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"Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace." (Ephesians 4:3)
Lent is a season of reflection on the frailty and vulnerability of human life. The season starts forty days before Easter on a Wednesday, which most churches observe as Ash Wednesday. Some churches have special services on Ash Wednesday and impose ashes on the forehead as a sign of our mortality and penitence. It beocmes the outward sign of penitence and repentance. We confront our own mortality and confess our sin before God within the community of faith. Lent begins with dust and ashes. We remember we are dust and to dust we will return. Our efforts in this life will one day be reduced to ashes. And in the meantime, we have deeply ingrained habits marked by sin, stained by selfishness, and helpless in our own efforts to change them. We confess and turn away from our sinfulness through confession and pardon. Two actions that embody the lent season are embracing our mortality and acknowledging and turning from our sin.
We look at the foundations of Christian living during this season on a daily basis. Paul teaches the need for unity in the spirit in the letter to the Ephesians. Peace and Humility are the foundations for Unity. God's spirit unites believers into one body. It is not a human effort nor it is unity of ideas.
The Bible teaches the unity of the spirit in comparision with the unity of the body with all organs work together in unison for the functiong of the body. Human efforts to unify the world has consistently failed. We are deeply aware that there is a struggle going on in us. We turn to God, that we might not become discouraged. We rely on God's compassion and love for us. We acknowledge who we are - sinners who experience the consequences of our selfishness. Denominationalism and the mindset by which we build cities, towers, and walls to keep people who are different out of our churches, out of our schools, out of our communities, and out of our lives remind us that we need to be disturbed, pushed to get attention.
We are united as a family becasue we have one father. When we pray "Our Father", we are acknowledging the privileged identity we have as children of God in approaching God. In personality analysis, there is something called an identity wheel. It is a pie chart or a wheel, depicting the importance we place on our social identities. Once you complete the wheel, you can look at how gender, race, socioeconomic status, education, religion, country of origin, age, family structure, and physical ability shape and define who you consider yoursself to be. Eventhough we all look different, in structue, color, race and geography, we are all children of God. As Paul says, we may live in a reality of being Jew or Gentile, male or female. But we should act as God’s children all the time, under all circumstances, no matter what our social identities are. We can clothe ourselves with Christ through the presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit, so that our way of living, our thoughts, our decisions, and our actions demonstrate our identity as children of God. When we have one father, that makes us all brothers and sisters. Jesus said, “you have one Father Who is in heaven" (Matthew 23:9).
Pauul continues in Ephesians 3:15, "From whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name." We all have derived a name from our families, particularly from the fathers. Christians derive their name fron the heavenly Father.
Building walls around ourselves remind us of Babel. The Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall, the Israeli-Gaza wall, and the electronic fence being erected along the U.S. border with Mexico. Christians are to build relationships and not walls. Much of our efforts and accomplishments as humans are directed toward building monuments to our insecurities. The Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall, the Israeli-Gaza wall, and the wall and the electronic fence being erected along the U.S. border with Mexico are all symbols of human insecurities.
Babel Tower was probably built about 100 years after the great flood at Noah’s time. After the flood, there were only 8 people of Noah’s family were left in this world. 1 Peter 3:20 “God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.” After that flood, people multiplied. According to some calculations, the world had as many as 30,000 people at that time.
Robert Deffinbaugh wrote, "Behind the facade of achievement, accomplishment, bravado and self-assurance is the haunting spectra of leaving this life with no certainty of what is to follow. That in my estimation, is the real reason for the building of the city of Babel and its tower. The people of that day were willing to make nearly any sacrifice to have some hope of immortality." (Robert Deffinbaugh, The Book of Genesis, The Biblical Studies Foundation, http://www.bible.org/).
Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth." (Gen 11:3,4). They built the tower to stop from getting scattered and be united to get to heaven by their own efforts.(Genesis 11:4). These people could not conceive of the blessing and security coming as a result of dispersion, even though God commanded it. They felt safer when congregated together. They saw a brighter future in unity. They could leave posterity a monument to their ingenuity and industry. Their hopes were on abstract words, nothing concrete, and so they placed their faith in bricks and mortar.
God wanted Noah and family to spread throughout the world and enjoy cultural diversity without being afraid. If there is a condemnation in the passage, it condemns the idea that cultural sameness is the way to salvation. The Babel passage also highlights our human tendency to resist obeying God. Instead of being fruitful and spreading throughout the world, the inhabitants of Babel insisted on being a local tribe. It was the dispersion, which the people feared most. God had commanded them to spread out and fill the land. They were to disperse. (Genesis 9:1,7). They obeyed God because they had the unity of the Spirit and not human unity. Unity of the Spirit is not to be congregated and be together, it is about opening our doors and reaching out to the farther corners of the world with love, care and compassion.
When Moses went up to the top of the mountain to receive the ten commandments, the people were united and made an idol and worshipped. They were united in unbelief. Their unity was not of the Spirit, but they were united in ubelief in the living God.
There is a great church prayer that goes like this: "Make us one with Christ, one with each other, and one in ministry to all the world.” A Jew is not better that a Gentile, a free man is not better than a slave, and a man is not better than a woman with regard to God's gift of salvation. We are all one. We are all Abraham's seed (Eph 2:14-16; Col 3:11) and heirs according to "the promise" (Gal. 3:29).
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