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
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