July 22, 2018 | Maurice Lee

Readings: Jeremiah 23:1–6; Psalm 23; Ephesians 2:11–22; Mark 6:30–34, 53–56

Recently I read this casual but remarkable statement by the American Lutheran scholar David Yeago: “For classical Christianity, the theological understanding of human history and culture is difficult.” [1] He didn’t mean that as a criticism or as a put-down. It’s just the way things are. Reality — created by God, and distorted by sin and evil — is complicated. Theories that reduce everything to a single factor or that focus on a simplistic theme are going to be incomplete and probably misleading. You can get some sense of the situation even apart from theology. Newton’s calculations seemed to be adequate, until Einstein came along. Explaining World War I in terms of politics alone leaves out important but confusing economic forces. Et cetera, et cetera. Reality is complicated.

You might say something along similar lines about the Christian gospel, the good news, as unfolded in the book of Ephesians, which our Epistle readings are moving through this month and the next. Take chapter 2, for example. Many Christians are familiar with the first part, the first ten verses — in fact, it’s popular, or it used to be popular, to memorize great passages like: “You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived” (verses 1–2), or: “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, made us alive together with Christ” (verse 4), or: “By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (verses 8–9), or: “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life” (verse 10). Of course, these are all amazing in their own way, challenging in their own way. But they’re familiar, or they used to be familiar, because they tell an apparently relatively straightforward and uncluttered story. We were dead because of sin. We’ve been made alive through Christ. And it’s all from God’s grace, not on the basis of our working but as the basis for our working.

But then the very next paragraph, verses 11–22 — which is what we read today — complicates the picture. Paul starts talking about Gentiles, non-Jews, and about Israel, the Jewish people. He refers to the ancient history of Israel with God, and he connects non-Jews to that history. No wonder this section is less familiar. But Paul wasn’t switching gears or changing subjects at verse 11. He thought he was still telling the gospel. “So then,” he says — therefore, for that reason, given that understanding — “so then, remember that at one time you Gentiles were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”

Who among Christians these days thinks seriously, thinks when they’re thinking at the heart of their faith, about the differences and the relations between Gentiles and Jews, or imagines that being a non-Jew — for those Christians, the vast majority as it happens, who are not Jews — should have any kind of actual bearing on how they see themselves and how they see what has happened to them? Everyday American Christianity, at least — as if it were a kind of melting pot! — typically conceives of the gospel of Jesus in terms of just verses 1–10 of Ephesians 2, in terms of God’s grace applying to everyone, from whatever ethnic or national or family background, without distinction. Everyone has sinned, everyone is far away from the source of righteousness and goodness. Everyone can receive mercy through Christ. Everyone can experience new life.

But in our Epistle reading, Paul describes the problem for Gentiles apart from Christ not as a kind of generic rebellion against God — although the problem is rebellion against God, to be sure — but as alienation from the commonwealth of Israel, as estrangement from the covenants made with Israel. The particular problem for Gentiles apart from Christ, the particular problem for Gentiles addressed by Christ, Paul seems to be saying, is that they’re not Jews — or at least that they don’t share, that they aren’t members, in the specifically Jewish relationship with God. I would guess, offhand, that not only are there not a huge number of non-Christians who would understand their own situation in quite that way, but also that there are not a huge number of Christians who would understand their own previous situation apart from Christ, or understand what happened to them because of Christ, in quite that way.

Just because a guy 2000 years ago wrote something doesn’t automatically make it true. On the other hand, maybe we should be open to the possibility that reality is complicated, that the truth isn’t as simple or as one-dimensional as we might prefer it to be. Maybe we should be open to the possibility that salvation and good news for Gentiles — that salvation and good news for us — means being brought into Israel’s specific relationship with God, a relationship from which we were alienated and estranged even if we were ignorant of the fact; means being grafted into a tree that we didn’t choose or plant ourselves and of which the flourishing is not at our disposal; means landing on the shore of a new world, taking up residence in a new country, where the customs and the constitution offer us the freedom we truly need, the freedom we were made for, instead of the freedom we often imagine we want. Maybe we should be open to the possibility that Paul, whenever he thought or wrote about the gospel, about the salvation and the redemption and the liberation that had been revealed so unexpectedly to be for all nations, for all peoples, as well as for the Jews, he always had at the back of his mind, and often at the front, the kingdom promised uniquely to Israel through the prophets of the covenant. Maybe we should be open to the possibility that, for Paul, being Christian, being “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God,” was really nothing other than entering this specific kingdom, coming under this specific rule, learning something about our true identity and our true purpose not by taking the self-directed journey inward but by being taken on the God-directed journey outward, into worship, into obedience, into service, into the Jew Jesus Christ.

That’s the astonishing thing: we’re made part of God’s kingdom by being made part of Jesus the Israelite. In a word, that’s grace. “By grace you have been saved,” Paul says, and anyone familiar with his writing knows that he never tires of repeating that, in every possible variation and context. We’re not made part of the kingdom — we’re not brought into the commonwealth of Israel and introduced to the covenants of promise — by conforming to certain cultural expectations, or by satisfying certain legal conditions, or by pursuing certain spiritual experiences, even the expectations and conditions and experiences characteristic of Israel. Paul told the Gentiles of the Galatian churches that getting circumcised — basically, playing at being Jewish, relying on their own efforts and their own commitment to hitch a ride on Israel’s relationship with God — would be worse than useless [Galatians 5:2]. Instead, he says in Ephesians 2, we’re made part of the kingdom — we “who once were far off have been brought near” — “by the blood of Christ.” The Jew Jesus “reconciled us,” Jews and Gentiles both, “to God in one body through the cross,” and he “created in himself one new humanity,” Jews and Gentiles both, so that “through him we,” Jews and Gentiles both, “have access in one Spirit to the Father,” and so that “in him we,” Jews and Gentiles both, “are being built together into a dwelling place for God.” Notoriously, Paul doesn’t explain here — or, really, anywhere — exactly how Jesus’ death and resurrection could accomplish such things, could join us to his life and allow us to share in his righteousness and faithfulness and peace and include us in his fulfillment of God’s calling of Israel. Probably no single or simple explanation would be adequate. Reality is complicated. So, it turns out, is God’s grace.

And yet God’s grace in Jesus — Jesus, himself the embodiment of Israel’s commonwealth and covenant; Jesus, himself the shepherd celebrated in so many interesting ways by all our other readings this morning — gathers us together, makes his guiding word available to us, draws us to his table of abundance and healing, sends us to be lights and witnesses in our world, in God’s world. Just here, we have enough and more than enough to think about. Just here, we have enough and more than enough to be thankful for. Amen.

David S. Yeago, “Modern But Not Liberal: A Confident Christian Faith Can Absorb and Sustain the Achievements of Modernity,” First Things (June 2012).