“Who is the Church for?”: a sermon for the FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT (22 MARCH 2026)
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Biblical texts: Exodus 29.42-46; Psalm 133; Ephesians
4.1-16
Introduction
What am I doing here? Who are these people? What is going on? These are normal questions for someone who is
visiting a church for the first time, or perhaps finding themselves inside a
church for the very first time.
These are also good questions for those of us who are long-time church
goers. Have we perhaps forgotten why
we’re here? We need to constantly be
reminded of what the Church is for and why we’re a part of
it. For those of us who are new to
(this) church, you may well wonder what is going on and why. As you look around, you will probably think
to yourself – these are not the type of people I usually hang around with. As the old expression goes, “Birds of a
feather flock together”. And yet, in
church – if things are working properly – you will rub feathers with all kinds
of different “birds”. So, what are
we all doing here? Perhaps there is
someone we can consult to help us understand.
Let’s go back in time…
In the first century Mediterranean world,
there was a man with a dream of establishing a new way for humans to live
together. This man’s name was Paul, and
his dream got him into a lot of trouble.
He often found himself in prison, and while he was in jail, he spent a
lot of time writing letters to the little communities that he had founded. These communities were located in what we now
call Turkey and Greece. One of these
“churches” (as the communities were called) was in the city of Ephesus, in
Western Turkey. Today, we’re going to
take a look at some passages from Paul’s letter “to the Ephesians” (which is
found in the New Testament of the Bible) and see what kind of answers Paul can
offer to our question.
Let’s take a look at the first few verses
of the letter, where we find the equivalent of what we now find on an envelope:
“(From:)
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God,
To: the saints
who are in Ephesus and are
faithful in Christ Jesus:
Grace
to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ…
God destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ…to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In Jesus we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace…” (Eph. 1.1-2, 5-8)
Paul
always manages to say a lot in a very few words; in that sense, he’s
like the 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. However, one thing is very clear – Paul seems
to be obsessed with Jesus, the name to which he attaches the title of
“Christ” (i.e. the king of ancient Israel, the nation known as “the people of
God”). Paul identifies himself as the
“apostle” of Jesus. An apostle was an
authorized messenger or ambassador, someone who had the right to speak in
the name of the person who had sent them.
So, Paul is claiming to have been called to speak with the authority of
Jesus the king. Since we’re talking
about a king and his ambassador, we might expect Paul to start speaking to the
Ephesians about taxes, or perhaps an upcoming war, or new laws, etc. However, that’s not exactly how this letter
unfolds.
An obscure king. Most of us have heard the name “Jesus”
before. Our western culture is still
haunted by this person, 2,000 years after his death by crucifixion. Who hasn’t seen an image of Jesus nailed to a
Roman cross? And yet, it is hard to
explain Jesus’ enduring popularity.
He never published a book, or – as far as we know – never wrote a letter
like the one Paul sent to the Christians of Ephesus. Jesus never travelled very far from his
birth-place; he was a poor peasant from a small village in a minor province on the
eastern fringe of the Roman empire.
Jesus wasn’t an “ordained” religious leader – he wasn’t a priest, nor
was he ever “officially” made a rabbi, although many people considered him to
be their spiritual “master” (rabbi).
Jesus was a blue-collar worker, and had most probably been apprenticed
to Joseph, the man who raised him. Jesus
only spent a few years in the public eye preaching, telling stories and healing
people of all kinds of illnesses. And
yet, there was something about this man that many of his contemporaries
found to be deeply compelling. Several
people wrote Jesus’ story (the “Gospels”), placing a heavy emphasis on the
circumstances which led to his death.
This was common in the ancient world – people were less interested in
how someone’s personality developed than they were in how the famous person had
died. How someone died was believed to
reveal the “essence” of that person’s life (think of how Plato described the
death of Socrates).
An unlikely ambassador. Paul’s story is also interesting. A few decades before he wrote to the Ephesians, Paul had been on a mission to destroy the Jesus-movement. He had been convinced that Jesus and his followers were heretics, that they were traitors to ancient Israel’s national cause. But then Paul had encountered Jesus in a spectacular way. This story is found in the book called The Acts of the Apostles. After this experience, Paul became an “ambassador” of Jesus and began to energetically talk about Jesus and establish communities – like the one in Ephesus – of people who were “faithful/loyal to him”. The idea of “loyalty” is important for Paul – he was telling everyone about a king, after all. So, Paul established a “church” in the city of Ephesus, a community of people loyal to Jesus and committed to sharing life together. Let’s see if Paul’s letter can provide us with some answers to our question.
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So, who is the church for? Answer: everyone…who wants to belong to God’s
new humanity.
Let’s
look at a few passages:
“…(Jesus) is our peace; in his flesh he has made both (Jews and non-Jews) into one and has broken down the dividing wall…, abolishing the law with its commandments… that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both to God in one body through the cross…” (Eph. 2.14-16)
It’s a
dream as old as the first empire – to have one
world, with everyone united with a single common purpose, worshipping the same
God/gods. But how to unite the world? Sadly, the answer is usually the same as it’s
always been – conquer it! The typical strategy – in the time of Paul,
as in our own day – is for powerful nations to impose themselves on others,
thereby “liberating” or “civilizing” them.
This is precisely what the Romans claimed they were doing – they went
around the ancient Mediterranean world and “pacified” uncooperative peoples and
then Romanized them (while stealing most of their money and resources “for the
good of the empire”). Does this sound like
something you may have heard in the news lately?
The New
Testament offers a radically different vision of a united world, as well as the
means to achieve it! Remember John
Lennon’s 1971 song “Imagine”? John
Lennon’s dream – though he probably didn’t see it this way – was actually the dream of God that we find in the Bible. One humanity, living in a world of peace and
justice – that’s the Creator’s plan! As
we read the book of Acts,
we discover that the members of the early Christian community in Jerusalem
shared all of their possessions with each other, so that no members of the
community were better off than any of the others. Everyone’s needs were taken
care of (cf. Ac. 2.44-45; 4.32-35). Sadly, as Lennon mentions in his song,
those who claim to follow God often prove to be part of the problems of this
world, as opposed to part of the solution.
Those who follow the way of Jesus are called
to be “saints”, i.e. holy people (Rom. 1.7; 1 Cor. 1.2). Saints are proof that genuine humanity is
possible, and beautiful. You know a
“holy person” when you see one. It is
precisely “to the saints who are in Ephesus” that Paul addresses his letter
(cf. Eph. 1.1).
One
God, one people. Historically
speaking, the ancient Israelites (Jews) had considered themselves to be the
special people of the one true God, the Creator. For them – just like for Paul before he
encountered Jesus – the entire world was divided into 2 categories – Jew and
Gentile, the people of God and the pagans, the “righteous” people…and everyone
else. But now, Paul tells the Ephesians,
Jesus is the one who has made it possible for Jews and Gentiles – for everyone – to come together and form one new humanity. Paul describes Jesus’ death on the cross as
having established “peace”, both between different categories of people and
between all humans and God. Through his
cross, Jesus has reconciled us to each other and to God. This is amazing news!
One
Church for all. All local “churches”
(Christian communities) belong to the “universal” Church (worldwide). We belong to the Church that is for all
people, regardless of ethnic background, gender, social status or any of the
other things that cause people to gather into “tribes” or subcultures, clubs or
special interest groups. The Church of
Jesus is the place where EVERYONE belongs.
That’s good news! The Church is called to be characterized by
“unity-in-diversity” – through the work of the Holy Spirit, people who speak
different languages are called to learn how to communicate with each other,
with the goal of forming one new people of God, filled with the Father’s Spirit
and loyal to God’s Son, Jesus.
As Paul
writes his letter “to the Ephesians”, he makes the same point. The Spirit is the source of our unity, which
we must work hard to preserve – not only at the local level (hard enough!), but
also at the universal level. All of Jesus’ followers belong
together! How do we unite the Church
(and then the world)? Answer: through humility, gentleness and patience. That’s as about as anti-imperial as you can
get. The kingdom of God has no place for prideful
strategies of uniformity and world “conquest”.
The Church is called to be a sign to the world (and those who think they
run it) that there is a new way to be human,
characterized not by tyranny, bullying and manipulation, but rather by
self-giving love, care for the weakest and most vulnerable people, and
self-sacrifice. The members of the
Church of Jesus are, quite simply, God’s new,
single, united-yet-diverse humanity. That’s Paul’s vision of the Church! Would you like to join it, so all “the world
may live as one” (as John Lennon sang)?
Time to ask our question again.
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Who is the Church for?
Answer: for people who want to experience God in God’s new temple.
“…you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are… members of the household of God…in (Jesus) 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.” (Eph. 2.19-22)
Have
you ever had a God-experience? Have you ever felt like you were in the
presence of something or someone who was “from above” or from a different
dimension of reality? You know
what? That’s exactly what many people
felt like when they were around Jesus. The more time people spent with Jesus, the
more they felt like they were spending time with…God himself. When Jesus spoke, it was like hearing the
very words of God; when he healed people, it was with the power of God. When Jesus forgave people’s sins, well “who
but God can forgive sins?” (cf. Mk. 2.7).
When people were with Jesus, they felt like they were in
a temple, and that the “image” (statue) of God was…Jesus
(cf. Col. 1.15; Eph. 1.10). And they
were right.
Gods
& temples. For
most of human history, if you wanted to experience the presence and reality of
God/the gods, you would go to a temple.
The ancient world was indeed full of temples, much like the modern world
is replete with churches, synagogues, mosques, and various places of
worship. The ancient goddesses/gods were
believed to “inhabit” their temples in some way; the “image” of the god in
question symbolized the fact that the god had taken up residence in its “home”
(naturally, the last step in the construction of a temple was the installation
of the god’s statue in a conspicuous place within the shrine). Interestingly, the book of Genesis tells the
story of the creation of the cosmos in such a way that would have been
immediately recognizable to an ancient architect – the first chapter of the
Bible describes the creation of the world as being the
construction of a temple!
In Genesis, the creation is described as taking place over the course of
one week. Guess what is created on the
sixth day? Naturally, human beings who
are made in the image of the Creator (cf.
Gn. 1.26-31)! This is a fascinating
vision of what humans are – intriguingly, the ancient Israelites were not
supposed to fabricate any images of Yahweh in the form of animals or humans
(cf. Ex. 20.1-6). The invisible God of the
Bible was to be “seen” in his image-bearing human creatures, and in no other
way.
God’s
homecoming. As far as the Bible is
concerned, the true God – the Creator – designed the entire cosmos as his
“home”, his temple, with his human creatures as “living images” of himself, the
“living God”. The desire of this Creator-God
has always been to live with humanity, to share life with his people and so
doing, impart his own life to them.[1] The ultimate dream of the Bible is for heaven
and earth to be united in a “cosmic marriage”, symbolically portrayed in the last
book of the Bible (Revelation) as a “temple-city”[2]
descends from heaven to earth to be the place where God will live with his
people forever (cf. Rev. 21.1-5, 15-17, 22-27).
So, this is the goal of God’s plan
– to live with his human creatures in the midst of his creation, thus allowing
the entire cosmos to bask in the glory of his presence.[3] This had been foreshadowed throughout the Bible,
including in the story of the Exodus.
God
with us. Not content to remain “in
heaven”, God desired to live among his people, that his presence would be part
of the daily life of the ancient Israelites.
To that end, God instructed Moses to construct a large tent that the
Israelites could transport during their 40-year journey through the wilderness.[4] As it says in the book of Exodus:
“…at…the
tent of meeting… I will meet with you, to speak to you there. I will
meet with the Israelites there, and it shall be sanctified by my glory…I will
dwell among the Israelites, and I will be their God. And they shall know
that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I
might dwell among them...” (Exodus 29.42-46).
Whenever the Israelites made camp, the tabernacle
would be erected in the center, and the 12 tribes would encamp all around
Yahweh’s portable shrine. Yahweh’s
“glory” was said to fill
the tabernacle (cf. Ex. 40.34-35).
We
already said that when people were with Jesus, they felt like they were in a temple (cf. Jn.
2.19-22; 1.14). As we read the Gospels,
we see that Jesus’ body
was taking the place of the Jerusalem temple.
Ultimately, as Jesus is nailed to the cross, his body literally becomes the place of atonement
and forgiveness of sin (cf. Eph. 1.7). As
Paul writes to the Ephesians, he tells them that when they are together as a
community, they form “the
body of Christ”, i.e. a living temple (Eph. 2.21-22; 4.11-16; 1 Cor.
12.12-28). Tabernacles and temples had
always been “signs” pointing towards the hope that one day “the earth will be
filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the
waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2.14). Paul
wrote his letter “to the Ephesians” and tells them that they are now part of the new and genuine Temple, God’s
dwelling place (Eph. 2.21-22). That’s
why Paul is always referring to “heaven and earth”, the two dimensions of
biblical cosmology. Heaven and earth
were made for each other. Temples are
places where heaven (God’s dimension) and earth (our dimension) come together. Temples are places where we can experience
God.
The community of both Jews and Gentiles who are loyal to Jesus is now the place where the Creator will “live” in anticipation of the day when the whole cosmos will bask in God’s presence. If you desire to experience God, join a church! It will perhaps take some time before things make sense. Sometimes, as we embark on our journey to follow Jesus in a church community, the experience happens first, and then we try to understand what it means. Sometimes, it happens the other way around. After a struggle to figure things out, we finally have an experience that seems to “fit” with what we had previously only been thinking about… Let’s ask our question one more time.
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Who is the Church for?
for people who want to become God’s children, to be like
Jesus
“(Jesus) granted that some are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers …for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of Jesus, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ… we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body…as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth...” (Eph. 4.11-16)
Another aspect of being part of God’s new humanity which is also God’s new temple is to “grow up” as a human being. That is to say, Paul is telling the Ephesians that God is calling them to grow – individually and corporately – into “the full stature of Christ”. At the end of the day, it’s all about Jesus. Jesus is the perfect human being; he is the genuine, authentic “image of God”. Jesus the man is also, at the same time, the incarnate “Word” of God – God made flesh, become human (Jn. 1.1, 14). Jesus is the place where heaven and earth meet. Jesus is the true Temple, the place where we come face-to-face with the true God. The community of believers (Church) is the “body of Christ”, the living temple of God, who is “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (cf. Eph. 1.3). God lives among us, the Church, by his Spirit. Father, Son and Holy Spirit – this is the Christian vision of God. Even in God himself, we find unity-in-diversity (the Trinity). This is a God who desires to be experienced. The Bible presents us with a living God, a God who is life-giving, unpredictable, surprising, faithful and loving.
“…be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us…” (Eph. 5.1-2)
The goal of life, according to Paul, is to
imitate Jesus, and thus…to imitate God.
Jesus has shown us the way. Jesus
lived the perfect human life. The Church
is “the school of Jesus”. The Church’s
mission is to form people into the “profile” of Jesus. That’s what it means to be a “saint”. Holy people are people who reflect Jesus’
character, his love, his goodness, his compassion, his courage, and his wisdom.
Who is the Church for? It’s for people who want to truly live. It’s for people who want to experience
God. What a God this is! A God who becomes human in order to show
us how to live, how to love, and how to die.
By belonging to the Church, we embark on the journey of – literally
– a lifetime. The church is the place
where we are apprenticed to Jesus.
He is the Master, and we are his disciples, his students. Jesus died on the cross for you and for
me. Jesus loves you. He loves me.
As hard as that may be to accept, Jesus died because of his love for me
and of his love for you. Not only that,
on the third day after his death, Jesus rose again into embodied, immortal
life (that’s what Easter is all about).
Jesus made it possible for us to belong together in his “body”, which is
the Church. Jesus has made God
accessible to us in an unprecedented way.
The church is the temple, which is the body of Christ, which is you and
me, which is where we can touch heaven, even while we’re still on earth. Ask yourself this question: Is the Church
for me? Amen.
[1] cf. Ex. 29.46; Jer. 24.7;
31.33; 32.38; Ez. 11.20; 14.11; 34.30; 37.23, 27.
[2] a temple-city designed
according to the proportions of the “holy of holies” in the temple of the old
Jerusalem.
[3] sneak peeks of which were
the pillar of cloud/fire: Ex. 13.21-22, 1 Kings 8.10-11.
[4] cf. Ex. chapters 25—40 (instructions for the construction of the
tabernacle); Ex. 33.7-11; Lev. 26.11-13; Numbers 1.50-53; 2.17.
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