Sunday, August 05, 2012

Unity Not Uniformity

WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
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!

           

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