Bible Study for Monday, March 10, 2014 Bishop Jim Mauney

Ephesians 2:19-22 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.

I love the house I live in! As I sit here looking out toward our patio, at the corner, the structure comes together not just in two but even in three ways. The garage comes into the corner there as well. From three different directions the whole structure comes to be joined together. They all enjoy the same foundation, and they all seem to be quite attached to the cornerstone! We may even knock down some of our walls, but we would not dare remove our cornerstone!

Now Ephesians wasn't the only place that talked about coming at things from differing ways. Remember in 1 Corinthians 12 and 13 where Paul had written:

1 Corinthians 12:21 The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." And 1 Corinthians 13:5 "Love does not insist on its own way."

With the church in Ephesus the Circumcised and uncircumcised were having division with one another. They just could not come together. In the second chapter Paul speaks to the Dividing wall, the hostility between them and names the Law as that dividing wall. But rather than knocking down all walls, he moved to speaking of a cornerstone by which a whole structure is joined by several walls coming from different ways. What holds the structure together and makes it a spiritual dwelling for God is the grace of Jesus Christ, the cornerstone. That is the key place that we meet and are attached, and can come together, and can remain in fellowship. After all, it is Jesus Christ, the cornerstone, by whom all things will be measured and who is the one who will measure the final connectedness of all things.

This past week I was in Chicago for the Conference of Bishops meeting with our brand new presiding bishop, Elizabeth Eaton (who will be at Power in the Spirit this July!). We also had four hours with the a delegation from the Lutheran World Federation. In our communio of 142 Lutheran churches in 79 nations, we are at a place where the Church of Mekane Yesu in Ethiopia is wanting to stop having pulpit and altar fellowship with the ELCA and the Church of Sweden primarily because of our decisions regarding human sexuality and ministry policies. There are also political circumstances of the present tied in with it as well, along with religious circumstances much more polarizing between Muslims and Christians. So three of the 142 members are in the tension of losing their connection with one another. They all have the same apostles and prophets, the same scriptures, the same creeds, the same Lutheran Confessions but a wall is being built. The team was seeking to say something like, "Let us be the connecting place in the name of the cornerstone. Let us be the continuing cornerstone in the name of Christ where three walls can find a joining place in Christ, even if for a while we need others to have pulpit and altar fellowship through them. Let other sisters and brothers preach and administer the sacrament while each of you listen to the gospel and kneel together at the rail for the Christ who is our cornerstone."

The text may be further right in this, "to be a dwelling place". Walls joined in Christ the cornerstone may yet be able to dwell together while time passes and prayers for one another and conversations happen because there is a connecting place. We hang pictures of our heros on our walls while we place all the weight of the whole building upon the cornerstone.

He who bore the weight of all the sin of the world will be able by the power of the Spirit that is working through him to accomplish abundantly far more than we could ever ask or imagine within the communio and within every issue of our lives.