Sometimes, it seems as if things fall apart. Facing the changes of industry, Marx said that "everything solid melts in the air."  As we move through life, we work to have it hold together, to cohere. Memory is our great aid in this, and we react when our memory is disrupted. That's why people react when they looked at all of the changes in the Greensburg square during the 150th celebration and why high school reunions are disquieting. Many of us over, say 40, had a shock to our memories with the passing of Walter Cronkite. We talk easily about songs being the soundtrack to our lives, but he was the narrator we heard for events from the fifties into the Reagan era.

 

The writer of Ephesians is dealing with people who have felt the social ground shift under their feet. In the new church, they are associating with all sorts of different people, including people they were told to exclude in their lives. In an attempt to create group cohesion, we make in-groups and out-groups. Sometimes, minorities become more exclusive to keep from being pushed out, and to try to protect a sense of cultural force themselves.As Ephesians says, we put up dividing walls of hostility between each other; walls that separate us. I heard that a huge chunk of the Berlin Wall is being moved to an Ohio museum. I never thought that the symbol of the cold War would fall without a shot being fired. When that dividing wall of hostility fell, it opened the way to reconciliation of people long separated.  In the church, where a wall once stood, there stands Jesus Christ.

 

It is not an easy balance between honoring particular groups and trying to hold together. Our writer uses political language, of citizenship, of a common polity, a common wealth, to get across that we occupy a new position. It seems as if we are often trying to make distinctive points important and to downplay shared values and concerns. I am saddened that the Southport church is considering leaving our church family. In large part, church schism occurs when we over-emphasize distinct points of view instead of tending to what holds us together in the faith: Jesus Christ. Sometimes, when we insist that we are holier than thou, that we somehow have a lock on truth, we can even make God the dividing wall between us. I'm not saying all religion is the same, but I do contend that Christians mistake the small for the essential. We have gotten into a bad habit of making exit an early option, whether it's a marriage, a club, or even church. After all, it's only possible to cast stones when you are on the outside.

 

I like the image of building the church together, where we are all connected one to another, each block fitting in where it needs to. It doesn't give the sense that we are finished; after all, we have been in this building project for almost 2,000 years. Repeatedly, the passage speaks of peace. I don't think it is inner peace, but the actual reconciliation of groups of people, even former enemies, that is peace. We are better at dividing than reconciling. We can think up a myriad of causes for hostility, but few for peace. My prayer is that we imagine Jesus as the glue that holds us together. We have been turned into a household, a family, a family of God. Brothers and sisters in baptism, we can leave our own family dysfunctions at the door, and learn to model a healthy, vital way of living together. Jesus Christ helps us bridge the gaps in attitudes and styles. We can seek out what is positive in our differences instead of using differences as a cudgel to beat each other up.Life is too short to allow petty differences to drive us apart. let alone for us to learn to be together.