The Household of God

In today’s 2^nd reading (Ephesians: 2:11-22), Paul addresses the Ephesian Christians as ‘you Gentiles by birth, called the “uncircumcision” by those who are called “the circumcision”’.

Called that is, by Jews – like Paul himself – who were brought up to despise and dislike Gentiles, whom they saw as immoral and unclean.

What sort of people were the Ephesians Paul was writing to? In his time Ephesus was the Greek-speaking capital of the Roman province of Asia, with a population second in the Empire only to Rome itself, perhaps as many as half-a-million. It was as vibrant and cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic and multi-faith as any modern European city. And it was rich, as I saw from the amazing archaeological remains when I visited 30 years ago – including an amphitheatre big enough for 20,000 spectators, and a massive public library!

Paul stayed in Ephesus for 2 years on his 2nd missionary journey, according to Acts. His first dozen or so converts had been baptised by John the Baptist – they were surely Jews like himself. Paul re-baptised them in the name of Jesus and they received the Holy Spirit. At first Paul preached the gospel in the Synagogue, but he encountered opposition there, so he withdrew elsewhere with his growing flock of Christians, both Jews and Gentile Greeks. By the time he left 2 years later, he had converted enough followers of the Greek goddess Artemis to threaten the business of local silversmiths who specialised in making shrines to her, provoking them to a nasty riot.

Clearly, by the time Paul wrote his letter the Ephesian Christians were overwhelmingly Greek speaking gentiles.

Paul believes in the continuity of the new faith in Christ that he preached with the old faith of the Jews.

He reminds the Ephesians that before they became Christians they were cut off from the true God that the Jews knew. They were ‘aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world’.

But he is intensely conscious also of the staggering change that Christ brings. Christ has ‘create(d) in himself one new humanity in place of (Jews and Gentiles), thus making peace, reconcil(ing) both groups to God in one body through the cross’. All Christians, whatever their background or tradition, are made one people in Christ, ‘for through him (all of us) have access in one Spirit to the Father’.

Paul’s insight is just as important for us here today as it was for the Ephesians then. Our town, our country, is increasingly cosmopolitan like Ephesus. Our neighbours come from many countries, speak many languages and hold many faiths. The old divisions of Catholic and Protestant are increasingly irrelevant. All our churches must work together, we must break down the barriers between us, we must move from being exclusive to being inclusive, if we are ever to make a reality of Paul’s vision of one new humanity in Christ.

Only then will we be able to hear Paul’s words clearly, ‘So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God’.

The Church, ‘the household of God’, is like a building, says Paul.

This lovely, suggestive metaphor is an alternative to the more familiar metaphor of the church as the body of Christ, which Paul also uses later on in his letter (Ephesians 4:11-16).

It is ‘built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone’, says Paul. ‘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’.

Without the right foundations a building is unstable – as unfortunate people living in new housing estates discovered, when foundations made from unsuitable pyrites rock swelled and cracked. The right foundation for the church is the teaching of the apostles – those Jesus sent out, of which Paul understood himself to be one – and the prophets – no doubt Christian as well as Hebrew prophets. As the Church we must be grounded solidly in scripture before we can build anything worthwhile using tradition or reason.

In Paul’s day builders made sure the walls of a building were true by carefully aligning them with a cornerstone – Jesus serves that function for the church. Jesus joins all of us together into a structure worthy of God, in which we can find God present.

Can we recognise today’s Church in Paul’s description?

Or do we see instead a building site with a higgledy-piggledy jumble of jerry-built shacks and lean-to extensions, a place where the architect’s plans have been ignored? Maybe we need to take lessons in construction!

Even if we can’t feel proud of the Church we see about us today, we should not be fearful for its future. We should listen, to what the prophet Nathan says to King David in today’s 1^st reading (2 Samuel 7:1-14). Nathan advises David that the time is not yet right to build the Lord God a great Temple to live in. God is content to live in the portable tabernacle inside a tent which the children of Israel have carried with them since the Exodus. But, says Nathan, your offspring shall build such a Temple. David’s son Solomon was to build the first Temple in Jerusalem, we are told, but that of course was destined to be destroyed, rebuilt and destroyed again.

Perhaps it does not matter so much that the Church does not yet live up to Paul’s vision of the holy temple, because it is what it always has been - a work in progress, one that is being built generation by generation - by us, by our children, by our children’s children, and by generations yet to come.

What does matter, though, is that we are all members of God’s household, whoever we are, wherever we come from, and however we worship. We are the Church, in all our glorious variety, founded on the apostles and the prophets, with Jesus Christ as our corner stone.

Advice to Ephesians

Address given on Sunday 2nd August 2015, the 9th after Trinity, at Templederry & St Mary's, Nenagh

Today’s OT reading (2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a) is a shocking story, isn’t it?

We heard the first part last week - the great King David, whom God has so favoured, arranged for Uriah the Hittite to be in effect murdered because he lusted after his wife Bathsheba. This week we hear how David takes her into his harem. Word of this wicked deed has got out, and the prophet Nathan confronts David, accuses him and tells him to his face that God will punish him. But David confesses his sin, and Nathan pronounces absolution, saying ‘The Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die’.

You may feel shocked that David was let off so lightly for such a wicked act. However, that is not the end of it - we are told later in 2 Samuel that David was later publicly humiliated, both by family strife and by his son Absalom openly seizing his concubines, much as Nathan had prophesied.

But the truly shocking truth is this: it is the very nature of our God to forgive even the most heinous misdeeds of those who truly repent. That is shocking, because it is so unlike our own nature, but it is also comforting to us as sinners. But notice - even though we may be forgiven, we do not escape the consequences of our evil deeds.

What I want to talk about today, though, is the advice Paul gives to the Ephesians in the 2^nd reading (Ephesians4:1-16)

Paul urges the church as a body to make ‘every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace’, while urging individuals to behave ‘with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love’. Put that way it sounds easy, doesn’t it? But the history of the church over 2000 years has shown just how hard it is!

Paul points out the variety of gifts that have been given to the church: ‘that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers’. I wonder if we have come to expect our parish clergy to display all of these gifts at the same time in the one individual. It must be a very heavy burden for them to bear, and perhaps we should not expect so much of any one person.

Paul goes on to describe the purpose of these gifts: ‘to equip the saints’ - which in this context means all church members – ‘for the work of ministry’ – that is, serving others - in order to ‘build up the body of Christ’  - the church as a whole.

Paul calls the Ephesians ‘to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ’. ‘We must no longer be children’, he says, ‘tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming’. Instead, ‘speaking the truth in love’, we must grow together to work like the church body Christ means us to be, ‘joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped’.

Don’t you just love that image of the church as a living body, with Christ as the head!

I believe this advice is just as relevant to us today as it was to The Ephesians.

First, let’s relate it to our own parish. We are very lucky that God has sent us Rev Lucy to be our pastor during the vacancy. In due course we will receive a new Rector, and of course a new Rector always brings change. Most of us are suspicious of change - some changes we like, and some we dislike, and different people like and dislike different things.

I feel strongly that Paul’s words have a message for us in this context: with humility and gentleness, speaking the truth in love, we are called to make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace within our own parish, both during the vacancy and amid the changes a new Rector will bring. We should be careful not to make mountains out of molehills, and not to over-react to the changes we experience.

Second, let’s relate it to our Church of Ireland and the Anglican Communion. I’m sure you, like me, have been reading and hearing in the public media about dissensions in the Church.

In all of this, I think I detect some of the things Paul warns us of: winds of doctrine, trickery, and crafty scheming. It is clear that in many churches of the Communion, including the Church of Ireland, there are those who are preparing for schism. The immediate issues are those of LGBT relationships and equal marriage. But underlying these issues are profound differences in how Anglican Christians perceive the word of God, and the role of the Spirit in interpreting it.

Whatever our own views may be, I feel each of us would do well to respond to Paul’s words, to resist being tossed to and fro by the winds, to speak the truth in love, and to refuse to countenance the dismemberment of Christ’s body. We do not all need to believe exactly the same things, and I for one consider myself in communion with all who confess Jesus’s name.

Let me finish with a prayer for the whole of Christ’s church, by Canon Frank Colquhon:

Heavenly Father, whose will it is

that your Church should be one visible body,

so that the world might see and believe:

draw us and all your people closer to him

who is the one Head, Jesus Christ,

so that we may come closer to one another;

and unite us all in a common concern

to share your good news with others

and further your kingdom here on earth,

in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord: Amen