Praying Together 21st July 2024

Trinity 8

Collect

Blessed are you, O Lord, and blessed are those who observe and keep your law: help us to seek you with our whole heart, to delight in your commandments and to walk in the glorious liberty given us by your Son, Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 2: 12-22

Mark 6: 30-34, 53-56

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. Ephesians 2:14 Try reading that verse after watching the News. It just doesn’t ring true. Paul might have been talking about the hostility between Jew and Gentile, but he could have been talking about any conflict in the last two thousand years, based on differences of culture, race, tradition, tribalism, prejudice and beliefs. If anything, today’s hostility is worse, with media reporting fuelling the flames. But his assertion is true, nonetheless – it’s just that even though the dividing wall has indeed been broken down at the foot of the Cross, people still have to make the effort to walk across it, and unfortunately they rarely do. To walk across demands an understanding and acceptance that reaching a consensus takes an effort of will, but it does not mean our own beliefs have to be compromised – rather, instead, it means respect and tolerance for difference. I have no need to be threatened by the worldview held by other people – I have enough trouble worrying about my own failure to live according to the challenges of my faith. It is all too easy to look at the speck in another’s eye while ignoring the plank in our own. We live in God’s created world with many different people; but when it comes down to it, we are all His children, brothers and sisters. In Christ, there is no East nor West. No dividing wall – unless we make one.

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.

Ephesians 2:14

Try reading that verse after watching the News. It just doesn’t ring true. Paul might have been talking about the hostility between Jew and Gentile, but he could have been talking about any conflict in the last two thousand years, based on differences of culture, race, tradition, tribalism, prejudice and beliefs. If anything, today’s hostility is worse, with media reporting fuelling the flames.

But his assertion is true, nonetheless – it’s just that even though the dividing wall has indeed been broken down at the foot of the Cross, people still have to make the effort to walk across it, and unfortunately they rarely do. To walk across demands an understanding and acceptance that reaching a consensus takes an effort of will, but it does not mean our own beliefs have to be compromised – rather, instead, it means respect and tolerance for difference.

I have no need to be threatened by the worldview held by other people – I have enough trouble worrying about my own failure to live according to the challenges of my faith. It is all too easy to look at the speck in another’s eye while ignoring the plank in our own. We live in God’s created world with many different people; but when it comes down to it, we are all His children, brothers and sisters. In Christ, there is no East nor West. No dividing wall – unless we make one.