Fellow Heirs

Sunday, January 7th, 2007
Epiphany
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Ephesians 3:1-12

1 This is the reason that I Paul am a prisoner for Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles— 2for surely you have already heard of the commission of God’s grace that was given me for you, 3and how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I wrote above in a few words, 4a reading of which will enable you to perceive my understanding of the mystery of Christ. 5In former generations this mystery was not made known to humankind, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: 6that is, the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. 7Of this gospel I have become a servant according to the gift of God’s grace that was given me by the working of his power. 8Although I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to me to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ, 9and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; 10so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. 11This was in accordance with the eternal purpose that he has carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, 12in whom we have access to God in boldness and confidence through faith in him.

If you would, please, everyone, close your eyes. This is not for prayer as such, though it might turn into a prayer, depending on where we end up. What I’d like us to do, as we sit in our seats, is to let our minds wander through the faces and names of people we’ve seen in town, or at Wal-Mart, or on a trip, especially on a trip, or on television, in news reports or on one program or another – keep it to actual, real-life people … and narrow it down to the one person or couple of people whom you would least expect to run into HERE, at church. Do you have them picked out?

Okay, Now, I want you to take them out of the context in which you saw them, wherever and whenever it was, and keep them just as you saw them – whatever they were wearing, however their hair was, and pick them up, spin them around a little, and land them sitting in the pew next to you.

Don’t open your eyes yet. Keep them closed. Imagine first, YOUR response to THEIR sitting beside you. You are both simply sitting next to each other. No words have been spoken, no greeting has been exchanged, no “good morning” has been offered, no hand extended, no comment about the weather, yet. You are frozen in a moment in time. You have all the time in the world to study it.

Oh, no, sorry. You have a week, or a month, maybe a little longer, maybe a little less. Maybe it’s happening to you right now.

Okay, you can open your eyes now. What questions were going through your mind? Let’s set aside for the moment the ones that have to do with HOW they ended up next to you, and walk through some of OUR feelings and responses and thoughts about their being here. Remember, up to this point you are only SITTING next to each other. Nothing else has happened.

Were they sitting in someone’s regular spot? How were they dressed? Did they seem uncomfortable? Were they sitting quietly or were they acting otherwise? Were you surprised to see them? I guess that might be an unnecessary question, since I asked you to imagine the person you would LEAST expect to run into here. But still, what was your reaction? Did their simple presence make you uncomfortable? Did you find yourself worrying about how they would respond to the service, if they would know when to stand, when to sit, when to read out loud, when to bow silently and wait?

Okay. Hold that image and those emotions in your minds for a few minutes, and let’s turn to the passage for this morning. Paul is calling the gentile members of the church in Ephesus ‘Fellow Heirs’. If you didn’t catch it, he’s talking to them as very much a Jewish follower of Christ. From the point of view of someone who comes from the “Chosen People of God – The People of Israel, Descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, A Member of One of the Twelve Tribes”. All those words are capitalized, by the way. There is no doubt in Paul’s mind that his lineage was entrusted with the mystery he’s referring to – the secret to what it takes to be in relationship with God the Creator of the Universe – ‘access to God’, he calls it – or that they still hold a unique and privileged place in humanity’s relationship to the Creator, but now he is going and calling these gentiles, these outsiders, ‘Fellow Heirs.’

Are we all clear on what an heir is? By definition, an heir is the legal inheritor of something – somebody who receives or who has by law the right to receive the property, position, or title of another, usually (on a human level) when that first person dies.

Here’s the property, position, or title the People of Israel held in relation to God: Children; Sons and Daughters. And Paul is calling Non-Israelites ‘Fellow Heirs’. He’s calling them brothers and sisters.

Over the centuries, the direction in which the people of Israel had moved in their relationship to God, called worship, was to a practice of exclusivity. That is, of keeping people OUT by way of a set of legal requirements that HAD to be met in order for someone to be considered worthy to approach the temple and the Holy of Holies, the dwelling place of the Most High God.

It was a position of privilege, you see. The world population at the time was somewhere around a little more than HALF of what the population of the United States is today – about 170 Million people – WORLDWIDE. Though there is no consensus among historians as to the population of first century Palestine, estimates range anywhere from 1 to 6 million people, and not all the inhabitants of Palestine were practicing Jews. Let’s say that half of the population was, so 3 million people practicing temple worship according to the laws of the Hebrew Scriptures. If I entered the numbers in my calculator right, that translates into roughly just over one and three quarters percent of the entire world population having “access to God” – quite an exclusive club by any standard. If we went with the lower number – that is, a total Palestinian population of 1 million, and still assume that half the population was not practicing the Hebrew faith, that percentage changes to just over one half of one percent being on the inside when it comes to being able to communicate with God.

Do you get the picture? To quote a modern-day advertising campaign that you might have seen in a magazine along the way: ‘Membership has its privileges’. And Paul is giving those privileges away to EVERYONE. Or rather, Paul is saying that CHRIST is giving that privilege away to everyone – whoever will call on him as Lord and Savior – they become ‘members of the same body, sharers in the promise’ – they take their seats right next to the folks who’ve been “guarding and protecting” that body, that promise, for all those centuries … how do you think THEY felt? Our exercise in imagination this morning was designed to try to make us understand the response.

The New Testament is full of how they felt about it. We were studying Luke on Wednesday evenings before Advent, and as we get back to it, remember what Luke was trying to speak against as one of the principal focuses in the Gospel? The Judaizers – those who were trying to make the new followers of Christ practitioners of the Hebrew religion BEFORE they could be called and accepted as followers of Christ.

The letters of Paul to most of the churches he started deal with the same problem almost universally. It was the deepest schism in the early church, and the one that was the most troublesome to it. Those who WERE on the inside trying to figure out the newcomers who don’t know how things are “done.”

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Okay, back to the folks sitting next to you in the pew. Not the ones who are actually there, but the ones whom we were imagining a few minutes ago: but this time, with a change.

Now, they are standing next to you and, somewhat hesitantly at first, and off-key, and stumbling a little bit here and there, they are singing the hymns or choruses along with you.

Now they are participating in the Responsive Reading with you.

Now, they are bowing their heads in prayer next to you.

Now, they are reciting the Lord’s Prayer with you.

Now, they are listening to the choir, and to the preaching, and to the invitation hymn with you.

Now, they are greeting you at the end of the service, with a big smile, and a hug, and thanking you for inviting them.

Because you see, that’s really the only way they will probably come. People almost NEVER just pull into a church parking lot on Sunday Morning and walk through the door out of the blue. It happens, but it is so unusual and unlikely that the probability of Jerusalem seeing someone come through the door in that manner is almost zero.

It is through relationships developed OUTSIDE this building that people will most likely end up INSIDE this building – and more importantly, inside this FAMILY. And in this case, I’m using the word ‘relationship’ in it’s loosest sense – it might be someone you see only on Saturdays at Food Lion, maybe the cashier, or the stocker, it may be the attendant at the gas station where you fill up once a week, or the person you rent your movies from, or the person who drops off your newspaper, or the mail. These don’t have to be lifelong friendships that you are calling on to come to join you in worship. The fact that you are acknowledging someone’s PRESENCE, in speaking kindly to them, calling them by name, greeting them and thanking them for what they’ve helped you with – that simple act initiates a relationship – however tenuous it might be – on which you can begin to build. And if the building of that relationship moves from where they work or where you run into them to a place where you come together to worship God, there is no telling where and to what depths God will take that brotherhood or sisterhood, that fellow-heirness … if I can make that term up and understood.

Will we dare to open our hearts and arms to those people who just a short while ago we couldn’t even imagine we’d ever be seeing inside this building?

The invitation this morning is for us ALL to extend this invitation on behalf of Christ just as he first extended it to us – to anyone and everyone who would, to become fellow heirs of the incredible riches we have IN Christ.

Let’s pray.