You are no longer Strangers and Aliens, but Members of the Household of God

 Author’s Note: I wrote this on July 15, 2021 during another stressful and challenging time in our country. This appeared in my Memories today and I believe it can be helpful to us in navigating our current situation in the United States. I pray it will be helpful to all of us a we seek God’s will for our nation and the world. Blessings and Peace. 

You are no longer Strangers and Aliens, but Members of the Household of God

 

So, Jesus came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him 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.

The title for today’s reflections comes from Ephesians 2:12-22, written by Paul or one of his followers in the 50’s or 60’s A.D. as instructions to both Jews and Gentiles, on how to live together as God’s people, and perhaps even like each other and cease being hostile to one another even though they come from different backgrounds and spiritual traditions. This letter celebrates the author’s vision for the church and how the life, death and resurrection of Jesus brought together a new and unified community. When it was written it expanded the vision of God for both Jews and Gentiles, giving to all a greater understanding of the “bigness of God and of God’s inclusive Kingdom.

I believe we today can learn from this timeless writing how we, like those in Paul’s day, continue to put God in a box, limiting, not God, but ourselves. As we open our boxes and let God be God to us, God will open our hearts to see God’s universal love for “all the Children of the World.”

The more I read the Christian and Jewish Scriptures on which I have been nourished from my youth, the more I realize I am not qualified to determine “who is in and who is out” of God’s kingdom based solely on their religion or lack thereof, or their politics and whether they agree with me or not. I do believe that our allegiance to God comes before our allegiance to country, and that being first a citizen of the Kingdom of God will give us the vision necessary to be a citizen of our country of birth or choice as well as a citizen of the world. Jesus gives us an example of how this might work in the following passage from Mark’s Gospel.

“And the Disciples and Jesus went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As Jesus went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.

When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. As people recognized him, they rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.” (Mark 6:30-56)

My prayer for all of us today is that, like Jesus and the early disciples, wherever we go and whatever we do, that all whose lives are touched by us will be healed.