Ephesians
2:11-end (NRSV)
11 So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth,* called ‘the uncircumcision’ by those who are
called ‘the circumcision’—a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human
hands— 12remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from
the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having
no hope and without God in the world. 13But now in Christ Jesus you who once
were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14For he is our
peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the
dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. 15He has abolished the law
with its commandments and ordinances, so that he might create in himself one
new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, 16and might reconcile both
groups to God in one body* through the cross,
thus putting to death that hostility through it.*
17So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those
who were near; 18for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the
Father. 19So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens
with the saints and also members of the household of God, 20built upon the
foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the
cornerstone.* 21In him the whole structure is
joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; 22in whom you also
are built together spiritually* into a
dwelling-place for God.
This is a special passage of Scripture for me for a number of reasons: (i) It was my text on Christmas Day 1993, before the first democratic elections in South Africa – specifically verse 14:
“ … For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the diving wall, that is the hostility between us …”
(ii) It was also the text of the first Church of my recollection as a young child in East London, South Africa, where my family worshipped with the first non-racial Presbyterian Church in that country in the early 1960s – something that was radical anywhere in the world at the time, let alone South Africa. In fact a broken wall and this text was the emblem of the Church. Even though I was a very young child of about 4 or 5, it had an indelible impact on me.
In Christ there is no difference at all, we are one, and race or class or anything becomes meaningless. How we need to remind the world of this so many years later. It is almost as if there are some things that are all too easily forgotten, even distorted and in need of constant refreshing.
The Jews are a special people; they had the Old Testament where it is crystal clear that God is the God of all and that it was their role to bring the love and mercy of God to all people. What a privilege. But some had got it all horribly wrong! By the time of Jesus, they considered themselves to be superior to all others; in fact Gentiles (everyone who was not a Jew) were despised. Some considered Gentiles to be mere fuel for the fires of hell; if a Jew married a Gentile, a funeral was held for the Jew; it was not lawful to help a Gentile woman in her hour of need for all that would do is to aid another Gentile coming into the world. The Jews of the time were considered to be the chosen people of God!
But
we must also never forget that this was not true of all Jews, as there were many
Godly Jews throughout these times, just an aberration by some powerful people,
for this is not the essence of Judaism at all.
No wonder Jesus was in for a hard time: he overturned this with his radical message of God’s love and mercy for all. The Parable of the Good Samaritan must have been as radical as a Taliban person helping a British person today; his contact with a Samaritan woman would have caused absolute outrage.
Jesus came to break down the dividing walls – all diving walls – for whosoever would come. There is still the truth that walls will remain because people build them; but in Christ, we can all be one. But for this to happen, people need to come to Christ. This is why I am of the view that the world needs to Gospel of Jesus even more today than it has for some time. In a sense, Jesus is our only hope.
The ancient world was full of barriers. Some of the Greeks were as discriminatory as some of the Jews – dividing the world into two groups – Greeks and barbarians (everyone who was not a Greek!) Barbarians were also excluded from religion. Plato, brilliant though he was, got things seriously wrong when he claimed that non-Greeks were ‘… our enemies by nature.’ Barclay points out that this is a plague that is timeless, and he is right because it was this sort of attitude that was at the heart of Apartheid in South Africa and remains a scourge in many areas still today. The Dutch, at one time, had a proverb that states: “Unknown is unloved”. This hits the nail on the head: when people do not know others, they act out of fear instead of love. Barclay quotes Father Taylor of Boston who said: “There is just enough room in the world for all the people in it, but there is no room for the fences that separate them.”
Central to our faith is transforming the world into a family where everyone is respected and afforded dignity, and this becomes especially real when people find forgiveness and wholeness by being united with the risen Christ; for it is only when this union happens that we come to realize that everything else, without exception, takes second place to being part of the family of Christ. Paul makes the point that Jesus is our peace and peace does not come from any other source than love. Real peace is nothing something that can be legislated or enforced; if this is the paradigm; it will be fake and will not last. As Barclay comments: “It is in a common love of Him that people come to love each other … and only when they all love Christ will they love each other …”
Barclay includes a telling true story that makes this point so clearly.
British soldiers brought the body of one of their friends to a cemetery for burial. It was Roman Catholic. The priest told them gently, that he was sorry but this would not be possible. The British soldiers therefore buried their friend on the border of the cemetery. They returned the next day to see that all was still in order, and to their astonishment, they could not find the grave! They were approached by the Catholic priest. I will let Barclay complete the true story:
“ … The priest told them that his heart had been troubled because of his refusal to allow their dead comrade to be buried in the churchyard; so he told them that early in the morning he had risen from his bed, and with his own hands he had moved the fence to include the body of the soldier who had died for France. That is what love can do. The rules and regulations put up the fence; but love moved it. Jesus removed the fences between man and man. He abolished all religion that is founded on rules and regulations, and brought to men a religion whose foundation is love.”
I often experience what it is like to be excluded. I believe our Lord led me into the ministry in the Methodist Church and because of this many in the Church of England in the UK (and the Church of Scotland) have not even considered me to be a minister of the Gospel; Roman Catholics have refused even to offer me the sacrament of Holy Communion. I am deeply grateful to you for accepting me and my ministry because of your love for our Lord and for me. (But this was true for most Anglicans in South Africa because other more important things needed to be dealt with – like getting rid of the sin of Apartheid.) I am grateful to some prominent Roman Catholic brothers who were also law breakers and because of their love for me, invited me to share in the Mass with them. (Because two of them are now in very senior positions, they will sadly need to remain nameless.)
We need to maintain standards, but not at the expense of love. I remain committed to breaking down walls that separate.
I now focus on the gifts we receive in Christ.
(i) We are made new: Barclay reminds us that there are two words in Greek for new – ‘neos’ which refers to a new point in time – and ‘kainos’ which refers to a new point in quality. A pencil that has been produced in a factory this week will be ‘neos’ but there already exists millions of pencils like it. For something to be ‘kainos’ means that it brings to the world something new, something that has never existed before. Paul is suggesting that Jesus brings together Jew and Gentile and from them produces a new kind of person. This does not mean that Jesus makes Jews into Gentiles and Gentiles into Jews – he produces something completely ‘kainos’. Chrysostom states that it is as if there is a statue of silver and another of lead and both are melted down and the result is something of gold. Barclay comments:
“The unity which Jesus achieves is not achieved by blotting out all the racial and national characteristics; it is achieved by making all men of all nations into Christians.”
This is important. In the past missionaries often made the mistake of converting people both to the Christian faith and to a western lifestyle. This is not what our Lord wants – he wants us to be something completely ‘kainos’.
(ii) We are reconciled to God: The word Paul uses is one for the bringing together friends who have been estranged. Jesus shows that God is the friend of all and because God is our ‘friend’ we ought to befriend all others.
(iii) We have access to God: Paul uses the word ‘prosagogeus’ – in fact there was person of this title in the Persian royal court and whose function it was to introduce people who desired an audience with the king. Because of what Jesus has done we have access to the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe – ‘… that, than which, nothing greater can be conceived …’ My mind always boggles at this: that God is interested in, knows and cares for David Owen.
Barclay concludes:
“The unity in Christ produces Christians whose Christianity transcends all their local and racial difference; it produces men who are friends with each other because they are friends with God; it produces people who are one, because they meet in the presence of God to whom they have access.”
Karen Armstrong points out that much of problem that we face today comes from the way in which we have been conditioned by the thought of the Enlightenment and the emphasis on ‘reason’ as the only worthwhile way of knowing. Yet, if we reflect on this, it becomes apparent that ‘reason’ has led us in many wrong directions and false notions e.g. that the world is flat, slavery was justifiable and even desirable, and other such heresies. Reason is an important way of knowing but not the only way, because it does not even ask some of the most important questions, viz. how we can make sense of life in this world, which has as a vital part, difficulty, suffering and injustice? Reason can help us to understand ‘how’, but can never address ‘why’. The theory of Evolution makes perfect sense as to how the world and life forms evolved, but taken to its logical conclusion can, in its social dimension, rationally, justify Apartheid and Nazism, because if life is a mere matter of survival of the fittest, these things can be seen as perfectly rational. And we know, intuitively, that this is simply nonsense. Life is about ‘being’ and being human means that we have choices and freedom, and history shows that those who are most human are those whose lives are filled with compassion and love and care for the weaker – which contradicts both evolutionary theory and reason.
Being human means that we are people not merely of biological existence, we are those with ‘inner being’ (verse 16) and this needs to be strengthened if we are going to be fully human. The Scriptures were, when they were written, never meant to be mere historical antiquarian records of precisely what happened, they were meant to take the reader into the presence of the ‘Ground of All Being’ and to encounter and experience transcendence. This happens by ‘faith’ and it is only since Descartes that this has meant signing up to a set of doctrines /beliefs. The faith of the Apostles and St Paul referred rather to ‘trust’ and ‘commitment’ and ‘engagement’. St Paul speaks of it taking place in one’s heart (not the brain), what modern philosophers would refer to as ‘mind’.
It is all too easy to get hung up on “Did Jesus really do this or say that?”; what really matters is that the Scriptures transport us to a deeper sense of reality by giving us an encounter with Jesus in the here and now. The compilers of the Old and New Testaments, and the early Church Fathers constantly re-interpreted the Scriptures to speak directly and intimately into their present contexts, and so exposition is vital. The Scriptures were never seen in a literal way until the modern period and so to insist on the Genesis account of Creation as literal truth is profoundly unbiblical.
The Scriptures are read with the distinctly human sense of ‘faith’ - commitment, encounter and engagement - and the commentary is as important as the text (although the commentary is not possible without the text.)
As Paul puts it in verse 18, it is more than a rational exercise, it is a prayerful exercise and if we think we understand – we are mistaken and must try again - because as Paul continues in verse 19 explains that it ‘surpasses knowledge.’ We cannot know the fullness of God, we can only experience it. This is far more than we can ever ask or imagine. Or as the writer of the Hindu Scriptures (Upanishads) puts it: God is like the ocean and our minds are like a spoon: you cannot measure the ocean with a spoon – but you can throw the spoon into the ocean …
It is wonderful to be reminded of all this again … Tell me the old, old story and tell me often, for I forget so soon … All too often I lapse into modern rationalism and deny myself of so much blessing.
I all too easily read past the idea of God as Father (verse 18), because it is an image that I am so familiar with. Barclay reminds us that ‘father’ can refer to paternity: the biological fact that someone has ‘fathered’ a child. This implies nothing more than the biological fact. Some fathers do not even know that they have children! But we have experienced more – not mere paternity – also fatherhood, the latter implying an intimate relationship of love and fellowship and care. God is responsible (ultimately) for our paternity, but in Jesus also welcomes us into the fellowship of his fatherhood. At the centre of the Christian understanding of God is that He is like Jesus – kind, loving, merciful.
This was a revolutionary notion at the time, for according to the Old Testament, access to God was denied. The people believed that if they ever saw God, they would die (Judges 13:22) The Temple was believed to be the dwelling place of God but it was only the High Priest who was allowed access to the Holy of holies on one day in the year on the Day of Atonement. When Jesus was crucified the curtain in front of the Holy of holies was rent asunder symbolizing that access was now possible to the presence of God.
But there is a danger that people might become overly familiar and forget that God is the God of glory. God is holy and if we seek to come into his presence we too must be holy, as Barclay comments: “… our right of access to God does not give us the right to be and to do what we like. It lays upon us the obligation of seeking to be worthy of such a privilege …”
God is also the Father of ‘all’; if we forget this, we make the same mistake as some of the Jews of Jesus’ day. There is no person, no church, no nation who has exclusive possession of God. This means that all human contempt, pride, religious exclusiveness are all ‘… necessarily wrong …’ Barclay adds: “… The very fact of the Fatherhood of God means that we must love and respect one another …”
Both of us have been blessed by having wonderful earthly fathers, but we are even more blessed by having God as our Father, as revealed to us in Jesus Christ our Lord.
But there is another thought as well. We are also blessed to be fathers ourselves. In reflecting on this I am reminded of the awesome responsibility we have of being good fathers to our children.
No wonder Jesus was in for a hard time: he overturned this with his radical message of God’s love and mercy for all. The Parable of the Good Samaritan must have been as radical as a Taliban person helping a British person today; his contact with a Samaritan woman would have caused absolute outrage.
Jesus came to break down the dividing walls – all diving walls – for whosoever would come. There is still the truth that walls will remain because people build them; but in Christ, we can all be one. But for this to happen, people need to come to Christ. This is why I am of the view that the world needs to Gospel of Jesus even more today than it has for some time. In a sense, Jesus is our only hope.
The ancient world was full of barriers. Some of the Greeks were as discriminatory as some of the Jews – dividing the world into two groups – Greeks and barbarians (everyone who was not a Greek!) Barbarians were also excluded from religion. Plato, brilliant though he was, got things seriously wrong when he claimed that non-Greeks were ‘… our enemies by nature.’ Barclay points out that this is a plague that is timeless, and he is right because it was this sort of attitude that was at the heart of Apartheid in South Africa and remains a scourge in many areas still today. The Dutch, at one time, had a proverb that states: “Unknown is unloved”. This hits the nail on the head: when people do not know others, they act out of fear instead of love. Barclay quotes Father Taylor of Boston who said: “There is just enough room in the world for all the people in it, but there is no room for the fences that separate them.”
Central to our faith is transforming the world into a family where everyone is respected and afforded dignity, and this becomes especially real when people find forgiveness and wholeness by being united with the risen Christ; for it is only when this union happens that we come to realize that everything else, without exception, takes second place to being part of the family of Christ. Paul makes the point that Jesus is our peace and peace does not come from any other source than love. Real peace is nothing something that can be legislated or enforced; if this is the paradigm; it will be fake and will not last. As Barclay comments: “It is in a common love of Him that people come to love each other … and only when they all love Christ will they love each other …”
Barclay includes a telling true story that makes this point so clearly.
British soldiers brought the body of one of their friends to a cemetery for burial. It was Roman Catholic. The priest told them gently, that he was sorry but this would not be possible. The British soldiers therefore buried their friend on the border of the cemetery. They returned the next day to see that all was still in order, and to their astonishment, they could not find the grave! They were approached by the Catholic priest. I will let Barclay complete the true story:
“ … The priest told them that his heart had been troubled because of his refusal to allow their dead comrade to be buried in the churchyard; so he told them that early in the morning he had risen from his bed, and with his own hands he had moved the fence to include the body of the soldier who had died for France. That is what love can do. The rules and regulations put up the fence; but love moved it. Jesus removed the fences between man and man. He abolished all religion that is founded on rules and regulations, and brought to men a religion whose foundation is love.”
I often experience what it is like to be excluded. I believe our Lord led me into the ministry in the Methodist Church and because of this many in the Church of England in the UK (and the Church of Scotland) have not even considered me to be a minister of the Gospel; Roman Catholics have refused even to offer me the sacrament of Holy Communion. I am deeply grateful to you for accepting me and my ministry because of your love for our Lord and for me. (But this was true for most Anglicans in South Africa because other more important things needed to be dealt with – like getting rid of the sin of Apartheid.) I am grateful to some prominent Roman Catholic brothers who were also law breakers and because of their love for me, invited me to share in the Mass with them. (Because two of them are now in very senior positions, they will sadly need to remain nameless.)
We need to maintain standards, but not at the expense of love. I remain committed to breaking down walls that separate.
I now focus on the gifts we receive in Christ.
(i) We are made new: Barclay reminds us that there are two words in Greek for new – ‘neos’ which refers to a new point in time – and ‘kainos’ which refers to a new point in quality. A pencil that has been produced in a factory this week will be ‘neos’ but there already exists millions of pencils like it. For something to be ‘kainos’ means that it brings to the world something new, something that has never existed before. Paul is suggesting that Jesus brings together Jew and Gentile and from them produces a new kind of person. This does not mean that Jesus makes Jews into Gentiles and Gentiles into Jews – he produces something completely ‘kainos’. Chrysostom states that it is as if there is a statue of silver and another of lead and both are melted down and the result is something of gold. Barclay comments:
“The unity which Jesus achieves is not achieved by blotting out all the racial and national characteristics; it is achieved by making all men of all nations into Christians.”
This is important. In the past missionaries often made the mistake of converting people both to the Christian faith and to a western lifestyle. This is not what our Lord wants – he wants us to be something completely ‘kainos’.
(ii) We are reconciled to God: The word Paul uses is one for the bringing together friends who have been estranged. Jesus shows that God is the friend of all and because God is our ‘friend’ we ought to befriend all others.
(iii) We have access to God: Paul uses the word ‘prosagogeus’ – in fact there was person of this title in the Persian royal court and whose function it was to introduce people who desired an audience with the king. Because of what Jesus has done we have access to the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe – ‘… that, than which, nothing greater can be conceived …’ My mind always boggles at this: that God is interested in, knows and cares for David Owen.
Barclay concludes:
“The unity in Christ produces Christians whose Christianity transcends all their local and racial difference; it produces men who are friends with each other because they are friends with God; it produces people who are one, because they meet in the presence of God to whom they have access.”
Karen Armstrong points out that much of problem that we face today comes from the way in which we have been conditioned by the thought of the Enlightenment and the emphasis on ‘reason’ as the only worthwhile way of knowing. Yet, if we reflect on this, it becomes apparent that ‘reason’ has led us in many wrong directions and false notions e.g. that the world is flat, slavery was justifiable and even desirable, and other such heresies. Reason is an important way of knowing but not the only way, because it does not even ask some of the most important questions, viz. how we can make sense of life in this world, which has as a vital part, difficulty, suffering and injustice? Reason can help us to understand ‘how’, but can never address ‘why’. The theory of Evolution makes perfect sense as to how the world and life forms evolved, but taken to its logical conclusion can, in its social dimension, rationally, justify Apartheid and Nazism, because if life is a mere matter of survival of the fittest, these things can be seen as perfectly rational. And we know, intuitively, that this is simply nonsense. Life is about ‘being’ and being human means that we have choices and freedom, and history shows that those who are most human are those whose lives are filled with compassion and love and care for the weaker – which contradicts both evolutionary theory and reason.
Being human means that we are people not merely of biological existence, we are those with ‘inner being’ (verse 16) and this needs to be strengthened if we are going to be fully human. The Scriptures were, when they were written, never meant to be mere historical antiquarian records of precisely what happened, they were meant to take the reader into the presence of the ‘Ground of All Being’ and to encounter and experience transcendence. This happens by ‘faith’ and it is only since Descartes that this has meant signing up to a set of doctrines /beliefs. The faith of the Apostles and St Paul referred rather to ‘trust’ and ‘commitment’ and ‘engagement’. St Paul speaks of it taking place in one’s heart (not the brain), what modern philosophers would refer to as ‘mind’.
It is all too easy to get hung up on “Did Jesus really do this or say that?”; what really matters is that the Scriptures transport us to a deeper sense of reality by giving us an encounter with Jesus in the here and now. The compilers of the Old and New Testaments, and the early Church Fathers constantly re-interpreted the Scriptures to speak directly and intimately into their present contexts, and so exposition is vital. The Scriptures were never seen in a literal way until the modern period and so to insist on the Genesis account of Creation as literal truth is profoundly unbiblical.
The Scriptures are read with the distinctly human sense of ‘faith’ - commitment, encounter and engagement - and the commentary is as important as the text (although the commentary is not possible without the text.)
As Paul puts it in verse 18, it is more than a rational exercise, it is a prayerful exercise and if we think we understand – we are mistaken and must try again - because as Paul continues in verse 19 explains that it ‘surpasses knowledge.’ We cannot know the fullness of God, we can only experience it. This is far more than we can ever ask or imagine. Or as the writer of the Hindu Scriptures (Upanishads) puts it: God is like the ocean and our minds are like a spoon: you cannot measure the ocean with a spoon – but you can throw the spoon into the ocean …
It is wonderful to be reminded of all this again … Tell me the old, old story and tell me often, for I forget so soon … All too often I lapse into modern rationalism and deny myself of so much blessing.
I all too easily read past the idea of God as Father (verse 18), because it is an image that I am so familiar with. Barclay reminds us that ‘father’ can refer to paternity: the biological fact that someone has ‘fathered’ a child. This implies nothing more than the biological fact. Some fathers do not even know that they have children! But we have experienced more – not mere paternity – also fatherhood, the latter implying an intimate relationship of love and fellowship and care. God is responsible (ultimately) for our paternity, but in Jesus also welcomes us into the fellowship of his fatherhood. At the centre of the Christian understanding of God is that He is like Jesus – kind, loving, merciful.
This was a revolutionary notion at the time, for according to the Old Testament, access to God was denied. The people believed that if they ever saw God, they would die (Judges 13:22) The Temple was believed to be the dwelling place of God but it was only the High Priest who was allowed access to the Holy of holies on one day in the year on the Day of Atonement. When Jesus was crucified the curtain in front of the Holy of holies was rent asunder symbolizing that access was now possible to the presence of God.
But there is a danger that people might become overly familiar and forget that God is the God of glory. God is holy and if we seek to come into his presence we too must be holy, as Barclay comments: “… our right of access to God does not give us the right to be and to do what we like. It lays upon us the obligation of seeking to be worthy of such a privilege …”
God is also the Father of ‘all’; if we forget this, we make the same mistake as some of the Jews of Jesus’ day. There is no person, no church, no nation who has exclusive possession of God. This means that all human contempt, pride, religious exclusiveness are all ‘… necessarily wrong …’ Barclay adds: “… The very fact of the Fatherhood of God means that we must love and respect one another …”
Both of us have been blessed by having wonderful earthly fathers, but we are even more blessed by having God as our Father, as revealed to us in Jesus Christ our Lord.
But there is another thought as well. We are also blessed to be fathers ourselves. In reflecting on this I am reminded of the awesome responsibility we have of being good fathers to our children.
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