Richard Davenport

July 21, 2024 – Proper 11

Ephesians 2:11-22

                Paul has never been an enthusiastic napper. In fact, our struggles with napping when he was very little are probably why I have gray hair today.  We’ve thankfully come to understand that sometimes naps are necessary for having a good rest of the day, but he still isn’t enthusiastic about them.  I do understand his point of view though.  There’s just a lot going on out there in the world.  There are things to see and do and, especially when you’re young and still learning about everything, the possibilities are endless. Closing your eyes when life is going on all around you is tough.  You might miss something and that thing might never happen again. 

                There is one place where Paul usually accepts the wisdom of sleep.  When we’re out on the road and the destination is still hours away, sometimes the best answer is to simply close your eyes.  You wake up and it’s as if the intervening hours didn’t happen at all. You were on the road and then suddenly you’re there.  The distance has disappeared.  You were a long way away, but now you’ve arrived.

                The Paul of ancient days talks about distance today in his letter to the church in Ephesus.  There are divisions among God’s people.  In this case, the distance is figurative and not literal.  The people he’s referring to aren’t on separate continents, though this applies to them too.  He’s talking to people who live in the same region, even in the same neighborhood, and yet there was a profound division between them. 

                In the days of the Israelites, there was an intentional division between the Israelites and the rest of the world. Not that the Israelites were really better or worse, they were just different.  They had been chosen by God for special duties and responsibilities, but that didn’t make them better.  It meant they had more to do.  God created a division in labor, not a division in righteousness, not a division in his love or favor or anything else he might offer. 

                Naturally, this division in duty and responsibility came to be understood as a division in importance.  “We are more important than you.  God loves us more than you.  We don’t really need you around.  We don’t really want you around.  All you do is sully everything with your uncleanness.  We’re the ones God chose.  He didn’t choose you.”

                You can see easily how this might lead to despondency and anger.  “If God doesn’t want me, then why am I even here?  Why am I alive?  What’s the point of doing anything right if none of it will get me any closer to him? If that’s the case, then I don’t need to worry about him.  I don’t need to care about him and I don’t need to care about anything he says. It’s all a waste of time.”

                To know there’s salvation out there, that it exists, whether you think of it as freedom from sin or evil or death, to know it’s there but that it’s forever beyond your reach because you weren’t born into the right family, well, it’s no surprise there was some tension between Jews and the rest of the world.  For the most part, the hostility went one direction.  The Jews generally looked down on everyone else.  Other people sought other paths to salvation, usually in the form of false religions.  Some few worshipped God anyway.  Perhaps he would still have mercy on them.  What other choice did they have?  God determined they weren’t born Jewish.  There’s no real fixing that.

                Not being one of the chosen.  Not being one of the saved.  Being completely helpless to change that circumstance.  God would always be out there, far away, out of reach. God is there in his temple at the top of Mt. Zion in Jerusalem, but you are out here, unable to bridge that gap. 

                Martin Luther felt that same despondency during his time as a monk.  He’d work and work, he’d say his prayers and read his Bible.  He’d do all of the things he thought needed to be done and yet God never got any closer.  God was always impossibly far away and Luther despaired of ever getting there.  He despaired of ever arriving at the place he wanted more than anything to go.  He wanted to be with God.  He wanted to be home, where he belonged.  But it was never going to happen.

                That immeasurable distance.  That uncrossable gap.  It exists between God and man and between man and fellow man.  It exists because of sin.  Back in the garden, Adam and Eve lived in harmony with each other and with God, no distance.  But then sin entered the world and Adam and Eve clothed themselves.  There was a distance between them now, a separation that didn’t exist before.  Sin has been driving people apart ever since.

                You keep running, you keep working, eyes open to any possible thing that will help you along, anything that indicates you’re getting closer, but you never do.  In fact, it’s often the opposite.  Things you do drive people away.  Often you even like it better that way.  There are people around you don’t care for or who do things you don’t like and you shove them away, you get rid of them.  You make clear there’s a distance and that you like it that way.

                Unfortunately sometimes it’s you who is doing things that cause problems.  You create a distance you don’t intend.  But, intended or not, the distance is there.  For everything we do to try and bridge a distance, we end up creating another one. There’s the constant fear that we’ll do something that will create an unbridgeable gap.

                Then there’s God.  The one person who should always be right there beside us is instead so far away he can hardly be seen.  You keep running toward him but he never gets any closer.  No matter how hard you work, no matter how long you wait, it never changes.

                God sees the problem too.  He sees you way off in the distance.  He sees you running every which way, trying to get to where you know you should be.  He sees how you never seem to get any closer.  Every sin you commit leads you further off course.  You have no hope of ever making it there. 

                So instead, God sets out to rescue you.  If you can’t come to him, then he will go to you. But still, this vast gap, this immeasurable distance.  He wants to be with you, but you are so far away.  So what does he do about it?  He does what has worked for others who are on a long journey.  He closes his eyes.  On a dark Friday afternoon, seeing that his beloved family is still so far away, God closes his eyes.  A bit later he opens them again.  When he opens them, he sees that the distance is gone.  His people, his family are no longer way off in the distance, out on the horizon.  They are right there.  He has brought them home by bringing home to them.

                All of the effort you put in, all of the time you wait, all of the work you do was never going to get you any closer, because sin kept driving you apart.  Christ closes his eyes in death and suddenly that distance is gone.  He no longer sees the sin and so that sin no longer divides you. As Luther examines the Apostles’ Creed, the wording he uses is valuable to reflect on.  “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian church, the communion of the saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.  What does this mean?  I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him; but the Holy spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.  In the same way he calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.”

                Christ dies to bridge the gap.  He is born into the world to establish the foundation that connects God and man forever.  He dies to forgive our sins.  With our sins forgiven, there is nothing keeping us apart any longer.  We come to him the same way.  Not through long striving and endless searching, but in the same way he comes to us, through death.  We don’t arrive there by staying awake, trying to eke out every last minute, but by allowing the Spirit to close our eyes.  We approach the baptismal font and the Spirit shuts our eyes in death. When we open our eyes as we are drawn out of the water, the distance between us is gone.  Our Savior is no longer out there in the distance, but right there with us.  Our sin is taken away and there is nothing to divide us any longer.

                Our Savior, Jesus, brings all of us together. He is with you, and he is with all of us.  Wherever you were and whatever you did, whatever life you led, all of that is in the past.  Nothing separates you from him anymore.  As he brings you to his table, he shows you that nothing separates us from each other either.  No one is more special.  No one is more righteous or more holy.  All are forgiven.  All are claimed.  All are washed clean.  All have died to sin and have been joined to Christ’s life. 

                Jesus brings us together by his death.  He brings us together by his blood.  We give thanks that he doesn’t hold our past against us.  We give thanks that nothing we have done is so terrible that his blood cannot pay for it. We give thanks that he did what we, by our own efforts, could never manage.  We give thanks that he was willing to die to bring us together and that, through his blood, nothing will ever separate us from him or from each other again.