One!

June 6th, 2020| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

What a week this has been, and a month, and a year! Impeachment, election fever, coronavirus, lockdown, economic devastation, unemployment, ….

And now the spotlight on police brutality, riots … all around the world!

Five decades ago, another voice sounded, From a Birmingham Jail:

I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.”

On the unity of believers in the church, regardless of race, ethnicity, culture, or language, another voice burst forth about two millennia ago, from another jail:

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens,
but you are co-citizens with the saints,
and members of God’s household,
having been built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone,
in whom the whole building, co-fitted,
is growing into a holy temple in the Lord,
in whom you also are being co-built into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.
Ephesians 2:19–22

Notice the six compound words in 2:19–22 that are built off the syllable oik– in Greek (from oikos, “house”): paroikos, “alien”; oikeios, “household”; epoikodomeō, “build upon”; oikodomē, “building”; synoikodomeō, “co-build”; and katoikētērion, “dwelling.” The new body—Jews and Gentiles (and everyone else) comprising the church, “God’s household”—is becoming “a holy temple in the Lord” and “a dwelling of God in the Spirit.” One God. One household. One people.

And catch the syn- words, too, that have the Greek preposition syn/sym (= “with”) prefixed (as in “synchrony” and “sympathy”): sympolitai, “co-citizens”; synarmologoumenē, “co-fitted”; and synoikodomeisthe, “co-built.” All because of God’s work: synezōpoiēsen, “co-enlivened” with Christ (2:5); synēgeiren, “co-raised” with Christ (2:6); and synekathisen, “co-seated” with Christ (2:6). One Lord. One new life. One people. What an amazing demonstration of unity in the body of Christ.

MLK, Jr.:

There was a time when the church was very powerful—in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.”

There is a sense in which this unity in the church is only gradually being accomplished, a work that needs to be ongoing, individual by individual, congregation by congregation, generation by generation: “being co-fitted” and “growing” and being “co-built” (2:22) are all in the present tense, indicating the continuous activity of temple construction—into “a holy temple,” where a holy deity abides.

If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.”

And some of that building and construction and fitting and growing in Ephesians 2 is integral to our responsibility as the people of God to be the thermostat for the rest of society and the world.

Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.”

May God’s blessings be upon God’s people, one household in Christ!