Sermon and Video for Nineth Sunday after Pentecost
Video of Service at St. Luke, Rensselaer
The Nineth Sunday after Pentecost
Jeremiah 23:1-6 Ephesians 2:11-22 Mark 6:30-44
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer. Amen.
I don’t know the personal history of all of you, but I suspect that most of you cannot remember a time when you were not a Christian. Nor do you remember a time when you were not associated with the church. You may have gone through various feelings and thoughts about your association with the church, but you have always been connected to the church. By “feelings and thoughts” I mean “bored,” “indifferent,” wonder about the “relevance” of it all, being “mad or upset,” or “grateful and can’t imagine not being a part of the church” and you cannot recall a time when your faith was not strengthened by your connection to the church.
The Apostle Paul writes to the Church in Ephesus somewhere between AD 60 and 62 while he is a prisoner in Rome. The last time he had face to face contact with the church in Ephesus is at least five years before. I am not sure how long the congregation has been worshiping together at this point. Perhaps 10-20 years?
While most of us cannot remember a time when the church was not part of our spiritual and mental landscape, the church in Ephesus can. That sense of “Before and After” Jesus Christ became a part of their life and they started to worship together does matter. There are some significant barriers that need to be addressed in order for the congregation to grow spiritually.
Ephesus is a prosperous Greek port town on the western shore of modern day Turkey. It is not known when Jewish merchants arrived, but they were well established by the time the Apostle Paul visited. Acts 18 reports that Paul was well received in the Synagogue and asked to stay longer. He had to return at a later time. From the beginning, both Jews and Gentiles responded to the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Standing alongside one another, their lives before Christ would conflict with one another.
Observant Jews, meaning those that followed the 613 commandments given by Moses that include moral, dietary, and other laws, kept themselves separate from Gentiles for certain parts of their life. If any of the Jews from Ephesus made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Temple, they would have seen the sign on the wall that Gentiles could go no further than the Court of Gentiles on the Temple grounds. Only Jews are allowed deeper into the temple compound. That sense of separation, the realization that friendship between Jew and Gentile could only go so far, would follow them home. There would be, even amongst Jewish Christians, a sense that the Gentile does not have the same level of God’s promise as what they do. They are God’s chosen. The men bear a symbol of the covenant upon their body through circumcision. And, of course, Jesus is Jewish.
There is a theological wall, a barrier, that separates Jew and Gentile. Or, at least on the surface, there appears to be one. And human sinfulness and pride can easily make an appearance into an uncrossable mountain.
Gentiles also have a “before Jesus” set of memories and practices that they bring into the congregation. We must remember that Ephesus contains one of the seven ancient wonders of the world: the temple of Artemis. We can safely assume many of the Gentiles have worshiped there. The Gentiles will also bring in their own understanding of devotion and piety as well as assumption about dress, household matters, and sexuality. And human sinfulness and pride can easily erect a barrier of us and them, their way and our way. Before long, you have more than one wall that appears to be an uncrossable mountain.
The ultimate purpose of the letter to the church in Ephesus is to establish a unity that is focused on Christ Jesus and that will be the basis by which the whole church will drop their identities and practices from “before Christ” and begin to walk in “after Christ” life and identity together.
The way that the Holy Spirit leads the Apostle toward this goal is to begin with God’s grace. The whole point of Ephesians 1:3-14, that mile long, “grammatical monster” of a single sentence, is that no one chooses to be a Christian. God has chosen you before the very foundation of the world to be a Christian. You are elected, predestined to receive God’s salvation through Christ, independent of any effort on your part. Long before the world existed, long before anyone knew you were going to exist, God chose you out of love. Not because of who you will be, not because of what you will one day accomplish, but simply out of love, he chose you. Your salvation is a mysterious gift, given by God on account of Christ Jesus.
In chapter two, Paul continues his argument that your salvation is a mysterious gift of God independent of anything you can say, think, or do, by underscoring the point that human beings are incapable of impressing the Lord. We cannot ever present ourselves worthy of God’s affection and favor because from the get go we are sinners. We are born in sin and are fundamentally at odds with God’s desire for us. Paul says it plainly in 2:1 “You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.” Left to our own devices, we will follow the passions of our flesh and minds and will live lives that are in stark rebellion against God’s intentions for us. The only thing that saves us is God’s mercy. Lutherans are particularly fond of what Paul says in 2:4-8
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
No matter what your affiliation before Christ, you were dead in your sin. But Christ intervenes. His mercy from the cross is extended to us. His grace is that his death on the cross saves us. We receive this gift through the faith that the Holy Spirit provides for us.
Paul continues his argument in the reading for today. In the mystery of God, people who have different identities, now stand next to each other to worship the one true Lord God, who is not made with human hands, but who has created the universe and everything in it, this Lord God gives us a new identity. We are no longer circumcised or uncircumcised, keepers of religious law or not, we are together Christians. The cross of Jesus Christ is what binds us together. Jesus has died for us so that our sins are forgiven. We are alive in Christ. We have hope for the future.
The walls that we put up to separate us are artificial. Christ Jesus brings them down. Through the cross of Jesus, we receive God’s forgiveness. He brings us peace. We cannot count on any kind of works righteousness, religious or secular, or the keeping of mosaic law to earn favor before God. Christ does all the hard work for us. So don’t put faith in your heritage, or your life before Christ Jesus, put your faith in Christ Jesus, for He has died for you so that you may live in peace. We are reconciled to God. We are reconciled to one another. In Christ there is no more Jew, Gentile, slave, free, male or female. We are together in Christ, forgiven and bound for heaven.
As we wait for the fulfillment of God’s promises in Christ, we learn to dwell in God’s house together. The Lord has figuratively destroyed the old temple. The new temple is Christ’s body, the Church. The foundation is the preaching and teaching of the Apostles and Christ is the cornerstone. In the church we practice living in the unity that Christ has brought us into through the cross and His grace. When our sin tries to erect those old or new barriers and walls that lead to “us and them”, we confess our sin, and ask the Lord to take away the effects of our sin so that we may dwell in the peace that God intends in his Church. We look forward to the day when there will no longer be a “before Christ” but only an everlasting with Christ.
The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
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