Sermon from June 21, 2009
"The Unity of All Things"
Ephesians 1:9-10

I made a life-transforming proposal to you last month. It is about your faith in God and the way you live your life. It is not for spiritual superstars; it is for people making their way everyday right down in the jungle of life. You may say, “I’m a religious amateur, and I don’t know anything about the Bible.” This proposal is for you. Others of you may say, “Then, with all due respect, it’s not for me. I have a lot to learn, but I’m not a beginner.” But it’s for you too. This proposal is flexible enough to fit all the diversity in this room and specific enough to transform your life.

This is the proposal: Everyone in this room has a religious vocation. That vocation is to be God’s chosen people with the mandate to be a blessing to all peoples on earth. God has chosen the Church along with the Jews to be “the dark, carnal presence through which the redemption makes its way into history.” The flesh of the Church is “the abode of divine presence in the world.” The Church is “the carnal anchor that God has sunk into the soil of earth.” That is your religious vocation.

We traced the origins of that vocation back to the exodus. The liberation from bondage in Egypt was the act by which God chose the Jews out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession. We traced the origins back even further to an oath God made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

God’s oath made three foundational promises: I will give you a land; I will make you into a great nation; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. You cannot take too seriously that last promise to Abraham: “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” At the heart of election is the mandate to be a blessing to all peoples on earth. Election doesn’t make you a snob; it makes you a servant to the rest of the world. That is your religious vocation.

Now, look at Ephesians 4:1. As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling (the religious vocation) you have received. All summer, Pastor Mark and I are talking about life that is worthy of our religious vocation. Today, we correlate that vocation with the unity of all things. Look at Ephesians 1:9-10.

The One Far-off Divine Event
I read something as a college sophomore that has captured my imagination to this day. It is a fragment whose source I didn’t find until years later. It goes like this: “one far-off divine event, toward which the whole creation moves.” It takes my breath away to think of more than six billion people with their diverse and conflicting aims and all their sufferings, moving toward one, far-off, divine event, whether they know it or not. Ephesians deepens the awe, as it articulates its vision of that one, far-off, divine event.

Ephesians 1:9-10: And he (God) made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment – (here comes the mystery of God’s will!) to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. The unification of all things under Christ’s love and authority – that is the one, far-off, divine event toward which the whole creation moves.

I want you to perform an act of imagination. Picture yourself as an educated person, living in Rome or Alexandria during the reign of Caesar Augustus. You would be aware that from Scotland in the west to the Arabian desert in the east, and from the Alps to the Sahara Desert Rome had unified the world with language, law, roads and, of course, the Romans legions. You could see how unity can encompass enormous complexity.

Now, let’s say that you were not only an educated person but an educated Christian. You know that Caesar referred to himself as kaisar kurios, Caesar is Lord. The ancient, Roman world was unified under Caesar. You know also that you and your fellow Christians worship Iesous kurios, Jesus is Lord. It fires your imagination to think of all things being unified under Christ’s love and authority.

Of course, you know nothing about the great land mass that will be called the Americas and the people living there. You know nothing about the beauty and ferocity of the lands below the Sahara. East Asia will seem more like a fairy tale than a reality, and you know more rumors than realities about the barbarians living north of the Alps.

Today, we know those places and those peoples. Many of you have been to those places and met those people. We are watching a global unity emerge that dwarfs the old Roman unity. World wars, jet travel, infectious pandemics, a global economy, the Internet, and Skype help us to see easily how unity can encompass global complexity.

Do you have room in your heart to believe that God is behind these unifying forces? Does it seem less farfetched to believe that God could bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ? Do these forces give substance the idea of “one far-off divine event, toward which the whole creation moves?”

The Unity of Church and Israel
What does this have to do with our religious vocation to be God’s chosen people with the mandate to be a blessing to all peoples on earth? The Church is a sign of the coming unity of all things. Think about it this way. God is at work to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. So, as followers of Christ, our religious vocation is to break down walls of hostility that divide people.

The litmus test of that vocation in the Apostle Paul’s ministry was unity between Jews and Gentiles, who for centuries had been socially and religiously segregated from each other. The apostle said that Gentile believers in Jesus are now fellow citizens with Jews. That’s the revolutionary proposal that Ephesians makes to the Church.

That vision for Jews and Christians fell out of favor. The ensuing history of Christianity became poisoned with accusations of Jews as “Christ-killers,” and with pogroms, which literally made daily existence for Jews in Europe as shaky as a fiddler on the roof. The secular application of anti-Semitism culminated in the Holocaust.

That has begun to change since World War II. David P. Goldman, an observant Jew, writes: “Today, evangelical Christians form the strongest base of support for the State of Israel in America.” He also writes: “The Jewish people cannot ask for a better friend than (Pope) Benedict XVI.” (First Things, “Jewish Survival in a Gentile World,” June/July 2009, 23, 24)

Jews and Christians are actually talking to each other, even when they can only disagree with each other; and they are doing it with a respect and candor unseen in centuries. You should just walk across the room and tell your Jewish friends about that. It may surprise them, but I’d like to think they will see it as a very different conversation than the one they have known for centuries. The effort is worthy of our religious vocation.

The Unity of the Church
The Church is called to be a sign of the coming unity of all things. A life worthy of that vocation breaks down walls of hostility that divide people. The time is ripe to do it between Christians and Jews. The time is ripe also to do it with other Christians.

Once again, Paul’s vision in Ephesians can take your breath away. Ephesians 4:13 is the epicenter of his vision. He speaks about building up the body of Christ (the Church) – here it comes – until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attainting to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Until we all reach unity in the faith! That, if anything, seems more unattainable than a friendship between Jews and Christians. But God, who is moving all things toward unity under Christ’s love and authority, cares about our unity in the faith. How do we do that? I’d like to give you two examples of the small ways I try to do it.

Several years ago, I was in a section of Washington, D. C. called CrystalCity. Several hundred of us attended a daylong meeting there. We broke for lunch, and I went to the restaurant in the hotel. It was packed. The hostess asked if people would be willing to sit with strangers so they could accommodate everyone. I agreed to do that and found myself having lunch with a man, who was at the same conference I was.

As we talked, I learned that he was a Roman Catholic priest from West Islip, NY. He wasn’t wearing his collar. He asked me if I had ever heard of a church named WillowCreekChurch outside Chicago. Of course I had. He told me he had taken people from his parish there so they could learn how to discover and use their spiritual gifts.

We talked nonstop for the whole lunch time. At some point in that unexpected conversation I looked him in the eye and said, “I don’t usually say this, but I want you to know that I’m glad you’re my brother in Christ.” He looked somewhat taken aback and said, “Thank you, and I you.” Lunch ended, we went back to the conference, and we never saw each other again.

For several years now Pastor LaBarron McAdoo of UnionBaptistChurch in Wilmington and I have done ministry together. He has preached here on Good Friday and been part of Ordination Councils. I have spoken there and been part of an Ordination Council. Almost every year for the past five or six years, I have been part of the noon service at Union Baptist on Martin Luther King Day.

My experience on that day this past January was different. I didn’t speak. I was part of the congregation. I was so glad Pastor Mac didn’t ask me to speak. It gave me a chance to be there as part of the congregation. It was a way of saying, “You can minister to me just as well as I can minister to you. I’m glad to sit under your ministry.”

Now, I need to avoid a misunderstanding. Reaching unity in the faith doesn’t mean that our differences with other Christians don’t matter. They do matter. What we need, if we are going to pursue Christian unity, is to practice true tolerance with each other. “True tolerance . . . is not the avoidance of differences, or an indifference to differences, but the thoughtful engagement of differences within the bonds of civility.” (George Weigel, Against the Grain, 100-101) If you think that’s easy, you just haven’t tried it.

I have a dear Catholic friend, and we often have substantial conversations about the faith. Over lunch one day, he asked, “Why do Protestants honor Mary so little? She is the Mother of Christ.” The ensuing conversation was a “thoughtful engagement of differences within the bonds of civility,” and our friendship remains intact.

At the end of the conversation we agreed to disagree about how best to honor Mary; but after many conversations I am amazed at how much we agree with each other on matters of faith. If ten million such conversations between evangelicals and other Christians were on-going in this country, we would be a lot closer to demonstrating unity in the faith and being worthy of our religious vocation.

Look up the page to Ephesians 4:4-6. Here are the great unities that we didn’t invent, and which justify all such conversations. There is one body and one Spirit – just as you were called to one hope when you were called – one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. We need to break down the barriers with other Christians and demonstrate our unity, even though we still disagree about matters of substance. But we don’t create unity; God does that. We seek to realize that unity in our experience.

Harmony in the Local Church
It is God’s will to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. The Church is called to be a sign of the coming unity of all things. That’s why it’s important for Jews and Christians to get along. That’s why it’s important for Christians to have a thoughtful engagement of differences with each other within the bonds of civility, and keep our friendship intact.

Ephesians is not through with us. Unity doesn’t deal only with large and weighty matters “out there.” It also deals with tensions much closer to home. Ephesians 4:2: Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.

Be patient; bear with one another in love. Put up with the nonsense of the people around you at church. In his autobiography G. K. Chesterton tells what he saw at Whitehall, the English Pentagon. He saw men who could have gladly died for England on the field of battle, but who squabbled like little boys over bureaucratic trivialities.

We can all rise to emergencies; we have not strength to rise to ordinaries. But most of life is ordinary; most of life is plain vanilla. Bearing with one another in love is mostly about small things, especially small, irritating things that people around us do repeatedly. People can make you furious with their mannerisms and not know they do it.

I made a choice that everyone who deals with people faces. Either you despise and resent people, or you choose to love them. Verse three says; Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. Love has been my choice. I hope it’s yours. That keeps us realistic about the Church without becoming bitter.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Can I tell you another walk-across-the-room story? Carole and I were a reception. We had gotten our buffet meal, and we said to each other, “Do you see a table where we don’t know anyone?” We did, and we sat there. The talk was energetic and aimless.

I asked the man next where he worked.” He said, “Delmarva Power,” but what he really loved was music. He played in a band.

I said to him, “You should come to our church and hear our worship band.” Before he could respond his wife piped up and said, “You tell him, Pastor. I’ve been trying to get him to go to church with me for years, and he won’t go.”

The conversation drifted off somewhere else. A few minutes later I said to the guy, “I think you’d really like our church. It’s a church of bad people.” The table cracked up. He still wasn’t coming to church, but no one at that table will soon forget that moment.

Think of every negative emotion you’ve ever had about the Church. I don’t deny her failings. We don’t need to deny them. Most people know churches have a hard time living up to our ideals. We gain credibility when we acknowledge that. But if all you see are the failures, you will miss her enduring beauty and the meaning of your vocation.