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
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