Citizens with the Saints

Citizens with the Saints

Ephesians 2

Sermon at Pleasant Oaks Mennonite Church

Middlebury, IN

October 12, 2003

I bring you greetings from First Mennonite Church in Bluffton and also from Bluffton College. I appreciate very much the opportunity to be with you this morning and share with you in study and worship. I had the privilege of sitting next to your pastor on Friday as we joined with the leadership of Central District Conference in considering the future of our conference. This was a good day and we accomplished much. It was a particular pleasure for me to get to know your pastor a bit and to learn that we share an interest in reading difficult texts by the contemporary French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Apparently he has even tried to inflict Derrida on you! That you have put up with this speaks much for your patience and forbearing and is a good sign that you will also be able to put up with me.

Your pastor asked me to speak this morning on Anabaptist essentials that we as Mennonite Christians cannot do without (or something like that). Now this is a topic that is very close to my heart and so I of course was very pleased with his suggestion. However, because I care so deeply about this topic, it is very difficult to know where to start. This is so especially because my convictions about the Mennonite church are so profoundly tied up with my hopes and dreams for the broader Christian church—our brothers and sisters in Christ who are Methodists, Catholics, Nazarenes, Baptists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Amish, Presbyterians, and Pentecostals.

I’ll put it very plainly. There is not any Anabaptist conviction that I want to advocate this morning that is not first of all a Christian conviction or a biblical conviction. We should not as Mennonites be advancing a special agenda for our denomination that we do not already believe is God’s will for the whole church, indeed for the whole creation.

Our peace convictions, for instance. What we Mennonites believe about peace and enemy-love is a commitment that is based on our response to the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus as recorded in the gospels and elaborated in the rest of the New Testament. We share that biblical record and the Holy Spirit’s guidance with all Christians, not just with other members of the historic peace churches like the Mennonites, Brethren, and Quakers. We should therefore be prepared to share these convictions with others. At the same time, we should be prepared to receive from other Christian groups the insights and practices that shape their lives and witness. Such mutual sharing of spiritual understanding and wisdom is the sort of practice that will knit our lives together with other flawed yet gifted members of Christ’s flock and will build up the household of faith. One of the great privileges of serving at Bluffton College is the opportunity for such fruitful and life-giving sharing of gifts from the many corners of God’s household. And I should express gratitude to you for this. The existence and survival of Bluffton College is due to the generous support of church conferences to which this congregation has belonged. And Bluffton College has been deeply shaped by the spirit of hospitality and mission that has permeated the Central District Conference and its congregations.

My concern to share the most profound commitments of our Anabaptist heritage in a way that strengthens rather than weakens our bonds with one another and with other Christians leads me to this marvelous chapter from the book of Ephesians. Surely the audience Paul addressed in this pastoral letter faced divisions and antagonisms within the church just as does the church today. In that day some of the major controversies included the struggle around Gnosticism—the idea that the whole cosmos can be divided between the material world which is evil and the spiritual world which good—and around various forms of apocalypticism—the expectation that the present order of things was going to be dramatically replaced by a new world and a new day. Of course, the major issue that had not been solved yet was the place of Gentiles in this new and inclusive Jewish movement that became known as Christianity.

Paul’s argument throughout Ephesians and especially in this chapter is that in Christ all of these factions and cultures have become reconciled. Not obliterated, mind you. Not absorbed into some nondescript common denominator. But reconciled.

And here I want to highlight right up front the way in which Paul tells the story of the salvation brought by Jesus. In the work of Jesus, people who were previously alienated from one another are brought together into one new humanity. Through the blood of Jesus, those who were “strangers to the covenants of promise” are brought near. Both Jews and Gentiles are now reconciled “to God in one body through the cross.” The work of Jesus is the work of reconciliation, of bringing together that which previously seemed incompatible or mutually hostile.

That work of saving reconciliation is not simply a personal transaction between me and God, as it is so often characterized in contemporary forms of Christianity. In Christ, we are no longer strangers and aliens, but are made “citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.” In our Mennonite tradition this understanding has been expressed in the way we practice baptism. Under most circumstances, we think of baptism as the way in which we both express our new identity in Christ and become members of a congregation. And that is right and good. When we are transformed by Jesus, we become a new people, a new nation, a new household, “built upon in the foundation of the apostles, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.”

I hope you can grasp the amazing and miraculous character of this new people founded in Christ. At its very core is the bringing together of what in the worldly imagination cannot go together. People who otherwise would not be caught dead in one another’s company, are now drinking coffee together in the church fellowship hall. People with cultural and social power are now sitting at table with people without much power. Members of different ethnic groups are friends. Enemies are reconciled.

I just came across a story in a book I’m using for a class on communication ethics at Bluffton College that illustrates this miracle of reconciliation in a particularly dramatic way. The story is told by Quentin Schulze, a professor of communication at Calvin College and author the book Communicating for Life, from which the story is taken. I use Quentin Schultze’s words here because I cannot tell the story better than he.

Two days before Christmas, a drunk driver killed a Kentucky couple’s eighteen-year old son, their only child. Consumed with hatred, the grieving couple fought for justice. They doggedly pursued the killer through the courts, seeing to it that he would be required to fully pay for the crime. When he eventually pleaded guilty and was freed on probation, they made sure that he spent the required night in jail every other weekend. For years they monitored all of the accused young man’s court appearances. After all, their son was dead. They deserved revenge. As the distraught mother said of the killer, “All I can think of is that he should die, and how he should die.”

Over time the couple’s preoccupation with revenge softened. Discovering details about the driver’s background, they realized that he was a human, not a monster. They heard that he had grown up without the kind of love and support that they had lavished on their own son. As the couple identified with him, they began to empathize with their son’s killer, to feel some of his pain, confusion, and regret. Eventually the couple invited him to their home to share meals. In word and deed, they began to love him. As a remarkable testimony to grace, they accepted like a son the man who had killed their only son. Freed of a vengeful spirit, they nurtured their “adopted” child, loving him as they once had loved the son whom he had killed.[1]

This is a story about a miracle. It seems almost unnatural. But among the people of God, the story makes sense because we ourselves have been redeemed and reconciled in the same way as were the drunk driver and the family of the child he killed.

Let me try to summarize in a very succinct way what I’ve been trying to get at here. In Christ, we who were dead in sin, alienated from other people and God, have been brought together into a new fellowship of reconciliation, a new household of faith, with people that we would otherwise despise. That’s my first point.

The second point is this: This new people of formerly alienated and hostile human beings called the church is the central outpost and a visible sign of the work that God is doing in and for the whole world. This point is implicit in the chapter we read for today, but we only need to move onto chapter 3 in order to hear it explicitly. Let me read verses 8-10 of chapter 3:

8 Although I am the very least of the saints, this grace (that is God’s grace in Jesus Christ) was given to me to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ, 9 and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; 10 so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

Now, to grasp the full import of what Paul is saying here we need to understand what he meant by the “rulers and authorities” or as is sometimes translated, “the powers.” In the world view of Paul’s audience, the events in their lives were to a significant extent dominated by cosmic forces that impacted the outcomes of human affairs. These powers were expressed through human arrangements of power such those involving rulers and subjects, masters and slaves, the strong and the weak. Writers such as Heinrich Berkhof and Walter Wink have explained these powers in contemporary language when they talk about the way in which the accumulation of power in institutions and structures takes on a life of its own that exceeds the will of even those who presume to be in charge. The modern state is such a power, as are economic institutions such as the stock market and the World Bank. Perhaps we could add multinational corporations to this list. In fact, we can include in this list the whole realm of public or profit-making institutions—from the banking system to the media to police forces to Wal-Mart to managed health care systems to the telemarketing industry—that both keep our lives somewhat orderly and at the same time dominate us in ways that do us harm.

The witness of the gospel as expressed in the life of the saved community—the church—is that Jesus has triumphed over these powers and demolished their deathly grip on our lives. Right before chapter 2 at the end of chapter 1 of Ephesians, in fact, Paul writes that

20 God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. 22 And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

And then, of course, Paul goes on at the beginning of chapter 2 which was read today, to say that we had once been dead in trespasses and sin, “following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air” but now we have been “made alive in Christ.” In other words, in Christ we have been freed from the power of these institutions of our age upon which it seems we must rely for security and order, but which are also at the root of our death and disobedience.

Now our Mennonite peace testimony has said very clearly that Christ has freed us from the grip that the power of the state has over us, especially its power to draft us or recruit us for its military adventures. And I believe that in order to be faithful witnesses to the reconciling love of Jesus Christ that our fellowship proclaims we must continue this peace witness. However, the good news of Jesus is that as members of God’s people, we proclaim freedom from all of the forces of bondage and captivity that lay a claim to our loyalty and subservience. That includes the bondage to wealth, to upward mobility, to the fashion industry, to media-culture, to addictions of mind and body, to racism, and even to well-intentioned but overextended patriotism. That includes the demands of career and employer, the forces of the bottom line and the profit margin, the expectations of success and progress. It also includes the dysfunctional authority of the courts and judges, the proliferation of lawsuits and prisons, and the machinery of state-sanctioned killing or capital punishment. It includes the very ordinary ways in which the days of our lives become structured around habits and practices that are not life-giving but yet seem necessary to us. All of these forces and powers have been made subject to Jesus Christ, according to Paul. And when we join the people of God, our lives are now also freed from the domination of these powers and authorities. Moreover our life together as a people of God is an ongoing witness to the world with its rulers and powers that they do not have the final word, that God’s reign is here to stay, that love and reconciliation have triumphed over hatred and division. I saw a bumper sticker recently that states very succinctly and cutely the claim we are making here: “My boss is a Jewish carpenter,” it reads. We could state this in other ways. “My financial consultant is a poor itinerant preacher.” “My health care provider is a faith healer.” “My president is the son of God.”

Now it is easy to wonder about the sanity and realism of what is being claimed in Ephesians chapter 2 about the nature of salvation. In fact, because texts like this have seemed implausible to many, they are often spiritualized. In Jesus we have inner freedom, we sometimes hear, but not necessarily outer freedom (that was what Luther said). As Christians we can look forward to a world of peace in the next life or in the future one thousand year reign of Christ, but in the meantime—in the real world—of course we need to fight and bomb and kill for all we’re worth to save truth, justice, and the American way (this is the message of the popular Left Behind series). But of course Paul does not spiritualize the gospel nor does he save it for the next life. Christ has triumphed over the powers already and in our fellowship of love is found the freedom and peace that God means to extend to the whole world. In fact, Paul makes this point even more explicitly in Colossians chapter 2 where says that through the work and cross of Jesus God has “disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.”

But, we might ask, why then is the church so flawed? Why are we so ineffectual? Why do I still not like some people who I go to church with? Why do we have divisions and quarrels and a thousand and one denominations?

It is important to notice what Paul is not claiming in this text. He is not claiming that the church will be perfect. He is not claiming that the church will escape suffering. He is not saying that there will be complete harmony. He is not even saying that we will like everyone with whom we have been joined in Christ. What he is saying is that in Christ we who were alienated from one another have been brought together into one body. We are citizens with the saints.

What do the citizens of a nation do when they gather together in a political assembly to acknowledge their allegiance to the nation and to make decisions together about the nation’s future? They argue endlessly, of course. But that argument takes place because they share citizenship and allegiance.

Just so in the church. Were it not for the church, this group of people would not be here this morning. I would not be here. There would be no opportunity for us to share life together, to get annoyed with each other, or to have a disagreement. We are gathered here together, not to make a witness to our propensity to all think alike. We are not here to say that we like each other. We are not here to say that we all agree with the Mennonite Confession of Faith or even with the interpretation of Ephesians 2 currently being advanced from the pulpit.

We are here to proclaim what God has done for us in Jesus Christ: he has reconciled us who were formerly alienated from each other into the household of the church. He has made us a new people, a new humanity. We have become the dwelling place of God.

Now I must confess that I did not always believe this.

When I was a college student I thought that the real work of social transformation and justice was going on in Washington D.C.—in the halls of Congress and in the White House. I spent a semester there to explore this assumption. What I discovered is that Christians most certainly have a witness to make on Capitol Hill, just as we have a witness for Wall Street and for Main Street. But I became convinced during my time in Washington D.C. studying the political process that the power to change the world is not to be found in the capital of the American Empire. Most of the people I met in Washington D.C. were good human beings, many of them Christians, who deeply desired to make a positive difference in the world. But almost all of their good intentions were profoundly compromised by the extraordinary concentration of power on Capitol Hill, and this fact was something practically everyone was prepared to admit.

The message of the gospel is that the power to change the world is the power that is made perfect in weakness. It is found where two or three are gathered in the name of Jesus to do God’s work in the world.

I am here this morning because I believe that there is more wonder-working power in this congregation than in the offices of the Pentagon or in the Oval Office or in all of the rulers and authorities of the world put together. That may seem outrageous but I believe that this is what Paul is in fact saying. This congregation is a part of Christ’s body. It is a regional outpost of the nation we call the church. Its members are citizens with the saints. And our head and chief-cornerstone is Christ who was raised into heavenly places far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named. This congregation is a dwelling place of God. So I mean it very sincerely when I say that it is a far greater privilege for me to be sharing here with you than to meet with the President of the United States or with Secretary General of the United Nations. This is where the power is.

Moreover, I am convinced that it was this understanding of salvation and the church that shaped the witness of our Anabaptist forbears. It was such an understanding of the church that enabled Conrad Grebel and Michael Sattler and Anna Janz and Menno Simons to stand up to the rulers and authorities of their time in order to proclaim the liberation of the gospel. They believed that conversion to Christ meant joining a community of faith that posed an alternative to the surrounding social order and that refused bondage to the powers of the age.

The stories of the Martyrs Mirror are stories of people who triumphed over the powers of their age through their witness to the defenseless and reconciling love of Jesus Christ. I want in closing to return to that venerable book of our church community’s memory for one such life-giving testimony.

In many respects this testimony is rather a typical story among the hundreds of martyr stories found there. It is the testimony of Tijs Jeuriaenss who together with Jan Claes was executed in a small Dutch town near Amsterdam in 1569. Tijs was an Anabaptist minister and Jan Claes was part of a group of Anabaptists who had gathered to hear Tijs’s exhortations to the gathered church in the town of Muyen. Both Tijs and Jan were arrested at this meeting and spent the next year and a quarter imprisoned, first in the castle at Muyen, then at the Hague, and then back at Muyen again. They were finally sentenced to be strangled first and then burned at the stake, a sentence that was carried out, after which their bodies were left as food for the birds.

Of course, read one way, this is a story of failure, of an accused preacher of heresy along with a member of his flock being overcome by the authorities of the present age. But in the Martyrs Mirror this story is told as a story of triumph. And in Tijs Jeuriaenss own verbal witness, he gives evidence of the freedom from bondage that he found in Christ and Christ’s body, the church. Much of this witness makes direct reference to the text from Ephesians we have been considering today. I conclude now with the eloquent greeting found at the beginning of a letter written to his friends which was included in the Martyrs Mirror alongside the account of his martyrdom.

My dear brethren and sisters, one with us in our most holy Christian faith, I wish you the weapons of light, to fight against the works of darkness; yea, from the depth of my heart and my inmost soul I wish you new tidings, glad news, an evangelical greeting, grace, mercy, peace, longsuffering, love, comfort, wisdom and steadfastness; yea from God our heavenly father all His heavenly treasures and riches, through Jesus Christ, our Giver and Distributor, our Prophet; great Apostle, and High Priest, our Ground, Foundation, and Cornerstone in Sion, our Trumpet, and Horn of salvation in the house of David and camp of Israel, our Way, Door, Truth, and Life, our Reconciler, Mediator, and Advocate, our Peace, Atonement and Righteousness, our paschal Dove and paschal Lamb, our Sun, Light, Morning Star, our delightful Emmanuel, Peace, Comfort, and Captain of the faith, our Shepherd, David, and Solomon according to the Spirit, our Comforter and Rejoicer, our Joy, Gladness, Might, and Strength, our Hero, Warrior, and Conqueror, who led captivity captive, deprived death of its might, power, and strength, that is, Him that had the power of death, brought life and immortality to light, spoiled principalities and powers, triumphed over them in Himself, broke down the middle wall of partition, blotted out the handwriting and nailed it to the cross, fulfilled the promises, satisfied the law, confirmed the testament with His death, and sealed it with His blood, and renewed all things, and put them under His feet, at the mercy seat upon the ark of God, above the cherubim, in the most holy place, that is, the head of His church forever. Amen.

May the witness of Tijs Jeuriaenss be our witness as well. Indeed, may it be the witness of all who claim the name of Jesus, all of us who are citizens with the saints.