Community of Christ

July 18, 2021
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois

Ephesians 2:11-22[1]

The early church began losing its vision.  Paul had started churches all over Asia Minor and taught them the gospel.  He told them of God’s redemptive involvement in the life of human beings and all of creation, and of the promise through Christ of our glorious destiny.^[2]  That destiny Paul spoke of was the second coming, the end of the world, when Christ, “with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and... we… will be caught up in the clouds… to meet the Lord in the air.”^[3]  Except… that didn’t happen.  The end never came.  Jesus didn’t come back on the clouds, at least not yet.  So, they thought, now what do we do?

The author of Ephesians has an idea of what to do next.  This letter was probably written soon after Paul died by one of the early Christians writing in Paul’s name. The letter to the church in Ephesus was circulated to other churches as well.  In that letter, the author redefines the purpose of the church.  Paul had established churches with the idea that the end was coming soon.  They were to be an apocalyptic group, withdrawn from the world, waiting for the end.  Sounds a little like a cult.  Ephesians gives the church a new vision and a new mission.  The church is redefined as the body of Christ, the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel and the final goal of God’s salvation history.^[4]  Christ isn’t coming back in some future time.  Christ is here, now, present in the Church (with a capital C), the gathered community of believers, and engaged with the world.  In Ephesians, the church becomes “the household of God… a holy temple… a dwelling place for God.”^[5]

In this new vision, the concept of who is, and is not, a member of the community must be re-imagined.  Paul had already convinced the other leaders of the church – Peter, James, the apostles – that the Greeks, the Gentiles, could join this Jewish religious movement.  Yet they were treated as second-class citizens.  The Jewish Christians held their physical marking, circumcision, as the symbol of true membership.  The Jews knew that they were members of the commonwealth of Israel; God’s chosen people through the covenants.  They were the insiders.  The Gentile Christians were aliens, strangers, far from God.  They were outsiders.  And there was hostility between them.

Things are not so different today.  We are constantly tempted to focus on what divides us – the Muslims and the Jews; Catholic, Evangelical, and the Old Main Line; the rich and the poor, women and men, the red states and the blue states, gay and straight, white and black.  It is so easy to fall into “us” versus “them”, to focus on who is “out” and who is “in”.  By our words and our deeds we exclude others, we exile people from our community.  And to be excluded from the community is like being condemned.  The Greek word “Ghenna”, which is translated “hell” in the New Testament, was the word used for the place outside the walls of the city where the garbage was dumped, the place where the outcasts were exiled.  To be in hell is to be tossed out with the trash.

The early church was divided.  The Jewish Christians had the laws and the commandments that they used to push the Gentiles away, to exclude them from the community.  It stinks to be treated like an outsider.  When you are left out, kept out, pushed aside, how do you feel?  Do you feel resentment, bitterness, hostility?  The Gentile Christians did.

In his gospel, Luke tells us that a lawyer once asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”[6]  Jesus replied with a story about a Samaritan, someone who would definitely have been seen as an outsider by the Jewish community.  Using that story Jesus redefines the meaning of neighbor.  You think that person over there is an outsider, a stranger, an enemy?  That person is your neighbor, a child of God, a member of your heavenly family!

So the author of Ephesians wrote to the churches, to the saints who are faithful in Christ Jesus, to remind them that Christ came to reconcile us to God, to reconcile both groups in one body through the cross, to create in Christ one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace.  One new humanity.  One community of God.  This is a new definition of community, a community that is joined together in Christ, where there are no more outsiders, only insiders.

In the midst of this community dwells God, God who has a plan, “a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth.”^[7]  God gathers all things, not some things, not some people only.  In this new vision, there are no more outsiders.  There is no room in this vision for Israel’s salvation as a separate people, an exclusive group.  In the church of Christ there is no more division.^[8]  For through Christ, all of us have access to God.  “[We] are no longer strangers and aliens, but [we] are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.”^[9]

What does this mean for us today?  What does a community look like that will not exclude?  What does it mean to be God’s dwelling place, and to gather up all things, all people, in Christ?

A story I read many years ago in Newsweek, back when it was still a print magazine, featured the “Giving Back Awards.”  The article told the stories of fifteen people who had gone out of their way to help others.  One of the people featured was Mona Purdy.  The article said that “When vacationing in Guatemala in 1999, Purdy, a hairdresser from Illinois, noticed children coating their feet in tar to be able to run in a local race.”[10]  Now, she was on vacation.  This wasn’t her community; she was a stranger, an outsider.  Besides, what could she do?

“She went home and began to collect shoes.  Today, her nonprofit, Share Your Soles, has branches in 13 states and sends shoes around the world.  ‘I always thought I was too busy to help others,’ she said. ‘Then I started this and found myself wondering where I’d been all my life.’”[11]  Mona redefined her community so that it included those children in Guatemala.  Now her community includes 28 countries.

In this church we seek to be a welcoming Christian community, with open hearts and open minds.  Our definition of community includes Gahan, where Debbie and Larry Colvin have served as missionaries for the past three years.  Our community includes Cambodia, where our giving through Our Church’s Wider Mission is helping people living in poverty create sustainable and safe futures for themselves and their families.  Our community includes Northern Illinois, where our work with the Food Bank helped hundreds of people to put food on their tables.  Our community includes the young people who learned music and performed a concert here just a week ago.  And our community includes the people sitting in the pews next to us, members of the household of God and citizens with the saints.

As Christians we are challenged to see all people as members of the household of God.  All people are part of our family, heirs of the promise of salvation.  As we go about our daily lives, let us strive to include others in our community, to reach out to those who are different from us, and welcome because they are members of our family, God’s household.

We belong to God.  God bought us with the cross.  Through Christ we are members of God’s family.  God’s family includes children of every race and every song.  God’s family includes the refugee, the hungry, the poor and oppressed.  God’s family includes you and me.  Let our currency be love, and kindliness our law, so that we may help to usher in God’s realm of peace forevermore.  Amen.

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[1] The scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.  Used by permission.  All rights reserved.

[2] J. Christiaan Beker, Heirs of Paul: Their Legacy in the New Testament and the Church Today (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), 124.

[3] 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 (selected).

[4] Beker, 90.

[5] Ephesians 2:19, 21-22 (selected).

[6] Luke 10:29.

[7] Ephesians 1:10.

[8] Beker, 90.

[9] Ephesians, 2:19.

[10] Alice-Azania Jarvis, “The Giving Back Awards: Reader’s Choice” in Newsweek (July 3/ July 10, 2006, Volume CXLVIII, No. 1/ 2), 64.

[11] Ibid.

Prepare the Way of Peace

December 8, 2019

St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois

Isaiah 11:1-10; Matthew 3:1-12

Most of us here have known peace for most of our lives. There have been periods of war, to be sure, and some here have served in combat. Children born after 2001, however, have grown up in a time of war. Children born when we entered Afghanistan and Iraq are graduating from high school. For some of us it is very close to home. We know someone who is serving over-seas. We know someone who has given their life in the line of duty.

And, yet, for others this war has been distant. The war on terror, the endless battle focused mainly in the middle east, is no longer constantly in the news, on the radio, on the internet, and in our minds. But it continues. Many of us have been largely unaffected by the war, except for fluctuations in gas prices, and perhaps the psychological anguish of knowing that terrible things are happening over there and no end is in sight.

For young people today, the war has been something distant – “above their pay grade” so to speak. Adults, parents, or older relatives might talk about war, but children should be protected. They should be playing, learning grammar, algebra, and history. Children should know peace, not war.

Children should know peace, but the unfortunate reality is that they are often faced with the absence of peace. There is always a bully on the playground, it seems, or some disagreement that seems easier to solve with fists than with words. There are drugs and guns in the schools, despite our best efforts to keep them out, and children who see no alternative but to use them. There are bad influences, and bad neighborhoods. There is music that glorifies violence, first-person-shooter video games, and active-shooter drills in elementary schools. And when there is war, there are always children who lose a parent, or a home, or a life. For children, for our children, the lack of peace is too often what they know.

Lack of peace is the reality that we face. We live in troubled times, and our children are growing up in troubled times. We can’t always protect them from the troubles of the world. All we can do is try to prepare them to face those troubles when they come, and teach them that there is hope, there is peace to be found.

Israel was a land and a people that knew war. The Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, and, most recently, the Romans had waged war in that region. The land of the Jews was occupied by enemies, and peace was maintained with the sword. The people of God yearned for a time so well described by Isaiah: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them” (Is. 11:6). One day, peace would reign. “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Is. 11:9).

As Matthew’s Gospel tells us, it was in these circumstances that hope appeared in the wilderness. John the Baptist, the one of whom Isaiah spoke, had come preparing the way of the Lord. “In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near’” (Mt. 3:1).

The sign of the coming of God into the world, the herald announcing the coming of the Christ was this wild man who wore clothing made of camel’s hair, and whose food was locusts and wild honey. The promise of God, that “a shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse” (Is. 11:1), was being fulfilled. The baptism by John, a sign of repentance, would become the blessing of water and the Holy Spirit that we know, symbolizing the grace of God, the new life that we have in Christ.

In the ceremony of baptism, we remember the covenant of God’s grace and we promise to help our children to be faithful members of the church of Jesus Christ, by celebrating Christ’s presence and by furthering Christ’s mission in all the world. We promise on behalf of our children until they are ready, in the act of confirmation, to affirm their baptism and take on that responsibility for themselves.

If you think about it, it sounds a little crazy. We bring our infants to the church and in front of everyone we promise that they will continue Christ’s mission! We then have this ceremony symbolizing death and resurrection. Why do we do that? Could it be that children are an embodiment of hope? Perhaps when we invite our children to join us on our mission, we are showing our faith that the mission has hope of success, that there just may be peace on the horizon.

Now, to hear John tell it, Jesus came to do battle, with his winnowing fork in his hand, burning the chaff with unquenchable fire. Yet we also know that Christ came to guide our feet into the way of peace. In a troubled time, what a powerful message of hope, to know that there one who is more powerful than the wicked, who comes to seek out and save the lost! God has shown us mercy and will guide us to peace. It might not be easy, but we will get there.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” We ask that question of all children, many times, and we laugh and we marvel at their plans and their dreams. But what is it that we are really doing? We are asking them to envision the future. We are asking them to tell us about hope. Having a vision is crucial for the vitality of a church or any organization. As adults, we don’t ask each other about our visions for the future very often. We hardly allow ourselves to dream of something better. But we ask our children about their vision all the time.

I think we could take time this Advent to prepare for the future. I believe that we have it in us to envision a better future for all, where there is peace and hope and joy. I am sure that one day they will not hurt or destroy on all God’s holy mountain. I know that with Emmanuel, God with us, the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord. Let us prepare the way of peace, and cry out that the kingdom of God has come.  Amen.