For [Christ] is our peace; in his flesh he has made both into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.
Ephesians 2:14
Last week, I began a sermon series on Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians: “For the Praise of God’s Glory.” I looked at the beginning of this letter, and reflected on what it means that God has chosen us in Christ.
In this letter, Paul teaches us that God has a plan for our world, and that is to save the world through his son, Jesus, and to bless the world through those who follow him – through those who have been chosen in Christ, which is each and every one of us here. We have been chosen by God to love and bless the world in the name of Jesus. That was last week’s theme and message.
Today, I am looking at the second chapter of Paul’s letter (Ephesians 2:11-22), and we see here that Paul is changing topics. He is now inviting us to consider how we, as the Church, can live as a united community in a divided world.
This is a topic that is obviously just as important now as it was then. Because the world today is certainly just as divided now as it has ever been. And the divisions in our world always seem to enter into the Church.
Sometimes, we think the world today is more divided now than ever before. But, really, when you look at world history, people have always divided themselves into groups. It seems to be human nature, at least since the fall, to divide our world into two groups. And the two groups always seem to be: us and them. And the only question that we usually ask is: which group am I in?
We all want to be in the right group. That is also human nature. We all want to be the insiders. But to have insiders, we must have outsiders.
There must be another way. And there is. That is what Paul is offering us today, in this passage from Ephesians. He is writing to a community that has two groups that are in conflict with one another, and he is showing them the path to unity.
The Path to Unity Begins with Grace
So what is this path to unity? Well, to really see it clearly, we have to back up a little, and look at a passage that comes shortly before today’s reading. It is probably the most famous passage in the entire letter. In fact, I have a keychain that I use that has this passage on one side and Luther’s Seal on the other. The passage that I am talking about is found in verses 8 and 9 of this chapter:
“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”
For Paul, it always comes back to the great theme and gift of God’s grace. Everything that he writes is rooted in this theme, and nothing that he writes makes sense when we forget it.
It is also the theme at the heart of Martin Luther’s theology, and still the core message of our Lutheran understanding of the Christian faith. And that message is simple but profound: We are saved by grace through faith, and this is not our own doing, it is the gift of God.
We’ve all heard this before, of course. We know all about grace. But every now and again, we need to be reminded of how radical it is, and of how countercultural it is. It is not at all how the world looks at things. And it can easily become not at all how we look at things.
Martin Luther wrote back in the 1500s that: “It is certain that we must utterly despair of our own ability before we are prepared to receive the grace of Christ.”
And here is how Eugene Peterson put it in the 1980s:
“A person has to be thoroughly disgusted with the way things are to find the motivation to set out on the Christian way. As long as we think that the next election might eliminate crime and establish justice or another scientific breakthrough might save the environment or another pay raise might push us over the edge of anxiety into a life of tranquility, we are not likely to risk the arduous uncertainties of the life of faith. A person has to get fed up with the ways of the world before he, before she, acquires an appetite for the world of grace.”
Every once in a while, it is good to be reminded of how radical and countercultural the grace that saves us truly is. The Christian way begins with grace. And our path to unity also begins with grace. But how? How exactly does this help us to live out our unity as Christians? That brings us to today’s passage.
Remember …
Paul starts out in this passage by telling us to remember. Remember what? Remember a time before grace. Remember that at one time we were without Christ. All of us. We were all outsiders once, because we were all outside of God’s grace and mercy and love. We still would be without Jesus.
“In Christ Jesus,” Paul writes, “you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
Before Jesus, we were all outsiders. Through Jesus, we are all insiders. We are all now inside God’s mercy and love, by the grace of God and the blood of Jesus.
It is important, Paul writes, for all of us to remember when we were outsiders. And we were all outsiders at one point.
This is especially true, at the time of Paul’s letter, of the Gentile Christians. He is saying that they were “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenant of promise.”
But what about the Jewish Christians? They weren’t outsiders, were they? Which brings us back around to the real division in this church community – the tension between these two groups of people, and what to do about it.
Breaking Down the Dividing Wall
The Church of Ephesus clearly had these two groups of people: Gentile Christians and Jewish Christians. And it seems that these groups didn’t really like each other. There was tension, even hostility, between them, as he points out in this letter.And so what does Paul do? Surprisingly, he starts out by reminding them of these differences.
Remember, he says to the Gentile Christians, who you are, and where you came from. Don’t forget, in other words, that there are differences between you. Don’t forget that there are two groups here.
But remember also these two groups have something amazing in common that is much more important than anything that divides you.
Both of these groups have been saved by grace through faith. They are united by God’s grace. All of them sinners, saved by God’s grace through faith, so that no one may boast. All of them baptized into Christ, who came to save us all.
Listen to how Paul puts it in verse 14 of this passage.
He writes that Jesus, in his flesh, “has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.”
And then, in verse 16, he goes on to say that: Jesus came to “reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death the hostility between us.”
Jesus came, in other words, to put an end to there being two groups in the church. He came to break down the walls between us. Through the cross, he put to death the hostility between the two groups, whatever those two groups are.
Paul is reminding the Ephesians that if you want to know how to live as a united community in a divided world, you must look to Jesus. There is no other answer.
You won’t achieve unity by convincing each other that you’re right. You won’t achieve it through politics, or through compromise, or through reasoned debate. The only way that you can achieve unity is not by achieving it at all. It is by discovering it in Christ.
He is our peace, and in his flesh he makes both groups – whatever those groups are – into one, and breaks down the wall between us.
Laminin
Listen to how Paul concludes this passage of Ephesians, in verses 21 and 22:
“In Christ the whole structure [of the church] 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.”
In Christ the whole structure is joined together. In Christ, we are joined together and in Christ we are built together. In Christ, and only in Christ, does this thing that we call the church hold together.
There is a fascinating illustration of this from the world of science. There was a discovery made some years back of a protein molecule called laminin. Laminin is a cell adhesion molecule. Now, I am not a molecular biologist, but I am told that what that means is that laminin is like the glue of the human body – it is literally what holds our body together.
But what is so fascinating about this particular protein molecule is its shape. If you go to Google Images and type in “Laminin,” as I did, you get a bunch of drawings and pictures of this cell adhesion molecule. And you know what? They all have the same exact shape – the shape of the cross. Diagrams and pictures taken with powerful microscopes all reveal that the molecule that holds our bodies together is in the exact shape of the cross.
Imagine that – The stuff that holds our body together is in the exact shape of the cross of our Lord! Isn’t that a great reminder to us of what will hold the body of Christ together? Or what will hold the Church together?In a divided world, if we want to know how we can be a community that holds together, there really is only one way: The cross of Christ.
Christ came to reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross. He alone breaks down the walls between us. He alone makes both groups into one.
But think, again, of all the molecules that make up the human body. Think of the wonderful diversity. There is an amazing variety of different molecules and cells in the human body, and they don’t change. But this cross-shaped protein called laminin holds them together.
There is also amazing diversity in the body of Christ. And nobody celebrates that diversity more than Paul. But there still has to be something that holds it all together. Cross-shaped laminin for our bodies. The cross of Christ for the church. That is what holds us together. That is how we can be a united community in a divided world.
Closing
In Christ the whole structure is joined together. And in Christ we all work together as one toward the mission that he has given to his church: To love and bless the world in the name of Jesus.
In Jesus, we are all one. Through Jesus, we are all loved. And with Jesus, we can share this love and unity with all of God’s beloved world. To the glory of God. Amen.
