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Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost

October 28, 2022

The Invitatory

Send out your light and your truth, that they may lead me, and bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.

The earth is the Lord’s for he made it: Come let us adore him.

Reading: Ephesians 2: 13-22

But 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 into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, so that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.

Meditation: Jo Ann B. Jones

One is well advised to give close attention to the very deliberate rhetoric of these verses, and the way it would have functioned for the people of Asia Minor living under Roman rule. Such attention can reveal just how deeply political the “spiritual” vision of Ephesians is. In short, the tightly-crafted rhetoric of Ephesians directly challenges the claims of Rome’s emperors, who saw themselves as the semi-divine forgers of a new world peace. Likewise, it undermines all systems that secure insider distinction and top-down privilege by setting up barriers that identify some as outsider or inferior.

It is crucial to recognize that any talk of peace within the context of Asia Minor in the late first century under Roman rule would be politically charged talk. This Roman brand of “peace,” of course, was an enforced peace by military dominance.

Imagine how such a community of Gentiles and Jews might take the first reading of a new writing — the one that will later come to be known as the Letter to the Ephesians. They would be gathered to hear it read out, of course, because most could not read. What a surprise awaits these listeners as the reader reads, “You who were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ . . . He is our peace.”

 What is being asserted is that despite all the swaggering claims of the world, true peace has been inaugurated by a man the empire crucified. What is so compelling and entrancing is that peace is a matter of creation! And how wonderful to find its creative force and activity in the hands, if you will, of the God who created all the heavens and the earth and who has come in the form of Jesus Christ to initiate his peace.

From Paul’s perspective, those to whom he is writing in Ephesus are lacking in a number of critical areas, including knowledge of God’s plan for salvation and the purpose of the church as the body of Christ. According to God’s eternal plan for humanity, Christ’s death brought together Jews and Gentiles into a new, united community: the Jewish law, which previously distinguished and divided Jews from Gentiles, was rendered irrelevant by the cross and Christ reconciled both Jews and Gentiles to each other and to God.

How might we now live into this reconciliation that so plagues and defines our time in this country? How important it is that the Church still bear witness to the united community and reconciliation won by Christ on the cross. What a gift and blessing to draw upon the creative energy present to us in the love of God to see each other without any labels or definitions, whatsoever, but as God’s created beings. Ephesians declares peace on new terms, the peace forged not by the Empire, but in the blood and bone of Christ. The cross undermined the wall dividing Jew and non-Jew, but that is only the beginning.

The Lord's Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven,

    hallowed be thy Name,

    thy kingdom come,

    thy will be done,

        on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

    as we forgive those

        who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation,

    but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom,

    and the power, and the glory

   for ever and ever. Amen.