Strangers No More (Ephesians 2.11-22)

On August 13, 1961, East German soldiers began to set up barriers on the border between East and West Berlin. At first it was just the soldiers. Then came the tearing up of roads that linked the cities together along with barbed wire entanglements. The barrier that began so simply would become known as the infamous Berlin Wall.

This wall was an international symbol of the division between the East and the West, not only of East and West Berlin but Eastern and Western Europe and the United States. It was a wall that divided and made strangers of people who should have known one another as they were in the same city, but divided by a massive wall. It was a wall that symbolized what it meant to be strangers.

But then on November 9, 1989 the unimaginable happened. People were gathered at the wall in protest and some began to climb the very thing they were protesting against. The strangest thing about this was that there were no shots fired at those climbing the wall. Then someone got a sledgehammer and began to smash away at the wall. Suddenly, what would have not been deemed possible that morning was happening: The Berlin Wall, the symbol of division of so much of the world, began to come down. Though it took until 1994 to remove all of the wall, that November night is marked as the night that the wall between the East and the West began to crumble.

Now this also marked the beginning of the reunification of Germany and the coming together of a nation that had been divided for over 40 years. There were families that were once again allowed to be together and to get to know one another. There were friends who were thrilled to meet once again. But most of all, there were those who were strangers no more in the sense that there was no longer East Germany and West Germany, there was only Germany now. There was no longer a wall that divided the two sides. The hostility that once existed between the two sides was no longer there. It was as if a new day had dawned with a bright future ahead of the country.

In the book of Ephesians, Paul was writing to the Gentiles who had come to Christ. In the text before today’s, they were told that they had been dead in sin and that it was the grace of God who transformed them to what they were now: saved by grace and not of themselves. Now he turns to another issue that needs to be addressed: the unity of the church.

It is often said that where three of a certain denomination are gathered together there are five opinions. It would appear that in the church in Ephesus there were those who were of the opinion that they were better than others. The Jewish Christians looked down upon those who were Gentiles because they were not circumcised and the fact that they were not under the covenant as the Jews were. The Jews were telling them that they were not really a part of the Church unless they did certain things that would make the Gentiles like themselves.

Paul will have none of this. He writes to both sides and tells them just what he thinks about this nonsense. He first tells the Gentiles that they were once strangers and aliens, literally that they were foreigners in the land of the covenant where the Jews were citizens. This was when they were without Christ. They had been without hope and without God. The word used here for being without God is where we get the word atheist. Paul is not saying that they did not believe in a god. Far from it. What he was saying is that they were without the one true God, the God of Israel. This would have been seen as an insult to the Gentiles. Here is how Pheme Perkins states it: “atheos was more than a description of nonbelief. It was an insult, implying that one was uncivilized. Those who rejected the gods and their laws were akin to anarchists, and threatened the well-being of society. Both Greeks and Jews could be accused of this: Greeks for rejecting the God of the Jews, and Jews for rejecting the state-sponsored religion” (Perkins, Ephesians, NIB 10:46) For Romans to be told that they were uncivilized and not citizens was anathema. Citizenship was highly prized in the Roman world. It opened all kinds of doors for the people who had it. And to be told that they were not citizens but strangers or foreigners must have been difficult to hear.

But, Paul says, there is hope. It is from Christ that we have unity. Because of his sacrifice those who were far away have been brought near. From Christ there is now peace, our peace, that is between the Gentiles and the Jewish Christians. And peace does not mean just a cessation of hostilities or of an armed truce to be held by those who are on either side. It is a word that “based on the Hebrew šālôm… speaks of well-being, wholeness, and prosperity. It denotes a state of concord and harmony, particularly in personal relationships…”[1]

And with this peace Christ has broken down the “dividing wall” that was between all the Christians. What was this “dividing wall”? One commentator asks these questions about that: “Could it have been the literal balustrade in the Jerusalem precincts that marked the maximum “nearness” to the temple Gentiles could attain—the one that divided the court of the Gentiles from the court of the Israelites and epitomized the hostility and division between the two?... Or was the barrier a metaphor for the fence around the Torah, i.e., the oral traditions or regulations (Eph 2:15), or the law itself?... Or are our sins the barrier between us and God (Isa 59:2) …? Or, finally, is the barrier the wall that divides the earthly from the supernatural?[2]” The fact is that no matter what the dividing wall was, all of these barriers have been abolished by the death of Jesus on the cross. There is now nothing that keeps the two groups apart. It is through the death of Jesus that a new humanity has been created.

The whole basis of true Christian unity is Christ. Merwyn Johnson said that true unity in the Christian community comes from Christ, through Christ and in Christ.

It is from Christ that we have unity. It is from him that we have this peace. The peace that was proclaimed to those who were far off in a distant country (the Gentiles) and those who were near and citizens (the Jews). It is from Christ that all have the same access to the Father through the Spirit. It is the trinity working together again to bring about the reconciliation of the world and to bring us into the communion that is shared by them.

And it is through Christ that those who were far off are now no longer strangers but now citizens with the saints. Not only that, they are members of the family of God. This does not mean one who is a distant relative, the third cousin twice removed that one only sees at the great big family reunion each year. No, this is a close family member, one who is there day to day, one who knows and loves you no matter what. Members of this family are members because of what Christ did and does through the work on the cross and the resurrection.

Finally, it is in Christ that we find our unity. Paul tells the Christians that the household of God is built upon a foundation that is the apostles and their teachings and the prophets of old who taught that God was bringing about the reconciliation of the world. While there is the foundation of these teachers, Christ is the cornerstone. The cornerstone was, and is, part of the foundation that was laid with great ceremony as it was the part of the foundation that told what a building was.

But there is something else that the word translated cornerstone could mean. It could be translated as keystone or capstone. This is a stone that is placed in the middle of an arch that holds the whole thing together. The stone is what takes the two sides and brings them together into one whole. Jesus is seen as that one thing that brings together both sides that had been separate.

What is built by Jesus that He keeps together? A new structure that becomes the holy temple of the Lord. There is to be no more physical temple, but one that is the believers that Christ has joined together in himself. It is a spiritual temple that will now be the dwelling place for God.

Like the Jews and Gentiles and the East and West Berliners there is often hostility between people in churches. We have our own groups inside and outside of the walls that split and call each other names. Snowflake. Liberal. Conservative. Republican. Democrat. Millennial. Boomer. Each name is used like a weapon. They are used to divide like those words used in Ephesus against one another. And we continue to build walls that divide us.

Or we may not have walls at church but walls that divide us from those around us outside of the church. We build walls to keep out those who we believe will make our country less safe. We build walls through legal means to separate ourselves from those we deem “less than” us. The question is we reach out to anyone? Do we reach out to other Christians? Do we reach out to those who are Jewish or Muslim? Do we reach out to those of other faiths than those that we know? Do we reach out to those known as the “nones”? Do we reach out to the one who is the addict? Do we reach out to the immigrant who has just arrived? Who do we reach out to and why? We are called to reach out to all people, to show them the love of God that is personified in Jesus.

We are to remember that Jesus brought us together with those who were first called in the covenant. We were without hope and without God. We were in the far country. We were strangers. But Jesus came and brought us into citizenship with those of the covenant who had the citizenship. Because of what Jesus did, not anything that we did nor what will we do, we who were on the outside looking in have been reconciled with those who were on the inside.

Sometimes it is shocking to hear that we might be on the outside. There are many of us who have been in church most of our lives. We have been on the “inside”. But in reality, we are on the outside. All were on the outside until Jesus made the sacrifice to reconcile us with grace and mercy.

Unity in the church comes From Christ, Through Christ and In Christ. It is Christ who does all the work to unite us all. It is our job to work together taking the good news to the world and showing the world that even with our differences we are united as one. We are strangers no more. Let’s start acting like it. Amen.

[1]Klein, William W. “Ephesians.” The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Ephesians–Philemon (Revised Edition). Ed. Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland. Vol. 12. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006. 76. Print. [2]Klein, William W. “Ephesians.” The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Ephesians–Philemon (Revised Edition). Ed. Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland. Vol. 12. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006. 77. Print.