In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Last week we started our sermon series on the book of Ephesians, St. Paul’s letter to a church that was in pretty good shape, but needed to grow up a little bit. Growing up, for church in Ephesus, and growing up for us are not easy things, we discussed. In fact, growing up physically, mentally, and socially are really nothing compared to growing up spiritually. Growing up spiritually takes a lifetime of living.
This week we move on to more of what St. Paul was teaching the church in Ephesus about growing up. If we really are going to grow up spiritually like St. Paul tells us in this letter, we are going to need to start walking around the neighborhood. We can’t spend our time playing with toys in the basement or playing in the sandbox in the backyard. Growing up means riding our bikes out into the neighborhood. And as we know very well, the neighborhood can be a pretty scary place.
The neighborhood is not like the home. For many of us, though unfortunately not all of us, the home is a pretty safe place to begin growing up. It should be. God has given parents the task of caring for and raising children in the way that they should go. Home is usually a pretty safe place to grow up. But the neighborhood; well that’s a little different.
But in order to grow up, we need to venture out at some point. At some point our parents have to let us start riding our bike in the street instead of riding in the driveway. What we learn riding on the street is that in the neighborhood there are a lot of other homes, too. Our home is not the only one. There are other people out there. We’ve been walled off for them in our homes, but when we venture into the neighborhood we find that there are even more walls with more people behind them.
Even though the neighborhood is a different place grow up, God is there, too. God is not just in the nice and neat and safe place of the home. God is on the street. And so if God is there in the neighborhood, it would stand to reason that maybe there is something in the neighborhood that we need to know in order to grow up spiritually.
Ephesians 2 is about growing up in the neighborhood. The neighborhood is full of walls with all kinds of different things and people behind them. The home is walled off, safe from the neighborhood. But now that we are in the neighborhood there are even more walls than we thought. In fact, until now, they’ve been keeping us separate from one another.
That’s what was happening to the church in Ephesus. The walls between God’s people and the Gentiles had been keeping them apart. There were dividing walls between God’s people and the Gentiles. And the church in Ephesus somehow hadn’t quite spent enough time in the neighborhood to realize that there were others outside of the walls, people who were not part of God’s people. Or if they did know they were there, they didn’t really want to spend a whole lot of time recognizing them.
We do the same thing. We wall ourselves off from other people. We like to think we are the people of God here in this place and they are the ones on the outside. But God has no inside and outside. God is in the neighborhood, too. The walls that the people of the church in Ephesus had made were keeping them separate from the God who was out in the rest of the world.
St. Paul reminds the church, “So then, remember at one time you Gentiles by birth...remember 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.”
Remember, St. Paul reminds the church, that you were once on the outside of the walls. Remember that at one time you had no home in the neighborhood. You were strangers, illegal aliens wandering in the neighborhood without a home.
“But now,” St. Paul says, “in Christ Jesus you who once were fare off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” In the neighborhood where God is there are no walls. Growing up and going out into the neighborhood means encountering others who are not part of our home, but who are still in the neighborhood that God has made and is active in.
Being in the neighborhood means being outside the walls. It means that Christ has broken down any dividing walls that once kept us apart from one another. Growing up means encountering others. And let’s face it, other people are scary! They are different from us. They don’t act like us, talk like us, look like us. I’m not just talking about people who are a different race than we are. I’m talking about the people living right next door to you, the people who are in your neighborhood. Even they are pretty scary if you stop to think about it. They might be unrighteous sinners like the Gentiles for goodness sake.
But Christ has not left us with a bunch of rubble when he broken down the dividing walls, the walls of hostility between people. Instead, Christ has built us up. St. Paul says, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you are also built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”
What an incredible image! Before all of this, God’s people had a temple, a physically building with walls keeping people separate. Christ broke down the dividing walls and instead of putting up new walls, Christ built up the household of God with God’s people. God’s holy dwelling is no longer walls of brick and mortar, but people. The temple of God is up and walking around in the neighborhood. There are no walls, we are not separated, we are built together as the body of Christ in the world, a holy temple moving around and learning what it means to grow up spiritually, built spiritually into a holy dwelling place for God.
Growing up in the neighborhood means walking around in it. And God is there. Rough as the neighborhood might be, as scary as town might have become, God has not built us a temple of brick and mortar, but called us to be the body of Christ, walking around in the neighborhood.
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
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