{"id":265,"date":"2012-08-05T17:05:56","date_gmt":"2012-08-05T22:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/?p=265"},"modified":"2017-10-26T22:20:32","modified_gmt":"2017-10-27T03:20:32","slug":"sermon-grace-and-gifts-august-5-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/2012\/08\/05\/sermon-grace-and-gifts-august-5-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Sermon: Grace and Gifts August 5, 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

Text:\u00a0 Ephesians 4:1-16<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Our friend, the Rev. Dr. A. Guy Waldrop, retired general minister of the Christian Church in Kentucky, says that he believes that the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is at the tipping point of irrelevancy.\u00a0 I admonish him by noting that it is not just our denomination, but virtually all of the historic denominations of the Protestant Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church, and even Christianity itself.\u00a0\u00a0 Perhaps that is shocking to you, but I suspect, because you are here, and not at Southland Christian Church this morning, that you already had intimations of the truth of the assertion of\u00a0 proximate irrelevancy that both Guy and I are making.<\/p>\n

The reasons for our near irrelevancy are relatively clear:\u00a0 too many Christians cannot articulate with clarity, reason, and persuasiveness, just what it is that the faith has to offer. \u00a0\u00a0Too many churches and too many people are stuck with a fifth grade Sunday School set of ideas, that they can no longer describe, much less suggest might have any persuasiveness in the modern world.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Pollsters tell us quite regularly that \u00a0young adults\u00a0 are abandoning Christianity because they are turned off by the versions of it, most often now presented as the face of Christianity in the media,\u00a0 that seem to be opposed to reason, opposed to science, narrow-minded, dogmatically rigid, judgmental, bigoted, and exclusivist.<\/p>\n

Into this context, the words of Paul in the letter known as Ephesians \u00a0may have some wisdom to offer us, and some hope.<\/p>\n

First<\/strong>, note that Paul writes from prison.\u00a0 It is worth noting that Paul stood for something over against the status quo of existing religiosity and secular power, rather than trying to get along by going along. But note also, that he says he is a \u201cprisoner in the Lord\u201d, which is to say that his heart, soul, and very life are captive to Jesus, and like any prisoner, must obey the one who rules his life.<\/p>\n

Second<\/strong>, we also should remember that stays in prison, or a place on the edges of culture can often hone and deepen understanding of the human condition and give insights for hope.\u00a0 Letters from captivity, such as Ephesians or Philippians in scripture, or like Martin Luther King, Jr.\u2019s Letter from a Birmingham Jail<\/em>; or Dietrich Bonhoeffer\u2019s Letters and Papers from Prison; <\/em>or Viktor Frankl\u2019s book, Man\u2019s Search for Meaning, <\/em> derived from his time in a Nazi concentration camp, are all profound meditations on the meaning of faith in critical times in the life of an individual or a culture.\u00a0 Many spiritual awakenings happen in jails, which is why I hope, on one of our Moment for Mission Sundays we will be able to hear about the Disciples of Christ congregation inside Luther Luckett Correctional facility in LaGrange.<\/p>\n

Third, in the very first sentence, Paul pairs the words, \u201ccalled\u201d and \u201ccalling\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 The readers are reminded of the grace of God to touch their lives, no\u2014more, to invade their lives\u2014with a sense that there is something sacred, holy, that shapes us and that connects us to Being itself; a sacred power calling out to us to be in relationship with holiness itself, whom we call God.<\/p>\n

There are, we must admit, many people who don\u2019t seem to have a religious bone in their bodies, or who, for whatever reason, seem not to have a sense of the sacred mystery at the heart of life.\u00a0 They don\u2019t feel \u201ccalled\u201d. Such folks strike us as callous; as self-centered; and lacking in empathy.\u00a0 They have no qualms about taking salaries, for example that are 500-600 times greater than their employees; or maybe they feel entitled to a little adultery or hanky-panky with their travel allowances; or perhaps they are inclined to think that the people around them, their families for instance, can\u2019t be happy and healthy, unless they are first happy, whatever that means.\u00a0\u00a0 By contrast, I\u2019m inclined to think that happiness derives from a sense of being loved and being an integral and worthy part of a community more than from what we have, or what we think we are able to do. \u00a0They may, perhaps, even think that their lives, and their successes are entirely self-made.<\/p>\n

I loved David Brooks\u2019 \u00a0New York Times column on Thursday, where he responded fictitiously to \u201cconfused in Columbus\u201d who wrote that he had built a successful business, and found conflicting comments about his success coming from the two presidential candidates.\u00a0 \u201cHow much of my success is me, and how much of my success comes from forces outside of me?\u201d wrote \u201cConfused in Columbus\u201d to Mr. Brooks.\u00a0 The last line in that essay revealed Mr. Brooks\u2019 sense of grace when he wrote:\u00a0 \u201cAs an ambitious executive, it\u2019s important that you believe that you will deserve credit for everything you achieve.\u00a0 As a human being, it\u2019s important for you to know that\u2019s nonsense.\u201d\u00a0 [Brooks, David.\u00a0 \u201cThe Credit Illusion\u201d.\u00a0 New York Times, <\/em>Aug. 2, 2012]<\/p>\n

Grace, you see,\u00a0 is that power, that mysterious action of God, that reminds us that we can\u2019t make it alone; that we stumble; that we are part and parcel of families and communities that shape us; that there is a holiness about everything that if we ignore, will leave us in hell.<\/p>\n

An awareness that one\u2019s life has not merely been touched by occasions of grace\u2014of being loved in spite of one\u2019s errors and selfishness\u2014but that life is embued from beginning to end with grace\u2014provides certain other attitudes that branch off of grace:\u00a0 humility and gentleness, patience, a willingness to bear with others in philia<\/em>, love\u2014as of a brother or sister, a member of one\u2019s family\u2014and a willingness to maintain \u201cunity\u201d in the bond of peace.\u00a0 These characteristics represent the core behaviors related to the concept of civility.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been reading Stephen L. Carter\u2019s marvelous 1996 book, Civility. <\/em>Carter suggests that civility requires two behaviors, which must also be inward attitudes:\u00a0 first, a willingness to sacrifice something of the self for the sake of relationship with the other; and second, generosity, which is a forbearing spirit of kindliness toward others.\u00a0\u00a0 Carter\u2019s arguments for civility sound very much like the Apostle Paul\u2019s statements about the sort of \u201clives\u201d those of us who have been touched, or more deeply, have been made captive to the notion of holy grace, are called to live.\u00a0 In the same vein, persons who have \u201cmanners\u201d\u2014like those our parents tried to instill in us\u2014are known as \u201cgracious\u201d people.<\/p>\n

Fourth<\/strong> comment about this text:\u00a0 Paul has begun his epistle with a statement of belief that the intention of God, or we might say the holiness at\u00a0 the heart of being, is that all things in heaven and earth might all be gathered up into Christ.\u00a0 To clarify what that might mean in more modern language, I suggest that Paul believes that in Jesus a model is offered to the whole world for hope\u2014hope for forgiveness, hope for human unity and peace, that we all are \u201cjustified by grace\u201d, and not by our works, our good deeds, our successes.\u00a0 It is grace by which we receive wisdom and grace that gives us hope.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0So in verse 6 of chapter 4, Paul notes that there is but one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all\u2014a statement of the universality of holiness, whatever metaphors, or persons, may be used to express that sacred power.<\/p>\n

Now in this fourth chapter, Paul turns towards the implications of that for our ethical and moral lives, attitudes, and behaviors.\u00a0 In effect, Paul says in this letter that we are all pilgrims on the way, the holy way, and that we journey toward that holy vision of the world that Christ offers as we journey in the way, the pattern of Christ.<\/p>\n

Because we are \u201ccalled\u201d by this holy grace we call God, we have \u201ccallings\u201d, that is gifts to offer one another, the church, and the world.\u00a0 They are gifts to \u201cequip the saints\u201d, that is to build up this body of Christ, Paul\u2019s way of expressing what the church, the ecclesia was supposed to be, that is Christs for each other in the community and for the world\u2014or, in the language of Jesus and his Jewish mindset\u2014the kingdom of God in the world until all humanity comes to an awareness of our dependency on one another, our need for tolerance and forbearance, for gentleness and kindness.\u00a0 \u201cWe must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people\u2019s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.\u00a0 But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

So to conclude: \u00a0just here is the word of wisdom and hope for the impending irrelevancy of Christianity, and it is THE word that our our Disciples of Christ forbears captured so remarkably in the 19th<\/sup> century, that made us by 1930s one the fastest growing denomination in the country.\u00a0 Now, of course, we have fewer members of our churches than we did in the 1870s.\u00a0\u00a0 What our Disciples of Christ founders knew was that doctrines and moral codes were not central, could NEVER be central, but that we should have \u201cno creed but Christ\u201d, which is to say that Jesus, whom we call the Christ\u2014the Savior\u2014saves by offering us the WAY to live, the TRUTH about life, and the only LIFE that makes sense in a world where each of us is an alien, an other, a stranger.<\/p>\n

If we want to move back to relevancy, we need to recapture what our forbears in the 19th<\/sup> century had come to understand:\u00a0 living the life as patterned for us by Jesus is central, and doing so gives us faith and hope in this life and for whatever life there is to come.\u00a0 And second, they were convinced that a learned, articulate, studious, biblically knowledgeable laity\u2014alongside a learned clergy\u2014who utilize reason, coupled with careful study of scripture using all the tools of modern scholarship\u2014are necessary for the church to be that body, that organization which will offer hope, insight, meaning, unity, and, yes, civility, to a barbarian world.\u00a0 We must grow up, the Apostle Paul wrote, into him who is the head, into Christ.\u00a0 We cannot be satisfied to let someone else do our thinking, our believing for us.\u00a0 We must be those who set aside our fifth grade concepts of God and Jesus and Scripture.\u00a0 We must be those who use the minds God gave us to understand the world and the many sacred scriptures of humankind.\u00a0 We must be those who can articulate what we believe, and why we believe it.\u00a0 Not for the sake of our little church, our little denomination, or even for the sake of the Christian religion, but for the sake of the world that it might be built up in love and peace at last.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach us was given grace\u2026he gave gifts to his people\u2026to equip the saints for the work of ministry (a word that means service or servant leadership),\u2026until all (meaning all humanity) come to \u2026the measure of the full stature of Christ.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Grace and gifts.\u00a0 We have them.\u00a0 Let\u2019s use them.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Text:\u00a0 Ephesians 4:1-16 Our friend, the Rev. Dr. A. Guy Waldrop, retired general minister of the Christian Church in Kentucky, says that he believes that the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is at the tipping point of irrelevancy.\u00a0 I admonish<\/p>\n

\"Share<\/a>Share on Facebook<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":541,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions\/541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}