There is One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism.
Paul said that – a lot – in different ways.
His Epistles are all about the same thing:
how to be the Church, the Body of Christ.
The first churches were always dividing up into factions
over this issue here; over that issue there.
In Corinth, some folk spoke in tongues and some didn’t.
Some ate meat, and some didn’t.
In Syria, next door to Israel,
most of the Christians were ethnically Jewish
and still practiced Judaism.
For them, Christianity was another party within Judaism,
For them, Christianity was another party within Judaism,
like the Pharisees or Sadducees.
But take things up to Western Turkey
and demographics shift.
Things were different around Ephesus.
There were Jews and some of the Jews were Christian.
But the majority of the Christians were gentiles.
So, the church division was still between Jew and gentile.
There had been a real blowout nearby in Galatia,
over whether you could even be a Christian
if you didn’t convert to Judaism first,
and for men that meant getting circumcised.
That’s the kind of division Paul was writing into.
We have all seen Christians divide up over all sorts of things:
women’s ordination, dancing, drinking, movies on Sundays –
whether the born-again experience is essential to salvation,
whether baptism in the spirit with tongue speaking
is essential to salvation;
whether the promised millennium of peace and justice
is to come before or after the rapture;
whether there will be a rapture;
whether the virgin birth is literal or symbolic.
We have divided over incense, prayer book revision,
abortion, gay marriage, background checks for gun buyers,
and whether it is too Catholic to put candles on the altar.
You name it.
In Nevada, we divide up urban versus rural,
North versus South, and East versus West.
Whenever we run out of issues to divide up over,
we get busy inventing some new ones.
What is true in the church is especially true in the wider society.
In his landmark book, The Big Sort, Bill Bishop lays out the facts.
America is more diverse than ever.
But we have divided ourselves up as never before
to ensure that we only interact people like ourselves
--- people who look, think, and even eat like we do.
We live in neighborhoods of people like us.
We go to churches where we all think alike.
We watch news channels carefully programed to offer only facts
that support whatever opinions we already hold.
Social media logarithms insure we see the posts
that will pour gasoline on whatever fire
we have already have going.
The social and political impact is obvious: division and discord.
We have redrawn the congressional districts into conservative
or liberal
so candidates do not have to campaign across ideological lines.
That’s why there are no longer any moderates to broker deals
and Congress no longer works.
Our divisions also have a personal impact.
Philosopher Martha Nussbaumsays we are losing
our very ability to imagine how things look to someone else.
That makes our world smaller. It shrinks our lives.
We can divide up Black versus white,
English speaker versus Spanish speaker, liberal versus conservative.
The categories don’t matter.
What matters is the very act of dividing up
that isolates us and narrows our minds.
It was into just such a division that Ephesianswas written.
You can substitute any of our contemporary divisions
for the division of Jew versus gentile in this letter
and we’ll see how the message plays.
Paul said, Now . . .you who once were far off
have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
For 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.
My bishop in Georgia used to have a saying.
When people would ask him if he could work
with some person or group of people, he’d say,
I haven’t met anyone yet that Jesus didn’t die for his sins.//
And that, my friends, is where it stands.
There may be somebody we don’t agree with.
We may not even like him very much.
But you know what: Jesus went to the cross for him too.
Jesus shed his blood for him too.
We drink that blood in Holy Communion to make us one.
We lay down our grudges and animosities
in order to take Jesus into our hearts at the rail.
There are so many standards
by which we judge each other as right or wrong,
wise or foolish, good or bad.
Paul had a word for those standards.
He called them the law.
And we’ve got all kinds of law:
we have liberal laws that judge conservatives
and conservative laws that judge liberals.
We got a law lurking around every corner.
The law is the standard of judgment we use to set ourselves apart.
But Paul says,
(Jesus) has abolished the law with its commandments . . .,
(Jesus) has abolished the law with its commandments . . .,
that he might create in himself onenew humanity;
in place of the two, thus making peace,
and might reconcile both groups into one body through the cross.
One speaks Spanish; the other, English.
One is black descended from slaves; the other, white,
descended from slave owners.
One is straight; the other, gay.
And we all got a law to make us right and the other guy wrong.
But the Bible says, (Jesus) has abolished the law . . .
that he might create in himself onenew humanity.
How did he do that?
He went to the cross for both sides
of every division we can invent.
Paul says Jesus . . . reconcile(d) both groups into one body
through the cross.
When Jesus brings us together in the Body of Christ,
he doesn’t abolish our differences.
He doesn’t make us all alike.
He leaves us different.
But he gives us something in common
-- something that runs deeper than our differences.
He gives us grace.
He gives us salvation.
He gives us the love of God.
We may have religious differences or political differences
or different spiritual styles.
And that’s a good thing.
How bland it would be if we were all alike!
How dull life would be if we didn’t know people
who saw the world through different eyes.
We get to enjoy each other’s differences
because we have something deep in common.
We act out that something in common at the communion rail.
Here’s the thing with Communion.
We can get the gluten out of the bread.
We can get the alcohol out of the wine.
But we can’t strain the grace out.
When you receive the bread and wine and you receive
the grace that forgives your sins.
But here’s the catch: that your is plural.
The grace that forgives your sins
forgives those other people too.
You are in the same boat – the Ark of Salvation.
Remember how Noah loaded the Ark two by two.
You enter the Ark of Salvation two by two,
and that person beside you may not be
anyone you would expect.
It’s Thegifts of God for the people of God.
Take them in remembrance that Christ died for you (plural)
-- died to make all of us one body –
and feed on him in your hearts by faith with thanksgiving.
