Sunday, August 28, 2022 | 10:00 a.m.

Church as Project, not Product, Part 2

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 107:1–15
Ephesians 2:11–22

I think we should start today with a pop quiz. For those of you who participated in worship last week either in person or online, please verbally fill in these blanks. I will give you the sentence first: The church is not a __________ we consume but a group _________ that we work on together. Ready? The church is not a __________ (product) we consume, but a group __________(project) that we work on together!

In our sermon today, the last one of this very short series of two, I want us to spend some time thinking particularly about one critical aspect of our group project work—one of the goals toward which we strive. We are going to consider how this group project called church can become, by God’s grace, a living, breathing spiritual space of home. Now I fully realize that to use the word home can be challenging. For one thing, not all homes are safe. Not all homes are places of welcome and love. Not all homes are where you feel like you can be fully yourself and still have a place. I understand that and grieve alongside you if that has been or is currently your story.

So know that when I speak of our group project called church becoming a home for all people, I am speaking of a kind of community in which enmity, hostility, othering, divisiveness, cynicism, and apathy are not given any space at all to thrive or even to survive. When I speak of all of us working together to help our group project called church become a home, I am imagining the kind of Beloved Community preached by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In 1956, following the Montgomery bus boycotts, he preached, “The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the Beloved Community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opponents into friends. It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of [people]” (quoted in “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and ‘The Beloved Community,’” scottspeak.wordpress.com).

A community who actively strives towards those ends is what I mean by the word home. The late Fred Buechner put it this way: Home “is where you feel you belong and that in some sense belongs to you, a place where you feel that all is somehow ultimately well even if things aren’t going all that well at any given moment” (Frederick Buechner, quoted in “Frederick Buechner Sermon Illustration: The Longing for Home (2 Corinthians 5:6–8),” day1.org).

Now to some, that desire, that goal for our group project, might sound naïve or misplaced. Given the state of our world, the state of our nation, the state of our city, it also might feel absolutely impossible. After all, the public air around us sags heavily with cynicism and bite. “You are either for us or against us” continues to be the mantra of our day. We have gotten exceedingly efficient at immediately defining someone based on what they look like, what they do, whom they love, where they live, the news channel they watch. We make snap judgments about whom we will like and about whom we assume we don’t want to be around since they might make us uncomfortable or angry.

Here is just one illustration of that conclusion: In 2021, an Axios poll found that nearly 25 percent of college students stated they would never even be friends with another person from a different political party (Neal Rothschild, “Young Dems More Likely to Despise the Other Party,” 7 December 2021, axios.com). Democrats, by the way, were far more strident on this point than their Republican peers. It makes me wonder—what are those of us older than twenty-five role-modeling for our kids and youth?

Given realities like the result of that poll, it is not too far-fetched to conclude that our culture relishes nurturing enmity and hostility, and somehow, we, ourselves, must be contributing to it. And as the 2022 midterms approach, I fully expect for this atmosphere of tension and polarization to increase with each political ad and debate. Most days it feels that enmity and hostility are being carefully cultivated and purposefully unleashed into our world. I always wonder who is profiting from it. Certainly it’s not our common good.

Yet though it doesn’t make us feel any better, do know the culture was not any kinder back in the days of the early church. When Paul wrote this letter to the church in Ephesus, the air that surrounded Paul and his contemporaries was also quite heavy with enmity and violence. As a biblical scholar describes, during this time “to the Jew, the Roman or Greek was an idolater; to the Roman [or Greek], the Jew was an atheist who refused to acknowledge the gods or the divine authority of Caesar.” The hostility was thick.

And when this turbulent air exploded with the Jewish Rebellion in 66, the Romans immediately followed with a bloody and horrific war that was “no polite reassertion of Roman authority.” Most scholars now agree that it was this violence, this political crisis, that prompted Paul to write what he did, for the enmity and the division, the ways the walls were being built even higher and even stronger between diverse peoples, seriously threatened the group project called church that Paul was trying to lead: a community based on the truth that in Christ all people were made to be part of one family, fully welcomed, and created into one home.

This revealing of the unity that all people have in Christ was a central, crucial part of Paul’s ministry. And that is why Paul expends great effort to remind his people, to remind us, that the problems they are experiencing are not due to difference but enmity; the solution is not violence but what God is up to in Jesus Christ; and the plan of God, a central goal of the group project called church, has never been uniformity but rather peaceable difference (Allen Verhey and Joe Harvard, Belief: A Theological Commentary—Ephesians, p. 11). Peaceable difference. In a similar way to how the church is not a product to be consumed is countercultural, the idea of peaceable difference is also quite a countercultural concept—both back then and certainly today.

As a friend of mine said, at the time when Paul wrote this letter, the culture was attempting identity theft (Belief: A Theological Commentary—Ephesians, p. 12). It was trying to make the Jewish and Gentile Christians think they could not pray in the same worship space, sit at the same lunch counter or around the same table, live in the same neighborhoods, go to the same schools, be a part in the group project called church together because they were too different. They had different stories, different rituals, different histories, different diets. How on earth could they be one? How on earth could they help to create a community of home together? How on earth could they live out any kind of unity?

They can’t, culture said. No, no, no. Stick with your own kind. Only watch or read the news that supports what you already think. Only read the scriptures that buttress your theology. Only eat meals with people who either won’t talk about hard things or who agree with you as to what to do about hard things. Don’t invest energy in nurturing relationships with people who might wear you out with difference. Don’t be friends with someone from the opposite political party.

Paul’s naïve, mistaken proposition of Jews and Gentiles together, culture claimed, is not only ridiculous but dangerous. It is just plain better and easier if you simply stay with your own people, whatever that means for you. There is not a home here for you both. Paul heard those divisive messages his churches were receiving, and he knew it was all an attempt at ancient identity theft.

Yet Paul refused to let this cultural attempt at identity theft go unchallenged. He refused to let hostility, enmity, violence, and separation dominate the conversation. Wrong, he counters in this letter. First of all, the unity between Jew and Gentile is not a proposition. It is who you already are. “For Christ is our peace,” he writes. “In his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is the hostility between us.” I always find it helpful to notice that nowhere in that sentence does Paul say, “Now, if you want to, you can be one in Christ.” Nor, “If you are willing to try and get to know each other and see if you can overcome your differences, then you will be one in Christ.” Paul does not claim either of those ambiguous statements.

Rather, Paul reminds the early church, “Guess what—regardless of what is or is not comfortable for you; regardless if you would choose to work together on this group project called church or not; regardless if prevailing culture says this can happen or not, God has already done it. Christ is our peace. The dividing wall, the hostility between us, has already been broken down and destroyed. This is not an optional reality one can or cannot choose. It has happened. That creation of this stunningly new humanity, this amazing spiritual space of home, of which all of you are already a part in all your difference, is exactly what God is up to in Christ,” Paul preaches.

What a subversive theological claim! It did not fit with the larger cultural narrative back then, and it still does not today—a narrative that would much rather split us up and keep us apart. Yet Paul’s claim is who we are, and that assertion implies that part of our work for our group project is to summon the kind of courage it takes to live out that theological assertion in a culture that is so successful in nurturing enmity and hostility.

Our challenge is, by God’s grace, to create a kind of home, a kind of congregation, a part of Christ’s body, that is determined to do all we can to live out our unity, not uniformity; to be a kind of home, a kind of congregation, a part of Christ’s body that strives to be a people who take the time and spend the energy to actively embody a community of peaceable difference, not a “you are for us or against us” kind of tribalism. As William Sloane Coffin always stated, “We are called to be a church [I would edit to say a group project called church] who practices and celebrates that as long as our hearts are one in Christ, our minds don’t have to be.”

I find it a marvel and a gift that we have this divine opportunity to help God create us into a community, a home, in which we can disagree about how we understand a particular scripture, or about the ways a church should or should not be engaged in larger social issues, or the nuts and bolts of how our faith impacts the decisions we make with our money or with our vote. And yet all of us have a role in this project. All of us are called to work together on this group project called church. But not because I say so. Because God has said so. Jesus Christ has destroyed any dividing wall, any hostility between us. This is what we are to be about as the body of Christ. It is a central, vital aspect of our group project. It is our call. It is our difficult challenge.

Listen to how Archbishop Desmond Tutu once stated it: Wall-breaching activity is why we Christians are here. The church is to be the Word visible, an audiovisual aid for the world. The place where all the walls come down and all people are accepted and included and loved simply because they are accepted and included and loved by Jesus. No ifs, ands, or buts. No votes need to be taken.

This big, unwieldy, fueled-by-the-Spirit-of-God, oftentimes chaotic group project called Fourth Presbyterian Church has been called by God to be a witness to the one new humanity, reconciled not only to God but also to one another. This group project called Fourth Church has been created by God so we might live out the reality of our Peace who is Jesus Christ, God’s love made flesh. We are to embody peaceable difference with each other. We are to co-create a community that feels like home together.

I know that especially in these days this is not an easy task. It will take dogged determination even when we are tired; the willingness to fail and try again; the grace to forgive, to assume good intent, and to keep at it; the courageous commitment to not just walk away from the project when it gets hard but to dig even deeper. This group project will rely heavily on God’s grace, and we are going to have to trust deeply that we do not do this alone, for this is who we are.

The church is not a product to be consumed, but it is a group project on which we all work together. All of us. For only together will we be able to be home. And only together will we be able to partner with God to “transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age . . . [living out a] love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of [people].”

Can you imagine what a witness that will be to our children and young people? To our city? To our nation? That kind of a God-breathed witness could just change everything. May it be so. Amen.

Notes
I am well aware of the arguments of disputed authorship. For the purpose of this sermon, I have decided to take seriously the new scholarship that suggests Paul was indeed the author and these were indeed the surrounding historical circumstances. I am strongly influenced by the work in the Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible series and its Ephesians book. But even if the author was a Paulist and not Paul himself, the content of this sermon does not change.