Christ United All Nations
24th Sunday after Pentecost
Ephesians 2:14-22; Luke 8:41-56
“For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity...” (Ephesians 2:14,15).
And further in this passage, the Apostle Paul attests that
“He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near.” (Eph. 2:17)
The last words are a quotation, by the apostle, from the Old Testament prophecy of Isaiah (57:19) about the role that Christ was to play for different nations. The distant ones are those nations that did not know the one and true God, and the near ones are the Jews who, at least formally, knew Him.
When Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, an angelic song rang out from heaven:
“Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!” (Luke 2:14).
And it was Christ who was to bring people that long-awaited peace, the inner spiritual peace. Humanity, the nations among themselves, had no spiritual unity. The Jews, for example, lived a separate spiritual life, in many respects incomprehensible to other peoples, especially to people of Greek and Roman cultures.
Their faith, spirituality, and way of life made Jews alien to other nations. They treated fellow Jews differently and people of other faiths and nationalities differently, and lived spiritually isolated and separated, whether in their own land or in the lands of other nations. But the Jews as a whole, who had lived for generations in anticipation of the coming of the Messiah, had no peace of mind or certainty, even though they formally recognized the one God.
Among other people, polytheism prevailed, but there were many people who sensed that many legends were false, who were not sure whether they knew the Creator of this world, and therefore felt empty. People of pagan faiths of different nations did not find peace of mind because, not knowing the one and true God, they were in spiritual darkness. The world of the Jews, who formally recognized the one God, and the world of other nations, who recognized many and different gods, were two worlds that did not understand themselves and fought each other, and in many cases had feelings of prejudice and contempt for the other.
The Jews were proud of knowing the one God, and in many cases had a sense of pride and contempt for other nations. Other people, on the other hand, had a sense of contempt for the Jews, who were considered narrow-minded fanatics who were emotionally dry, alien to the art and multifaceted culture of the Greeks and Romans, as well as to the cultures of other Eastern peoples.
After all, the Romans, who practised polytheism, had a strong and large empire that united dozens of different countries on three continents, who had great military and administrative power believed that they had nothing to learn from the Jews, who could not even maintain statehood for their own people.
The coming of Christ to earth was meant to unite people of different cultures and faiths into one spiritual community and give them peace of mind, for the Lord brought salvation to all of them. Jesus Christ had to break down that spiritual “middle wall of separation…the enmity” and lead everyone to the path of salvation. Christ called everyone, but as we know, not everyone followed Him...
Born and raised among the Jews, Jesus Christ never called Himself a son of the Jews, but only the Son of Man, as The Gospel testifies. The inscription on the cross:
“Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” (John 19:19),
which Pilate declared was in contempt and ridicule. But Jesus' kingdom, His state, was “not of this world” - that kingdom is a spiritual concept. It is for all those who follow Jesus Christ in their earthly life and fulfill His gospel commandments.
The road to Christ's kingdom, both on earth and in heaven, is open to people of all nations. The Apostle Paul testifies:
“For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him” (Romans 10:12).
So, although evil people, spiritual children and servants of the devil (Jhn. 8:44) on earth created great obstacles to Jesus Christ in fulfilling His great mission of saving all people, the Lord, the Son of God, fulfilled this great undertaking: He "broke down the middle barrier…the enmity" between the separate nations, He brought peace to all nations. He does not force anyone to come to His kingdom, but invites everyone; He is available to all who are “pure in heart”. (Matthew 5:8)
In The Epistle to the Colossians, Apostle Paul mentions in even more detail that in Christ, in the New Testament, there is no chosen people, that people are not judged by their social position on earth:
“where there is neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all”. (Colossians 3:11)
We should, however, properly understand: Christianity does not set as its goal the leveling, the disappearance of different peoples. In fact, on the contrary -- during Pentecost, the dignity of different languages, different peoples before God, is demonstrated when the apostles of Christ spoke, under the influence of the grace of the Holy Spirit, in different languages. (Acts of the Holy Apostles 2:4-11).
Jesus Christ cannot be blamed when people, in his name, preached the so-called trilingual heresy or when they, dividing into different groups, destroyed and burned dissenters:
On February 17, 1600, Giordano Bruno was burned alive on the Square of Flowers in Rome;
On July 6, 1415, a great righteous man, the rector of Prague University, Jan Hus, was burned alive in the city of Constanta. (Our T. Shevchenko dedicated one of his poems to Ivan Hus).
Thousands of people were burned alive and tortured in the name of Christ, but whether the perpetrators knew and were aware of it or not, they did not do what Christ commanded, who preached and called to Himself only with love.
We should be mindful that those who seek an inner peace for their souls, who seek unity with their Creator, always have an open path to unity through our Lord Jesus Christ. However, we should not deceive ourselves with bewildering, demonstrative unity – people should strive to find spiritual consensus among themselves, and then, having agreed with one another, turn to God in unity (Mat. 18:19). Without mutual agreement, praying to God is hypocrisy – a demonstration for the “human eye.”
There are many sincere believers of various faiths who, desiring unity in Christ, wish to come together in prayer on earth, in man-made temples, yet, unfortunately, this does not lead to good. Here are some historical examples:
Kyiv Metropolitan Platon (in the 1880s), while traveling through the eparchy [diocese], entered a Catholic church and delivered a Christian message:
“I trust that the barriers that people have built between themselves are not so high as to reach Heaven.”
But after his visit to the church, the Catholic priest was defrocked, and the church was re-consecrated...
There are Christian groups that engender fanaticism in some perverse ways (for instance, Baptists: Christians are forbidden to drink wine or smoke); however, Christ provides us the basis for unity, not on some personal preferences but on the basis of the clearly revealed will of God.
The Lord performed the Sacrament of Communion with bread and wine; we are not forbidden to consume wine, but the Apostle Paul also explicitly urges that we do not get drunk, that we do not become intoxicated:
“And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation...” (Eph. 5:18);
“All things are lawful for me, ... but I will not be brought under the power of any.“ (1 Corinthians 6:12)
This counsel is given not only to the Corinthians but to all Christians as a guide in life, so that by adhering to it, we can direct our efforts toward unity with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, filling ourselves with peace and tranquility of the soul; for we are confident that we are moving toward our salvation, toward unity with our Creator.
Amen.
Very Rev. Fr. Taras Slavchenko
Taras Slavchenko was born on March 8, 1918 in Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region in Ukraine. After graduating from school and the Pedagogical College, he entered the language and literature faculty of the Scientific Pedagogical Institute. Having successfully completed it in 1938, he served as a teacher in a secondary school.
