“Pax Christos” on Ephesians 2:11-21 by Joe Ellis - Oct. 13, 2024

Here, Paul is writing to two groups of people in Ephesians who would normally have been at war — or at least the Jews would have liked to be at war with their enemy, were it not that their enemy was so much more powerful, were it not that their enemy quite literally pounded the Jews into submission. The enemy of the Jews was, of course, Rome.

Now this is pertinent, because Jesus is the true Peace, which is the Gospel that’s announced in the Scripture passage we just read. Paul is a declaring that Christ has made a way for Peace to come between two people groups who were divided by a wall of hostility.

The Romans prided themselves on being peacemakers. Ha! In fact they coined the phrase the Pax Romana — which means the Peace of Rome. But the Pax Romana was a peace accomplished through domination, through slaughter and bloodshed.  So, the Jews learned to live in so called ‘peace’ with the Romans because the Pax Romana was so lethal and deadly. The Romans and the Roman form of peace plays in the background in our Scripture passage.

But you don’t hear Paul explicitly talk about the Romans, he uses a different word — ethnos. Now the NIV translates this as Gentiles —referring to anyone who is not Jewish. We could just as equally translate the word ethnos as ‘nations.’ Throughout this sermon I want to translate the word ethnos with a phrase closer to the sense that you get of who they actually were before Christ: Unwelcome Outsiders. As you look at the passage, you see Paul has all sorts of examples of how the Gentiles were Unwelcome Outsiders before Christ — separated, excluded, foreigners.

Before we dive in, who might you regard is an unwelcome outsider? The backdrop in our passage of what defined an unwelcome outsider had a lot to do with race — but for you the dividing line might not have anything to do with race — it might be, or it could be around politics, or sexual ethics, or addiction, a different style (progressive or traditional) of Christianity, or someone who thought differently about Covid? Can you picture your Unwelcome Outsider? Let me be clear — I’m not inviting you to imagine the Outsider that is unwelcome by a lot of other people but is welcomed by you. No, I’m asking you to imagine the person you’d just prefer wasn’t here beside you in church, because then you wouldn’t have to deal with that tension. Maybe right now, you could imaginatively invite them to sit next to you throughout this time today.    

There was no peace between the Jews and the Unwelcome Outsiders.  The Unwelcome Outsiders didn’t follow the law of Moses; seen through the fact that they weren’t circumcised.  For that reason, the Unwelcome Outsiders were excluded from citizenship in Israel (not that they would have wanted to be citizens of Israel). Before Christ, the Unwelcome Outsiders, as Paul says, were without hope and without God.  There was hostility between these two groups — they called each other dogs.  They wouldn’t eat together, and they certainly would not worship together — the Unwelcome Outsiders’ gods were an abomination, and the Unwelcome Outsiders weren’t allowed deep into the Jewish temple.  In fact, there was a warning on one of the walls inside the Jewish temple that said an Unwelcome Outsider shall not cross through this wall on pain of death. 

And now look at how the Gospel shines into this context: Paul says in this passage that Jesus has brought these Unwelcome Outsiders into God’s family — Paul literally says that God has given them citizenship in Israel, a previously abhorrent thought! Remember that Paul felt so strongly about this Unwelcome group in his previous life as Saul, that he killed Christians to keep his religion pure. But now a new Nation is being established, a new people — one without this dividing wall of hostility between insider and outsider.  A new humanity exists in which all who are in Christ are one in Christ. 

Now, let’s look at how God established this peace, by using the same substance that the Romans used to establish their Pax Romana: blood. Remember, the Romans established peace through spilling blood — often the blood of Jews. Yet the Pax Christos, which is the Peace of Christ, was also established through blood. Yet this Peace, the Peace of Christ did not come about through the spilling of the blood of the enemy. The Pax Christos came through spilling the blood of Christ. 

This is a very different use of blood than the Pax Romana. Both God and the Roman Emperor used bloodshed and crucifixion to establish peace. The Roman Emperor spilled the blood of his enemies, publicly crucifying them as a violently powerful warning to any who would threaten his peace. God spilled his own blood on the cross — God himself became a curse on the cross. The blood and the cross were transformed from being a threat to maintain peace, to an invitation to peace. God establishes the Pax Christos, through spilling His own blood on the cross. 

For many, Rome’s way of peace makes sense in a way that God’s way of Peace does not. After all the Roman way to peace is the same way that virtually all nations pursue peace: through pulverizing the enemy. That’s why the United States military has named one of their missiles ‘The Peacemaker.’ We might not like it, but we understand the logic and effectiveness behind establishing peace by spilling another’s blood.  That is not the way Christ uses blood to make Peace — and that is not the way followers of Christ make Peace.

So, how does God make Peace through blood? Blood has a particular role in the Old Testament sacrificial system. Blood makes things clean. More specifically, blood makes us clean from sin. This especially does not make sense to us. For us, blood makes things dirty, but in the Old Testament, spilling the blood of an animal in a sacrifice was a way of taking away the stain of not only individual sin, but also the sin of the nation. This is all laid out in the law of Moses — one of the things the Law of Moses teaches us is how to become clean before God.

Of course, the Unwelcome Outsiders did not follow the law of Moses, the law of sacrifice, so that meant in a Jew’s eyes, they were filthy. That’s why they couldn’t mix.  For the Jews, the law of Moses was like a guidebook that taught you how to stay clean so that you could safely come into the presence of the holy God in the temple. The Unwelcome Outsiders did not follow this guidebook, but rather seemed to make a practice of doing the opposite of what was written in the law. Unwelcome Outsiders were sinful.  They were dirty. If a Jew associated with an Unwelcome Outsiders there came the fear of incurring judgment from God. After all, the Unwelcome Outsiders had not been cleansed by the blood of the sacrifice, and they were doing the sort of things that makes a soul dirty. So the Jews and the Unwelcome Outsiders stayed away from each other.

Who is your Unwelcome Outsider that you invited to sit next to you throughout this sermon? What is the uncleanliness that you are afraid of, that this Unwelcome Outsider in your mind is polluting? If you have not thought of someone, maybe you are not being completely honest?

The Pax Christos is not the Pax Romana. The Peace of Christ is not the peace of Rome — but they both come about through crucifixion and spilling blood. For Jesus the cross was His sacrificial alter on which He poured out His blood. We might not have the same ideas of what makes a person clean and unclean, but likely we all have an idea of who we want in our lives, in our communities, and in our churches, and who we’d rather not. But Jesus’ Peace is not like Roman Peace. Jesus’ Peace is not a peace that comes from silencing or killing or separating yourself from people that are different from you, people you view as ‘unclean’.

As Paul says, Jesus’ Peace does involve killing — but it involves killing the hostility between us. Jesus’ Peace is one that works to break down the walls of hostility we put up to buffer ourselves from others and to make a new humanity, a new family where all people, clean and unclean, Jew and Gentile, male and female, high earners and low-earners, indigenous peoples and settlers, kids, seniors, adults, liberals and conservatives are all gathered to worship together; not because we think the same way on things; not because we are righteousness in the same way; not because we share the same culture — but because we have been washed clean by the blood of Jesus Christ.

Do you know what happens when the blood of Jesus washes you clean before God?  It means you are clean! Period. Do you know what happens when the blood of Jesus washes your Unwelcome Outsider clean? It means they are clean! Period.

The Pax Christos kills the hostility. Christ poured out his blood to not only wash me clean, but to wash the Unwelcome Outsider clean as well!  Jesus’ cleansing blood means that our cleanliness is not determined by how well we obey the law of God.  Our cleanliness is not based on how much we are able to keep ourselves untainted by sin. Our cleanliness is not based on how much we are able to keep ourselves pure.  By His blood, and only by His blood are we clean — no matter all the ways we’ve gotten dirty by breaking God’s law, bent the rules, violated God, or hurting our neighbour.  

Jesus has thrown us all under the same blood. We are like kids washed together in the same bathtub. We are only clean because Jesus’ blood has made us clean. We’re only united together because Jesus’ blood has made us family. We are all in the same tub.  Jesus cleansed us all through His blood. For followers of Christ, the Unwelcome Outsider doesn’t exist.  We are all Welcome Insiders. Jesus has washed all of us clean.

And so, the Jews and the Unwelcome Outsiders had to figure out how to start tearing down the walls that’d been building for centuries. And Jesus calls us into the work of breaking down our own walls.  Jesus isn’t interested in a Peace that comes from walls, where everyone isn’t fighting anymore just because we avoid each other.  Jesus comes in and just strips those walls down. He wants us all to get in the tub together and experience the Pax Christos.  Jesus says, “I poured out my blood to wash you all clean so that you might do away with these walls.  I died so that you can invite everyone into the tub — there is no place in my kingdom for your walls.” 

The vision of the church that we have in the New Testament is a place where those walls are gone and now these people who would be at war, are having dinner together. Dinner! Dinner is a big deal. Outsiders having dinner together is a picture of what this new humanity of Jesus looks like. Where people eating together not because they think the same, dress the same, make the same amount of money, vote the same or look the same. They eat together because Christ has washed us clean and made us one. 

This is the Peace Christ has given to us, Peace with Him through His blood — and because we have Peace with Him, we can have peace with one another. So, we can come together before God as we are.  There are no longer any tiers.

Christ has made Peace with God for us, and through the Spirit we have access to God, we no longer have to play any of those religious elitist games — they just don’t matter anymore.  Jesus has cleared the way so that you and I may have Peace with God solely through His blood. That is what defines the citizenship of the New Israel — those cleansed by the blood of the Lamb.  

So Jesus piles us all into the same tub, so that climbing out of the tub we are all part of the same family and have the same Father in heaven.  And when we get out of the bath, you know where we find ourselves? We find ourselves home. That’s the last image Paul brings into this text — we find ourselves at Home in God’s household — a home that is made up by all the people that you see around you. Having been made clean by the blood of the Lamb, we are invited to witness to the peace between us by having dinner together.  This is the Pax Christos, all are welcome to the table.