A sermon by Pastor Noel Anderson at First Presbyterian Church of Upland
TEXT: EPHESIANS 4: 1-6 CEB
11 Therefore, as a prisoner for the Lord, I encourage you to live as people worthy of the call you received from God. 2 Conduct yourselves with all humility, gentleness, and patience. Accept each other with love, 3 and make an effort to preserve the unity of the Spirit with the peace that ties you together. 4 You are one body and one spirit, just as God also called you in one hope. 5 There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 and one God and Father of all, who is over all, through all, and in all. †
aul, a prisoner IN the Lord (not for or of) calls the early Church to do all it can to maintain unity. He addresses the church members by reminding them that as he himself is bound into the body of Christ, they are also—and inasmuch as they are bound together into the body of Christ, they are bound to one another. So they need to acknowledge their basic connectedness and seek to remain as one. The unity of the Church is God’s clear will. The Church has had trouble with unity from the very beginning because, well, people are people.
The Church has been in division of one form or another since as early as the second or third century, but all the elements that divide us are implicit here in Paul’s letter to the Christians at Ephesus. Paul represents God’s heart in encouraging the church to remain unified.
The word we use to signify the desirable unity of the Church is “ecumenism” from the Greek meaning “one house.” We are anything but. The Church’s most monstrous divisions came first in the Great Schism of the 12th century, wherein the Roman Church divided itself out from all the Orthodox churches. With the Protestant Reformation, dividing and denominationalizing became our DNA.
The problem is: it is not the DNA Jesus planted and not the DNA he wants for us. In John 17, Jesus prays for the unity of the church:
20 “I'm not praying only for them but also for those who believe in me because of their word. 21 I pray they will be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. I pray that they also will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me. 22 I've given them the glory that you gave me so that they can be one just as we are one. 23 I'm in them and you are in me so that they will be made perfectly one. Then the world will know that you sent me and that you have loved them just as you loved me.
There is no way around it; Jesus desires that the church be one. Division is always a move in the wrong direction.
As a student at Jesuit Gonzaga University, I was surprised at how strongly the resident Jesuit Fathers (who were also teachers) valued church unity. They have something that we Protestants don’t always get. When they celebrate the Lord’s Supper, the same words are being used all around the world in every time zone. One worship unifies them. As I worshiped I was impressed by this vision of the table being a single, unbroken meal—one being constantly celebrated somewhere around the planet at any moment—by a worldwide church unified and unifying all humanity through time. While it’s a beautiful vision, my Jesuit teachers also made it pretty clear that they (meaning the Roman Catholic Church) were waiting for their Protestant brothers and sisters to come back home into the one, true fold.
Today, the division is beyond heresy. We have market-driven churches. We shop churches to match our personal preferences and create new ones to scratch the itching ears of a faithphobic culture. You can find a denomination to match your specific personality and personal peccadillos.
We can and must grieve all things that divide us, and whenever we come to the table we do so with some shame over our divided denominationalism. Paul has further recommendations, which are not merely virtues but fruits of the Spirit.
PAUL’S PRESCRIPTION
Paul offers four virtue/fruits that we do well to consider:
Humility
Literally, the Greek word means “lowliness of mind” This doesn’t mean thinking of yourself as something less than your are (which is false humility), but rather refusing to ride a high horse. Christianity undercuts worldly caste systems and class designations. There is no one who is “beneath” us—no one unworthy of our love and positive attention.
Jesus said that those who would be greatest must become the servant—slave, actually—of all. It is this servant orientation and servant heart which is the Christian strength.
Gentleness
Again, we should think of gentleness less as a soft touch and more as doing what is noble. This is an excellent basis for Christian ethics as well. For any difficult situation or moral quandary, it is perhaps less useful to ask “What is right and wrong?” than to ask, “What is the most noble thing I can do in this situation?” What line of action reflects that you and I are in fact sons and daughters of the King of the cosmos?
Gentleness means that we live this life like princes and princesses who remain disguised. The world may not perceive our royal stature, but we know who we are and to whom we belong. We can and ought to live like children of the Heavenly Father, seeking what is noble for ourselves and others.
Patience
Again, the Greek word is literally long-suffering. That means we put up with stuff we may not agree with or dislike—more specifically, we practice love towards people with whom we disagree and with whom we may struggle to find common ground.
We tolerate differences and practice mutual forbearance. We all have a right to our opinions, but we don’t make that a reason to reject other people.
Acceptance (with Love)
To practice acceptance means suspending judgment, which is very difficult. “How can I practice ‘good judgment’ if I suspend judgment?” Within the Body of Christ, wherein we are all bound together in the bonds of peace, we are called to apply to others the same grace of God that we would apply to ourselves. Acceptance means that we not presume the condemnation of anyone. Got that? We are not to expect that anyone in particular is Hell-bound.
When Jesus says “do not judge,” he is not saying that we shouldn’t practice wisdom—good judgment—but that we shouldn’t speculate on God’s own judgment over any individual. Do not judge also means that we never consider anyone unworthy of our love, attention, and service.
THE VISION OF ONE
Paul says we should strive seriously to protect unity of the spirit in the “bond of peace.” This is the way the Church is held together—by the Holy Spirit connecting us to each other as we share Christ’s peace.
The vision—beyond dispute—is that we be one. It is fair to ask what kind of unity is expected and worthy of our striving.
I don’t think institutional unity is necessary. In fact, if we all came back under one company, we would be like a worldwide DMV—an addlepated bureaucracy—only less efficient.
Spiritual unity is required. We are one not based on human efforts and ecumenisms, but we are made one by the work of God. Though differentiated into too many denominations, there is only “one body, one hope, one faith, one Lord, one baptism.”
It is crucial that churches—all churches and all denominations—acknowledge our essential oneness at the table of Christ, with none claiming exclusive access or sole propriety. We rightly come to the table grieving our necessary divisions, and we all ought to downplay the importance of the dividing factors.
This spirit of oneness begins when we accept one another—and all of humanity, God’s creatures—and proclaim the inherent value of others.
An inspiring example of this comes from the most-excellent downtown ministry known as Homeboy Industries. Father Greg Boyle (who happens to be a Gonzaga grad, not that it matters), has built t [ he most successful outreach to gangland members in history.
He has built this all one a single premise: we are all kin. Best you hear it from Fr. Boyle himself:
[Fr. Boyle video]
And here it is: we are all kin. Can you see it? Can you feel the love behind it? We are to think of every person—no matter how different from ourselves—as relatives. Brothers and sisters—kin.
From here, it is only natural that we should be fair with them. Patient, humble gentle, accepting—all the signs of agapé love.
May our witness—yours and mine—so grow in this kind of love that everyone and anyone would feel their essential belonging with us and among us, to the glory of our one Father, who is all in all—over all, in all, through all—and may our witness of oneness become the compelling factor that draws the wayward home to the love and peace of Jesus. †