A sermon by the Rev. Guillermo A. Arboleda, written for and delivered at All Saints' Episcopal Church, Tybee Island, GA, on Sunday, July 28, 2024, the 10th Sunday after Pentecost (RCL Proper 12, Year B).
Primary Bible Reading
Ephesians 3:14-21
14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. 16 I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit 17 and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. 18 I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 20 Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Overcoming Impossible Divisions
By the Rev. Guillermo A. Arboleda, Program Manager for New Starts, ELCA
We live in divided times. Maybe we always have, but the divisions in our society feel sharper than they have in a long time. That much is clear with a quick scan of newspaper headlines and push notifications and the rolling ticker tapes at bottom of the screen on 24/7 news channels. There are divisions between rich and poor; people experiencing homelessness are being forcibly removed from their outdoor tent camps from Georgia to California. There are divisions between races and genders; we learned recently of yet another Black person killed by the police, this time Sonya Massey in Springfield, IL. There are international divisions that have led to war in Ukraine, Gaza, and South Sudan, just to name a few. Don’t even get started on the political divisions in a US presidential election year. When I was here two weeks ago, there was an assassination attempt against one of the major presidential candidates.
In such divided times, it is easy to feel hopeless. Can we ever heal this brokenness? Can we ever come together? Will we ever find peace?
Well, for better or worse, we are not the first generation ever to experience such sharp divisions. People have hated each other and fought one another as long as we have walked the earth. People were just as divided (if not more so) in biblical times as they are today. And God has a lot to say about our divisions and how to heal them. I’ll give you one guess at the answer: Jesus.
Our reading from the Letter to the Ephesians (3:14-21) is a prayer at the end of a long section that is all about overcoming divisions. We heard a piece of it in last week’s reading. But the overall message is that Jesus Christ came to heal our human divides. The division that occupied most of the New Testament authors’ attention was the division between Jewish people and Gentiles (every other ethnic group on earth). When God rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and led them through the Red Sea (Exodus 12-15), their first stop was Mount Sinai. There they received the Law of God, handed down to Moses, and there God first called the Jewish people “a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). God blessed them so that they would be a blessing to the rest of the world (Genesis 12:1-3).
But, very early on it became more important to the Israelites that they separated themselves from others, which led to division and fear. The Jewish people told themselves that their neighbors in Canaan were savages who needed to be destroyed, that they should not intermarry, that they were unclean and only we – the Jewish people – were the holy people of God (e.g., Deuteronomy 7:1-16). They told themselves that God ordered them to destroy their neighbors instead of love them, to curse them instead of bless them. The “us-them” mindset was toxic. They had spent generations placing those divisions and hatred into the mouth of God to justify their own fear, hatred, and violence.
Divisions, fear, hatred, and violence were not just ancient Jewish problems, of course. Today, Americans have been taught many of the same attitudes. We are xenophobic, we fear people from different cultures and backgrounds. We hear messages from across the political spectrum about the dangers of immigration, even though most American citizens are immigrants or descendants of immigrants. Our forebears treated the Indigenous residents of Turtle Island (the Indigenous name for the North American continent) like they were savages. They brutally destroyed them in wars. Interracial marriage was illegal in most American states until 1967, when the Supreme Court ruled those laws unconstitutional in Loving v. Virginia. Even for those Christians who are more open and accepting of different racial and ethnic groups, we sometimes still judge and condemn people from other religious traditions.
But Paul proclaims a Gospel based on God’s adoption and love for every human being, Jew and Gentle! He explains a few verses before our reading begins that the “Mystery of Christ” is that “Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (Ephesians 3:4-6). Despite our fears and divisions, God has made us all one. In today’s benediction, Paul asserts that “every family in heaven and on earth” comes from God the Father, regardless of race, ethnicity, religious upbringing, or other backgrounds (Ephesians 3:14-15). He prays that we “may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth” of “the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:18-19). That huge, broad love transcends our human divisions of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and all the rest. As Paul wrote in last week’s New Testament lesson, “Now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups [Jews and Gentiles] into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us” (Ephesians 2:13-14). Jesus tears down the walls that divide us!
This seems like a major change from the Old Testament, but there are other parts of the Old Testament where Gentiles are included and celebrated. Ruth is a Moabite who married an Israelite and became the grandmother of King David. Jonah was a prophet who preached grace and mercy to Israel’s foreign enemies in Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire. The Prophet Isaiah proclaimed that worshippers will stream in from Egypt and Assyria, Israel’s mortal enemies (19:23-25). Later, Isaiah prophesied that God will welcome all the peoples of the earth, saying “Nations will stream to your light and kings to the brightness of your dawning” (60:1-7; Canticle 11: Third Song of Isaiah, BCP, p. 87).
This theme of God’s love for all people and our unity across divisions continues in today’s Gospel reading. When Jesus feeds the 5000, we learn that he is “on the other side of the Sea of Galilee” from his homebase in Capernaum (John 6:1). The eastern shores of Galilee were a different Roman province called Decapolis, with a much smaller Jewish population than Galilee to the west or Judea (Jerusalem) to the south. That means that Jesus chose to miraculously feed people from all the Gentile nations, sitting, eating, and socializing together with him and his Jewish followers. In a scene that would scandalize religious leaders of his day, Jew and Gentile broke bread and ate fish together on the lake shores. They built relationships across the differences that seemed to permanently divide them. Even before his death and resurrection, Jesus was showing us how much God loves people from all the nations on earth.
The divisions that seem so stubborn and impossible to overcome have already been overcome. The hostility that exists between us — regardless of the reason — is being torn down by the love of Jesus Christ. The dividing wall is being toppled through his peaceful, healing flesh. Through Christ, the impossible is made possible. God is “able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine,” including uniting people who hate one another (Ephesians 3:20). Human divisions are strong, but the love of God is stronger. And that healing begins in each one of us, who are members of the Body of Christ.
Who are you afraid of? Who do you feel divided from? Can you pray for them? Can you invite Jesus to break down the dividing walls of hostility between you? Can you trust that God will do more for us than we can ask for or imagine? Amen.
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