Dwell, Abide, Remain, with the Lord
On Friday, Stephanie and I drove to the modern art museum in Fort Worth. A good outing on a day off, but harder for me than you might think. I am impatient by nature, and my head was full of issues at work, but art requires that you stop, stand still, and actually look for longer than mu usual cursory moment. We do so to see what exactly is in the picture, and then to allow the picture to evoke a feeling, of whatever kind. The display specialized in surrealism, art as dreamscape, for in our dreams one thing morphs readily into something different and incongruous. We are told that dreams have their own logic, image, feeling, some reality behind them, and art is similar. But first, standing still, the hard part.
This morning I want us to stand in front of Ephesians 2 with this kind of extended gaze, for it its image is complicated, even strange, and, needless to say, profound. But first, some background. Those early communities of Christians in Asia Minor were small, threatened, conflicted, the early chapters of the Book of Revelation confirm all this. But appearances notwithstanding, Paul has assured them in the first part of the letter who they really are- chosen by God from eternity, raised to the right hand of the Father by the risen Son as His beloved sons and daughters in worship. Now in chapter two Paul tells us how this is so, and this is where the picture comes in.
It is a single image, but in three stages. The first is the temple in Jerusalem. It was the goal of pilgrimage, the place where God’s glory dwelt, the center of the universe, the symbol of the future hope. It was where sacrifice, mandated in the Torah, was offered to God, with the holy of holies for the priests, then the temple precinct for God’s people, and then, beyond a wall, the ‘court of the Gentiles,’ an outer space for spectators, the rest of the tribes of the earth, once, and not yet, God’s own.
Let us linger over this for a moment. Paul describes them as ‘without God in the world.’ But those pagans had their own gods, and they were drawn with interest toward the outer court. But at the same time, gods of our own making, idols, are extensions of ourselves and our desires, not really God. Those ancient people then knew something of secularity, being orphaned in a cold universe, and as to the trouble you can get yourself into with this mindset; when it comes to decadence, they were pros. We have not invented our post-modern predicament.
Back to the picture! Suddenly the articulated temple on Mt. Zion morphs into the dying body of Jesus on the cross. Paul tells us that when his body was broken, it knocked down that wall separating Gentile from Jew, and in a sense separating us from our God. We are now one- in fact we are now a new humanity, as we were meant to be. This involves a series of surprises- first, this is not just a metaphor for Paul- it has happened. It is not that we wish we were one- we are made one, the sacrifice accepted, the gap closed, Emmanuel dwelling with us. We are now one, with Him, and so with one another. Secondly, the making of peace, the end of violence, has happened through his suffering the violent act of crucifixion. This is harder for us because we are not accustomed to the cult of sacrifice. The change in us has happened- Christ is made our peace, through the blood of the cross.
Allow me one more aside. One of my favorite movies is ‘Elizabeth’, the first that is, which I commend as a refresher in Anglican history. When something decisive and of another order happens, the director Shekhar Kapur has the screen go to sheer light for a moment, a kind of punctuation mark, and then the action picks up once again. I want you to imagine with me for a moment something similar. Verse 14: ‘for he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the wall of hostility.’ Action, perfect tense, Jesus the subject, done deal: screen to sheer bright for a moment…..
And then we move on to the third stage of the same picture. The cathedral as fallen down, like bombed out Coventry, and a great renovation has taken place. It is a temple once more, described in the same way as the ‘household of God,’ only now those in the outer court, the strangers and sojourners, are now on the inside, the new Israel. In stage three the temple become his body become a temple once more, only different. It is the Church, us, here in this place and this morning.
The word ‘stages’ is true enough, when time is considered in the simplest way, but it isn’t enough to say. Let’s recall that idea of a dreamscape, Zion into Jesus into Church, the first two do not go away. They are layers, angles. Temple leads to Jesus and church flows out of him, literally as water and blood from his side. Time too heads toward Him and from Him, because the goal of all things is there in the middle of our broken world, the perfect sacrifice for the sin of the world. That is why Paul, in what follows in chapter 3, will speak of the ‘mystery,’ which for him means not mystification, but God’s plan for time, with Jesus made our peace, the center, the key to the puzzle of life.
Preaching is like teaching in that it tells us where we come from, and how we got here, and so who we are. The complex and luminous picture of the temple/body/church that is Christ in us does all that, and we should gaze long on it- as is often true with God’s Word, we look at it, and realize He is looking back, and in seeing Him we come to see ourselves. But preaching is more than teaching in this, that it tells our heart as well as our mind why the truth is good news. It becomes ‘gospel.’ And with Ephesians 2 the picture preaches in two words, ‘access’ and ‘dwelling place.’ Paul says essentially the same thing when in his valedictory letter to the Church in Rome he says in chapter 5 ‘through [Christ] we have obtained access to his grace in which we stand.’ You have access to God! You know where to find him! He is nearer to you than you are to yourself! (in Romans 8) even when perplexed, His own Spirit is praying though you, confirming that you are his beloved son or daughter of the Father through the Son Jesus Christ. You are not feeling your way along the walls of a dark room. You whisper into the ear of Jesus who stands beside the right ear of the Father. And so the Temple of the lamb who was slain, and behold, he is alive, is any and everywhere, which is why in the Eucharistic prayer we say that ‘at all times and places,’ even the most forlorn, we offer the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving , as the prayer book calls it. So the second word, and my parting one in this sermon, is ‘home,’ that is, dwelling place. The new temple is spacious, united, intimate, available wherever you are, the picture actually a three dimensionally place you can dwell, abide, remain, with the Lord who was incarnate to do that very thing with us, who are no longer strangers, but heirs. Amen.
