July 11, 2021: May God’s words be spoken, may God’s words be heard.  Amen.

The English language is filled with annoying and even downright hilarious examples of how crazy it can be.  Take the fabulous Oxford comma, a crucial grammatical tool, especially when we consider a sentence like this one with, or without, the comma: “I like cooking my family and my pets.”  With the comma, it is clear that somebody likes three things: their pets, their family, and cooking.  Without the comma – they are a psycho who enjoys cooking their family and their pets.  The Oxford Comma – saving lives every day.

Now, why am I bringing all this up today?  Well, if we think English is complicated, imagine Koine Greek, the language of most of what we call the New Testament.  Why?  Because punctuation – commas, semi-colons, and even periods, were often missing.  It was added later, and thankfully so too. 

Take, for example, today’s letter to the church in Ephesus.  We read a part of the opening of this epistle this morning.  If you look at the text in the bulletin, there appears to be a number of sentences in Ephesians 1:3-14, the portion of the text we heard.  However, the fuller passage of 1:3-23 is actually only two sentences long, of which the passage we heard today was one.  Yup – one really looooonnnnnggg sentence.  Apparently, somebody played hookey from their grammar lessons.  Thankfully, scholars added occasional periods and other punctuation marks to give us all a break.

Now, the letter begins just prior to what we heard with “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”  But here’s another thing to know about this epistle to the Ephesians… despite this opening sentence, we don’t really know who wrote it, and for whom it was written. 

While not in full agreement, the majority of scholars would lean toward this being written later in the first century by a follower of Paul, and that it may have been a general set of instructions to churches based on St. Paul’s epistle to the Thessalonians.  Or, put another way, the beginning would be a nod to St. Paul’s authority with an “insert name of church or people here” instruction for the opening line, so that these letters could be circulated (forwarded or retweeted in our day) among the many early Christian communities.  This epistle, and other letters of our canon – whether by St. Paul or not – were generally instructions for congregations trying to figure out how to be followers of Jesus in what was then a new and unfamiliar community of faith.  They were essentially emails or tweets from faith leaders to congregations to instruct them on how to do this new thing…how to enter into this new normal.

Now, we are going to hear from this epistle for the next seven weeks no matter where you attend (assuming they use the Revised Common Lectionary), and that includes the next two Sundays we will gather here at Christ Church at the beginning of August.  And the timing is kind of perfect, I think, because as we emerge out of this pandemic, churches all over the world are in a similar place as those early church communities of the first century – we are all trying to figure out how to be followers of Jesus in a new and unfamiliar way, and among people we have only just begun to know.

We are making plans for what some call a hybrid worship service – both in-person and live streamed.  This on top of the past several years, where we have been re-imagining our lives in Christ – joining him in the world, as well as at the table within our churches.  And, at the same time – we have been prayerfully discerning how to be followers of Jesus in a time of division, hate, poverty, and violence. 

So, maybe we just think of it this way as we gather and read from it: “To the saints who are in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge and are faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and our Savior, Jesus Christ.”  Because what we will hear in this epistle over the next several weeks can help us as we seek to live into our “new normal” as followers of Jesus in this place and in this time. The full epistle tells us who we are, what that means, and how to live into it, well…except perhaps for that middle part in Chapter 5 (which the church thankfully omits from the lectionary, and which I will address sometime along the way).

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  Instead, let’s start at the beginning, which is essentially the part we heard today.  Paraphrasing to keep this a bit more simple than what this author gave us, this opening basically says a few important things that the author will expound on later in the letter, which we too will talk about in future weeks:

1. God claimed us as children from before all time, and all of heaven and earth are united in God.
2. Both Jews – who were first to set their hope on Christ, and Gentiles who were baptized into him – are united as one body in Christ Jesus.
3. That we, having heard the truth, are marked as Christ’s own by the Holy Spirit.

The first thing to consider about this epistle is that this is written to a diverse community trying to get along with one another – Jewish followers of Jesus, Gentile converts, people from all over different parts of the known world, slaves and free, rich and poor.  There were arguments over who was a true follower, what rules to follow, and so on.  The author is Jewish, but seems to be writing to Gentile converts and Jews alike who a part of this new faith community.  Throughout this letter, the author will continue to try to unite this diverse group, acknowledging that living within the tension of difference isn’t easy, but it is who we are as children of God. 

It seems that in many of these early Christian communities, some people felt that their way of following Jesus, or who baptized them, or whether they were originally Jews or Gentiles, made them better or inferior to others.  It was a lot like that classic Aesop fable about the body parts all arguing with one another over who was the greatest:

One day the various members of the human body, the brain, arms, legs, eyes, feet, hands, lungs, etc., got together to discuss the body’s belly and what they thought about its contribution to the group efforts on behalf of the body. The body parts were all unhappy and resentful for various reasons, and chose to target their collective anxieties at the belly, in a rather bullying way. The unhappy body parts decided that the belly was not doing enough towards maintaining the body’s operations, and accused the belly of spending its time lazily consuming food and allowing other members to do all the work. “We have decided that we will no longer do what we need to do in order to feed you,” they said to the belly, “Because you do nothing to help us, and you are lazy and unproductive.” And they stopped feeding the belly. The belly soon starved. But then so did the body and all of its parts starve too. The unhappy body parts now realized – too late unfortunately to save themselves and the body – that although the belly seemed to be doing nothing, it had in fact been fulfilling a vital function necessary for the wellbeing of the body and all of its parts.

St. Paul in a different letter uses a similar analogy, perhaps drawing off the older fable of Aesop, and in this epistle, the author is making a similar point – that not only should we be united with one another across our differences, but we are responsible one to another.  The author writes about God, “With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will…a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”  And we hear that all things – all of creation – are important to God – all things belong to the Creator – and we must then see the world, this earth and all who dwell within it, both human and creatures, as beloved of God.  If it is important to God, …is it not then important to us who are sealed by the Holy Spirit, who set our hope on Christ, the incarnate God?  We then must also see creation with a new vision – with the lens of our Creator who claims and loves it all.

Here at Christ Church, we understand living within the context of difference.  Our congregation is very diverse – with around 50% being people of color, many first or second generation immigrants from a variety of countries, another 30% or so being LGBTQ+, young and older, families and singles, and a whole host of “converts” from other faith traditions.  It is a wonderful thing.

Still, when we come back together in this space, we will be welcoming in among us those who have become a part of our community during pandemic over our Facebook, Youtube, and Zoom live streams.  Many, we hope, will continue to participate in person, or using those virtual platforms either because it is easier for them, or because they live far away – in other states, and even in other countries.  We will need to remember that our parish family has grown in new and exciting ways as we come back together.  It will be up to each of us to continue to ensure that we welcome everyone – whether they are long time members, or joining us for the first time, whether they worship in a pew, or from their homes.  We will have much work to do.  Yet this unity amidst diversity isn’t for our parish alone.

I have been reminiscing a lot lately about General Conventions of our Episcopal Church that I have attended, for right about now, we would have been near the end of one of them in Baltimore.  We still will meet virtually in the coming months, and gather in person next year as we had planned to do this summer.  And one of the things that happens in those large gatherings of people is that we consider greatly who we are as the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement, and what that means for us in the world.  We are united, yes, in gathering together, but we are not at all united in thought…and that is okay.  In fact, it is a part of our Anglican DNA that is rooted in the via media – a sense of the both/and – that impels us to come to the table united in Christ, even if we are not united in our thought.

And what this epistle is telling us is in many ways a similar thing – that we are not meant to be some sort of monolithic group – everyone being the same. That isn’t a faith community – that’s a machine…and it’s not only impossible to achieve, it isn’t something to strive for really.  Our strength as a people is our diversity – in culture, language, gender, sexuality, liturgical expression, and more.  As one of our own in the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, once said “God’s dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion.​ In God’s family, there are no outsiders, no enemies. Black and white, rich and poor, gay and straight, Jew and Arab, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Buddhist, Hutu and Tutsi, Pakistani and Indian—all belong. When we start to live as brothers and sisters and to recognize our interdependence, we become fully human.”

And let the people say AMEN to that!

But the author of this letter also realizes that being united is only the first step.  The main thing to take from this opening is not just about who we are as a community – but who we are as followers of Jesus.  It is about our identity – both corporate AND individually.  We can’t possibly live out our lives in Christ if we don’t really know who we are in the first place, right?  And in this letter we hear very clearly again who we are: We are Christ’s – we belong to him.  What does that mean?

Well now we get to the heart of it, don’t we?  What does it mean to belong to Christ – marked by the Holy Spirit in Baptism.  What does it mean to set our hope on Christ? 

In later parts of this letter we will hear more about what that entails, but for today, as we consider that this letter is written to a people who seem to be divided, we need to remember that we too are like them: Called in our diversity into unity in Christ for a higher purpose. The challenge we face, like that of the people in Ephesus, is how to continue to embrace our own diversity, united in our common bond of Christ, as we move forward in this new normal into which we will live in the months ahead. 

And so, we are reminded today that we are united in God, sealed as Christ’s own by the Holy Spirit, and that means that…

United by our God, we must be united in our call to love as God loves – the earth and all that dwells within it.

Sealed by the Holy Spirit, we must have Her fiery zeal to boldly go forth into the world.

Setting our hope on Christ, we have a life in him – a life impels us to live into our calling. 

Today, we begin our journey in this epistle to the Ephesians, and in the coming weeks, we will come to learn more about our lives in Christ, what that means for us, and the real meaning behind something we hear every Sunday which comes from this very letter.  We will learn what it means to truly “walk in love as Christ loved us.”

Until then I leave you with the letter’s closing, “Peace be to our whole community, and love with faith, from God the [Creator] and [our Savior] Jesus Christ.” 

Amen.

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Sermon Podcast

The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
July 11, 2021
The Seventh Sunday After Pentecost
1st Reading – 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
Psalm 24
2nd Reading – Ephesians 1:3-14
Gospel – Mark 6:14-29