“Dealing with our ‘unhappy divisions’”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Monday, January 16, 2023
Ephesians 4:1-16 (Forward, p. 79) CEV p. 1224
Here the apostle Paul begins with an appeal to his readers to ‘live lives that are worthy of their calling, worthy of the people God has chosen them to be. He then lays out a number of very practical, doable suggestions:
-always be humble and gentle with each other;
-patiently put up with each other;
-love each other, and not just in sentiments but in costly and practical actions;
-try your best to let God’s Spirit keep your hearts united;
-live at peace with one another And then, as if to back this up, he mentions three things that God has done that should encourage or enable this course of action:
a) Firstly, that God has called them, not into a whole bunch of separate bodies or units, but into a single body, the Church. That was God’s purpose and plan. There aren’t many lords, many faiths or many kinds of baptism, but simply one, and so, they too should be one.
Nothing should be dividing or separating them.
b) Secondly, that God has gifted them, every single one of them, with gifts that benefit the whole body. Indeed, God has a use and a purpose for every single one of them. And so, no single believer is better or worse than another. Every one of them, every one of us, has a purpose and a place in God’s plan! And so, there is no room or place for competition or rivalry, but enough room for everyone if we are all doing our parts.
c) And finally, that God bestowed upon the Church certain offices, certain ministries, with the express purpose of helping its members be united, grow strong in their faith and become more like Christ. The ministries of the church should do more than simply go through the motions of running a church or assisting in worship but should be actively engaged, intentional, in growing and developing strong, mature and faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.
‘Our unhappy divisions’: surely this is not what God has called us to, and surely this is not a way of life worthy of what God has done for us. Maybe, then, the clue, the answer, is not to think of ourselves at all, but to focus on the body, on the Church as a whole. God has called us to belong together, to contribute together and to grow together. None of this is to have its focus on ourselves alone, but on who and what we are as a body, as a Church. So, our focus, our objective, should be on what we, each one of us, can do to promote its unity, its strength, its grown, and then simply let everything else—including our own personal agendas and wishes—to simply fall by the side. By and with God’s help, we can do this. Amen.
Forward notes: “When it says, ‘He ascended,’ what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth?” (verse 9)
“’He descended to the dead’ is a short but loaded line in the Apostles’ Creed. Our medieval teachers believed that Jesus died, descended into hell, and broke apart the bonds of death and opened the doors of hell. Our Orthodox siblings have wonderful icons that depict the great moment of resurrection: Jesus is holding Adam and Eve by their wrists, and he pulls them up right out of hell. Christ’s victory over death itself is why we can say that human life is changed at death, not ended.
“Today’s verse is but an aside from Saint Paul, who, while in prison, writes that Christ ‘made captivity itself a captive.’ Despite the reality of his condition, Paul kept the faith in the promises that God made: to proclaim release for captives and freedom for the oppressed. We may join Paul in paraphrasing the prophet Hosea, ‘Where, O death, is your sting?’ not because we no longer know suffering or the pain of grief but because God refuses to allow death to define our lives. God takes on flesh even into the depths of hell, to redeem even death in our lives.”
Moving Forward: “Have you thought about Jesus descending into hell?”