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

No Longer Strangers, Part 3: God's Powerful Love

Ephesians 3:14-21

I have an app on my phone called Ceaseless. Every morning at 8:00 it pings me and asks me if I would like to pray. Sometimes I say, “later.” And that is okay, because it is always there for me.

It gives me focus for my prayers. Each day this app randomly pulls three people in my contact files and suggests I pray for them. I never know whose name will pop up.

So it happens, sometimes, that it is the name of a person I am angry with. Or it may be the name of someone I am deeply concerned about or anxious for. It could be someone I haven’t thought about in ages, someone I’ve lost touch with and I have no idea what is going on in their lives.

And Ceaseless asks me to pray for them. Sometimes, though, I don’t know how to pray for them.

If it is someone I am angry with, how can I pray for them? Maybe I should be praying for myself, that my heart would be more forgiving and the anger would go away – but how should I pray for them?

If it is someone I have lost touch with, I look at their name and I wonder what in the world is going on with them. Where they are, what their life is like, if they are even still living. I have no idea what they need, and I wonder, how should I pray for them?

But I think sometimes the hardest of all are the ones where I do know what’s going on in their lives. Sometimes I know the challenges they are facing and I am sure I know the many ways they make their challenges even more difficult. And I think to myself, if only they would do more of this or less of that! And a part of me would like to pray, God, make them do more of this and less of that. So when their names pop up on the screen, I wonder, how should I pray for them?

Have you ever thought that you just don’t know how to pray? Annie Lamott said the most common prayer in the world is “please, please, please,” or “help, help, help!” And the second most common is “thank you, thank you, thank you.” But I think it’s a distant second, because we are just more likely to turn to prayer when we feel the need for something.

Perhaps you have had the occasional night of little sleep, when something is weighing heavily on you and as you toss and turn you make your fitful prayers to God. Little cries to a supreme being who, you feel, may or may not be listening. And they might sound like,

“Make it stop!”

“Save him!”

“Make this pain go away!”

“Keep her safe!”

Whatever is keeping you awake, whatever is giving you great anxiety, this is your focus and your sole desire is to fix it. Asking God to fix it. Our cries of desperation, these are the rawest form of the “Please, please, please” prayers.

And then, if God does make it stop, save him, make the pain go away, you might return to God with a deep sigh of “Thank you.”

But if not … If not –

What happens to our prayers when we don’t receive the answers we wanted? What happens to our faith when we are disappointed?

When the addict keeps on using. When the pain does not cease. When the problem doesn’t get fixed. Then we might wonder if prayer is worthwhile – just a tiny drop in the ocean. Or, if we still hold on to hope, we might wonder: If not like this, then, how should we pray?

I remember a man who had prayed ceaselessly for his grandson who was an alcoholic. It seemed like nothing could stop this poor soul on his path toward self-destruction. The grandfather said, “I don’t know how to pray for him anymore. All I do now is say his name and offer it to God.

Scripture gives us a lot of examples to help us with our prayers. The first thing I believe we can learn from them is that all kinds of prayers are good prayers. To pray what is in your heart is not wrong. There have been times I have tried to second-guess my feelings and muster up what might be a proper, respectable prayer. But I am not fooling God. I am only hiding from myself.

Opening our hearts to God is the beginning of prayer.

But here in this portion of the letter to Ephesians, we find an astonishing example of prayer that both strengthens our hope and gives us something to aspire to. This prayer for the church is that they might begin to comprehend God’s powerful love.

“I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

Consider this.

He does not pray that the Ephesians will be healthy. He does not pray that they will be wealthy or successful. He does not pray that they will live their best life now, as we might have heard some preachers say. He does not pray that they will triumph over enemies, whether they be people, corporations, nations, or diseases. He simply prays that they will know fully, deeply, completely, the power of God’s love through Christ.

And to know the breadth and length and height and depth of this love is not to take its linear measure. It is not to know its precise dimensions. To know its measure is to know that, for us, it is immeasurable.

His prayer for us, God’s beloved, is to know God’s power is love and that love is immensely powerful – so powerful that it is beyond anything we can ask or imagine.

Beyond anything we can ask or imagine.

It would not be a bad thing for us to think of these words when we pray – for ourselves or for others. When I try to pray for someone I am harboring a grudge against, I might recall that the power of God’s love can accomplish far more than I can ask or even imagine. And when I am trying to pray for someone I want to fix, because I can see several ways they might live their life better than they currently are, I might recall that the power of God’s love can accomplish far more than I can ask or even imagine.

When I am losing hope for someone, I might recall that the power of God’s love can accomplish far more than I can ask or even imagine.

When I don’t know how to pray, I might recall that the power of God’s love can accomplish far more than I can ask or even imagine. And this may strengthen my hope: To know the answers are not in my hands; they are in the power of God’s love. God seeks to put his power within us, rooting and grounding us in love.

Imagine, if you will, how much we could do with the power of God’s love.

This, my brothers and sisters, is the beginning of living the life we have been called to. God has drawn us together under the banner of God’s love.

The letter to the Ephesians will go on to speak more in detail about how we might live in the likeness of Christ. There are parts of this letter that might irritate us, parts that might puzzle us; but, while the details might change over time, the fundamentals remain the same: God’s power is love and God is still seeking to fill us with this love.

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

No Longer Strangers, Part 2: Aliens Brought Near

Ephesians 2:11-22      

In 1871 two archeologists found a piece of engraved stone from the Jerusalem temple with Greek writing on it. It held a stern warning: “No foreigner is to enter the barriers surrounding the sanctuary. He who is caught will have himself to blame for his death which will follow.”

This was one rule they were, evidently, pretty strict about. No gentiles were permitted to enter the temple. But it was not the only rule. There were degrees of acceptability in the temple worship of the time.

The outermost area of the temple was called the court of the gentiles, and it was a large, open, public area. Anyone could come into the outer court. But within this courtyard there was a barrier, called a soreg, which surrounded a wall defining the perimeter of the outer court of the temple. The outer court was also called the court of the women, because this was as far as Jewish women were allowed to enter. Further within, there was an inner court, the place where the burned sacrifices were made. Jewish men were permitted to enter the inner court, as long as they didn’t have certain conditions that would make them disqualified. And finally, the innermost region, called the Holy of Holies, where only the purest ones could enter.

When you read the Old Testament you notice that there were many types of people who were restricted from participating in temple worship. Foreigners, or those of mixed race; women; eunuchs; anyone with a skin disease; these were all barred from entering. But additionally, Jewish men who were deformed in some way were prevented from entering the inner region. The scriptures speak of the blind and the lame, dwarves, and hunchbacks, all excluded. Anyone judged to have abnormalities or imperfections, excluded. There were many ways a person could be shut out.

We talked a bit last week about insiders and outsiders, and the ways we tend to separate the world into these two categories. The human mind likes order, and if we can’t find it in the world around us, we will create it and impose it. We divide people up into categories, and then judge those categories. So, in the end, there are those who are like us and others. These others might be frightening to us. They might just be perplexing to us. Or they might somehow seem wrong to us.

In the first century, as the church was yet small but growing fast, who should belong was still an open question. But it was becoming increasingly clear that many different, diverse peoples were going to belong. Among those who gathered to worship, there were differences in race and culture, which would not easily be erased yet must be overcome. No longer, in the church, would there be the circumcised and the uncircumcised, but there would be one body in Jesus Christ.

These issues are raised in many of the New Testament epistles, seeming to indicate that this was a common problem at the time. The Spirit of God was crossing over boundaries and drawing diverse groups together in Christ – but those people were, maybe, a little averse to being drawn together. They were too preoccupied with their differences, and the ways those differences made them uncomfortable with one another. And in their own ways, they were prone to judging those who were different.

There were the poor Christians, some of them even slaves, and the wealthy Christians. They had dramatically different lifestyles, obviously. And the wealthy ones were sometimes unable to comprehend the unique challenges of the poor ones.

We have to admit that we are still beset by these kinds of problems. It is hard for us to understand people who are different from us. For those who abide strictly by the law, it is hard to understand the law-breakers. For those who are free of addiction, it can be hard to understand those who suffer under the weight of addiction. For those who have enough, or more than enough, it can be hard to understand those who don’t have enough and, to our minds, do a poor job of managing what little they have.

Put simply, it can be very hard for us to understand those whose path through life has been different from ours. In some cases, we admire them; in others, we disapprove of them. sometimes we are simply appalled by them.

Philip Yancey, in his book called What’s So Amazing About Grace, relays a story a friend once shared with him. A young woman came to his friend in desperate straits. A miserable sinner without a shred of dignity left, she was an addict, homeless, a mother of a two-year-old girl. She had no money and no food. She unloaded on this man a torrent of words, confessing to him all the horrible things she had done, all the horrible things that had been done to her. He listened, then he asked if she had considered going to a church for help. She looked at him with shock, and said, “Why would I do that? I feel terrible enough about myself already. They would just make me feel worse.”

To be truthful, I am afraid if I had been sitting across from the woman Yancey wrote about and listened to all the things she confessed, the thought would have entered my mind, “How could anybody do that?” And it is possible I would have judged her, condemned her, proving to her that yes, the church is there to make you feel bad about yourself, just in case you don’t feel bad enough already.

Any time we start a sentence with the words, “Why would anybody …” it is a chance to stop. Pause. Think about what it is we don’t understand. And then perhaps rephrase the question: “What kinds of circumstances might cause me to do such a thing?”

The reason Yancey told this story is because he couldn’t help but see the contrast between this young woman’s relationship with the church and Jesus’ relationship with sinners. Particularly, the stories about some of the women who came to him, miserable sinners without a shred of dignity. They were accustomed to being scorned by the religious establishment, but they looked at Jesus and saw someone they could turn to. They saw someone who would have compassion for them. Even though, as Paul wrote, he himself was sinless, Jesus put no barriers between himself and all the sinners of the world.

When we think about what the church is for, it is worth noting that it is sometimes called a hospital for sinners. No one, no matter how deep their transgressions, should be turned away from the church in their time of need. No one, no matter how appalling their sins, should ever be turned away from the church because of them. Remembering that we, too, are sinners and have found sanctuary in the church, where Christ heals us of the sickness of our souls. How could we not extend that same grace to others?

The radical thing that Jesus Christ did in his life was to draw the sinners and the outcasts to him. He healed those who had been cast out of society, giving them a chance to become reconciled with society, an opportunity to be restored to wholeness.

The letter to Ephesians speaks to the gentiles, saying you who were once far off, or aliens, have been brought near, by the blood of Jesus Christ. You who were once excluded: the gentiles, the women, the blind and lame and deformed, the sick, the imperfect. Now the walls and barriers have been removed, the gates are open. In Christ, all have been brought together.

For in him we find our peace. There becomes a whole new way to find and articulate our identity – and a whole new way to frame our outlook on the world.

You see, where we once looked at the world as a framework of lines dividing peoples into groups, separating them from others, we found our identity by focusing on the lines and what they represented: differences in acceptability, differences in belongingness. The lines represented the ways we differed, and we defended the boundary lines because they defined who we were against who we were not.

But in Christ everything changes. And we no longer look to the boundary lines, but we look to the center, which is Christ. The holy of holies. He is our center, our purpose, what we are drawn to, where we find our peace. He is our peace.

And so in Christ the circumcised and the uncircumcised came together. The slave and the free, the Jew and the gentile, the north and the south and the east and the west, all came together to find their peace in him. Turning our attention away from the lines that separate us and toward the center which now defines us.

May it be so.

Photo: A copy of the soreg inscription at the Museum of Roman Civilization in Rome. Translation is "No stranger is to enter within the balustrade round the temple and enclosure. Whoever is caught will be responsible to himself for his death, which will ensue."

No Longer Strangers, Part 1: The Family

Ephesians 1:3-14

This week we begin a new series focusing on Christian community. Using the letter to Ephesians to explore this basic question: how to live as a community of faith in the best ways we can.

The church has changed an awful lot over the past 2000 years, but something that has not really changed is the struggle we have to be an authentic Christian community. Ever since the beginning, this has been a hard task for the church, because it is a fight against our tribal instincts. Human beings have always had a tendency to cluster into groups of people who are “like us.” In whatever ways are important to us, whatever values are foremost in our minds, these are the markers we look for in creating community.

And this is precisely what the church of Jesus Christ is working to overcome. The very radical thing that the church does is to cross over tribal and familial boundaries and create new community.

God, through Christ, is making a new family, adopting us as God’s own, kid brothers and sisters to Jesus Christ. Crossing over family lines – blood lines – and grafting us onto the family tree. All of us, and many more. The image of family is a strong one for the church. It is an image we use frequently. The joys and trials of family are things we think about a lot.

Because it’s a topic that most everyone has an interest in, there are many good movies about family. I watched one this past week, called The Family Stone. It came out about 10-15 years ago. It’s Christmas and all the adult children of the Stone family are coming home. And – spoiler alert – there will be tension.

Have you noticed that in most families every member plays a specific role? This is true in the Stone family, where they all have unspoken labels. The eldest son Everett is the successful child. He wants to make his parents proud. Susannah is the nurturing one, who spends most of the film in the background quietly caring for her young daughter. Ben is the free-spirit who marches to the beat of his own drummer, and the first to be blamed if something goes wrong. Thad is deaf and gay, the one they all rally around to support and protect. And Amy is the spoiled baby of the family.

This Christmas Everett is bringing home Meredith, the woman he plans to marry. Things don’t go well. Amy hates her. The rest of the family tries to be polite, but they look at Meredith like she dropped in from the planet Mars. She doesn’t seem to fit in well. The more nervous she gets, the more she puts her foot in her mouth, offending them.

Ben, however, takes an interest in Meredith – maybe he has sympathy because he knows what it’s like being the square peg in the house. Unexpectedly, they seem to be kindred spirits.

Pretty soon, a couple of other oddball characters get added to the mix. There is Brad, who has had an awkward crush on Amy since high school. And Meredith’s sister, Julie, who – unlike Meredith – does fit in quite well. Which creates an even bigger wedge between Meredith and the family. When Julie shows up, it’s like waiting for a car crash to happen.

The film is funny and sweet and sad and familiar, because we all know how challenging family can be. Family involves a lot of relationships that were not entered into by choice. And, in general, we are stuck with them no matter how difficult they are. And we all know they can be really, really difficult.

The thing we see happening with Meredith in the film is an example of how hard it can be to join a family. It’s like everyone has their place, their role, and there isn’t always room for someone new. They were all dismayed by Meredith, in one way or another, because they couldn’t figure out where she fit in. Even more of a problem, they didn’t need Meredith. They felt complete as they were, without her.

Family can be very hard. Just when you might think you’ve got it all sorted out, one little thing shifts, and everything is out of whack. It’s not easy being in relationship with a bunch of people you didn’t necessarily choose to be in relationship with. Which brings us to the church.

The letter to the Ephesians speaks of the church as family, as we are all, each one of us, adopted into the family of God through Jesus Christ. And this letter is deeply concerned about the matter of insiders and outsiders, and how the various members are treated. Because not everyone was treated well. The circle of membership wasn’t always open and inviting.

The message we hear in these words from Ephesians is that God’s divine plan involves gathering up all of God’s children into one family. Christ is the firstborn, our elder brother. The Jews who followed him were gathered in first, but the family did not end there. The gentiles from all the nations were gathered up into the family as well, to make up the body of Christ, the church, with Christ as our head. It is by God’s grace and for God’s purpose that we are gathered together, to be heirs to the promises God made so long ago.

The Jews, Christ’s brothers and sisters, needed to know that the family, the promises of God did not end with them. And the Ephesians and all the other churches of Asia needed to know that the family did not end with them. And we, of course, need to know that it does not end with us. God is still at work, gathering, reconciling, healing the world.

God has made us one family, in Christ, not to set ourselves against the world, but to welcome all the world into the fold. We are family. Not because we chose each other, but because God chose us. We are family. Not because we like each other but because God loves us. We are family. Not because we have so much in common but just because we all, each one of us, bear the mark of adoption.

You and I and all of us are beneficiaries of the love and grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s a done deal. And because of that, other labels no longer have meaning. As Paul wrote to the Galatians, there is no longer Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.

It’s like in the Stone family. Like most Christmas movies, everything resolves toward love in the end. Accepting one another, forgiving one another, and loving one another. And in the end they are all, every one of them, members of one big family.

By the end there is no longer uptight-and-awkward-Meredith and goofy-boy-down-the-street-Brad and I’m-only-here-because-my-sister-asked-me-to-come-Julie. There is no longer black-sheep-Ben and gay-Thad and spoiled-baby-Amy. There is one family where all are loved. The members are held together, in spite of their differences, by the love and grace of God.

There is so much more we can say about this matter of being in community with one another. But it begins with God. God chose us and loves us into community. We have been called, forgiven, and anointed as God’s own for God’s purposes.

We are here because God marked us as God’s own, as members of God’s family. And no matter how much things change, that will be the same.

Occupy

2 Samuel 5:1-5,9-10

2 Corinthians 12:2-10         

The beauty of following a story through a series of Sundays is being able to see how characters develop. You think back to just a few weeks ago when we were reading about the boy who ran around with a slingshot in his back pocket, following the sheep around the pasture, running errands for his dad and his big brothers. You think about this little boy who bragged to the soldiers of Israel, I could beat that old giant any day! And they laughed him off. And then he did.

That cute little boy from the hick little town of Bethlehem, ruddy and innocent – look at him now. He’s king over all Israel, ruling from his new stronghold, the city on a hill, the city of David.

All the tribes of Israel came out to see him, they praised him and honored him. They made a covenant with him and anointed him king. He was 30 years old when he began to rule. Not bad.

Not bad for the man, and not bad for the nation. These were the glory days for Israel. David occupied the stronghold, he became greater and greater, and Israel became greater and greater. As their leader, he defeated enemies and increased their territory and wealth. These were the glory days. They were on top of the world. Taking possession of the city on a hill, the stronghold, this was a critical point in their rise.

It wasn’t easy, of course. 

David wanted this city for his capitol because it seemed impregnable. High on a hill with good vantage points all around, there was no way to sneak up on Jerusalem. The Jebusites, who occupied it at the time, felt pretty confident that they were keeping it. In fact, they were so confident they taunted their enemies saying even their blind and lame could defend Jerusalem.

But that turned out to be wrong. David’s army managed to surprise the Jebusites by taking the less-traveled route. They shimmied up a water shaft and – surprise! – popped up inside the fortress. At that point it was essentially a done deal. All they had to do was get in there, and the city belonged to David. Occupation was all they needed.

It got me thinking about the spaces we occupy.

In some way, the space we occupy defines who we are.  To be the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, or 10 Downing Street – we know who you are. To occupy these addresses is to occupy a seat of power. When David arrived in the city of Jerusalem, I guess dubbing it the City of David was just a formality.  To occupy this city was to claim power. And it still is today, as we witness ongoing power struggles over control of this city.

But the matter of occupation and power impacts all of us, even those of us who are not kings, prime ministers, and presidents. The space you occupy means something. The space you occupy says something to the people around you. When you have the biggest house on the block, or when you have the tall-steeple church in the center of town, it says something about your importance.

Israel was flying high on that day when they took the city of Jerusalem, and for many years after. And they probably thought it would last forever, because that’s the way we tend to think. If you’re sitting on top of the world, why wouldn’t it always stay that way?

But, of course, it didn’t.

A few hundred years later they were exiled from the land altogether. Some of the tribes of Israel were beaten so severely and scattered so thoroughly that they were never reunited. They are known as the lost tribes of Israel. Others were sent to a foreign land, Babylon, where they lived as captives.  Later, they were permitted to return to Jerusalem and rebuild, but they were never again the masters of their own land. They were always in the company of one unwelcome occupier or another. By the first century CE, they were living under Roman occupation.

And so it’s interesting to me that Jesus, the descendant of King David, grew up in an occupied land, under the oppressive rule of Empire. And it’s also interesting to me that Jesus claimed no space of his own. He occupied only the space that he happened to be in at any given moment. And what’s more, he asked the same of his disciples. An interesting 180 degree turn from the glory days of King David, isn’t it? Just what, exactly changed?

The theology underpinning the books of Samuel and Kings draws a strong connection between Israel’s obedience to God and their fortunes. The covenant law holds that the foundation of the relationship between God and the people of Israel is their obedience. As long as they are obedient to God, God will be with them, and they will receive the benefits of God’s presence with them. The story says that David became greater and greater, for the Lord was with him. At other points, they tell us that Israel suffered losses because of their failure to obey God’s laws.

This passage from Samuel is affirming this theological point. Yes, David’s army was great; they had strength, ingenuity, courage, and all sorts of good qualities. But they didn’t take the city because they had good qualities. The scripture wants us to know that they took the city because God was with them. They were successful, they prospered, because God was with them. And God was with them because they were obedient to God. That is the message of Samuel.

Honestly, it is a message that probably doesn’t work for all times and places. We know full well that there are people in the world who lack goodness and compassion and humility, yet still occupy high places. They prosper because they are ruthless and greedy. I will not say that their prosperity and success is due to their godliness, or even that God has reasons for wanting them to be successful.

The story of our faith gives us more than kings, though; it also gives us prophets.  Prophets were sent to Israel, again and again, to show them the ways they had strayed and to bring them back to their God. The prophets told them in so many ways that their failures to care for the least among them was a failure that would bring them great pain and suffering. Their failures to care for the well-being of all, instead of allowing a few to prosper at the expense of the many – this would be their great failure. But did they listen?

Jesus grieved for Jerusalem, calling it “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it,” he said. He said, “Your house is left to you”; they still occupied the city on a hill. But he would not be left with them – for much longer.

How we occupy the space we occupy is the question that matters. This is a matter of spiritual occupancy.

Paul writes to the Corinthians “I once knew a man who was caught up into third heaven.” Whatever that is.

Ancient religions sometimes spoke about the layers of heaven, that there were seven levels of heaven – hence, the term seventh heaven. Apparently, there are some extra-biblical writings that speak of these levels of heaven, although I don’t know much about it, but I have read that some believed that God resides in the third heaven. So, to be co-occupants with God in the third heaven, that would be a big thing.

Scholars agree that Paul is really referring to himself, when he says, “I knew a man who went to the third heaven.” But he probably doesn’t say so because he is preaching to the Corinthians about humility. He is trying to steer them away from the so-called super-apostles who boast about their credentials, back toward himself, Paul, who has said previously that if he boasts at all he boasts only of Christ.

That if he would boast at all, he would boast of his weakness.

He would not boast of having the biggest house, the best address, the most powerful position.  He will not boast of his education or his evangelistic achievements – but only of his weakness and his need. This thorn in the flesh that was given to him, whatever it was, kept him humble, always knowing that but for the grace of God he would be nothing.

The spiritual space we occupy is what matters. This will make the difference in how we use whatever we have been given. Think about what we have: buildings, location, endowment, a long and rich heritage and countless spiritual gifts amongst us.

The question we must ask ourselves is this: How will we choose to occupy it?