URC Daily Devotion Thursday, 6 August 2026

Thursday, 6 August 2026    
A Catholic Spirituality 

Ephesians 2: 11-22
 
So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called ‘the uncircumcision’ by those who are called ‘the circumcision’—a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands —  remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.  But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.  For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.  He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, so that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace,  and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.  So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near;  for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father.  So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God,  built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.  In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord;  in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.
 
Reflection
 
This is one of Paul’s great expositions of the unity which Christ brings. For Paul the reconciling work of God, which began on the Cross, was working itself out in his life-time in the bringing together of the ‘uncircumcised’ (the Gentiles) and the Jews. Those two irreconcilable groups were now visibly one in Christ – ‘…he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.’ (2:14)
 
To be Reformed was to be catholic, to be a member of that one Church of Jesus Christ whose work was to break down divisions between God and humanity and between different peoples. In his Institutes Calvin wrote, ‘The Church is called “catholic” or “universal”, because there could not be two or three churches unless Christ be torn asunder – which cannot happen!’ (IV.i.2), and he followed that with a description of the Church as a mother which could have come from any medieval or patristic writer. Indeed, Calvin himself is still regarded as one of the finest scholars of the early fathers of the Church.
 
Tradition, being part of the one Church of Christ mattered. Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor at Zurich prefaced his Decades with eleven creeds from the early centuries, affirmed the first four ecumenical councils (from Nicaea to Chalcedon) and in the fifty sermons which made up the book sought to show that his church was in continuity with the Church catholic. That continuity mattered. To be a Reformed Christian is to be part of the Church catholic, to share in the glories of the early martyrs, to value the Church fathers and to inherit the faithful witness of the medieval Church. Our churches were born at Pentecost, not when Luther issued his 95 theses in 1517.  The tragedy of course, is that the quest for reform ended in division.
 
Prayer
 
Christ came to end division
yet unwittingly we have multiplied it.
Christ came to break down barriers,
yet we have built walls.
Lord, we are ashamed and sorry,
raise us we pray
as members of your universal Church
and teach us how to break down walls
and live as one.
In Christ’s name we pray.
Amen