Sermon - January 22, 2012
Body Aches
John 17:13-23, Ephesians 2:11-23
Over the last
few years, I’ve noticed, I can’t ride a bike 35 or 40 miles like I used
to. If I garden a couple of hours, my knees can barely get me up to my
feet. I stripped paint and varnish off an old door for our home. I
was determined to get most of the paint off. The next day my fingers,
hand, wrist and lower arm still ached with more persistence than I had
to finish the door. Body aches. We know what they are in our knees,
our joints, our lower backs, from our shoulders down to our ankles and
feet. Whenever we extend ourselves to do something more, or something
different than what we have done before, we feel it.
The Church is
the body of Christ and when it is extended to do something more,
something new, something different than what it has done before, even
the church experiences body aches. When people complain about it, that's
belly aches.
But God is
always doing something new to, for, and through the Church, the body of
Christ; always reaching out to those previously unnoticed, those yet
untouched, unmoved by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. When the creation of
the world was completed on the sixth day, God rested. He didn’t quit.
He didn’t stop creating. God is
still creating, still doing a new thing in the world, in the life of
every believer, and in the life of the Church, the body.
To the faithful
Jew of Jesus day there were only one people worth God’s time and effort
to save: Jews. Anyone who wasn’t a Jew was a Gentile and there was an
old saying that God created Gentiles to be fuel for the fires of hell.
There was no love lost for the Jews among the Gentiles either, you
understand. King Xerxes, as you may remember, intended to exterminate
all the children of Israel. All through history the Jews have been
persecuted, in part because of their separateness.
In the temple
itself were dividing walls that separated the court of the Gentiles
beyond which God-fearers were prohibited, the court of women, and the
inner courts that led to the Holy of Holy. Over the threshold of the
outer court was an inscription that read (loosely translated)“No
intruder is allowed in the courtyard and within the wall surrounding the
temple. Whoever enters will invite death for himself!” But then
Jesus, a devout Jew comes along with the extraordinary Good News of
God’s love saying, surprise, surprise the Gentiles can get in too! In
fact, Gentiles will get into the kingdom of heaven before some
self-righteous folk.
The Apostle
Paul writes to encourage the people of Ephesus, Gentiles suffering body
aches in the early Church. In
Ephesians 2: 13, he writes that though they were once aliens, strangers
to the Kingdom of God, now they are citizens and members of the
household of faith. This was accomplished by Jesus’ sacrifice for sin;
the cross. “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have
been brought near through the blood of Christ.” The Church of all
Nations in Gethsemane, Jerusalem stands on that very word.
No student of
Mrs. Irwin’s Senior English class would ever embark upon the world
without the benefit of Robert Frost. Frost’s poem Mending Wall took new
meaning in the late sixties when walls of racism and prejudice were
being stormed by force. It is a
poem about two country neighbors who walk their common border and check
the rubble stone wall that marked their property line. You see many
such walls, not more than 2 ft high in New England, which serve no other
purpose but to delineate one property from the other. The winter frost,
hunters, and the unexplained seem to rip and tear these low rise walls.
From his
observation, Frost writes, “Something there is that doesn’t love a
wall.” He questions the purpose of such a barrier. Certainly, it is
sensible to have a fence to contain cows or horses, but Frost wonders,
“He is all apples, and I am all pine.” It’s not as though an apple will
stroll over and threaten a pine cone. Yet the neighbor contends, “good
fences, make good neighbors.” In the last lines of the poem Frost
wonders what he is fencing in and what he is walling out.
On “Flip this
House” a television program about remodeling old dilapidated houses to
get big shiny profits, a team of workers will literally deconstruct
existing walls to make a bigger kitchen, a master bedroom suite, or a
“spa” like bathroom that make the house more marketable. Ephesians 2:14
“For He himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has
destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing in
His flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. Jesus is in
the deconstruction business. By offering Himself for our sin, for the
sin of the whole world, sin of the children of Israel and the gentiles,
Jesus tore down the walls of hostility between God and the whole world.
Jesus also tore down the walls of hostility between us and one another.
Jesus leveled the playing field. We are all on the same page. We are
all in need of God's grace,reconciliation, peace with God, which only
Christ can give.
Jesus is in the
deconstruction business, and also in the construction business. Look
again at Ephesians 2:19 Consequently that means, as a result,
therefore... you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow
citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the
foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as
the chief cornerstone. In Him the whole building is joined together and
rises to become a holy temple to the Lord. More than a bigger family
room, Jesus destroyed walls to build a bigger family. More than a
house, God’s purpose in Christ was through Him build a house hold. More
than just a building, a grocery store, an office complex, or even a
mall, Christ is building a Temple of human hearts. He is the
cornerstone and we’re the brick mortared with His love and held
together by the Holy Spirit in Him.
The church that
Christ is constructing has body aches. It is stretched to invite and
invest in people we would least likely associate with from places we
would never visit, much less live in. The body of Christ is pulled in
directions exerting muscles that have not been tried before. It is an
ongoing construction project that knocks down walls of hostility and
builds on faith and trust in Him.
21
A wall that wound around and down the
center of streets divided neighborhoods, friends, and family, the east
from the west for decades. It was not particularly high wall, but it
was laced with concertina wire and heavily guarded. Anyone who
attempted to climb over the east to the west and freedom from communism
was shot dead. People could see one another from their windows but
could no more clasp a hand than grasp the moon. At last, the seemingly
impossible happened. On
Nov. 9, 1989 the Berlin Wall separating communist Germany from
the free world came tumbling down; destroyed.
Ireland is divided by a wall of
hostility. In our cities are concrete walls,by passes and overpasses
that divide and hide the less desirable neighborhoods from the wealthy
precincts. What hidden walls of hostility remain in our hearts, old
resentments, unconfessed sin, grudges and grumblings?
I once met a
man who was so angry and resentful he would not permit me to pray with
him. He had no use for religion. He blamed religion for the death of a
loved one and alienation in his family. Some build walls of distrust to
protect themselves. Some build walls of resentment to armor
themselves. Some build walls to insulate themselves from the needs of
others. Some build walls to isolate themselves from obligations. Jesus
has come to tear down all walls that separate us from God and from one
another that we may be one in Him just as He is one with the Father.
The body of Christ aches until the prayer of Christ is fulfilled in us.
Amen.
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