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A Sermon on the Occasion of the Birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
January 18, 2004
Names are powerful things. In the Semitic understanding of names there is the belief that a name reflects the very character of the person, place or thing that it describes. So Jacob (which means ‘deceiver’) becomes Israel (he wrestles with God) after he spends a night tussling with an angel. Jesus (Yeshua) means “the Lord saves.” Names also have the power to mold those who bear them. Some of you remember the old Johnny Cash song, “A Boy Name Sue.” Having that name forced that boy to be tough and hard and able to stand up against the hardships of life.
Names of churches are important as well. Taking a particular saint’s name is to identify with the ministry and Christ-like life demonstrated by that person. Other church names reflect a point of the great truths of the Christian faith: Christus Victor, Resurrection, Redeemer, Christ the King, etc.
Our church’s name is significant as well: Cornerstone. It is a direct reference to the passage we read this morning. In this scripture Jesus is called the Cornerstone. Why is that? Why is it important and what does it have to do with the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr?
It is a reminder that Christ’s reconciling work on the cross not only reunites us with God but also RECONCILES US TO OTHER BELIEVERS.
You see, most of us in the evangelical world have of us have been exposed to an anemic, depleted, Gospel. What we have received in many cases has been half a Gospel. This halfway Gospel rightly focuses on the reconciliation we have with God through the atoning work of Jesus Christ, but leaves out a vital element of the Good News. But it neglects the truth that the cross also impacts our relationships with other people.
Just as the Cross is comprised of a vertical and a horizontal beam the full Gospel of reconciliation has both a vertical and a horizontal component. Jesus was firm in pointing out that our horizontal relationships -- the human-to-human relationships -- are just as vital to our faith as our vertical relationship -- humans to God.
I want to suggest to you that this is why the message of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had the power to transform an entire nation - it was a message energized by the RADICAL TRUTH OF THE AUTHORITATIVE WORD OF GOD! MLKJR was raised in the bosom of the Christian Church and the Word of God seeped from his every pore. Dr. King’s message had power because it was based in the biblical message of reconciliation that centers on the self-sacrificing love of God shown by Jesus on the cross.
I. Background to the Text. The Scripture Lesson from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians deals with the greatest challenge to reconciliation and unity in the early church. It just so happens that it is also our greatest challenge to unity and reconciliation in the church today.
A. The problem experienced in the early church was this: There were two ethnic groups that made up the early Church: Jewish believers in Jesus and everybody else. Now the everybody else group or Gentiles were of course from every national and ethnic makeup imaginable. But the lines of division in the Church of that era were drawn between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians.
B. Our modern divisions between ethnic groups pale in comparison to this division. In his morning prayers a Jewish male of this era would praise God for not making him a “Gentile, a slave or a woman”. William Barclay, the great Scots commentator, says this about the division between Jew and Gentile in the first century:
The Jew had an immense contempt for the Gentile. They said that the Gentiles were created by God to be fuel for the fires of Hell; that God loved only Israel of all the nations that he had made; that the best of the serpents crushed; the best of the Gentiles killed. It was not even lawful to render help to a Gentile woman in childbirth, for that would be to bring another Gentile into the world. The barrier between Jew and Gentile was absolute. If a Jew married a Gentile, the funeral of that Jew was carried out. Such contact with a Gentile was the equivalent of death; even to go into a Gentile house rendered a Jew unclean. (Wm. Barclay, The Daily Study Bible Series: the Letters to the Galatians and Ephesians; p. 107).
C. The animosity, suspicion and bigotry of our culture does not come close to the outright hatred and enmity that existed between the Jews and Gentiles. The closest equivalent would be the relations between blacks and whites in the southern United States 50 or 60 years ago, or the relations between whites and everyone else in South Africa in recent years.
II. The Biblical Solution for Reconciliation. I want us to look briefly at the great divide that existed between Jewish and Gentile Christian and how they were reconciled. And then I want us to apply that principle of reconciliation to the ethnic, racial and cultural divisions that still exist within the Church today.
A. The Apostle Paul tells us that Jesus is the means of reconciliation. Jesus is our peace. He is the one who brings unity to disparate factions. Not education. Not good will. Not good intentions. Reconciliation is bound up in the PERSON of Jesus Christ.
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility. Eph 2:14
B. The Jewish and Gentile Christian had absolutely NOTHING in common except that they lived on the same planet! The one thing that brought them together and enabled them to live and worship side by side was that they both LOVED THE SAME JESUS. They both had a relationship with Jesus Christ. That’s all they had in common but that was enough!
C. The dividing wall of hostility that Paul mentions is a word picture taken from the Temple in Jerusalem. The outer Temple court was divided into 3 sections: The first court was the court of the Gentiles. The second court, closer to the Temple itself, was the court of the Women. The final outer court was the court of the Israelites, reserved for Jewish males. There were walls separating each of these courts. The wall that separated the Gentiles from the rest of the Temple (which was the representation of God’s presence on earth) had stone tablets placed on it every few feet that warned the Gentiles that if they came any closer to the temple they would be put to death.
· Both Jewish and Gentile Christian now had access to the same God through Jesus Christ. Jesus had destroyed the division to bring them together.
D. Now there is no Jew or Gentile Christian -- there are just Christians. Jesus has made a new race from the two.
You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:26-28
In the last census, when we were asked to indicate what race we were, I put down Christian. We are no longer defined by race or secular culture or economic level. We are solely and supremely defined as humans by who we are in Jesus Christ. Listen to the text again:
His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace. Eph 2:15b
· There are 2 words translated as new in Greek: neos and kainos. Neos means new in time. In other words something that is new but has existed before. Like a new airplane. Airplanes have been around a while. But you can still build a new airplane. The other words, kainos means new in the sense of something totally fresh that has never existed before. When the Wright brothers built the first airplane it was kainos. Nothing like it had ever existed.
· Paul uses the word kainos when he says that the two hostile races had ceased to exist in Jesus Christ. That Jesus had actually created a NEW type of human in himself, the Christian.
III. The Cross didn’t just reconcile us to God. It was God’s means of reconciling us to one another.
…and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. Eph 2:16
A. When we enter the family of God through accepting what Jesus did for us on the Cross we enter one family. We are members of God’s household. We are literally brothers and sisters in Christ and there is now no division. The work of reconciliation was completed by Jesus Christ on the Cross.
Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, Eph 2:19
B. Without a reconciled relationship with our brothers and sisters we delude ourselves if we think we in God’s will or can have fellowship with God. Our church took the name Cornerstone United Methodist Church because we wanted to emphasize Christ’s reconciling work between people as well as between humanity and God.
C. And reconciliation is NOT something we have to make happen. The work of reconciliation was completed on the Cross 2000 years ago. Rather, reconciliation is some thing that must be owned and received by the Church and each believer. Just as you, by a conscious act of the will received Christ’s atoning sacrifice on your behalf you and I must accept Christ’s reconciling work with other believers.
· Unity is only possible through Jesus Christ. For many of us Jesus is the only thing we have in common. The Good News is that this is enough of a basis for unity and reconciliation!
III. Application: Reconciliation is Expensive. It cost Jesus his life! It is expensive to us. There is a Cross in every act of reconciliation. It always involves dying to our selves in some way.
A. Reconciliation is too difficult to achieve based on human good intentions. It requires a supernatural empowerment. Thus the Church, who is empowered by the Holy Spirit, is the only hope for reconciliation in our world.
B. Establish common ground. Reconciliation means realizing that we are one family in Jesus Christ. Our kinship ties in God’s family are more lasting, more potent than any blood relationship or ethnic identity.
After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. Revelation 7:9
C. As Christians, secular culture can no longer define us. Christ’s institution of the church was a creation of an alternative culture to fallen secular society that emphasizes racial division between Jew or Gentile, black or white.
Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. Colossians 3:11
CONCLUSION: Attempts at reconciliation that have come from other sources than the living God are destined to fail because racism is a SIN PROBLEM. It is NOT an education problem. It is not just a problem of misunderstanding. Rather, it is a manifestation of the broken-ness that resulted from our rebellion against God. That broken-ness is only dealt with by the cross. Reconciliation begins with the confession of sin.
Ephesians
2:11-22
11 Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and
called "uncircumcised" by those who call themselves "the circumcision"
(that done in the body by the hands of men)- 12 remember that at that time
you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and
foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God
in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have
been brought near through the blood of Christ.
14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed
the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by abolishing in his flesh
the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create
in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in this
one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he
put to death their hostility. 17 He came and preached peace to you who
were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both
have access to the Father by one Spirit.
19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow
citizens with God's people and members of God's household, 20 built on the
foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the
chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and
rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being
built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
NIV
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