Sermon: No Longer Strangers, Part 6: Suiting Up

Joshua 24:1-2, 14-18  

Ephesians 6:10-20

Anyone know what Charlie Sheen is up to these days? Some years ago, you might recall, he had a spectacularly public breakdown. Although, not if you asked him. If you asked Charlie he would have said, “Winning!” because that became his mantra.

When asked about his diagnosis of bipolar disorder, he said, “Not bipolar. It’s bi-winning! Winning here, winning there…” His conversations were colored with staccato bursts of “winning!” It appeared to be a kind of game – a mind game, where the object is saying it enough times in the hope that will make it true, talking oneself into believing it despite the clear reality. Winning!

He started something, didn’t he?

Winning is big. Winning is huge. #winning. Winning at life. Winning so much we get bored with winning. So. Much. Winning.

It might get boring, but it has to be about winning, because this is a zero-sum game – if you’re not winning you’re losing. And who wants to be a loser?

No one wants to be a loser. I don’t. I like winning. I like winners.

Most people do. Winning at games, winning at politics, winning at business, winning at friendship – winning at friendship? Yes, when life is a zero-sum game, there are winners and losers in everything.

The people of Israel were just like everybody. They liked winning. On this fine day when they stood before the threshold of the Promised Land. After 40 years in the wilderness, homeless, property-less, they were finally on the verge of winning.

And their leader, Joshua stood up before them and reminded them of all the trials they had faced, of all that they had overcome, and of the great opportunity that lay before them now, so close they could almost taste the milk and honey. And he offered them these words: Choose this day whom you will serve. Whether it be the gods your ancestors served back in the land they came from, or the gods these other people serve in the region we are in now. Choose. As for me and my household, Joshua declared, we will serve the Lord.

And the people all cried out in answer, Yes, yes, we too will serve the Lord. He has done great things, he has brought us through the wilderness, he has protected us and he has brought us to this place where we are winners. We are winning. We will serve the God of winning.

Perhaps they didn’t say it quite that way. But I imagine they felt like the Bad News Bears when they turn their losing streak around, the Hoosiers when they win the championship game, Rudy when the coach finally puts him into the game and he makes the winning play for Notre Dame, Rocky Balboa when he beats Apollo Creed. Winning.

They liked the feeling of winning as much as we like the feeling of winning. And they said yes, we will serve the Lord who has brought us so far. We will remember his deeds, his faithfulness to us. We will.

But then they didn’t – not always. The promise they made was at times forgotten. Because life got complicated, offering too many options – in this new land they took there were the remnants of other gods and forms of worship, interesting things they had not seen before, perhaps. Opportunities to hedge their bets. You know, if the Lord doesn’t seem to be helping you quite as much as you want, you can try this other god over here – what can it hurt?

Have you ever said that – what can it hurt?

And these temptations, these other gods, come in all forms, we’re not just talking about stone figures. There are endless forms of idols that offer us opportunities to be winners. They seem harmless; they usually appear as something good. These “spiritual forces of evil,” as the letter to Ephesians phrases it, look like winning. And winning feels so good, it just makes you feel like you ought to keep on winning and winning and winning – at any cost.

The struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, the letter says, but against the cosmic powers of this present darkness. It is no wonder we get confused.

But we reach for the armor to fight the battle, to keep on winning. Breastplate, the shield, the helmet to protect us from losing, to keep us fighting another day. Suit up! Game on!

The problem is we forget what battle we are fighting. We forget what winning is and what losing is. We forget what kind of armor we really need.

It’s the risk of living in this world – as the letter says, “this present darkness” – that we can become habituated to just about anything. We can become so well adjusted to the darkness it seems like light. and when confronted with dishonesty and theft, say things like, “anybody would have done the same.”

And because anybody would have done it, we will excuse it, overlook it. We might even draw the conclusion that we, too, need to do it – cheat and lie and steal, because it looks like the kind of armor we will need to survive. To thrive. To win.

Then when we stand up before Joshua, full of enthusiasm, and say, “Far be it that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods … we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God” how truthful is our proclamation?

I remember a church I did some preaching at years ago. The church was about 40 years old, and had been about the same size for those 40 years. Then suddenly they started to get an influx of people. A couple would come visit, express an interest in joining the church. Another couple would come. In a period of a few months they received about 25 new members. They were all coming from the same place. The Methodist church in town had a new pastor and things were not going well. People were leaving the church and going across town to the Presbyterian Church. And the Presbyterian congregation was overjoyed. Winning!

This is what happens when it becomes a zero-sum game. Sheep-stealing feels like winning.

I met a new-church pastor last week, and he told me that when someone comes to them from another church, feeling wounded by that other church, they send them back. They encourage them to reconcile; so far as they are able, to make peace; to not spread ill-will by their actions, but to seek the good of all. Because we are interconnected; our loss is their loss and our gain is their gain. This is not zero-sum. It’s either win-win or lose-lose.

The truth, which we might forget, is that we are the church wherever we go and whoever we are with. To take satisfaction in our neighbor’s loss, even if everybody else is doing it, is to become alienated from the way of Christ. The words of our Confession of 1967 affirm that the church is both gathered and dispersed to do the will of God. And as the church is dispersed, “the quality of their relations with other persons is the measure of the church’s fidelity.”

Winning. This is winning. Not just what we do in here and with one another, but the quality of our relations with others wherever we go.

So we must suit up with the armor of God. Not to be confused with steel and iron outfits that allow us to make war on each other. I am always a little bit bothered by this imagery of armor. Ever since the time I went to a birthday party where the child was given a “whole armor of God” playsuit. So this child could have play dates with his Christian friends and they could put on their whole armor of God suits and beat up on each other. The message seems to get lost in the application.

The truth is this: there is no way to win when we lose the ability to distinguish the dark from the light. There is no human-made armor that can protect us from the weapons that will pierce our hearts and destroy our souls. There will always be a better weapon to match and beat our armor and shields and helmets.

True winning is putting on the armor of God, clothing ourselves in truth and righteousness, faith and peace; taking these with us out into the world; seeking reconciliation with all God’s children. In this way we draw ourselves closer to God.

So, suit up. March on in the light of God.

Photo credit: By john - armorUploaded by Urbourbo, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14951910

No Longer Strangers, Part 5: Overflowing Life

Ephesians 5:15-20

Time is something we think about often enough. We have a popular saying: Life is too short.

Too short for what?

Life is too short to be sad, to hold grudges, to not celebrate. Life is too short to worry. Life is too short to be on a diet, to live on low-fat everything, to forgo cake and champagne or any of the good stuff! Life is too short to stay in a bad job, a bad relationship, or to live a lie. Life is too short for a long story, life is too short to talk slowly, life is too short to waste a minute of it.

In the immortal words of Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Clearly, there is a wide range of ideas about what life ought to be used for. No doubt there is a wide range of ideas about what wise living should look like. What do the scriptures say wise living should look like?

We know from the context, the entirety of this letter, that the life God has intended for us is to seek reconciliation with God and with others. To know ourselves as God’s beloved and seek to imitate God’s love in our lives and relationships with the world. To let that love be reflected in all we do, making the most of the time we have.

The key to making the most of the time is to feel the urgency of it but avoid becoming anxious about it. A sense of urgency will motivate you to do what needs to be done, to take the risks that ought to be taken. We need that sense of urgency. But anxiety is another thing; anxiety will paralyze you, making you afraid to do anything at all.

I could easily become anxious when I think about the minutes ticking by, the sand sifting through the hourglass, knowing that as each day passes I have one day less ahead of me. And yet, when I allow this anxiety to overcome me, I am failing to do the very thing I intend to be doing, the thing I ought to be doing – seizing the moment, making the most of the time. I am failing to live in this precious moment that is given to me.

Make the most of the time, the letter says to us.

A textual tidbit I learned this past week about this phrase, making the most of the time – it is a Greek word, exagorazomenoi. Within it we see the Greek word for marketplace – agora. And it literally means to snap up all chances of a bargain at the marketplace. If you see a great deal on a bag of apples, take it – it will be worth it. And if you see a great deal on a blanket, take it. Take the opportunities that are presented to you when they are worthwhile, without stewing too much over whether there might be a better one somewhere or if this is the appropriate type of apple or blanket. Let go of whatever is getting in your way of taking the good opportunity that is before you.

That is an enlightening way of hearing the phrase, making the most of the time. Seizing the opportunity to do something good. And to be looking for those opportunities to do something good. This is life abundant and overflowing.

How can we as the church, the body of Christ, do that?

How can we pay attention to the incredible bargains that are offered to us and seize them?

Take church meetings, for example.

I think of church meetings, because I have spent a lot of time in church meetings and thinking about church meetings. And I know there is a lot of time wasted in meeting. I have sat in some meetings where we let hours go down the drain as we rehash things that have gone before, things that are really of no consequence today, or things we dislike but have no power to change. Sadly, neglecting what we might be doing now, how we might be making the most of the time.

I have been in meetings that are the equivalent of pushing the food around on our plates. An hour passes by and no active steps have been taken, no concrete decisions made. Nothing is changed.

And mostly, I have been in meetings where there are too few present. Most people don’t come to the meetings. Maybe because they don’t like meetings – they have been in too many of the kind of meetings I have just described. But maybe because they don’t know they are needed. They assume that they are neither needed nor wanted, because others are already doing it.

Of course, we must realize that this business of meeting, discussing, planning – the good, the bad, and the meh – this is all part of the business of being church. Could we do it better? No doubt. But we start where we are and go from there. What are the possibilities you can see?

Even as you read this there are incredible opportunities for us to be church all around us. In our city, there is the National Folk Festival coming up in a few weeks, an event that will draw thousands of people here. How can we be a part of helping this beautiful thing happen? How can we welcome the strangers in our midst? There will be a lot of them.

There is the event called Third Friday every month downtown where citizens of Salisbury come out to be a part of the community – how might we be a part of that?

And there is so much more. How might we be a part of the many efforts in our midst to make our community more beautiful, more joyful, more loving?

Exagorazomenoi! There are a ton of bargains out there – don’t think there are not. Let us go out and snap them up! Let us fill ourselves with the Spirit, with songs of praise and thankfulness for everything, and make the most of all we have been given. We have been given life – adoption into the family of God, a new identity as God’s beloved children. And we have been given a purpose – to nurture and strengthen the body of Christ.

To live this life overflowing – it is not something in the past that we look back on. It is not something in the future that we look toward. It is now and here, on offer to us.

Let us make the most of it.

photo credit: Jerusalem Old City Market. By  Ester Inbar, available from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:ST., Attribution,https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1637899

No Longer Strangers, Part 4: Making Peace

Ephesians 4:25-5:2     

On a Saturday afternoon recently, Kim and I were listening to Harry Chapin’s music while we were working around the house. When the song, Cat’s in the Cradle, came on we both stopped what we were doing and just listened.

It’s one of his most famous songs. It tells the story of a father who has a son. It starts out:

A child was born just the other day,

He came to the world in the usual way,

But there were planes to catch and bills to pay,

He learned to walk while I was away.

He was talking before I knew it, and as he grew he said, “I’m gonna be like you, dad. You know I’m gonna be like you.

And the song goes on like that; in each verse, a different stage in the child’s development presents opportunities that are missed by this father, to be a part of his son’s life. Until, finally, the son is grown, the father is retired. And now when the father has time and wants to be with his son, the boy has grown into a man who is too busy for his father. And in the last line, the father realizes his son was just like him. He’d grown up just like him.

Kim remarked that it was such a sad song. A song of opportunities missed and relationships that drift apart, or just never happen.

A song about how we learn who we are … and how we should live … and what to value.

As we have been working through this letter to the Ephesians, we have been paying attention to what it is trying to teach us. So far, we have learned that God has drawn us into God’s family. That we are all, in a sense, adopted children of the Lord. We have learned that it is God’s divine plan to gather up all of his children into one big family. And that it is hard for us to be brought together, because we resist this lumping together of disparate parts. We don’t necessarily want to be in the same family as SOME PEOPLE. But, nonetheless, God has called us to put aside labels and judgments that divide us.

And we have learned that what it will take for us to be brought together, the thing that will finally be our common ground, is our brokenness. We are all, every one of us, broken – broken, but loved.

It is the power of God’s love that brings us together and makes us whole again, in the communion of God’s love. That’s the first three chapters:  We are a beloved community of God’s children.

And we, the beloved children of God, may seek to be like our heavenly parent, if we remember who we are, whose we are.

But we don’t always remember who we are.

In our Tuesday Bible study a couple of weeks ago we talked about a recent poll that was taken in England in which almost half of the respondents thought the world would be a better place without religion. They were inclined to believe most of the wars that are fought are caused by religion. And even though they tended to acknowledge that these problems are largely caused by religious extremists, they seemed to feel that it would be best to just get rid of religion altogether.

As a community of people who gather around the table each week to study the word of God, to strengthen our faith, this was disheartening to hear. But I think we have to acknowledge that religion, particularly Christianity, has gotten a bad reputation in our society. Those who are on the outside of it, too often see us on the inside as being narrow-minded, judgmental, and failing to practice what we preach. In a word, hypocrites.

That feels like unfair criticism. We just aren’t perfect and we never will be perfect. But rather than be offended by it, perhaps we should be prompted to ask ourselves how well we are living into the calling to be a community of God’s grace.

If we are, indeed, the beloved children of God, how do we live in the world?

Some would say that the way to do it is to separate ourselves from the rest of the world – the pagan world. That to retain our identity as Christians, we must avoid contamination from non-Christian influences. However, I would say to them: show me where Jesus practiced that kind of lifestyle, because I cannot find it in any of the gospels. I’ve looked, and that’s not what I’ve found. Here’s what I’ve found: Jesus hanging around the fringes of Jewish society – the sick, the downtrodden, the homeless – and listening, healing, feeding, loving. Accepting.

And he said to his followers, Go and Do likewise.

We must go back to these scriptures to find and claim our identity as God’s beloved children. It tells us the kinds of things we should put away, or cast off – lying, bearing grudges, taking from others what is not yours to take; and the kinds of things we should put on – kindness, tenderheartedness, forgiveness. We get so far away from the gospel truth, and we must continually go back to the scriptures and seek to know how we shall live as God’s beloved children. To know what to cast off and what to put on.

It is as though we are children who are trying to dress just like their parents. We want to be just like them. When my son Joe was four, he had carefully observed how daddy dressed every day when he went to work: wool gabardine pants, a button-down shirt, and a tie. He wanted to be just like him. I had to search hard to find some nice gray dress pants for this little boy, to go with his oxford shirt and his clip-on tie, because he made it very clear that khakis just wouldn’t do. He felt that rough cotton fabric, looked at that wide elastic waistband, and looked at me. He said, “that’s not what daddy wears.” He wanted the real thing. He wanted to be just like dad.

How, then, shall we dress like our father or mother in heaven? How can we be most like our God of love?

The good news, you might say, is that it is the little things to which we should attend, the day-to-day behaviors that matter.

It is to be kind to others, even the strangers. It is to speak honestly, so as not to let lies become barriers between us. it is to avoid letting anger fester, but seek reconciliation with others. To be peacemakers.

And lest we should think that to make peace is to smooth over and tamp down differences and troubles –

That’s not peace. Not really.

True peacemaking, my friends, involves working through those disagreements, seeking better understanding, striving for compassion. This is, indeed, the only way we can be the one family God desires for us to be.

Seek to be imitators of God, beloved children, living in love. These are the words of the scripture. This is just what all the words that come before, from Genesis on, are leading us to.

Be kind, be honest, be forgiving. Let go of anger, seek reconciliation, share with those in need. Offer encouragement, give grace as you have received grace. The more we are doing these things, the more we are living into the likeness of God; the more we are representing the beloved children of God.

Know who you are: children of the living God. And seek to be just like him. Just like him. And when we live this way, imagine what the world would think of us then?

Photo Credit: By State Library of Queensland, Australia - https://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryqueensland/6504265771/, No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53526373