Sermon for Time after Pentecost – Ephesians 2:11-22

I had the joy of preaching this at Emerson Avenue Baptist Church. Thanks, Pastor Justin!

What is peace? Is it when everything’s quiet and calm? Maybe you’ve got the house or apartment to yourself for a moment. Maybe you’re like my Dad and just hang out in the bathroom for a while. Alone time. You can hear yourself think for a change. I grew up out in the country, with fields and gravel roads and no traffic. Neighbors were a ways off. It was pretty quiet, but I was a quiet kid, nose always stuck in a book, so that was fine by me. But it wasn’t so fine by my Mom. If you ask her what peace is, she’ll tell you about summers with our house full of rowdy kids. I’ve got a ton of cousins – all city kids. We were the country folk, so my aunts used to ship them off to our house for a week, and it was pure chaos. Roughhousing. Busting my toys. No peace for me. But Mom actually loved it – yelling at them to behave, chasing after them. Where’s the peace in that? Well, if we were raising a ruckus, she knew we were alive. We hadn’t killed each other. We were ok, and that was her peace. She tells me when it was just me, I was too quiet. She was always checking on me to make sure I was still ok. Peace for me, NO peace for her. I guess peace is noisier than I thought. It reminds me of Pastor Justin and his family on vacation this weekend. I don’t have kids myself, but I’ve met his kids, and I bet his peace is a lot noisier than mine! Bless their hearts…..

So, maybe peace looks very different for each of us, but there’s one thing we can all relate to – making peace with our past. Maybe we’ve got that wild past that’s a little embarrassing now. Maybe we regret that thing we said or did. I think back to some of the things I’ve done and all I can do is smack my forehead. But you know, hindsight is 20-20. If we knew then what we know now. Of course, we might still be dealing with the aftermath or nagging memory. Maybe we’re estranged from family or friends, and we wish things weren’t this way. Now, maybe nothing’s going to change today or tomorrow, but there’s a little peace in knowing there’s still time. People I know in recovery talk about one day at a time. Just focus on today, let tomorrow worry abuot itself. Jesus even says something like that in his Sermon on the Mount. It’s got a certain peace to it. I’ve found it helpful. But there’s still a daily struggle. Maybe we’re not as changed as we want to think. That doesn’t feel like peace.

Now, let’s say we COULD figure out the secret to inner peace. I’m not sure Jesus would believe it, but let’s pretend. Well, we still have a big problem. What’s going on out in the world? You read the paper or watch the news and it’s a constant stream of injustice and racism and strife. The rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer. Underemployed parents can’t provide everything their kids need, while we argue about a living wage. More unarmed black and brown bodies being killed under the pretense of safety. Bitter arguments about who can marry who. Medical care and price-gouging while people die. And these are just the tip of the iceberg. There isn’t much peace in the world and we’re all affected. We can’t get away. And in the end, how do you really know the difference between peace and denial? But we don’t really think about that. We’re too busy coming up with opinions and arguing about it all. Perhaps we think that if we know we’ve got the right answer, then we can convince ourselves we’re not actually contributing to a problem. So, maybe that’s what peace really means – not having to feel guilty. Not feeling guilty about our past. Not feeling guilty about oppressing others. Not feeling guilty because we don’t understand WHY we’re guilty. The problem isn’t about finding peace – it’s that we can’t escape guilt, and it’s killing us. The harder we try to fight, the deeper we sink. We have a problem, but what’s the solution?

Well, that brings us to today’s reading from the apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. He writes “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace.” But what does that actually mean?

Well, you have to start with who the Ephesians were. They’re gentiles – ethnos – that means ethnic. People from all sorts of far off places, and they end up together in Ephesus, part of the Roman Empire, the biggest melting pot ever. The Empire is always swallowing other nations into this huge economic system where people move from city to city to make a living. Migrant workers, if you will. Now, the Empire is all about power and control. Because when you smash together all these random ethnicities and force them to mingle, what always happens? Strife and conflict. Just like today. So the Empire lays down the law and calls it “peace”. That is, if you think “peace” means laws and military domination and crucifying anyone foolish enough to speak out against it. But the Empire’s smart. It’s hard work to ram their “peace” down everyone’s throat. It’s so much easier if people WANT it. So here’s what they do. They set up a system of privilege. If you can manage to become a citizen, and it’s not cheap, then you can get privilege. You can’t let everyone have the same privileges because then it’s a commodity. No one wants it if everyone’s got it. No one wants a trophy if everyone gets one. So you restrict it. If it’s exclusive, then EVERYONE wants it. It’s a FANTASTIC system. It works every time, and the Empire knows a thing or two about what makes people tick. So if you’re just common folk, after a while you stop worrying about the Empire. People get crucified every day. You get used to it. Because you just want to fit in. If you could just belong to the system, your life would be so much easier. After a while you start thinking, isn’t this really just about communities and common decency and order? What’s wrong with that? The alternative is chaos. How peaceful would it be if we all just got along, even if it takes a little force sometimes? Sound familiar?

But the Ephesians have a problem, and his name is Jesus. Being a follower of Jesus means belonging to Jesus, and no longer belonging to the Empire. If word gets out, then suddently you’re a political dissident, and that might get you killed, just like it got Jesus killed. So you feel like you’re choosing between personal safety and faithfulness, and guess which one wins. Sure, you can reckon that you’re not much of a disciple if you’re dead, but somehow that doesn’t seem to placate your guilt over not taking a stand. So maybe you feel desperate to prove that you’re a true disciple. Maybe you become incredibly pious because even if you don’t FEEL like a disciple, at least you’ll LOOK like one. And what’s the number one way to do that in the day? Circumcision. God’s commandment. No one could question your faith if you could muster up that kind of courage. But Paul says this is nothing but the work of human hands. It won’t change your heart. Deep down inside, the guilt remains.

See, the problem is that we keep trying to save ourselves, but it’s never enough. So Paul confronts our problem head on by telling us how Jesus confronts our problem for us. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. Because Jesus takes all of our fear, our guilt, our helplessness, all these things that are killing us – he willingly takes it all upon himself on the cross, to die that death for us, so that in his rising we would also be raised to new life. But Jesus never asked us if we wanted him to, because we didn’t. He didn’t ask our permission. He just went ahead and did it to us anyway. All because he loves us too much to let us suffer like that. See, Jesus doesn’t wait around. He knows what he wants, and what he wants is us, to call us by name and call us his beloved. To show us that everything in heaven and earth has been accomplished, for us, and there’s not a thing we can do about it, except to experience the joy of finally recognizing it.

THAT’S peace. See, we always mistake the commandments for some kind of righteousness checklist. All the things that we’ve got do to please God. That’s nothing but self-justification. We forget that Jesus has filled us with his Holy Spirit, the very source of his own power to heal and cast out demons, just so that we couldn’t help but do likewise. Jesus isn’t a gambler. He doesn’t leave anything up to chance. And that’s exactly the kind of faith that makes us suddenly realize that the commandments are actually describing the new truth of our lives. All the things we say and do to serve our neighbors without even realizing it. That’s what Paul means when he says, “He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace.” Paul’s not saying the commandments ever go away. But he IS saying that the commandments now work on us in a radically different way than before. Before faith they only showed us our failures, Paul says when we were strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But with this faith that we didn’t ask for, these are the covenants of promise. That means everything that God will bring into being through us, because God always keeps God’s own promises. That means what we need the commandments for, is what to tell others that God is doing to the world. After all, if we’re so bold to claim that the Spirit really does change us from the inside out and makes us to care for others, then we don’t need to be commanded. We just do it. Instinctively. What could possibly give us more peace than that?

And doesn’t it take a LOT of faith and courage to claim that’s true? Because a lot of people will tell you it’s not. After all, we’re still careless. We still reveal our selfishness. We still make messes. We know and we hate that. But the thing is, that’s the only way that anyone else can know that nothing is beyond Jesus’ unconditional forgiveness. You can’t even begin to tell others about Jesus’ forgiveness if you don’t clearly know just how desperately you need that same forgiveness yourself. That’s the only thing that others will finally believe, because they’ll see it working in you, beyond your own control, and they’ll know that’s God. This assurance of forgiveness from Jesus is pure peace. It’s the freedom to fail that unleashes us to work for justice in spite of our imperfections, because Jesus knows our neighbors can’t wait for our perfection. They need us now, as we are. It’ll probably be chaotic, it’ll definitely be noisy, but sometimes the peace that passes all understanding is pretty noisy. It’s true for my mom, it’s become true for me, and I know it’ll be true for you. Thanks be to God.

And may the peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds set in Christ Jesus our Lord.