Blood is thicker than water. This well-known colloquialism denotes the loyalty that exists among the members of a tribe or a clan. This loyalty is such that the clan members will automatically close ranks when faced with a common threat. In a broader sense, the expression suggests closeness, affinity, and support among members of a family.

Whether the apostle Paul was familiar with the expression is not known. In any case, he wrote the Epistle to the Ephesians to call the Church’s attention to the miraculous fact that calvary (the blood) and baptism (water) had a binding power that was strong and resilient enough to bring together people as far removed from each other as the Jews and the Gentiles were.

Indeed, prior to the ministry of Christ, Israel had built and maintained a wall of separation between themselves and everyone else who did not belong to "God’s chosen people." They did so after reflecting on the Babylonian captivity, which was understood to have been the punishment from God for the sin of idolatry, that is, embracing the gods of the surrounding nations. On returning to the homeland, Nehemiah undertook an aggressive spiritual cleansing of the nation to prevent such things from happening again (Neh. 13:15–31).

That Nehemiah was lead by the Spirit cannot be denied. But as good as the reformation was, it also had an unintended negative consequence: Israel became intensely nationalistic and totally exclusive. The people built the first religious, social, and ideological Iron Curtain, the extent of which could be seen in the way they kept away from non-Jews for fear of defilement, as well as in the enclosure built around the temple and beyond which no "goims" could venture without courting death. At a time when the concrete and not the abstract was the norm, being physically distant from the center of worship meant that one simply did not belong. For a Jew, all non-Jews were hell bound. Paul was referring to that Jewish point of view in Ephesians 2:13, 14.

Yet, in so doing, the nation designed by God to be the light of the world, the nation whose temple was to be a house of prayer for all the people, that same nation had to all intents and purposes closed the door of God’s grace to the world. But God’s ultimate purpose cannot be thwarted. God created a new Israel, the Church, and gave her the mandate of reconciling the nations to God, and the people to one another (2 Cor. 5: 17–20).

God chose Paul, a man of the Diaspora who was not as parochial as his Jewish contemporaries, and revealed to him the mystery of the Church without walls, a mystery that had been kept hidden in God for ages past, namely that "the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members of one body," brought together by a common faith in the cross and by the shared experience of baptism.

According to the Pauline Corpus, there is no greater testimony to God’s manifold wisdom working through the power of the gospel than that of people who had previously been at each other’s throats, but were now brought together into the same body. "For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female [we might add black nor white, rich nor poor], for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:27, 28).

In Romans 6:5, Paul illustrates the reality of this incredible miracle by using an example taken from agriculture. He writes about the believer having been grafted (sumphutoi) into Christ’s death and, therefore, also sharing in Christ’s resurrection. Furthermore, in chapter 8 verse 29, Paul uses the word sumorphoi, which contains the idea of a metamorphosis to explain that God is transforming the believer into a likeness of Christ. What Paul writes in these texts is incredible. The believer is organically a part of Christ. It is not simply a matter of belief, it is the reality.

It is in the Epistle to the Colossians that Paul dares to spell out his deeper understanding of the nature of that reality. Colossians 2:9 is primarily about Christ, who while on earth in a bodily form was yet fully God though he had laid aside some of the metaphysical attributes of deity. In other words, Christ, as a man, may not have possessed such attributes as omnipresence and omniscience, but as far as his character was concerned, he was LOVE just as God is. In that sense, the fullness (pleroma) of deity dwelt in him.

According to many scholars, translating the rest of the sentence by "and you are made complete in Him," as many translations do, loses the impact of Paul’s thought. A literal translation would sound like "and you are by him having been filled" (that is, of the same divine fullness; Paul uses the same word, pleroma). This is indeed mind-boggling. That the believer has been filled with the same divine fullness that was in Christ when he walked this world as a man is a reality that has not yet touched the consciousness of God’s children.

Jesus could say, "He that has seen me has seen the Father." The same LOVE as defined in 1 Corinthians 13 was in both. The Father was in Christ reconciling, that is, bringing people together or breaking down walls of separation between people. Can the same be said of the Church today?

The Sad Reality

Except for a very short period at the beginning of its existence, the Church has shown little ability at breaking down barriers in a real effective and long-lasting way. In fact, with dozens of Christian denominations around, each claiming of having the truth (ours is possibly the most adept at this game) one can hardly say that Christianity is without walls. Furthermore, the Protestant churches, ours included, have succeeded in hiding man’s instinctive fear of the stranger within the gates by organizing its congregations along racial and cultural lines, where birds of the same feather flock together on Sundays or Saturdays.

A well-known French editorialist recently wrote an article about the Church in America in which he says: "Sunday morning is the day when Protestant America demonstrates its inherent racism and its discomfort with people from other cultures." He goes on to note that this is generally not true of the Catholic Church. The same aloofness can all too often be seen and experienced within individual churches even when the people are culturally similar.

I was born in Mauritius of an Indian father and a mother of French descent. My wife is Icelandic. My son is married to a Texan girl, and my daughter to an Australian of Greek descent. The extended family includes individuals from Canada, Germany, South Africa, and China. We enjoy getting together, which sadly does not happen as often as we would like. We work hard at nurturing and maintaining an ongoing positive relationship. Love and mutual respect are the key terms.

A few years back, we all gathered in Montreal for Mum’s funeral. The mixed group of people reminiscing, weeping, and sometimes laughing together was an unusual sight for the numerous nonfamily members who had come to express their condolences. Many openly expressed their amazement at the unity in diversity that was obvious.

I like to believe, until I have proof to the contrary, that my extended family is one without walls. I am not sure that I can say the same of my church.

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