Ephesians 4: 1-16
John 6: 24-35
Last Monday we learned with horror about the terrible attack at a children’s dance party in Southport. We cannot imagine the suffering of the families of the three children who died, nor the trauma of those who witnessed the attack. The community of Southport will mourn for many years. It’s therefore all the more shocking and troubling that quiet vigils and a community’s grief should be hijacked by far-right groups for the purposes of violent protest based on lies, fear and racism. Those violent protests reached Sunderland on Friday with the police subject to what’s been described as ‘serious and sustained levels of violence.’ The violence has been quickly and roundly condemned by everyone from Kim McGuinness, the Mayor for the North East, to Sunderland Football Club. Seeing the number of volunteers who took to the streets yesterday morning to help council staff with the clear-up, we can be sure the rejection of this violence by the people of Sunderland was quick and resolute.
This unrest, distressing as it is in the wake of the terrible tragedy in Southport, is the work of a tiny minority in British society whose voice is amplified on social media. But we can be thankful that just a few weeks ago this country witnessed a gracious transfer of power to a new government. The more extreme voices in our political life were not silenced but neither were they heard above the majority.
There are nevertheless times when even mainstream politicians in Europe and America play on fear, prejudice and division. Some of them just tell lies. So it’s perhaps worth reminding ourselves of some basic Christian commitments concerning our common life and how we live together peacefully in multi-cultural and multi-faith societies. Inevitably, this takes us into the domain of politics, not in the party-political sense, but in the sense that Christianity is deeply invested in this world as God’s creation, in human flourishing and common goods, and the establishment on earth of a kingdom of justice, mercy, and peace.
So what are our basic Christian commitments concerning our common life? We have some helpful teaching from St. Paul in this morning’s first lesson. He writes to the Christians in Ephesus in modern day Turkey. Ephesus was one of the important and diverse port-cities in the ancient world. Paul is concerned with the unity and well-being of a church community that was multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic, gathering together members from richest and poorest backgrounds. The threats to the unity of the church in Ephesus were many. Paul writes, “I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Paul wanted to maintain the integrity of the church and its commitment to Christ in a pluralist culture. He’s totally committed to the church’s peaceful unity.
There are two fundamental convictions that govern Paul’s teaching about the church’s identity and mission in a diverse society with lots of competing religious and cultural voices. The first conviction is that the love and blessing of God is not confined to any nation or race or socio-economic group. The blessing of God could fall on anyone, because Christ came for everyone. Before his conversion to Christ, Paul was a Jewish Pharisee and a Roman citizen, yet he came to the realisation that Christ didn’t come only for Paul’s people, only for the Jews or cultural elites, but for the Gentiles – literally, all the peoples of the world. As Paul teaches the Christians in Galatia, in Christ there is no Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female. All are one in Christ.
That’s the first of Paul’s convictions: Christ came for everyone, so we should be concerned for everyone. The second of Paul’s convictions is this: Christ now ‘fills all in all’. As he puts it in today’s lesson: “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.” In the risen Christ, God calls all creation back to himself. This means that there is nowhere the Gospel of Christ does not belong, nowhere it cannot be proclaimed, no one with whom it is not concerned. In that sense, the Church is catholic – literally ‘pertaining to the whole’. There is nowhere the Church does not belong because it proclaims Christ who ‘fills all in all’.
This is a kind of radical inclusivity – Christ comes for all – but it doesn’t leave us with a cultural or religious mush where it doesn’t really matter what you believe or how you live. Paul is quite clear about the distinctiveness of the Christian gospel and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as Lord and saviour. But Paul’s message does leave us with the clear conviction that, because God loves his whole creation and Christ came for all – not a particular nation, culture, or region – we should also convey that universal love in fostering the peace and well-being of all people. That’s why Christian charities do not just work with Christians and the Church of England serves the entire nation. It's why we attend to the poor and sick, the stranger and refugee, regardless of their creed or colour. Christianity is pluralist and catholic, seeing in every person, no matter how foreign to our sensibilities, a child of God for whom Christ died that we all might live. At the same time, Christianity is particular: Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour.
Out of bitterness, fear and hatred, some play on the divisions in our society. There have always been fault lines in our communities when we struggle to live well with each other, when loving our neighbour is difficult. Forty years ago next month, at his enthronement sermon, Bishop David Jenkins stood in this very pulpit during the miners’ strike, perhaps the most bitter industrial dispute in post-war Britain. Fault lines in the communities of this region and nation were never more obvious. With passion and emotion, convinced of the justice of the miners’ cause, Bishop David banged his fist and said we have to find a way of living better together. Bishop David had a Pauline hope: God is as he is in Jesus, therefore we have hope, he said. God is as he is in Jesus, so there is a way beyond the divisions in any society because Christ came for all. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, said Jesus, whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. We hunger for peace and thirst for justice in this and every nation. The answer begins and ends in Jesus Christ.