This sermon was preached during a visit to Trinity's mission partner, Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Niles, MI.
Good morning! It is good to be here worshiping with you here at Holy Trinity. Those of us who are here bring you greetings from the rest of our congregation who were not able to travel with us, back at Trinity in Battle Creek. It is so good to be worshiping together as mission partners in the body of Christ.
I have been the pastor at Trinity for just a little over a year now, and I remember when I was discerning this call to ministry one of the pieces that really helped me know that I was called to be in ministry in this place was Trinity’s partnership with outside organizations like the Woman’s Co-op and Creating Change. I first experienced my call to ministry in a congregation that partnered with a women’s shelter in Washington, DC, so the church has always felt most alive to me when it was in partnership with others. I was really excited to come and serve alongside these nonprofit partners in mission.
And then I don’t think I’d been in the office a week, when my office manager wandered down the hall with a check stub from some congregation in a Michigan city I had never heard of. “Where is Niles?” I asked. “And why are they sending us money?” They do this once a quarter, I was informed; they are our mission partners. And that was when I knew I had stumbled into something really special. Because not only was I a pastor who had the incredible privilege of serving a congregation committed to being church in the world. But in doing that work, my congregation had partners all across the Michigan synod who are also committed to being church in the world, and who live out that commitment by supporting Trinity so that we can then better support these non-profit partners who are our hands and feet, and through us God’s hands and feet, in a world who so desperately longs to know God’s presence.
There is something so strikingly counter-cultural about us joining together in this partnership. Here we are; two little congregations in two small towns in a state that is still struggling to regain footing after the recession. Members of a religious tradition that all the media wants to say is struggling to retain members and relevance in an increasingly secular world. We have all the reasons, the world might say, to hole up, to protect our scarce resources, to make sure that we have enough to survive. But we have not done that. Instead we have joined together, and joined with other partners in mission, Trinity and the Women’s Co-op and Creating Change, Holy Trinity and the neighbors who tend your community gardens and the congregations with whom you serve community meals, and in these partnerships we have declared that our God is a God not of scarcity but of abundance. That God’s math is not a zero-sum game, but a game of exponential expansion, and when two small things, like two little congregations in two small towns, are brought together, the resulting ministry is exponentially greater than either could accomplish on their own.
It’s counter-cultural now, this partnership of ours, and it was also counter-cultural in Paul’s time. Our epistle reading today was from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. And the Ephesians were really struggling with this concept of joining with people who were different than them. Paul, remember, was a Jew. And a faithful Jew at that; under the law, blameless. But when he came to know Christ, he came to realize he had put too much faith in his ability to live perfectly under the law. He came to know himself as freed to live under the law, not because of the law, but because of Christ. The Ephesians, on the other hand, were Gentiles. They had never been under the law. And in Christ they too had come to know freedom. So the question then is; how now shall we live? Were the Jews to give up the law completely and live as Gentiles? Were the Gentiles to take up the law and live as Jews? Whose way was the “right” way? Who was to become like the other? Who had to change in order to be part of the Body of Christ?
Paul told the Ephesians in this letter to remember the radical welcome they had experienced in Christ. Remember that Christ came and proclaimed peace “to you who were far off and peace to those who were near” not so the near would go far off, or so that the far off would come near, but so that both would be brought together into a new humanity in Christ. It is not Gentile or Jew, one or the other, Paul told the Ephesians, it is all of us, together, “no longer strangers and aliens, but citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” This seemed like impossible words to a community so divided among cultural lines of Gentile and Jew. To imagine that both could come together, without becoming one or the other, but in fact could just be together in their differences and proclaim the Body of Christ precisely in those differences. That was unheard of! But, Paul said, this isn’t a new thing you have to do. In fact, it isn’t a thing you have to do at all. This unity, this oneness in Christ, this was already done by Jesus. Through the cross, Paul reminded them, Jesus “has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” He has “created in himself one new humanity in the place of the two, thus making peace, and reconciling both groups to God in one body.” “In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”
Through the cross, Jesus has broken down the dividing wall that separates us, and in him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord. For the Ephesians, this meant that everyone, Jew and Gentile, was welcome in the worshiping community of believers in Ephesus. But what does this mean for us? How do we, in our time and place, break down the walls that divide us and come together as one body? Is Paul telling us to tear down both Trinity and Holy Trinity and build one dwelling place for the Lord? No, I don’t think that’s what we’re called to do at all. I mean, let’s face it, that’s simply not practical. It’s ninety minutes between Battle Creek and Niles on a good day. I’ve lived through one of your winters; there is no guarantee of making a ninety-minute drive in Michigan in February.
I think that what we are doing here this morning is precisely the sort of thing that Paul is talking about, when he reminded the Ephesians that Christ had joined the whole structure of the church together into one holy temple in the Lord. Just like the Gentile and Jewish believers in Ephesus were no longer strangers and aliens to each other once they had worshiped together, so too are we no longer strangers and aliens to each other. We know each other, we’ve worshiped together, we’ve prayed for each other, and in this partnership we have become a part of growing this one holy temple in the Lord, spread across not just Battle Creek or Niles, but across all of the Michigan synod, all of the ELCA, and indeed all of the world.
This seems like a big statement I’m making here. That somehow our congregations worshiping together this morning is changing the world. You may think I am ambitious or idealistic for making a claim like this, and anyone you share this claim with might think you’re a little bit crazy. But here’s the thing, I don’t think this claim I’m making is ambitious or idealistic, because I don’t think this claim I’m making, that the in-breaking of God is made manifest in our worship together, has anything to do with us. Remember what Paul told the Ephesians, that “Christ Jesus is our peace; and in his flesh, he has broken down the dividing wall and created in himself a new humanity. This oneness we’re talking about, this indwelling of God among us, this has already happened. Through Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, we are already made one in Jesus, we are already united into one holy temple. We don’t have to make peace, Jesus is peace and so peace is already here. All we are doing this morning is bearing witness to the peace of Christ that we have already experienced, bearing witness to the oneness of God that Jesus Christ brought through his death and resurrection. We bear witness to the amazing thing that God has already done in our lives, in our churches, in our communities, and in this world. So thanks be to God. It is good to be in mission with you. It is good to bear witness with you. Amen.
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