Fully Submitted to Christ (Ephesians 5:21)

Sunday, November 19, 2017

            Imagine a trek through jungles, across a river, in all weather.  You walk for days, thirsty, bug-bitten as you deal with snakes and wild animals.  By the time you arrive, you’ve used up your supplies.  Still you make that final climb up the mountain in order to sit at the feet of the shaman.  He’s older than time.  That’s why you seek his wisdom.  Yet before you can open your mouth, he speaks as if he knew you were coming.  He asks, “What is the theme of your life?  Why do you exist?”

            Maybe that doesn’t work for you.  You couldn’t, in a million years, imagine yourself on some kind of adventurer’s journey.  You don’t hike and you don’t “rought it,” and you have no plans to do so.  But, you can see yourself in a coffee shop with a friend you’ve known a long time. A good friend. The trust between you runs deep.  On this occasion the conversation has exhausted the usual topics – gossip about friends you have in common, complaint about how commercialized the holidays are, and delight at the pumpkin spiced latte.  Why don’t they serve that all year?  At the lag in the conversation, your friend asks, “What’s it all about?”

            She’s asking the same question put by the aged wise man.  What is theme of our lives?  Why do we exist? What’s it all about?  Hint.  The answer is not to save for a comfortable retirement.  That’s something we do, but that is not the purpose of life.  The answer is not watch football. That’s something some of us do.  It is not why we are here.  So, why are we here?  What is it all about?  In Ephesians, we find one path to the answer.

            Issues abound Ephesians chapter 5.  “Do not get drunk with wine.”  This is not an anti-alcohol sermon message.  What we see here relates to drinking only because the heart of the matter relates to every part of our lives.

“Wives, be subject to your husbands.”  I see red-hot anger on the faces of advocates of equality in marriage and smug satisfaction on those who promote complimentary roles in marriage.  This is not about marriage.  This word from Ephesians informs our marriages because the central idea sees Jesus at the center of all our relationships. 

The central idea comes in verse 21.  “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.” “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.”  The Greek actually says, “[we are] submitting to each other in fear of Christ.”  In my previous study of this verse I saw emphasis on “submitting to one another.”  All of Ephesians is related to mutual submission within the church, but that’s not the first and primary lesson.  Mutual submission comes after “fear of Christ.”  The answer to all the hypothetical questions I posed at the outset is found in this idea.[i]

We have to read the passage and listen to God’s word very carefully.  I think that is what the NRSV editors had in mind when they rendered the Greek word ‘fobw’ as ‘reverence.’  Fear is a negative emotion.  In the dark, we fear sounds that creak in the house in the dead of night.  We fear financial ruin, we have fears when we have to have surgery, and we fear heights and enclosed spaces.  Phobias, from the Greek word ‘fobw,' used in this passage’ are categories of fears.

Fear has been used to oppress people in churches.  The fear of judgment and God’s displeasure has been used been by heavy-handed church leaders to beat people down. It’s the attitude of superiority Jesus condemned when he confronted priests and Pharisees.  We approach Ephesians 5:21 cautiously.  Speaking of “fear of Christ,” we don’t want to awaken the fears that break people spiritually and drive them out of the church. 

In the Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, [ii] the entry for fobw shows the term to be part of a family of words.  The description of this family of words is over two pages long.  The way the term is used in Ephesians 5:21, it specifically means reverence or respect.  That’s a bit more inviting than fear, as in being scared of someone.  We’re happy to revere Jesus Christ.  We’re eager to show how much we respect Christ.  We love him.  He doesn’t strikes terror into our hearts.

However, we don’t want to neuter this term.  The deference and esteem we give to Jesus exceeds any respect we would extend to a general in the army or the president or the pope.  We might hold a special kind of respect for human beings in elevated stations of life, but it is nothing like the reverence we offer Jesus.  The force that defines who we are is the light in which we see Jesus Christ.  He is Lord and everything in life is done based on who we understand Jesus to be and how we see ourselves in light of who He is. 

To say we fear the Lord, in the sense of Ephesians 5:21, is to say we can’t imagine any life decision, situation, or relationship apart from full obedience to the way of Jesus.  We are fully submitted to Him.   The use of the Greek word fobw in Acts 9:31 is helpful. 

Paul had just turned from persecuting Christians to joining them.  Barnabas joined forces with him, convincing the churches to trust him – congregations who feared his past evils against the church.   With Paul now in the fold and Barnabas at his side, the church experienced tremendous growth.  Many people began trusting in Jesus.  And Acts 9:31 says, “Throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria [the church] had peace and was built up.  Living in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit it increased in numbers.”  ‘Fear of the Lord,’ that is, life fully submitted to the way of Jesus, was coupled with peace, comfort, and growth.  Normally, we don’t associate fear with peace and comfort.  It is the opposite of those things. 

That’s why the phrase ‘fear of the Lord’ is different.  At the center of the Christian reality we see “fear of the Lord” as the only way to live.  Have you suffered soul-crushing abuse at the hands of judgmental Christians?  Come and discover the merciful welcome of Jesus in a community fully submitted to Him.  Together we discover and rediscover life lived fully in fear of Christ.  It’s a life of love and grace. 

The fear of the Lord is why we live and act the way we do.  Once we have established that life is fully submitted to Jesus, then we move to what in most English translations is the first stanza of Ephesians 5:21.  “Be subject to one another.”  Why do we subject ourselves before each other?  Because we fear Christ.  We revere our Lord and want to walk in His way and thus, we submit to each other. 

The Greek verb is upotassomenoi, and like fobw, we derive a variety of English ideas from this word.  In Ephesians 5 it means the voluntary yielding to each other out of love.  Why we do what we do?  Out of reverence for Christ.  What is it that we do?  We submit to each other as an expression of love.  We are reminded, in chapter 2, verse 19, that we are all together in the household of God.  Once we have submitted to Christ, we do not have the luxury of simply ignoring one another.  We belong to each other and are accountable to one another.  Beyond technicalities of membership in a local congregation, this is about membership in the body of Christ.  We are connected to other believers.

In Ephesians 4:2, Paul emphasizes humility, gentleness, and bearing with one another.  There is no option for indifference.  Too often in our cultural context Christianity is treated as one religious option among many and Christians approach church as their own individual preference.  If you are following Christ, the church you belong to should be the one he leads you to join.  I have had times in the life of our church where people in our church family simply refused to talk with me about a difference between us. As Americans that’s our right.  We can engage with people or ignore them at our leisure.  But we do not exist in this space or anywhere as Americans.  We are a people fully submitted to Christ.  We submit to one another.

That doesn’t mean when I call to talk with you that you are obligated to do whatever I say or vice versa.  I am not beholden to you nor you to me.  In love we voluntarily submit to one another because Jesus is Lord and he tells us to live this way.

In Ephesians Paul extends this out telling wives to submit to their husbands, husbands to love their wives, children to obey their parents, and slaves to obey their masters.  Paul’s effort is to bring the call to voluntary submission in love to the places of real life in first century Ephesus.  He’s not writing primarily about marriage or households so much as he is locating the call to mutual submission in the context of home life because Jesus is Lord there. 

This passage cannot be used as grounds for affirming slavery or affirming a husband’s dominance over his wife and children.  Slavery was an accepted first century institution.  Paul subverted it by declaring that in the church, everyone was to submit to everyone else.  He commended deferential behavior, but he also broke the law himself when the way of Christ demanded that he do so.  This letter was written from prison.  In his letter to the slaveholder Philemon, he tells the man that now, the slave Onesimus was a brother in Christ.  Philemon, out of fear of Christ, would need to submit to Onesimus even as the other submitted to him.  Wives and husbands, parents and children submit to each other. 

For us to live out the words of scripture we ask, what does it look like when, because of our reverence for Christ, we live in mutual submission in the places of our lives?  It looks many different ways depending on the situation, but we know this.  We have unity instead of strife because our reverence for Christ takes priority over individual rights and preferences.  We eagerly seek ways to meet the needs of all who come.  We love each other and this love is seen in the way we extend grace to one another. 

This passage challenges our church to understand who we will be in a world swirling with both change and tension.  Public mass shootings have us on edge.  How can we prepare for something unpredictable?  Divisive political rhetoric has us feeling combative.  We’re always ready to establish our position and then defend it in verbal combat.  The nature of gender and sexuality has created generational divides.  We don’t know how to talk to each other anymore.  In these and many other controversial topics, the church and individual Christians are pushed to extremes, unable to unite with one another in love.  How do we move forward as a faithful witness to the Salvation we have in Christ?  How do show people outside of God what life in the Kingdom is like?  The answer is not found in how we deal with any individual crisis or debate.  As soon as we find our ground in one issue, another, one we don’t understand, will arise.  The answer comes in who we are in Christ.

We are a people fully submitted to Jesus as Lord.  We fear the thought of life apart from him, and we fear Him in a way that exalts him all the while knowing he extends us love, grace, and life.  Because we are fully submitted to Him, we live in gracious submission to one another.  That defines as we face the questions of our day and try to help people come to know Jesus. Whatever arises to confront the church, we face as a people in Christ.  That’s our top value.  We are His, a people whose identity is found in Him.  Who we are in Him determines what we do, how we do it, and what it means.

AMEN

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[i] I am indebted to Marcus Barth and his commentary in the Anchor Bible volume on Ephesians 4-6.  He helped me understand the centrality of ‘fear of Christ,’ as the starting point in Christian life.

[ii]Bauer, Walter and F. Wilbur Gingrich (1958), A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, revised and augmented by F. Wilbur Gingrich and Frederick W. Danker (1979), University of Chicago Press (Chicago), p.862-864.

Response to the Shooting at First Baptist Church, Sutherland Springs, TX

Church Security and Soft Targets

Pastoral Response to the Texas Church Shooting, 11-5-17

Rob Tennant, HillSong Church, Chapel Hill, NC

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

            Terrorist events (see Boston Marathon bombing, San Bernardino shooting), mass shootings (see Orlando night club, see Las Vegas country music concert), racially motivated violence (see Charlottesville), and other deadly interruptions into the flow of normal life have occurred with alarming frequency in the last 7-10 years.  We Americans haven’t yet caught our breath from the unthinkable attack in Las Vegas, and we learn of Sutherland Springs, Texas.  We learn that we love the people of that small community because the First Baptist Church (FBC) there was shot up on a Sunday morning, the sanctuary full.

            For me, a church pastor, this hits close to home.  I have raced through, in my own mind, how our church would react if a shooter entered.  I have played the scenario out repeatedly.  Truthfully, I don’t know what I would do because I am not prepared for that.

            On a Sunday morning, I am prepared to preach.  I am prepared to meet the people of the church.  Some need encouragement, and if I can, I give it.  Some need a welcome and a hug.  I certainly can and do give that.  Some are leaders in the church and we need to confer about what’s going on Sunday morning or what’s going on at other points in church life.  These are the things on my mind on a Sunday morning.

            I hope, my heart and mind are prepared to encounter God.  I pray that we – myself and all in the church – come expecting to see God act among us.  Over and over the disciples who walked with Jesus every day found themselves surprised by his displays of power as he commanded demons and the demons obeyed and angry, storming waves on the sea cowered before him.  They found themselves scandalized when they saw Jesus love people society had pushed to the margins.  These disciples saw it every day with Jesus and still got surprised.  I hope we’re open enough and worshiping with enough eager anticipation that we see it when God send surprises of love and provision and hope to us.

            What we’re not doing is preparing how to respond to a crazed, murderous shooter (or bomber) (or vehicle operator).  And I don’t we should.  I think our call and our responsibility is to God.  We need to be looking for God when the church gathers.

            My heart goes out to First Baptist Church Sutherland.  That church, like ours, is small.  So many were killed and so many more were critically injured or traumatized, and the community is so small, that that specific church may not recover.  The pastor has got to be devastated.  I don’t know if I could continue in ministry if a shooter killed a bunch of our people, and I survived.  We pastors feel a certain responsibility for all who enter.  God has entrusted the worshipers into our care. 

            The other time, recently, I felt such a burden for a church was the Emmanual African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC, when Dylann Roof shot up their prayer meeting in June, 2015.  On that occasion, I preached a sermon about how churches should exist in a time of random, unpredictable, deadly violence.  The text of that message is here https://honesttalkwithgod.blogspot.com/2015/06/sermon-in-response-to-shootings-in.html. 

            One of the things I stressed in that message is that the deadly shooting happened when the church was doing “what churches do.”  They were in a prayer meeting, and they welcomed Dylann Roof, a dangerous person, into their fold.  They didn’t know he was dangerous.  We never do.  We know we are called to welcome people – people with mental illness, people will deep-seeded anger, and people who are themselves badly broken.  As we are church, the body of Christ, we welcome the lost.  That’s what we do.

            FBC Sutherland was different than Emmanual AME Church in that they never had the chance to welcome Devin Kelly.  He came in shooting, killing.  He may have destroyed that church.  God allows human beings agency – the freedom to make moral choices.  Part of being made “in the image of God” (Genesis 1:27) is we have free will.  But too often, we use our freedom for evil.  God allows this because without this freedom, we would no longer be human.  Atheists will see and evil event and use it as an opportunity to attack the church, but they don’t understand the bigger picture.  God has created a world in which human beings and God are in a relationship of love and trust.  God doesn’t force the relationship.  But God is active in it and God is active in the world. 

The mark of the person walking in close relationship with God, in Jesus Christ, is how that person responds in crisis.  Tragedy hits all people – Christ followers and non-Christians alike.  God is seen in how his church represents his love and hope in the face of tragedy.  On Sundays, we in the church, pastors and worshipers, whether long-time members or first-time attendees, have the same invitation.  We are invited into the presence of God.  That’s what we’re seeking and preparing for, not a shooting.

I wrote in 2015 the following after the mass murder in Charleston:

We as a community of faith have to tell the alternate story – the grace story.  … We have to be the story of hope.  We do this by opening our doors and ourselves to the lost and hurting people in the world.  Yes, churches are soft targets because broken people need a soft place to land.  Hurting people need to meet Jesus in an atmosphere of love. 

By being a safe place, a soft target, we risk everything.  Dylann Roof could walk in here.  Or someone without a gun but with a dangerous agenda could attempt to infiltrate our community.  Our commitment to being a people who welcome all leaves us open to such risks.  But we embrace that because God has given us a particular mission.  God calls us to live a story in which people of different backgrounds are brothers and sisters who embrace each other in the love of Jesus.  God calls us to stand in the midst of the violence, throw open our doors, and say to the world, “Come in, you’ll be loved here.  You’ll be valued here.  You have a place here.  In the heart of God, in God’s Kingdom, you have a home.

In coming days, it will become harder for us to tell this story and live this mission.  But we will do it no matter the cost because God enables us as God calls us.  And we will do it with great joy because God’s story is a grace story and a joy story.  The hope for the world is in the telling and living of that story.  Now is the time.

Those words still ring true.  I know some churches are talking about having armed security.  I suspect there may be people in our church family who are armed when they come to church on Sunday morning.  My own preference would be for us to post signs that say “No firearms on the premises are permitted.”  My desire for this is not a comment on gun ownership as a political issue.  I offer no comment on that issue in this essay.  The action of posting a “No firearms permitted” sign would be a statement about where our focus is.  Our focus is on meeting the Holy Spirit of God in this place. 

This action wouldn’t slowdown someone like Dylann Roof or Devin Kelly.  But it would be a reminder to all our people that we put our trust in God.  The people of FBC Sutherland Springs put their trust in God too.  I don’t know why they died.  I don’t know why Stephen was stoned (Acts 7:58-59), but John died a natural death (John 21:23).  I don’t know why most churches have pleasant Sundays but on November 5, tragedy his Sutherland Springs. 

But I know this.  We who follow Christ cannot let tragedy tell us who we are to be or how we are to live.  Tragedy doesn’t get to be the boss.  Racism doesn’t get to dictate to us.  Terror doesn’t the first word, the last word, or any word.  We churches are communities of Christ followers.  We are the body of Christ.  We’ll voluntarily exist as soft targets because we want to be safe places for broken people who need a soft landing.  

The Church Lives its Calling

Lead a life worthy of your calling … [a life marked by] humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace; from Ephesians 4:1-3.

Our church has spent several weeks in Ephesians during the Sunday morning sermons.  We’re finally to chapter 4.  It encourages me to be able to say, from my vantage point as senior pastor, that I have seen our church family embody the life depicted in these opening verses of the 4^th chapter.

“A life worthy of your calling;” pastors and professional clergy are thought to be called by God like prophets of old.  But, I have seen lay members in our church family live out just as strongly this sense that God has given them purpose in their lives and they are as compelled as any pastor to live into that purpose.

“Marked by humility and gentleness;” our church family includes individuals who have accomplished much.  They are the leaders of their organizations, the groundbreaking researchers, and those with oversight in power positions in our community.  In our church family, these distinguished people are called by their first names, not “Dr. this,” or “Mr. that.”  We downplay titles because we are a family, brothers and sisters in Christ.  Yes, church is an institution and titles can be appropriate.  But the lasting image of church, exceeding the societal function, is the household of God.  When I am at home, it’s comfortable and I’m on a first name basis with my family.  In our church family, the one in the kitchen wearing an apron and washing dishes is a department head at the university.  The one hunched over spreading mulch on the workday is the head of her department at work.  This wasn’t done by design.  We don’t try to “humble people.”  They have embraced the call of Christ.  What’s happening in what I am describing is the result of people following God with humility and gentleness.

“Bearing with one another in love:” we’ve had conflict, like most churches do at some point.  Some have left our church family in unhappy departures.  We’re not perfect.  But the ones who are here do their best to overcome differences that arise in loving ways.  Many of members are not that crazy about everything I say, but they love me as much as they love each other.  They “bear with” me because they’re trying to follow the Spirit’s lead.  I’ve seen people in our church overcome differences and become true friends – disciples who help each other grow in faith.

This has sound like a brag-session; look how great our church is.  I did not intend that. I thought, as a supplement to the Ephesians sermon series, I’d zero on some details in Ephesians 4 where we might focus our energy.  But don’t pastors do too much of that sometimes?   We must be humbler and gentler.  We have to work on “bearing with one another in love.”  Yes, we must and we have to, but sometimes pastors overdo it with the “must’s” and the “have-to’s.”  As I sat down to write, I wanted to express how grateful I am for that ways I see our church already living into the vision Paul casts in Ephesians 4. 

October was “pastor appreciation month,” and the church showed great love to me.  I feel it.  November is the month of Thanksgiving.  I am very thankful that the HillSong Church family is a body of believers who believe that to be Christian is to be a disciple of Jesus.  And this church lives out that discipleship.  I am glad I get to be part of it.  

Paul Prays (Ephesians 3:14-21)

Sunday, October 25, 2017

            I am a Detroit Lions fan.  In the early 1980’s, in one of the rare seasons in which they won more football games than they lost, they were nearly in the playoffs, but they needed to win one more game.  They had it!  Down, by a point, their kicker, one of the best in the league, lined up a long field goal attempt with just seconds remaining.  He makes it, and they are in.  As the ball sails through the air, the camera pans to the Detroit head coach, Monte Clark.  He’s on his knees, hands clasped, eyes toward heaven.   The field goal went wide right, by the way, as we Lions fans knew it would.  Those prayers are never answered, not for the Lions.

            What leads you to pray?

            We’ve seen it over and over here in our university town.  Graduation approaches, and what then?  Our church family’s graduates need jobs.  “I’ll pray for you,” we assure one another.

            A hurricane hits Texas.  And the voice on the radio says, “Our thoughts and prayers go up …”.  Then Florida, and the somber news anchor, “Our prayers go out tonight …”.  Then Puerto Rico, and the church prayer list is emailed out, “We remember all affected by the hurricane in the Caribbean …”

            What leads you to pray?  He discovers your affair and even though you cheated, you want to save the marriage.  Do you confess?  Beg forgiveness?  To whom?  Him?  To God?

In another family, a happier one, his wife whom he loves and who loves him calls to say, “They found a lump.  Biopsy to be scheduled.” 

What leads us to pray?  We have the ultimate praying holiday coming up – thanksgiving. 

So many prayers; so many different reasons for prayer. 

The question for today is what drives us to prayer?  The need to praise and worship God?  It’s not the most common response, but it is why some people pray – the driving force in the prayer story of some.  What about others?  A guilty conscience?  When we pray, is it confession?  Most of time, we’re praying for help or healing or consolation.  Sometimes we don’t know why we pray.  We just know there’s a need – we need God to do something or give something. 

Of the 100 or so gathered here, I am certain some among us right now feel the need to pray.  If that number of those compelled to prayer is 15, we will hear 15 different stories that end with you in church not sure of much except that you really need God.  No one reason is better than any other in prayer.  We come praising, confessing, or asking – in all cases, we are in prayer and God welcomes us.

What drove Paul the Apostle, the church planter, the defender of Christianity to his knees?  What incited Paul to pray?  Ephesians 3:1, “This is the reason, I Paul, am a prisoner for the sake of you Gentiles.”  Ephesians 3:14, “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father.”

We look back to what Paul radical idea in chapter 2.  “By grace we have been saved through faith” (2:8).  No matter your birthplace, no matter your gender, no matter your cultural background, no matter your education or work experience, this gospel is true for all.  All are sinners.  Jesus’ death on the cross covers the sin of all.  All who come to him in faith and repentance and receive the gift of eternal life he gives are saved from sin, saved from death, and saved to life in the Kingdom of God. 

There, all divisions that separate people have been shattered by Jesus.  Therefore Paul says, also in chapter 2, “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 in the Lord; in whom you are also built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God” (2:19-22). 

We pray when things are bad, when we need help or healing, or, when we need something.  We should pray in those times, and usually, some hardship or challenge is what leads the Christians I know to prayer.

Paul looked and saw what God had done.  Paul was driven to prayer when he thought about the implications of the salvation we have in Christ.  God had eliminated the division between Jews and Gentiles.  God had removed the barrier of sin that separated people from Himself.  In Jesus Christ, God had made a way for people to be adopted as His sons and daughters.  Paul saw that and it drove him to his knees in prayer. 

Think of it this way.  Imagine Tychicus, as the one carrying this document – the letter to the Ephesians. He is named in Ephesians 6:21.  He may have actually written the letter.  If so, he would have attributed it to Paul because the material comes from what he heard over and over as he traveled with Paul.  So imagine, Tychicus standing before the church with the task of sharing this letter. 

Now, imagine Tychicus with the letter in hand, transported from Ephesus, 90AD to the year 2017, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, HillSong Church.  Tychicus stands before us, and says,   

“OK, great!  You are God’s church, the household of God, the dwelling place for God.  Look at you.  You’ve got worshippers here with lighter skin shades and darker skin shades and shades in between.  You’ve got people from different language backgrounds.  I see babies and teenagers and people in their 70’s and 80’s and everywhere in between.  Yes, with all your differences, you are gathered together in Christ’s name.  You have salvation.  And the divisions have been abolished by the Gospel.  You are the household of God.”

He says that, and then he reads the prayer Paul wrote in Ephesians 3. 

            “For this reason I bow my knees.”  Because of what God did, Tychicus must pray Paul’s prayer.  The Ephesian church in the first century drew together people who had previously been at odds with each other.  Yes at times Paul prayed for healing. Yes at times Paul asked for provision.  And forgiveness.  But on this occasion, Paul was driven to prayer because a group of people who believed the message of the cross came together and became a community of Jesus-followers.  He was driven to pray for the church.

            Are we?

            We begin to understand the prayer and even more importantly, we begin to understand ourselves as the household of God as we look at who does what.  It’s in the verbs.  “I pray … that [God] may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through [the Holy] Spirit.”

            “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend … the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.”

            Paul prays all this so that the believers who make up the household of God “may be filled with the fullness of God.”

            There are some good verbs here driving this story.  Strengthened.  One strengthened knows himself or herself and is not swayed by temptations.  One strengthened lives a convincing faith because when others see her, in the force of her conviction for Christ they can’t help but admire her and want what she has.  The strengthened believer is a support to others in the church and a witness to God’s goodness before the unbelieving world.  Wouldn’t you like to be strengthened? We all would!

            Comprehend.  Combine strength with knowledge and wisdom in a follower of Jesus, and you have someone ready to love the poor with compassion, to support the discouraged with a word of hope, and to speak the Gospel into the face of sin and death.  Comprehension and knowledge enable the disciple to see the world for what it is and to help people move from the world into the Kingdom by showing how God gives what we need.  Wouldn’t you like knowledge, given by God?  I want it!

            Strengthen and comprehend are meaningful verbs.  So too is filled.  ‘That you may be filled with the fullness of God;’ that’s what Paul prays.  Anchored when the winds swirl, the one filled with God does not sway in the face of the moral failings blowing about in society, or break when Christian truth is seemingly reduced to one idea among many truths from which one might pick.  The one filled with God knows the truth of the Gospel, stands on that truth, and does not move when the surrounding world questions or mocks that truth.  We all want and need to be filled with the Spirit.

            So then what must we do in the story of our own faith lives in order to grow in strength, knowledge, and the fullness of God?  Wait a minute!  That’s the wrong question.  What must we do to be stronger, smarter, wiser, and fuller?  We read the Bible and memorize scripture.  We participate in worship and go on mission trips.  We can work on relationships with Christian friends who help us grow in our faith.  We should do all those things.  An active Christian life; spiritual disciplines; relationships with other believers; yes, all of these should be important in our lives. 

            However, look at the verbs!  Who does the strengthening?  God.  Who dwells in our hearts?  God – that’s Ephesians 3:17!  God lives in us!  Who gives us power and knowledge and most importantly love?  God is the subject of all these verbs.  God is the one doing these things.  We – His church – are the objects.  Through strengthening, dwelling, giving, and filling, God is at work on us, among us, and in us.  God does this to us and for us.  In the household of God, one of the things to see is God at work.  That’s why believers are called witnesses.  We see what God has done and is doing and we testify to what we have seen and experienced.

            I wondered, how do I depict the gifted, strengthened, in-dwelt, rooted, grounded, knowing, full life?  Is it the kind of thing where you know it when you see it?  To whom do we direct our attention?  Who can we look at and say, “That’s it!  That person is living the life I’m talking about here.”

            More importantly, how do we know we are living that gifted, strengthened, in-dwelt, rooted, grounded, knowing, full life?  What can you do to ensure that life is your life?  How can I fix myself in that life, that God-life?

            Once more, we’re back to the verbs.  I pointed out that God is the subject, and we the objects.  God strengthens, dwells in, gives, and fills.  There is one verb in this passage in which Paul put himself as the subject.  Paul said, “This is what I do.”  “I bow my knees before the Father.”  In verse 16, “I pray.”  In verse 18, “I pray.”  In the household of God, we – you and I – pray, God acts, and we live in response to God in action. The church doesn’t accomplish.  God accomplishes in and through the church.  We are God’s instruments.  God makes the music.  Paul prays.  We pray for healing and forgiveness and needs, yes, but also that God’s Kingdom come, that God’s will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. 

            When a community is gathered in Jesus’ name and in Jesus’ name the people pray, God acts, and the people live in response to and as witnesses of what God has done, then that community is the church, the household of God. 

            This chapter ends, and Paul’s pray ends, with a word, ‘logos,’ of glory, ‘doxa,’ lifted to God.  ‘Doxa.’  ‘Logos.’  Doxology.  A word glorifying God.  This doxology proclaims exactly what Paul has said about God in action and us in response.  It is how the prayer and this message concludes. 

            “Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than we can ask or imagine, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generation, forever and ever. 

Amen.

Once Far off ... Brought Near by the Blood of Christ (Eph. 2:13)

Sunday, October 5, 2017

            Two Satursdays ago, I took a shovel to a weed patch.  Hiding under that invasive overgrowth is good dirt, ripe for a garden.  But the green blanket of nuisance is covering it, so I took to digging.  Forty-five minutes later, good dirt smiled through and said to me, “Fill me with your seeds.  Flowers.  Vegetables.  Greens.  Let beautiful and delicious things grow here.”  I dragged three cans full of weeds to the curb for pick-up, went in the house, cleaned up, and began folding the mountain of clean laundry that needed to be put away.

            The weeding wasn’t done.  I was just done weeding.  I picked it back up yesterday. I got more done but still wasn’t finished.  Again, I went inside to fold Laundry with college football on in the background.  Fold the laundry.  Put it away.  Rinse.  Repeat. It’s a lot of work to maintain a home.  It’s good work.  A blessing.  But still, a lot of work.

            “We are no longer strangers and aliens,” Ephesians 2:19.  We are no longer cut off from God or the people of God.  The verse continues, “We are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.”  I mentioned three weeks ago that we would talk about HillSong as “the household of God.”  Our aim is to maintain this household so that all who come feel welcomed and feel at home here. 

            However, after setting that goal, I did a message about grace.  And then last week’s message was about how the Christian view of reality is more hopeful than any other.  In essence, that too is a message about grace.  Why so much emphasis on grace when the end in mind is to build up the household of God? I think people are scared of God; scared of what it will mean for them to be too close to God. 

            The question for reflection in your bulletin is “what, specifically, makes it hard for you to draw near to God?”  It’s unhelpful to be generic with this question. 

What make it hard to draw near to God? I ask.  Sin, you say.

That neuters the question.  You say, well sin is what cuts people off from God, so the answer must be sin.  It’s logical.

Yes, I respond, but which sin? 

Drinking to excess? 

Abusing power? 

Living in paralyzed fear when God calls us to bold faith? 

Living in affluence surrounded by need when God calls us to extravagant generosity? 

By saying “sin is what prevents anyone from coming close to God,” we avoid naming our individual, specific sins that prevent us from drawing near to God.  Church goers love condemning sin in general and especially love damning sins that don’t tempt them.  We don’t like it so much when talk of sin turns to our sins and thus to confession.  We have to confess things we have done, sins we have committed that hurt people and serve to separate us from a relationship of closeness and trust with God. 

Verse 13 says, “You who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”  I have seen people sit in the sanctuary as far back as possible during worship.  If we moved the back wall 15 further back, they’d be grateful.  Because up front is where the communion table is; up front is where the baptismal pool sits.  The big cross high up on the wall is up front.  That’s too close to God.  That’s terrifying. 

Why is it hard to draw near to God?  Before we can begin doing our part to maintain the household God has constructed in Christ at work in the hearts of people, before we can live as God has invited us to live, we have accept God’s invitation to come close.    That means we have to be honest with ourselves and about ourselves.  We’re sinners.

Twelve step programs get this right.  Hi, my name is Rob, and I am an alcoholic, or, I am an addict.  Stark honesty is essential.  What would church be like if every week, we began by going person by person, beginning our worship in raw confession.  Hi my name is Rob and I am sinner.  I am saved by grace, but though the Holy Spirit of God lives in me, still this week, I have sinned against God and against people.  How different would church be if instead of worrying about our “Sunday best” we live in confessional honesty?  We cannot draw near to God unless we do that.  If we do that God draws us into a bear hug of forgiveness and love.  Verse 13 says, “We’re brought near by the blood of Christ.”  That blood was shed for the forgiveness of sins.  Sins are covered and forgiveness received as we confess, as we come to God with our full selves, as we are.

What comes between us and drawing close to God?  Fear of standing before the Holy One exposed in our sin. 

Another question that must be faced as we prepare to join our hearts with one another and live in the house God built as the household of God is this.  What new thing is God doing?

            Hear the language in Ephesians 2.  “At one time you … were called the uncircumcision.”  “Remember that at that time you were without Christ … having no hope and without God in the world.”  The view from Ephesians is that to be without God is to be without hope.  Those addressed were without hope.

            However, that changed.  “Remember at that time” yields to the language of verse 13.  “But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”  Something happened.  Something changed.

            This change occurs at two levels in Ephesians.  First, the individual is cut off from God by sin, but through Jesus’ work on the cross, the death sin brings is shouldered by Jesus.  So the individual is saved from death, saved for life.  Salvation! 

We saw this in Greg’s life.  He came to know himself as a new person, forgiven by God.  His baptism gives witness.  His baptism is public, a statement made before the entire church.  He is lowered under the water, dead in sin and buried.  But we don’t leave him under the water.  He is raised just as Jesus rose from death in resurrection.  Greg is raised to new life.  It’s the story of everyone who comes to God in confession and repentance.  Each person’s journey is unique, but we are united in our baptism.  What is god doing?  God is saving individuals.

            What else is God doing?  Reconciliation!  We are united in baptism.  Whatever may have previously divided groups of people is removed.  Race.  Ethnicity.  Social class.  Place of birth.  Country of citizenship.  It doesn’t matter what divides us because that division has been removed. 

            What is God doing? 

·         Saving individuals from death. 

·         Eliminating the divisions that come between groups of people. 

·         Building a house – a gathering of people into a family, the household of God. 

In Ephesians, the specific division is between Jews who follow Jesus and Gentiles who follow Jesus.  Ephesians existed as theological writing in the late first century when the church was a couple of generations old.  This is Jewish-Gentile tension had several decades to evolve into an ongoing institutional sickness that weakened the entire church.  One of the main reasons Ephesians was important as a letter is the profound statement of 2:15-16.  It says God [created] “in himself one new humanity in place of two, [reconciling] both groups to God in one body through the cross.”  This action put to death hostility. 

            Why is it hard to draw near to God?  Because of the specific sins you and I commit.

            What is God doing?  Saving people from sin and death, bring together groups who were hostile to each other.

            A third question: what hostility among us is bring broken down?

            Possibilities include the tension between white people who live privileged in society and non-white people who have to contend in society with privileged persons; also, the tension between people who deny there is such a thing as white privilege and those who insist it is an evil that plagues our culture; also, the tension between conservatives and liberals.  These and many tensions would divide us, but they cannot when we live in Christ because, he, “Puts to death the hostility” (v.16).

            Practically speaking, what does this mean?  It means your stand is not that important and cannot be what defines your relationships. 

Where do I stand on gun control? 

Where do I stand on birth control? 

Where do I stand on immigration? 

Where do I stand on tax reform? 

Where do I stand on big government v. small government?

Where do I stand on race relations?

            If, as I went through these questions, you thought of where you stand on each issue, you’re missing the point.  The first thing and the last thing is am standing in Christ?  Am I one forgiven, full of the spirit, ready to love, ready to forgiven, and ready to welcome my brother or sister, even the one who is opposite of me on all these issues?  Am I so grounded in Christ, I won’t run to Facebook to list all my stances in confrontational way that puts people with opposite views down because I know doing so will bring pain to my brother or sister?  I might post my ideas, but not in a way that demonizes people with other ideas.

            Facebook can be an arena of dialogue.  And it is OK to have opinions and hold them passionately.  But for the sake of who we are in Christ and for the sake of being a household that welcomes in people, all kinds of people, will I make it a spiritual discipline to show restraint in my language, in my use of social media, and in my expression of my passionately held views?  I will make sure that whatever I say is said in language colored by love and fragranced by Christ. 

            If you know that I love you no matter what your views are or who you voted for and if I know you love me no matter what my views are or who I voted for, then we can talk, laugh, shout, and cry together in our agreement and our disagreement because we are united in Christ.  If I trust you to be sensitive and not use language that hurts me and to apologize when you have hurt me, and if you trust me to be sensitive and not use language that hurts you and to apologize when I have hurt you, then we talk.  About anything.  The hostility has been broken down.  We are ready to work together to maintain the household of God.

            Jesus accomplishes a lot on the cross, more than we often acknowledge.  We know about the individual’s experience of grace.  Salvation is a work of the cross.  But so too is the work of reconciliation.  Groups welcoming each other – groups previously hostile to each other – is as important to God as the experience of individuals.  Salvation and reconciliation are both important.

            And so, we pray. 

In prayer, think about the group in society today that is the object of your hostility.  You don’t like liberals.  You don’t like people who post of Facebook.  You don’t like supporters of our current president.  You don’t like supporters of our previous president.  Think about the object of your hostility.

            Now confess sins hostility has led you to commit. 

Maybe you will need to go to someone and confess how you have thought hurtful thoughts about them or done hurtful things to them. 

If someone comes to you confessing, give them the grace you want God to give you.  Let this be a time where our hearts are wide open before God.  As church family, may we together pray, asking God to rain down grace, forgiveness, and healing.  We also want God to do some wall-busting.  O God destroy the hostilities that arise and divide us. 

In upcoming weeks, we’ll go deeper in Ephesians as we examine how we live as the household of God. 

This morning we pray for an in-breaking of the Holy Spirit.  May the Lord draw us together – to one another.  May the Lord provoke us to full-bodies, raw, honest confession.  And in that confession, may we accept God’s invitation to come close to Him.

AMEN

By Grace we have been Saved (Ephesians 2:5, 8)

            I have little tricks that I use when I am talking with people.  I use this in preaching too.  It’s not sinister or disingenuous, but it is intentional.  Whether in a one-on-one conversation, or in a sermon, I will say something to try to get you to like me, or at least trust me.  If I know I am about to give a message that will rile people up, raise someone’s hackles, maybe anger someone, then I at least want to gain credibility.

            I played high school football and rode the bench for a year in college.

            I was in the military, the National Guard.

            I am from the south; moved to Roanoke, VA in 1982.

            I am from the Midwest; lived in Michigan before moving to Roanoke at age 12 in 1982.

            I spent a summer working in a factory.

            I spent a summer working landscaping.

            I have traveled the world.

            I have a mixed-race family.

            I read Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn.

            None of that is much of a big deal to anyone really, but if I think it will help me gain credibility, I weave it into conversations or into my presentation.  I want you to hear my accomplishments and my experiences.  I want you to think it is worth your time and your mental energy to listen to what I have to say.  I am trying to relate to you.  I hope you’ll find me relatable.  And at a deeper level, I hope you’ll find me worthy. 

           

            I am not unique in this.  People want to be liked.  People want to be respected.  You do.  I do.  People want to be welcomed and to belong.  You may use different methods to achieve this than I do, but I suspect you do it.  And achieve is the word, especially in the American cultural landscape.    

The spirit of the American way of thinking, our cultural ethos, highly values the self-made person, the rugged individualist.  Stand on your own two feet.  If you’re going through tough times, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. 

In the movie Saving Private Ryan, Captain Miller lay dying, knowing he had given his life in combat to save Private Ryan.  His dying words to Ryan are “You earn it.”  In other words, you better darn well live a life that was worth the sacrifice that was made for you. 

Can we a take a second to acknowledge the absurdity of this?  How can John Ryan live well enough to account for the entire squad of army rangers who died trying to save him?  What measurement determines whether a life is well-lived or not? 

In my own life, how foolish is it for me to recite my life resume in hopes that I’ll be worthy of your attention, your respect, and maybe even your friendship.  Such futility.  I say I played football, the other guy was named to the all-state team.  I come with my National Guard experience, the other guy was regular army special forces.  I causally mention that I read War and Peace, the other guy read it and actually understood it.  There is always someone smarter, someone taller, someone with a better physique, someone with a better education, someone who did cooler things in life, someone who achieved more, or has more than you and me.  Always. 

Trying to earn respect and affection and friendship is futile.  It is a complete waste of time.  Furthermore, the harder we work to prove ourselves worthy and good, the further we move away from the foundation of the Gospel.  I do not condemn all competition.  My sons are both playing sports.  I want them to try to be the best, the fastest runner in Cross Country, the hardest hitter in football.  Maybe you work in a competitive industry and part of your success is being a leader in attracting new customers.    

That’s fine.  Be competitive.  Try your hardest in whatever you’re doing in work and in life.  But, as followers of Jesus, we have to listen to what the word of God says about our value.  Upon hearing the Gospel story, we have to adjust how we value other people in light of how Jesus values us. 

We’re going to spend the next couple of months thinking about our church family as a household. Beeson Divinity School professor Sydney Park writes, “The house of God is not a physical construction, but a living organism composed of people who are now members through Christ’s sacrifice.”[i]

When you think of us as “members,” imagine your fingers and your toes and how connected these digits are to your body.  When we imagine church as the household of God, we see ourselves connected to each other in that way.  Cut off my finger, and something is missing.  Cut me off from you and you from me, each one of us from each other, and we feel it.  That’s the kind of intimacy and interconnectedness we want in our church. 

For me to be the pastor of this kind of tight-knit family, the shepherd of this community of self-giving love, I have to move away from constantly trying to win you over by reciting my life resume.  I can share about football and the army and school and Michigan and Virginia.  But my sharing should not be an effort to impress.  It should come out of my willingness to share my story.  You give me the gift of showing interest in my story.  And you give me another gift: you share your story with me.  We share our lives with each other. 

We move away from attempts to be found worthy, and instead reach for grace and generosity.  It is essential that we are honest about our weaknesses, wounds, and vulnerability.  We all have scars.  I don’t need to bleed all over the stage every Sunday, but it would be dishonest for me to stand up and pretend I am perfect and have it all together.  For us to be Christ to each other in this household of God, we have to recognize each other as wounded healers.[ii]

When we do that then we’ll be ready to embrace what I am quite certain is God’s call on this church.  This church is called to be the household of God.  That means whenever we gather, we answer this question: what must we do to help people feel at home here, in the household of God?  What changes must we make to help feel like they are at home here?

We’re not dealing with those questions today.  Today, we face the futile search for worthiness.  Today we openly admit that we aren’t going to impress each other, that we can’t, and we shouldn’t try.  Instead, we love each other exactly as we are.  No matter how messy or broken, we give each other the love of Christ.  Change comes for each person because when one meets Christ, change is inevitable.  He makes us new creations, but that is at God’s initiative.  Our starting point is love.

In Ephesians 1 and 2, note what is said about Jesus. 

He is Lord (1:3) – master of everything, master everywhere.  He’s not a lord, he’s The Lord.

He is Christ (1:3), the anointed one of God, sent to save God’s people from sin, death and destruction.  When Jesus came, we discovered the wonder that he saved Israel, but not only Israel.  All who come in repentance to the Jewish Messiah are saved.

He is eternal.  Verse 4 – “[The Father God] chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.  “In Christ” is the key phrase.  God was at work in Christ before the foundation of the world.  Our lives only make sense when we understand them in Christ.

He is the means of our adoption as children of God, he is God’s means of grace, he is God’s beloved, and he is the vessel of redemption (1:4-7). 

Jesus is flush with grace; verse 7 God lavished grace upon us.  That means the best things in our lives, the realities that give us life are gifts we did not earn, but rather blessings God gives freely and extravagantly. 

He is the revealer of mysteries, the reconciler of all things, and the enabler of life (1:7, 9; 2:5).

Ephesians 2:6 says we are raised up with him.  Jesus rose from the grave, defeated death, and takes us with him.  Death is next after this life, but it’s not last.  Each one of us who is in Christ has resurrection ahead, after death. 

When Ephesians says in chapter 2, verse 9, that we are made for good works, that also happens as we are in Christ.

All the good we experience comes about because of who God is and we know who God is because we know God in Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the embodiment of God’s gift, giving us salvation, that which we do not deserve and have not earned.  In Christ, our sins are washed away, we are made new, given joy now, a meaningful life now, and promised eternal life with God after resurrection.

This is summed up in chapter 2 verse 5 – “by grace we have been saved.”  And then so we don’t miss the point, it is repeated in verse 8.  We are saved by grace through faith.  It is not our own doing.  It is the gift of God, not a result of our efforts.  Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are what he has made us.”

This is a core Christian confession, but we rarely stop to recognize just how hard this confession is to accept.  We Americans are individualistic in our thinking and merit-driven when we talk about value.  You assess another person’s worth based your evaluation of their worthiness.  I do it.  It’s an American thing and it is the antithesis, the opposite of how it works in the Kingdom of God.

For us to be the household of God, we must pray for release from this kind of individualistic, merit-based thinking.  We need to spend a long time asking God to free us from this and to guide us into grace.  We need to see the world and to see one another through the eyes of grace. 

Our default is to revert to assessing worthiness.  Do you deserve for me to give you respect?  Have I earned the right for you to give me your time and your attention?  That’s where we go automatically. 

The change comes when we are able to live in the grace God’s lavished on us and then that grace spills out from us onto those around us.  And we will begin existing as the true household of God when collectively we are characterized by grace.  When people come among us and they know they are welcomed and loved and they meet God here, then that will be the fruit, the evidence that we are a graced community. 

The reflection questions for this morning are “what do you have that you’ve earned,” and “what do you have that has come as a gift?”  Look over the attributes of Jesus mentioned in Ephesians 1 & 2.  Especially remember 2:5 & 8.  “By grace we have been saved.”  Imagine how life looks when it flows out of the gift of new life God has given.  We don’t see and interact with the world based on an achievement mindset.  Rather, we wake up every day basking the radiant light of the joy-filled grace God has poured into us.  And from there we step into the world.  When we do it that way, what does life look like?

AMEN

---

[i] M. Sydney Park (2012) in Honoring the Generations, M.Sydney Park, Soong-Chan Rah, and Al Tizon, editors, Judson Press (Valley Forge, PA), p.3.

[ii] Peter T. Cha and Greg J. Yee (2012), Honoring the Generation, p.89.