I want you to look at your hands. Front, back, each finger, nails, lines, whatever. Consider your hand. What do you like about it? What don’t you like about it? Are there any particular strengths or skills that your hand has? What does it enable you to do? Are there any particular ways that your hand has been difficult or painful to you? 

I want you to look at your knees. For many of you it is covered, so you’ll have to remember what it looks like under the clothing. But think about your knee. What do you like about it? What don’t you like about it? Are there any particular strengths that your knee has? What does it enable you to do? Are there any particular ways that your knee has been difficult or painful to you?

Consider both your hand and your knee. How do they benefit you? What would your life be like if you did not have your hand? Your knee? Both hands? Both knees? Both your hands and your knees are gifts to you, gifts from God. Sometimes they may be painful to you. Sometimes they may not do what you want them to, what you expect them to. But they are yours and you are much better off with them than without them. They are yours; parts of you unified as one body.

Now, look around the church, not at the walls, but at the people, not at their hands or knees, but at them. What do you like about them? What don’t you like about them? Are there any particular strengths that they have? What do they enable you to do? Are there any particular ways that the church has been difficult or painful to you?

Like your hands and your knees, they, the Church, are a part of you. You are a part of them. We are all parts of the body of Christ. He is our head. Just as your hands and your knees are gifts to you, gifts from God, so are the people around you gifts from God. They may at times be very pleasant gifts from God. At other times, like your hands or your knees or other body parts, they may be difficult or painful to you. Like your hands or your knees, they may not always do what you want them to. But, you know what? They are still part of you. Just like your hands and your knees, you are much better off with them than without them. They are yours, you are theirs, parts unified and growing together as one body, the body of Christ, the church.

This, basically, is the message that Paul has for the Ephesians here in our epistle text. Paul has just spent three chapters captivating them with the marvels that Christ has done for them, many of which we have read over the past three weeks in the epistle lessons. He has proclaimed to them that Christ has predestined them to be His, and Paul comforts them with that thought. Christ has saved them by His gracious intervention on the cross and by His glorious resurrection. He is risen. He has made them alive when they were dead.

Paul then makes a shift in chapter 4.  “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.”   He lists some characteristics (elsewhere called fruit of the Spirit) like humility, gentleness, love, patience and peace.  This is what the Christian life looks like. This is what our lives ought to look like.  This is the life that we are called to as Christians.

Then Paul focuses on the major theme of the entire letter to the Ephesians, our unity in Christ.  Seven times (note the completeness of the number seven), Paul writes of our oneness in 4:4-7, “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”  As Christians, we are one in Christ, brought into the unity of the Church through baptism, and kept there through God’s Word and Holy Communion.

The fancy name for this is the una sancta.  This Latin phrase comes from what we confess in the Creed, that we believe in the one, holy, Christian and apostolic church.  Broadly speaking, there is only One Church, one spiritual body of believers in Christ, who one and only head is Christ.  This One Church is to be found where the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered.

What is at stake here for us is not the true unity of the Church, but our continued connection to it.  Our old Adam desires to do his own thing, strengthened by the individualistic American culture in which we live.  Our old Adam desires to redefine God’s Word, to pick and choose what to believe in or not believe, to be enslaved by what feels good at the time or what may please man.  We want to do it on our own, by ourselves.  We cannot sacrifice our unity in Christ for the sake of uniformity to the world.

Our unity is not based upon us, but solely upon the very Word of God as the source and norm of our faith.  It is not of human making, it is the work of Christ. Nor is it of human preserving, it is the Spirit’s gift.  Nor can it be destroyed by human neglect or hostility, it has Christ as its cornerstone.  The true unity of the church is always a perfect, holy thing, because it is of God.

But there is a grave danger that Christians can fall away from this divinely given unity.  Twentieth century theologian Herman Sasse once commented, “No one can split the body of Christ. But what can happen is that we cease to be members of this body, that we defect from the Una Sancta by the grave sins of schism and heresy.”[1]  The unity of the Church is at the same time a gift that is given by God in Christ and a task in which we are to work toward maintaining in the Spirit.  We are to maintain, to hold fast, to keep, to treasure that which has been given to us. Christians are one, Christ makes us one, Christ provides the gifts to maintain the oneness, and all Christians are to seek it as our goal. 

We should always seek to be and remain part of the Una Sancta, the One Holy Church, by sincere faith in Christ and faithful to that visible gathering of God’s saints where the Gospel is purely taught and Sacraments are rightly administered.  It really does matter which denomination you belong to, and it really does matter which congregation you attend.  We should avoid false teachers, false teaching, and false churches so that we are not tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.  Rather, we are to grow up in every way into Christ, who is the head of the body of the church, built up in the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Ephesians 4:14-16).  “Lord, keep us steadfast in Your Word…” Amen.

Some of this sermon is reworked from the Homiletical Helps found in Concordia Journal, Spring 2015, Vol 41, No 2, pp 171-172.