The Church Universal

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

October 5, 2014

World Communion Sunday

The Church Universal

Ephesians 2:11-22

They came from every corner of the known world.

Some came eagerly and willingly,

while others came reluctantly.

Some came by boat,

others by donkey,

still others by horse, or cart.

Many came on foot.

They all came because they had been

commanded to come,

commanded by the emperor.

They had all been commanded to travel

to the town of Nicea,

a town in the region then known as Asia,

in what is today modern Turkey.

The emperor was Constantine,

and the year was 325,

some three hundred years following

the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord.

They came because Constantine was tired of the quarrels,

the bickering,

the fighting among the churches,

fighting among the leaders of the churches,

the elders, the bishops.

They all claimed to follow Jesus Christ,

but they couldn’t even agree on who Jesus was:

Was he the Son of God,

or was he God himself?

Was he fully divine,

or did he take on divine powers at his baptism,

or his transfiguration?

If he was divine,

then how could he have been human,

born of woman?

Constantine decided that it was time for

the leaders of the church to gather together

and talk,

debate,

argue,

shout if need be,

but reconcile, agree,

come together as one.

Constantine put out the call,

telling all the bishops their travel expenses

would be paid by the empire.

Constantine, the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire

was also Constantine, a precursor of Priceline.com.

The church leaders came,

more than 200 bishops and others,

perhaps as many as 300 ecclesiastical leaders,

overseers of the growing Christian church.

They came from Spain, from France,

from North Africa, from throughout the Mediterranean,

There is evidence that Christian leaders

even came from the island we now call Britain.

Constantine wanted order and peace

in his far-flung empire

and he knew the church could help,

the church could be instrumental

in establishing peace,

but only if the leaders of the church

weren’t arguing among themselves.

Christianity was just emerging from the shadows

where it had been forced to hide

for three centuries.

Constantine’s embrace of the faith

allowed it to come into the sunlight,

out into the open.

Over three hundred years

church leaders found much to divide them,

many issues about which they disagreed,

from the petty to the profound.

They couldn’t even agree on

an acceptable date for Easter.

But it was the question of who Christ was

that was roiling the church.

Scripture wasn’t clear;

in fact, Scripture seemed to have

conflicting messages.

How could Jesus be God,

and at the same time be the Son of God?

And if Jesus was something other than God,

something less than God,

even if he was fully divine,

did that mean that Christians worshipped two Gods?

It was a man named Arius

who argued most forcefully

that Christ was not equal to God,

that Christ had been created by God

at a point in time and was not fully divine.

Arius thought Christ was unique and “godlike,”

but not equal to God;

there was but one God.

Some church leaders agreed with Arius,

others thought him a heretic.

Still others were not sure.

The historian Robert Wilken has written

Arius’s arguments showed that

“there was a wide range of opinion in the Church,

even distinct schools of thought

on Christ’s relation to the Father,

and the differences could not be easily reconciled….

The disagreements ran deep,

and the disputes were often bitter.”

(The First Thousand Years, 90)

Constantine called the bishops together,

gathering them in assembly in Nicea,

in what became the church’s

first ecumenical council.

Constantine presided at the opening,

and “expressed an ardent desire

that [church leaders] would put

dissention behind them

and bring about a spirit of peace and concord

to please God, as well as himself.”

(The First Thousand Years, 92)

The debate that followed was vigorous,

argumentative, often angry and hostile.

The heated tone of debates we have

within our contemporary church is nothing new.

Disagreement among believers

reflects apostolic succession

as much as leadership in the church does.

Ultimately, though, the bishops did manage

to find consensus;

not unanimity, a minority disagreed.

But a majority agreed on a common path to walk

in order to bring peace and harmony to the church.

The result was the Nicene Creed.

A creed in which we say that God and Christ are one,

one and the same,

that Jesus is of one Being with the Father,

fully human, fully divine.

The creed doesn’t explain;

it simply states,

states what we take on faith,

what we believe even if we don’t understand.

60 years after the Council of Nicea met,

another council modified the Creed

to add language regarding the Holy Spirit,

and from that we developed

the idea of the Trinity,

one God in three persons,

something that Scripture alludes to,

but doesn’t speak to expressly,

unequivocally.

The history of our church is one of both

conflict and consensus,

devoted discipleship and disagreement,

followers of Jesus all professing their faith,

but then often living their faith,

interpreting their faith in different ways.

Still, we are part of the church universal,

what we call the holy catholic church,

catholic with a small “c” to mean universal,

all of us followers of Jesus Christ,

without distinguishing denominations,

geography, language or culture.

We are all one in Christ Jesus,

and we are called by God to work together,

to live in harmony with one another,

to break down barriers, not build them,

to build instead the Kingdom of God.

That has been our call since Paul took

the gospel of Jesus Christ to the broader world,

beyond the Jewish community

that Jesus and his disciples were part of,

out to the Gentile world,

back when that word, Gentile,

referred to anyone who wasn’t Jewish,

wasn’t a follower of the Lord God.

Paul’s first struggle was to get past the disagreements

that separated those Christians who had been Jews,

and those Christians who had come

from the Gentile world.

In the letter to the new Christians at Ephesus, we read,

So then, remember that at one time

you Gentiles by birth,

called ‘the uncircumcision’

by those who are called ‘the circumcision’—

a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands—

remember that you were at that time without Christ,

being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,

and strangers to the covenants of promise,

having no hope and without God in the world.

But now in Christ Jesus

you who once were far off have been brought near

by the blood of Christ.

For he is our peace;

in his flesh he has made both groups into one

and has broken down the dividing wall,

that is, the hostility between us.

He has abolished the law with its

commandments and ordinances,

so that he might create in himself

one new humanity in place of the two,

thus making peace,

and might reconcile both groups to God

in one body through the cross,

thus putting to death that hostility through it.

So he 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.

These are words for us today,

reminding us that even with all our

denominational differences and

all those things we argue about,

we are one,

all members of the household of God,

with Christ our cornerstone,

all of us reconciled by the love of God

to one another in one body.

You and I are part of the church universal,

and each of us is a dwelling place for God,

each of us a reflection of the Son,

the only Son.  

AMEN