This past summer I was looking forward to playing a round of golf at a course I had never played before. Helen was spending the afternoon shopping, and I had the freedom to spend a few quiet hours reveling in the pleasure of green grass and blue sky. I found the course with little trouble, paid my green fees, which were quite modest since it was a municipal course, and then walked to the first tee box, which was right next to the greenkeeper’s shed. As I stepped to the tee I noticed a plaque encased in glass on the side of the shed. The plaque said: “Erected in memory of Mr. Joseph James McIlwane, Aged 20 years, Greenkeeper on this golf course, murdered by terrorists in this building, 12th June 1987.” The plaque was placed by the Lisburn Borough Council. And for the rest of the day, it was hard to take my mind off that sobering reminder of one of our time’s most persistent and difficult conflicts, that between Catholics and Protestants. You see, Lisburn is a lovely little city about 10 miles south of Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Since the beginning of the fall season, we have been sitting at the feet of Paul and we have been learning the great spiritual truths of our Christian faith. We have learned that through his grace, God has blessed us with a new relationship with him. God has a plan for all of history and all of creation, and we are part of that plan. We have a magnificent spiritual heritage that rescues us from spiritual confusion and spiritual death, and instead offers us the reality of living our lives as God designed them to be lived, filled with power and joy and goodness.

With today’s lesson Paul begins to move further into his thinking about the consequences and implications of this new relationship we have with God and the new life we have because of God. As you might expect, something so amazing and transforming as the blessings Paul has discussed has similarly amazing and transforming effects. Paul moves directly into a consideration of one of his time’s most persistent and difficult conflicts, a conflict that in some ways exists down to the present, that between Jews and Gentiles. The Jewish people divided the entire population of the world into two groups of people: themselves and everyone else. They knew themselves to be uniquely chosen by God for the special role in spiritual history of serving as the primary stage upon which God revealed himself. They knew themselves to have a status and blessing from God that provided them with insight and hope and faith unlike that possessed by any other group of people. Consequently, the Jews looked upon all non-Jews as separated from God, as not in a special relationship with God, as lost in lives of despair and hopelessness because they were ignorant of the true God.

The Jews believed so strongly in this barrier between themselves and all other peoples that it was built into the design of the temple in Jerusalem. The temple consisted of a series of courts, with each successive one being a little higher than the previous one. The first court was called the Court of the Gentiles, then the Court of the Women, the Court of the Israelites (for the men), then the Court of the Priests, and then finally, the Holy Place, that innermost court that was entered only once a year by a specially selected priest. If a Gentile were caught in anything but the outermost court, he would be executed.

The conflicts between Jews and Gentiles in Paul’s time or Catholics and Protestants in Ireland are only two of countless conflicts that plague human society. In fact, conflict, separation, division, and outright warfare are so common to human experience that it is the second topic about which Paul writes when he considers some of the implications of the gospel. The first topic was also quite universal: the topic of death. No, conflict is everywhere and at every level of human society. Put two little children in a room full of toys and they’ll end up fighting over one toy. And the conflict just escalates from there. Mark Twain used to talk about an experiment he conducted. Seems he put a dog and a cat in a cage together to see if they could get along. They did, so he added a pig, a goat, and a bird. After some adjustment, they got along okay, too. Then he put in a Baptist, a Presbyterian, and a Catholic, and soon there wasn’t a living thing left.ⁱ Frank Reed, an American who was held hostage in Lebanon for a time, after his release told the story that a conflict arose between him and a fellow hostage and they had not spoken for several months during their confinement. For most of that time, the two had been chained together.ⁱⁱ I am quite certain that everyone here today would take only a few seconds to call to mind some vexing and persistent conflict in your own life. And that is no surprise. The story of the first couple begins with the conflict between Adam and Eve with God and the story of the first family begins with murderous conflict between Cain and Abel.

Conflict, division, warfare, and strife seem to cast a shadow over every aspect of our existence. What are we to do? In another of his famous “but” statements, Paul shares the answer with us: “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….” Paul goes on to explain the various ways in which Jesus is the answer to the ages old conflict between humanity and God and between human beings with each other. It all begins, as we might expect, with the establishment of peace between God and humanity. Remember that one of the two key words at the very beginning of the letter was “peace.” Paul says here that Jesus, “proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to you who were near,” a reference to Gentiles in the former case and Jews in the latter. Both groups of people, and so by effect, all people, needed some way to have peace with God. Jesus is that way. Because Jesus is the key factor in the peace treaty initiated by God, and because Jesus has come to Jews and non-Jews alike, therefore not only do people have peace with God, they also have peace with each other.

We do need to understand that Paul is speaking to Christians here, whether they are from a Jewish or a Gentile background. The simple fact of Jesus Christ has utterly abolished any distinction between Jews and Gentiles. In other letters, Paul will expand the analogy, saying that there is no longer any distinction between male and female, slave or free, for all Christians are united by this one overpowering reality: that they are one in Christ Jesus. Christians are different, of course, in countless ways. Christianity does not begin to produce uniformity. But true Christianity does produce unity, and that unity exists not in our ability to resolve conflict but in our common relationship with the one, true Lord, Jesus.

There’s a story told in various versions about two old friends, Sven and Ollie. Sven goes on an ocean voyage, is shipwrecked and lost at sea. After many years of searching, Ollie finds Sven alive and well and living alone on a deserted island. Sven shows Ollie around the island and proudly displays his handiwork. “Here’s my little grass hut where I live, and here’s another grass hut where I cook, and here’s another grass hut where I hang out, and here’s another grass hut where I go to church,” Sven tells Ollie. Ollie looks around at the tidy little village of huts, and he sees another hut that Sven hasn’t mentioned. “What’s that?” Ollie asks Sven. “Oh, that. Well, that’s the church I used to go to.”

Christians are famous for always fighting about something and always dividing up over something, and as a religious group we are not alone in that sad characteristic. But Paul reminds us that our faith is not about us, it’s about Christ. And as we focus on Christ, we find in him the only reliable source of unity. We belong together because of our common relationship with him, and anything that would deny that simple fact is plainly outside the bounds of truth.

Of course, conflict and division and difference continue to exist and even thrive in the worldwide Christian community. But when we are at our best, we put aside those things for the sake of our common love of Christ. It works something like this. Because of the realities of modern American life, it is often the case that when we have a wedding the mother and father of the bride or groom or both are no longer married to each other. And there is often some stress associated with bringing together all the different parties in the room for such an emotionally charged event. But for the most part, former spouses put aside their differences for at least long enough to get their child married. That doesn’t happen 100% of the time, but that’s what’s supposed to happen. The common love of a third person is all it really takes for two people to find a sense of unity.

The most drastic division of which Paul can think is that between Jew and Gentile, but even that dividing line was erased when Jesus came to earth to die for the sins of all people and to welcome all people into a relationship with God through him. And so there comes into being a new reality, a new dynamic, a new truth about those people who have been claimed by Christ. Paul describes this new thing in different metaphors. We are fellow citizens in the coming Kingdom of God. We are building blocks in the structure of the church. We are different parts of the same body. We are all members of the same household, the same family.

I wish that all of you could have met my Aunt Mary. She is with the Lord now, but for many years she was a missionary of the Presbyterian Church in what was then called the Belgian Congo, in Africa. While living in Africa, my aunt and uncle adopted from a native family an infant child whose mother had died in childbirth. The child actually was given to them by the child’s father, so that he would be raised as a Christian. And so my very white Aunt Mary became the mother of a very black little boy who is now a grown man living in Austin, Texas, my cousin Tom. Aunt Mary never tired of telling the story of one time, while they still lived in Africa, when she went to fetch Tommy from nursery school. Aunt Mary arrived with all the other mothers, all very dark-skinned, of course, and waded into the sea of little children, also all very dark. One little girl looked up at my aunt and asked in a loud and innocent voice, “Whose Mommy is you?” The little girl had no question that here was a mother looking for her child, the only problem was matching up the two when something very obvious about them didn’t seem to match up at all!

For Paul, the crucial question about us has nothing to do with our gender or skin color or politics or birthplace or net worth or anything else save one thing. That one thing is this: Who is your Lord? If you believe and trust in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, then everything else is, fundamentally speaking, irrelevant. Yes, serious differences may and will exist, and they cannot be taken lightly. But Jesus trumps them all. We are all children of the same Father, servants of the same Lord, disciples of the same Jesus. In that way, we are all one big, happy family.

Now, I know as well as the next guy and maybe even better than the next guy just how hard it is for our Christian family to get along, and for real families to get along, and for the human family to get along. But I have to proclaim the truth, and the truth is that we love and serve a God who, by his invitation to all people to come to him, intends for all people to be joined together in loving him and in loving each other. That is what God wants. That is what God makes possible in Christ. And it is only Christ-like to extend the peace of Christ to people who don’t themselves know Christ. But the making of this peace must begin somewhere, and it begins in the church. It is so very easy to find the things that divide us. In fact, the divisions find us, I think! And it is so easy to forget the things that unite us. But how can we look at Jesus and not realize that because he loves us and we love him that we then must love each other?

I will be the first to admit that our unity in Christ does not necessarily produce a uniformity in all members of the family everywhere. There is broad diversity in the ways and shapes and forms by which we follow Jesus. But Paul says that when we are most acting like family, then God is there. And that is what God is calling you and me to do, to cooperate with him by loving our fellow Christians and loving our fellow human beings so much so that we become a family in which God himself is welcome and present and alive and well.

During World War II, in France, a small group of soldiers brought the body of a comrade of theirs to a cemetery, to be buried. The priest in charge of the cemetery told them that he had to ask if the soldier had been a baptized Roman Catholic. When the soldiers said they didn’t know, the priest gently explained that the burial would have to be outside the churchyard. And so, the soldiers buried their friend just outside the fence. The next day, they came back to check on the grave to make sure all was well with it, and they could not find it. They were about to leave when the priest came up to them. He told them that his heart had been troubled all night, and very early that morning he had gotten up and with his own hands he had moved the fence.ⁱⁱⁱ

When you move the fence to make room for everyone, then you make enough room for God, because God wants us to be one big, happy family. He wanted it so badly that he sent his only Son to die so that all the fences in heaven and earth would come down.

Amen.

ⁱ As told in Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace?, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1997, p. 3.
ⁱⁱIbid., p. 83-4.
ⁱⁱⁱAs told by William Barclay, Daily Study Bible Series, The Letters to the Galatians and Ephesians, Westminster Press, Philadelphia, revised edition 1976, p. 115.

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