August 5, 2012
Rev. Mark R. Miller
Ephesians 4:1-16
“Unity Not Uniformity”
It is easy to get lost in most of the Letters in the New
Testament. Or at least it is for
me. For weeks we have been reading the
Gospel stories and they are… well… stories.
And stories are much easier to follow.
The Greek rhetoric translated into English is easy to get lost in all
the divergent thoughts and miss the essential parts. Our passage from Ephesians is no
different. I do not promise what I am
about to say will make all those letters make sense. I can only hope to unearth what was going on
in this convoluted message.
The keys are really quite simple.
The first rhetorical trick is the Therefore. It serves as a marker for those who have
drifted off during the reading. Each of
the letters was read publically, often like a sermon, so the idea that someone
might nod off is not unheard of. But the
therefore comes along as a marker that the entire previous statement has been
leading to what comes next. So if you
have missed everything that has come before, pay attention now.
Therefore, lead a life worthy of the calling. That is the simple message. But can be lost if we do not understand or
have a sense of what calling is all about.
Some reduce this sense of calling to those who have been ordained or
hired in some professional capacity in the church. However, at the time this letter was penned,
there was no paid staff in the community.
The calling was for everyone.
Anyone who claimed faith in Jesus Christ was called and that message is
no different today. Each one of us in
this room, or who will read this, or hear a recording of this, has a calling. But what does it mean to have a calling?
Fortunately, the letter is pretty clear about grounding this sense of
calling in some things with which we can relate. The idea of calling is connected to the
conversation about grace. Each was given
grace accordingly. Another way to think
about this is as giftedness. And the
giftedness has to do with specific work within the community. Some are gifted to be apostles, some
prophets, some evangelists, some pastors, and some teachers. It is a pretty short list but they are not
job descriptions. In other words it does
not say that what you will need to do to build the body of Christ is to hire a
pastor for apostleship, a pastor for prophecy, a pastor for evangelism, a
pastor for pastoral care, and a pastor for teaching, if you are a large
church. Or if you are a small church you
need to hire one person who has the ability to do it all for you.
Paul assumes that in the community of faith each person
will have a responsibility that reflects their God-given giftedness. And to this I can hear a familiar chorus of,
“I used to do all those things. I used
to teach, I used to sing, I used to serve on the session, I used to have energy
for that, I am a teacher so I don’t want to teach at church, I am not able to
give like I used to, I don’t know those people’s names, I am not sure I can speak
up, I can’t… I can’t… I can’t… anymore.”
To those, and as many others as we can come up with, I want to say this
as gently and as lovingly as I can, I am not interested in what you can no
longer do or are not interested in doing.
It is time to let that go. Let go
of the belief that our best days and your best days are behind you. Don’t let that belief stand in the way of
what God has called you to do at this stage of your life.
Now please do not hear me wrong.
I am not saying that you need to force yourself into doing something
that sounds like drudgery. This is not a
call to recruit people to do hours of committee work and four hour session
marathons or to teach children, when frankly you cannot stand them except at a
distance. But, as an aside, we have done
away with the hours of committee work and four hour session meetings for the
very reason that that takes all the joy out of using our gifts for the building
up of the community. But on the children
piece, you might want to be praying on that one, but I promise we won’t ask you
to teach.
Lead a life worthy of the calling.
Those words remind us that Paul thought it was possible to be worthy of
the calling. Unfortunately, the history
of the church has implanted into too many of our heads that we will never be
worthy. That there will never be enough
we can do to get to the stage of being worthy.
But the good news is that being worthy of the calling is really about
being willing to share your great joy in the life of the community.
Calling and giftedness in the life of faith is about finding out what
brings you the greatest joy and where your aptitudes lay. The problem is that historically we have been
on the lookout for any warm body to serve on session or a committee and then
drain every last ounce of energy and every last ounce of joy for as long as we
could. And this is why many of us keep
our heads down and dare I say even keep our giftedness a secret so we do not
end up doing everything by ourselves. This
does not build up the body of Christ.
This is not what Paul is getting at.
And this eats away at the unity of the body because some are doing too
much and others are afraid of doing too much or don’t believe they have
anything to offer. Being called and
having gifts is not about killing ourselves.
It’s about living out and sharing our greatest joys in community. Maybe you don’t have the energy to do much
hand’s on work, but you can pray and you can use the phone to check on folks
you haven’t seen for a while. Those two
things alone go miles to building up the community especially if that means you
are living out your calling. Taking time
to reconnect on a Sunday morning or sharing a meal with friends and inviting
someone new to join the group, whatever group of which you are a part… it
really can be that simple…at least to start.
But if you aren’t sure and still don’t think this applies to you then we
should talk because I know that each person in this place has important gifts
for the work of building up the community in love and joy.
It is clear in this letter that the love and joy serves one ultimate purpose. And that purpose is for the building up of
the body of Christ. The strength,
vitality, the love of the community that worships and serves Jesus Christ
together is the whole purpose of ministry.
It is the whole purpose of our gifts, our resources, and our time and
energy. That really is it. That might be evident when we gather for
worship or study the Bible or bring food for the pantry or do a hands-on
mission project. But it is also true
when we gather to decide how to use our resources for the repair and
maintenance of the building or when check in on friends or members we haven’t
seen for a while. And the beauty of this
is that there is no one right way to do it all.
There is no one right way to praise God, there is no one right way to do
the work of the church, there is no one right way to have a parking lot
conversation, and there is no one right way to organize our community.
The only thing that matters is that we keep one goal in mind. And to do this we need to ask ourselves, does
this build up the community in love? Is
this binding us together to serve God?
Imagine really taking time to ask that question whenever we gathered
officially or unofficially as community members? What might change if we began each of our
gatherings with that question? Will this
build up the community in love? Imagine
the possibilities.
While this is a call to unity is it not a call to uniformity. And the unity to which Paul speaks is the
unity of the faith and knowledge of Jesus.
There is plenty of room for divergent beliefs and individuality. This has not often been the way this is lived
out. This week some of you might have
seen the call to support Chic-Fil-A in the ongoing fast food culture war. And as a Christian I am not really happy
about the way junk food and consumerism have been wedded to the unity of
faith. But an evangelical and conservative
blogger asked a question that seems to get at the idea of building the community
up in love. The question that was asked
was this: Does anyone truly believe that the message being sent last Wednesday
was a message that expressed the love of Jesus Christ? Whether or not you think the fast food chain
supports a Christian message or not, did this event sound more like a battle
cry or a call to share the love of God in Jesus Christ? In other words, the love of God and the unity
of faith were not served up with a side of waffle fries on Wednesday.
For those of us who do not stand with our brothers and sisters in this
action or even believes what we have to remember is that unity does not mean
uniformity. I do not stand with Mr.
Cathy but that does not mean I am not a Christian or even for that matter a Bible
believing Christian, because I am. And
the good news is that Paul did not write that unity must come on every issue of
faith. Unity is not uniformity of
thought. The unity is on the faith of
Jesus Christ. The unity is not based on
our opinions about political issues or parties.
The unity is not in the style of worship. The unity is not in how we express our
faith. The unity is on the faith and
knowledge of Jesus Christ. But unity is
an elusive thing. The key to this comes
when Paul writes that we must grow up in every way.
Growing up means that we no longer
need other people to think like us or act like us to extend the love and grace
we know in Jesus Christ. The truth is
that the immature mind cannot hold two opposing thoughts and believe that both
might hold some truth. That is where
love comes in. Leading a life worthy of
the calling means we are always being called to grow up in love. For one ultimate purpose, and that purpose is to equip the saints for the work
of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the
unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the
measure of the full stature of Christ. And to do so by speaking the truth in love, and grow up in every way. So I challenge all of us… and invite you to
challenge me... to lead everything we do with one simple idea… does this build
up the community in love? Does this
equip others to do the same? Amen? Amen!
No comments:
Post a Comment