{"id":1231,"date":"2010-09-22T18:13:23","date_gmt":"2010-09-22T18:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=674"},"modified":"2017-08-26T15:26:29","modified_gmt":"2017-08-26T19:26:29","slug":"a-dwelling-place-for-god-marilyn-zehr-sept-19-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/?p=1231","title":{"rendered":"A Dwelling Place for God – Marilyn Zehr – Sept. 19, 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

View Archived Sermons <\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ephesians 2:11-22<\/font><\/h5>\n

Welcome and inclusion have become really important words\/ideas in the church.\u00a0 – and for good reasons.\u00a0 We are a mobile society and one of our fundamental needs is to find and experience a community where we belong or feel at home.\u00a0 The fulfillment of this need often eludes many in our society.<\/p>\n

From TUMC\u2019s declaration of Values and Identity (in a listening process that this congregation undertook in 2008)
I find the following list of values:
Home
Community,
Worship and music
Spiritual formation and transformation
Diversity and Hospitality
Service Peace and Justice<\/p>\n

Under the TUMC is our Home category
I read:
\u00a0– TUMC began as a \u201chome away from home\u201d for Mennonites coming to Toronto for education and work
\u00a0– Today many of us are still transplanted people: rural or urban migrants from across Canada, immigrants from other countries, pilgrims from various theological traditions, and sojourners among the excesses of our global and urban culture.
\u00a0– We are spiritually and emotionally rooted and grounded in this place.\u00a0 Here we find strength and courage in our call to gather and wrestle with the big questions of life.
– In this place we call home we support each other in the joys and difficulties of daily life
\u00a0– As home is a place of nurture we commit ourselves to the faith formation of our children.<\/p>\n

Out of these values and desires, including a desire to embrace our diversity:
A diversity that includes many races, mother tongues, ethnicities, sexual orientations, faith backgrounds, physical capacities, and gifts \u2013
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 –\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We extend hospitality to all who journey with us.<\/em>
And as our Inclusion team reminds us the practice of this desire takes attention, awareness, intent and practice.<\/font><\/p>\n


\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 An article in the Canadian Mennonite on June 28th also reminds us of the need to practice welcome and inclusion because it\u2019s apparently not always easy.\u00a0 The article is entitled,\u00a0 \u201cWelcoming the stranger \u2026.. Not,\u201d and begins,
\u201cApparently many, Toronto, Ontario churches are not interested in attracting newcomers.\u201d\u00a0 Ouch.\u00a0 In this article, Arthur Paul Boers recounts his and his wife\u2019s experiences trying to find a church when they came to Toronto.\u00a0 In their experience, and we don\u2019t know if they ever visited TUMC by the way, Arthur says that sometimes website information about time of service was inaccurate and in one instance they were told they should have called ahead, sometimes it was difficult to find information about what would be needed when they came into the service, sometimes people would be so caught up with conversations with friends over coffee that they felt ignored.\u00a0
Given the significant and intentional work that our ushers and inclusion and worship teams have been doing in the last couple of years to help our congregation become intentionally welcoming, the tone of this article really stung.
I had a follow up conversation with a Mennonite Pastor who took Arthur Paul Boers out for coffee after this article was printed and he found out that this article was not originally written or intended for the Canadian Mennonite, it was reprinted there with permission, and not all the churches visited were Mennonite.\u00a0 Be that as it may, it never hurts (okay sometimes it does hurt) to be aware of ways that we may inadvertently be unwelcoming.
<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ultimately, for all of us, and especially the stranger among us, one of our fundamental needs is to find and experience a community where we belong or feel at home. There\u2019s probably not a single one of us who hasn\u2019t at one time or another felt excluded from something to a greater or lesser degree. We have not always welcomed the stranger in our midst or each other. Sometimes, as above, it is because of oversight or inadvertent things like being unaware of the things that make others feels excluded and sometimes it\u2019s because of boundaries within or around the church that mark certain persons or locations or activities as special or different \u2013 think of communion for example, we have certain understandings of how we practice communion and who participates.\u00a0 From very early in the Jewish and Christian tradition there have been issues about where boundaries should be placed that mark some locations and persons and activities as more Holy or pure than others. Usually these issues have to do with understandings of access \u2013 ultimately access to God.\u00a0 Reasons for guarding access to God were not all bad. In Leviticus we often hear the phrase, \u201cBe Holy as I am Holy\u201d, says Yahweh.\u00a0 Much of the Purity Code in Leviticus, limited access to the Holy of Holies, a special part of the temple available only to the High Priest once a year, and other laws, were written to protect persons from being overwhelmed by the awesome presence of God.\u00a0 Proverbs 1:7\u00a0 says, \u201cFear of the Lord is the beginning or the foundation of wisdom.\u201d\u00a0 Our God is an awesome God.\u00a0 A sense of the awesomeness of God\u2019s presence is wise.
<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But can we have that sense of awe and still draw near, or belong or feel included, and ultimately be at home<\/strong> with God and each other?
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Some of the understandings about boundaries and access and inclusion began to shift already with Isaiah (also before) but specifically in Isaiah when we hear <\/font><\/p>\n


<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

And the foreigners who join<\/em> themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant\u2014 these I will bring <\/em>to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted<\/em> on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer<\/font>
for all peoples.<\/em><\/font><\/div>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Already, The God whose name is YHWH had promised to make the ancestors of Abraham and Sarah a blessing to all nations.\u00a0 And in Isaiah that promise is reiterated by declaring that God\u2019s house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.<\/font><\/p>\n


\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The letter to the Ephesians that represents our other scripture passage this morning was written six or seven centuries after Isaiah.\u00a0 This passage in Ephesians is dense with a certain understanding of welcome and inclusion instigated by a new self-understanding of the Jewish followers of Jesus.\u00a0 Jesus\u2019 closest Jewish followers believed that he was their long awaited Messiah despite and because of his journey through state sanctioned torture and execution and beyond to Resurrected Life.\u00a0 In the power of that new life these Jewish folk, descendents of Abraham and Sarah, already inheritors of God\u2019s covenant promise \u2013 the circumcised ones, led by Peter and Paul came to realize that Jesus, – through his death and resurrection\u00a0 – meant to bring everyone else near to God as well. Ephesians is written from this unapologetic Jewish perspective.\u00a0 The Jews
\n are already part of the Household of God.\u00a0 They are at home with God.\u00a0 And the good news of what Christ Jesus accomplished through his self-sacrifice was to make room in this house for everyone else too.<\/font><\/p>\n


\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In this Ephesians passage we learn the following things about inclusion:\u00a0 Inclusion of all non-Jews or Gentiles, as they are called here, into the covenant promises of God is initiated by God.\u00a0<\/strong> \u201cYou who were once far off have been brought near in Christ.\u201d\u00a0 And verse 8 \u2013 just before this passage,\u00a0 \u201cFor by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.\u201d\u00a0 God initiates<\/strong> official welcome into the Household of God.<\/font><\/p>\n


\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Second, all of us are recipients of this radical inclusion into the story of God\u2019s people.\u00a0 We were not the original stakeholders.\u00a0<\/strong> Historically speaking, we were all at one time outsiders \u2013 \u201cwithout hope and without God.\u201d According to the Jewish perspective in Ephesians.\u00a0 Those of us who were eventually called Christians, who were not first Jews, were radically welcomed into this household of God.\u00a0 To be clear what I\u2019m trying to say is that Christians were never meant to supersede the Jewish people for God\u2019s covenant with the Jewish people has never been revoked.\u00a0 We were meant to be members of one household.\u00a0 \u201cFor Christ 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, by abolishing the law with its commandments and ordinances\u201d\u00a0 It is this last part of this verse that has most led to the idea that therefore the Christian faith replaced the Jewish faith.\u00a0 That sentence, \u201cThe law and the commandments,\u201d are abolished in Christ is problematic when you read about Christ\u2019s relationship with the law in other parts of our New Testament.\u00a0 In the Gospels we hear that Christ came to fulfill not abolish the law for example.\u00a0 And there are good reasons to believe that Jesus was a practicing Jew.\u00a0 The apostle Paul struggles with this issue in Romans as well. But back to Ephesians, according to the one interpretation of this verse in Ephesians where the Greek could be translated as the \u201cLaw in dogmas,\u201d rather than the law and its commandments and its ordinances could be read as an abolishment of those dogmas or commandments that divided people one from another \u2013 for example the practice of circumcision and dietary laws.\u00a0 These laws that divided were the ones that were no longer considered necessary for the followers of Jesus.\u00a0 However we read this verse, it is hard not to be aware of the difficulties and challenges that the early church faced when it tried to imagine and practice a household of God that included Jews and non- Jews.\u00a0 This leads to my third point.<\/font><\/p>\n


\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Third, real peace, real welcome and inclusion, assumes real enmity, real differences and real challenges.<\/strong>\u00a0 For two thousand years this dream of this one household – made up of God\u2019s original promises to the descendents of Sarah and Abraham and then to everyone else through Christ is not yet fully a reality.\u00a0 And these verses remind us that it is only Christ\u2019s peace that can hold all of our differences together in one place.\u00a0 Since Christ, many have drawn near to God, but we are still learning what it means to live in this household of God together in all of our diversity.\u00a0 And it isn\u2019t easy.\u00a0 For terribly violent and long stretches of history Christians and Jews in particular forgot what it meant for Christ to be our peace.\u00a0 Or both Christians and Jews didn\u2019t appreciate or accept that we were meant to belong to the one household of God.\u00a0 We forgot or never internalized what Christ\u2019s peace really meant and what it means that Christ\u2019s sacrifice brought down the walls that divided us.\u00a0 Michele Rizoli and I this summer came across an interesting example of this point in the Corning Glass museum in Corning, New York.\u00a0 There we found a chess set made as recently as 1981 that depicts Jews and Christians as Chess enemies\/combatants.\u00a0 We were not sure what to make of this but found it somewhat disturbing.
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And that brings me to my fourth point.<\/font><\/p>\n


\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Fourth, because of these real enmities and real difficulties, Christ\u2019s inauguration of the new humanity required real bodily self-giving.<\/strong>\u00a0 Jesus the Christ laid down his life for the sake of Life for everyone.\u00a0 Jesus addressed nitty-gritty problems \u201cin the flesh,\u201d\u00a0 – with his body.\u00a0 He laid down his body.\u00a0 He chose not to cling to his own life, so that all might have Life through him.
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Fifth, this household of God is a work in progress.<\/strong>\u00a0 Ephesians gives us an organic imagery of a house or home that is still growing.\u00a0 In Christ, the whole structure is joined together and continues to grow into a Holy Temple in the Lord.\u00a0 We\u2019re not finished yet. <\/font><\/p>\n


\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And finally, number six, we are built together (insiders and outsiders who are now a new humanity) into a dwelling place for God.\u00a0 God initiated the process of inclusion \u2013 not so that we would have a place to belong necessarily (as important as we know that is) but according to Ephesians, God initiated the process of inclusion so that God could have a home among us. <\/font><\/p>\n


\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201c in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.\u201d<\/font><\/p>\n


\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When we allow ourselves to be held together by Christ\u2019s peace in all our diversity and with all of our challenges then we become a home\u00a0 – an actual dwelling place for God.<\/font><\/p>\n


\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Looked at from another way, when we don\u2019t let Christ be our peace and join us together we not only exclude each other \u2013 we exclude God.
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 Welcome and inclusion are urgent realities for the church of Jesus Christ.\u00a0 God initiated this possibility by drawing together all who are far off, by destroying the dividing wall of hostility, by making all of us citizens in the household of God so that God could Dwell among us.\u00a0 The very essence of the home to which we long to belong is a home where God might choose to take up residence.\u00a0 May this truly be the Home to which we long to belong.\u00a0 Amen<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

View Archived Sermons \u00a0 \u00a0 Ephesians 2:11-22 Welcome and inclusion have become really important words\/ideas in the church.\u00a0 – and for good reasons.\u00a0 We are a mobile society and one of our fundamental needs is to find and experience a community where we belong or feel at home.\u00a0 The fulfillment of this need often eludes many in our society. From TUMC\u2019s declaration of Values and Identity (in a listening process that this congregation undertook in 2008)I find the following list…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons-a-worship-audio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3995,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1231\/revisions\/3995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}