tired of being considered “not quite Christians” by the Jerusalem factions. He reminds them that they were once outsiders, “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.” In light of their new status, he wants them to seek reconciliation with those who would exclude them, and stay rooted in Christ. “For he 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.”
Can we be reconciled with Christians who seem to ignore so much that Christ did, said and taught? Who ignore his command to welcome the stranger and love the enemy, who uphold the sanctity of unborn life but dismiss the life-threatening violence and poverty afflicting so many already born? How can we be reconciled in Christ if some don’t seem to worship the same Lord we meet in the New Testament? Here’s a place to start:
So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father.
We all have access to the Father in the Spirit, and so we all have the same access to the truth. What each does with it remains a matter of choice, and it is up to God to reveal and to judge. We are called to bear witness to the truth we encounter in the Gospels, and the Truth we have met in the living person of Jesus Christ. The answer is draw near to Christ, if not to all those who claim to follow him.
Paul ends with this stirring reminder: So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.
If we make it our intention to base our life in faith on Christ Jesus himself; if we make it our desire to grow together spiritually into a place where God can be known on earth, a temple, a dwelling place, we will have a firm foundation on which to stand in relationship to those who seem to distort Christianity We can disagree without condemning, remembering the thousands around us who are thirsty for God, who are rightly repelled by our conflicts. Let's get busy introducing them to Jesus, our peace.
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