What if you were traveling along, filling out your days with what you think is truly important. You've made plans, set goals, have a distinct purpose in everything you do. And suddenly, there's a collision. Except, this time it isn't a total stranger. It's God. That's what happened to Paul.
The early church wasn't perfect, but when they had a pot luck supper, they knew to invite everybody. They respected one another, they took care of strangers, the poor and the refugees, and they kept coming together. People noticed, even their enemies. Emperor Julian said, "Christians support not only their own but ours as well."
Just a year after we returned to the States, we watched as people tore the Berlin Wall to shreds. The East German government was kaput. If I had ever doubted the story of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho — where the walls came a-tumblin’ down — well, I doubted it no longer.
Don Harbuck said, "The wall is everywhere. All of us know about it. No age or age group has gone unshaped by its pernicious power. Its menacing power moves the length and breadth of human existence. What wall is it? Paul calls it the dividing wall of hostility. It is the wall that separates and fragments and isolates.
Philip Yancey points out the contrast between the life of Jesus and the modern church. People like the prostitute in this story flocked to Jesus, but they avoid the church like the plague. Somehow in the course of 2,000 years, we have managed to turn that upside down.
We thank God that Jesus is more than just a powerful king – that kind of absolute power could be too scary. But Jesus is our loving Lord. He knows our weaknesses and lack of commitment to doing what God wants us to do. That's why he died for us.
We are not a club. We are not a business. We are a community of believers who share one common denominator. We are all redeemed and "destined in love." We are all different. We are people who at sometime or another "have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." But, the glue that holds us together is grace.
That final plan is to sum up all things in Christ (vs. 10). The meaning of "summed up" in Greek comes from accounting where you sum up a column of figures. Paul uses this word to say that one day the universe, and all that has happened in it, will be explained (summed up, tallied), and Jesus is the bottom line.
Here's the bottom line: Scripture speaks of the new creation in different ways. If you look carefully through the eyes of faith, you'll see signs of God's re-creation in each of them. With that in mind, let us pray: "Open my eyes, that I may see // Glimpses of truth Thou hast for me; // Place in my hands the wonderful key // That shall unclasp and set me free."
The issue that Paul was dealing with in the first century of Christianity is no different from an issue we deal with here in the 21st century. It is an issue of inclusion vs. exclusion. It is an issue of barriers—barriers to belonging that have been created by the minds of God's children; not by the mind of God.