"No Longer Strangers and Aliens"

Ephesians 2:11-22

July 22, 2012

Reverend Wanda Neely

Introduction         

I am going to venture a guess that there are few of us here today who have ever been members of the Jewish faith or even have Jewish ancestry in our family lineage.  I am guessing that the majority of us here are Gentiles, non-Jews.           

These words from the apostle Paul are written for just such people.  We outsiders who were, as Paul says, “aliens to the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise.”           

But now, Paul says, we have been adopted as members of God’s family.  And through this adoption, peace and unity have been established between us and all others who belong to God. 

I         

You have heard of the infamous three point sermon.  Well, it is summer; it is hot, we have company coming and a lot to do to get ready, so here instead is a Two Point Sermon on the two main points of this text from Ephesians.          

Point One:  In Jesus Christ, God has broken down the barriers between us and God, bringing us near to God through the church.         

Point Two:  In Jesus Christ, God has broken down the barriers between us and our brothers and sisters, bringing us near to one another through the church.           

Do you believe that?  I believe it.  I not only believe it, but I have seen it, in you and in the church.  Paul says we have been “built spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”  He says that the church is like a vast building project in which we, you and I, are part of the structure.  We are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, and Jesus himself is “the cornerstone.”           

In getting ready for hosting the meeting of Presbytery with commissioners coming from all the Presbyterian churches of eastern North Carolina, people have worked hard here cleaning up, both inside and outside.  After the flower beds were cleaned, I noticed what looked like the cornerstone to the church lying on the ground outside the door.           

“Do we need to move that, so it does not get lost?”  I asked someone. “Probably not,” he answered, “It has been lying there since 1968.”  Turns out it was the original cornerstone of the church that had been moved from the first and second buildings.          

Would you believe the cornerstone for the US Capitol in Washington has been lost?  Over the years there have been all kinds of searches using advanced scientific instrumentation to try to find it in the ground, in the building.  There have developed all kinds of theories about where it is and what happened to it, good material for novelists like Dan Brown.  But the cornerstone is still missing.            

When our daughter was an undergrad at Duke University, one of her jobs as part of her work study was to take people up to the top of that tall Chapel tower.  Most people do not know it, but in the tower, there is a room and embedded in its walls are about a dozen cornerstones out of the old buildings from Trinity College, the precursor of Duke.  When they demolished the buildings they saved the cornerstones and brought them to with them the new campus.         

What is so significant about cornerstones that people go out of their way to preserve them and move them to new locations?  A cornerstone is laid at the beginning of a building, in the foundation.  You build everything else upon the cornerstone.  Ephesians says we may be part of the foundation of the church, but Jesus is the cornerstone.  Everything in the church is built upon him.           

A cornerstone is where two intersecting walls meet.  This text says in Christ, the walls between Jews and Gentiles have been pulled down, and now the two meet in the cornerstone, Jesus.  And we become “a holy temple,” “a dwelling place for God.”           

We are spending a lot of time and work getting our building ready for the big meeting.  But note that Paul does not say that our building is God’s dwelling place.  He says that we, the human beings in the church, we are God’s dwelling place. 

II         

Sometimes it is not easy to believe that we in the church are God’s dwelling place in the world, the manifestation of God to the world.  Sometimes our differences and divisions get the best of us, and we find it tough to get along together.           

Augustine taught that the whole purpose of scripture is “to build up charity toward God and neighbor.”  Sometimes it is easier to be charitable toward God than to be charitable toward our neighbor, particularly when we see some of the neighbors God gives us.         

I read of a minister who said that he found as a useful pastoral discipline to take a seat in any busy public place, a mall, a park, an airport and sit for some time, watching throngs of people go by and repeating to himself the question, “Did Jesus really die for her?  Did Jesus really die for him?”         

Will Willimon says he often asks students in the seminary where he teaches, “What led you to ministry?”  Sometimes they answer, “Well, I like working with people.”  And Willimon replies, “Have you actually been in a church and met the people there?  I worry about somebody who says he or she likes working with those people.”         

None of us has a right to be here, Paul says.  We, each of us, were “strangers,” “aliens,” “separated” from God.  We did not earn our way in here.  We are here because Christ reached out to us, paid a price for us, won us back to God, kicked down the door separating us from God.           

We should remember that act of reconciliation to God as we attempt to get along with one another in the church.   

III         

You see, the thing that often sets us apart here is that we see each other as strangers.  We are not of the same biological family, not all of the same social group, the same race, same background, same marital status.  All those factors work together to make us feel like strangers to one another.  Yet, in baptism, we have been made family, adopted, engrafted into a new people.  Out of many have been made one.         

My husband, Bill, used to start his articles in his church newsletter with “Dear Friends.”  Then one day a member asked, “Why do you call us friends?  You should not call us that. “           

“Then, what should I call you?” Bill asked.           

“You should call us brothers and sisters,” the man said.  “You get to pick your friends, but brothers and sisters come with your family, and you have to learn to love and live with them.  That is how it is in the church,” he said.  “We do not pick each other like friends.  God puts us together as brothers and sisters, and we have to learn to be family.”  So Bill changed his greeting to “Dear brothers and sisters.”         

Our church, the Presbyterian Church, has set forth a concept that is alien to just about every church growth manual.  We will strive to be inclusive, to include people from all economic strata, from all ethnic backgrounds, all racial backgrounds.  And we work at that as a church.           

Church development specialists say, on the other hand, you should pick a particular segment of the population to target for your church, a particular social class, a particular age group.  Because people want to gather at church with others who are like them.             

And the Presbyterian Church says no, that is not what the Gospel teachers.  We are strangers from all kinds of backgrounds, but we are bound together in one family in Christ.         

I have seen that in you.  Although you have differences, things separating you, you work together, pray together, grow together.           

How is it possible in a world of so many intractable divisions for that to happen?   Christ, having brought us near to God, enables us to come near to one another. 

Conclusion         

Point One:  Christ has made us one with God.           

Point Two:  Christ has made us one with each other in the church.         

But wait, there is a Point Three after all:  As we are made one with God and with each other, we become “the household of God, a “holy temple,” built into “a dwelling place for God.”           

Do you know what that means?  That means if others in the world are going to see any hope of overcoming their painful divisions, any prayer for unity and peace, they need to see it in us.          

We, the crazy, mixed up, sometimes divided household of God, are the visible, tangible evidence that God through Christ God is reconciling the world.         

No, we do not want to lose the historic, marble cornerstone of the church. But even more, we do not want to lose Christ as the true cornerstone of our church.         

May Christ build us into God’s dwelling place.

May Christ build us into the family of God.  Amen.