Sermon – Pent 10 – Year B –
2 August 2015
Grace to you and peace from
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
The text for this meditation
is written in the 4th Chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians:
Verses 1 - 6
1 As a prisoner for the Lord,
then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 Be
completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make
every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There
is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were
called; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God
and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
In my experience, the best job you ever had, didn’t
come with the best pay packet. Also the best church experience you ever
had didn’t have the best music. Most likely your best relationship experience
wasn’t necessarily with the most visually attractive person. Think about
it; what makes a job great and a particular church great and a relationship
great? It’s not just the pay or the presentation; it’s the people. To be more precise, it is the harmony between you and
the people involved, that makes the acquaintance develop into something
special, something enjoyable and bonding. Such a relationship is
priceless.
On the other hand, division is devastating. Did
you ever enjoy school, but feared attending because of the kids in your
class? Has the joy of celebrating Christmas with your family been
diminished because of senseless tensions between members of the family? Did
you ever choose to work overtime because you get along better with a laptop
than with your spouse? Friends, have you ever left a gathering of
Christians, a gathering of worship and prayer, with a knot in your belly
because of how those Christians made you feel? I can attest you can be in
a Bible study with other Christians, regardless of denomination, and be
miserable if there is a lack of unity. Division poisons our best
experiences and robs us of so many blessings.
God wants more
than that for us. Our Heavenly Father knows us
well, He knows our failings, and He is passionate that this gift of unity that
originates from Him is embraced by us that our life may be full. God compels
us with words like Romans 12, “As far as it depends on you, live at peace
with everybody,” and Matthew 5, “If your brother has something against
you, go and reconcile,” and Psalm 133, “How good and pleasant it is when
brothers live together in unity.” God knows how good and pleasant
church and school and marriage and family and work and life are when we deal
with our divisions and pursue unity. In our text for this meditation, our
Triune God offers us a guide to unity.
In St. Paul’s words in Ephesians 4, “As a prisoner
for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have
received.” He is calling for a shift in our thinking. Through
Paul, God is about to lay out the pattern for the Christian life. However,
before God calls us to live, He reminds us exactly of what we’ve
received. A calling; and what a big and beautiful calling that is.
In Christ, every Christian is more blessed and chosen by God, blameless in His
sight, forgiven of sin, and heirs of heaven’s riches. In Christ, every
Christian has the Father advocating for their eternal good with our problems
under the feet of King Jesus. In Christ, we are spiritually alive and
saved by grace through faith. In Christ, we are God’s masterpieces,
created to do good works. In Christ, we are united with God because Jesus’
death and resurrection tore down the barrier between the Father and us.
In Christ, we know God’s love is wide and high and long and deep. He
loves us this much! This is not who we will be if we keep these commands. This is what we are now because of Jesus.
So, in this text, we are called to be what we are. We are loved, so we
love. We are forgiven, so we forgive. God pursued unity with us, so
we pursue unity with each other. That’s a life worthy of our calling.
How does the Holy Scriptures lead us in pursuing
unity? Verse 2, “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing
with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the
Spirit through the bond of peace.” Make every effort; every last
thing we could possibly do to be united with him, her, and them; do it.
Every conversation we could start, every phone call we could make, every
apology we could offer, every opinion we could try to understand, every sin we
could forgive, every everything humanly possible, do it. God through Paul
compels us to make every effort to “keep the unity of the Spirit” because
unity needs to be kept, guarded, protected, like a priceless jewel that the
Evil One’s thieves are trying to snatch, destroy, replace with division. Satan’s
thieves are named indifference, insensitivity, contempt, opinionated, selfishness,
stubbornness, prejudice, disrespect. Every day, they plan to undermine
our unity and rob us of God’s priceless gift.
Our Creator and Commander orders us to “guard the unity,” When I was a Combat
Soldier on Guard Duty, I had to know what I was guarding, just where to look!
As Christians, our area of responsibility is deep within us. We must
watch for tension, patrol for cold shoulders, fake smiles, mock hugs and mumbled
words. We shine the flashlight into our hearts and check for bitterness
or resentment. Unity is too valuable to take for granted. We must
guard and keep it.
If someone shouted, “Hey! That man is taking your child!”
what would we do? Say “Hang on I’m on Facebook right now!” Or “I
cant run, I have heels on.”? No! We would drop everything at any
time and sprint to save our child, so precious and valuable. God holds
something ‘precious and valuable’ as well - it is unity and it is
precious. It is worth sprinting and sweating and tearing hamstrings to
save. God says, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit.”
Drop everything right now and do it. Jesus even taught that if you are in
church and remember your brother is not united with you, walk out and make
every effort. Unity is too valuable to do anything less.
So, why is unity is so scarce? If God is
so passionate and clear about this, why are our families and classrooms and
churches sometimes filled with division? Why don’t we just deal with the
disunity in accordance with the Holy Scriptures? The answer is
simple: Humility hurts.
I am a veteran of obstacle courses – Most of the
courses I have endured are designed by merciless people who enjoy making people
suffer. They usually start with walls and ropes and mud, but end up leading you
down to ground level where you crawl on your belly and on to sub terrain
tunnels that are almost too small to crawl through. You lose skin, become
bruised and bent, and although you are hurting beyond all imagination you keep
going because you can see the other side and the chance to rest and recuperate.
Unity is an obstacle course. To get from the
tension here to the unity there, hurts. Starting
conversations with people who’ve hurt you will knot your stomach. Just
looking them in the eye will rip open old wounds. Apologising for the 2%
that was your fault won’t feel right, since 98% was theirs. Suppressing
the feeling that they need to say sorry first will kill you inside. There
is no way around it. Humility hurts. Perhaps the only thing that
hurts worse is spending years without peace.
Humility is painful, but it is our calling: “Be
completely humble.” Not just mildly humble. Completely! When
there’s tension, this means assuming maybe we don’t understand the whole
story, assuming maybe we are part of the problem and aren’t aware of it,
assuming maybe our opinion might not be right. To be completely humble
means starting the conversation and then spending more time listening to their
points than pounding home ours. To be “gentle and patient, bearing
with one another in love.” Be patient, (which the proud never
are), not expecting others to grovel and beg for your forgiveness.
Don’t expect others to react perfectly. Bear with their human nature
(possibly their selfishness and faulty memory of their sins). We humble
ourselves, own up to what we did wrong, ask for forgiveness, and make every
effort to reconcile.
Sin always pushes us apart and the obstacles of pride keep us there.
The only way to be united is to bow down in humility, to get on your hands and
knees, to crawl through the dirt, and come to the only place where unity is
possible. Like an obstacle course, this will not be easy, but it is
necessary. Without this approach there can be no reconciliation. You
see, your antagonist will have to humble themselves as well, either in
forgiving you or in confessing their own sin. If there is mutual humility,
unity is reborn. Mutual humility always precedes unity. There is no
unity without mutual humility.
The cross towering above Christian Churches and
Christian Alters are no coincidence. You see, the calling we have
received comes from a Saviour who
defined humility. Jesus humbled himself. To unite God with sinners,
Jesus had to endure his own obstacle course…and He did. The Son of God
took on human flesh and crawled down into a backwoods village called
Bethlehem. Jesus became a man, a breakable, scratchable, bruisable,
man. He got hurt. Up the skull-shaped hill to his cross, Jesus
crawled. But Jesus crawled. The Son of God stooped down and scraped
his way up to unite himself with us. Our pride separated us from God, so
God himself got down. God crawled in the dirt not once but twice, at his
birth and at his death, not just to meet us in the middle but also to embrace
us in our pride. God humbled himself to be united with us! God made
every effort that we may always be reconciled with Him.
This is the calling we have received. And now we live worthy of that
calling this is a true story (name changed) – I wish it were mine:
“…I felt sick as I stared at her number. It had
been years since our final conversation, which was filled with bitterness,
hurt, and misunderstanding. To be honest, I thought it was her
fault. She thought it was mine. But Thursday, God shouted into my
conscience, “Who cares about right? Be righteous. Be reconciled.”
So I called. Of course, she wasn’t home, so I had to call twice.
“Hey, this is Michael. I know we haven’t talked in a long time. But
I wanted to tell you I’m sorry. I wasn’t gentle with you or patient or
humble. Although we have different opinions about things, that’s no
excuse for what I did. I’m sorry.” She forgave me. I hung up
the phone, feeling so…different. And then I stared at the next number…and
felt sick…and prayed as the phone rang. Humility is hard…but it leads to
something beautiful.”
Friends in Christ, we don’t have to make the same mistake,
spending years living with that anxiety and tension and pride. By God’s
grace and calling, we can embrace humility today, we can achieve our Calling of
unity and reconciliation! Can we? Can we talk to our wife? Can
we call our brother? Can we apologise for broken relationships? Can
we address the awkwardness with our classmate? We may not be best friends
again. We may not get back together, but maybe we’ll live at peace.
Our Father in Heaven compels us to make every effort. The joy of unity is
too beautiful not to. “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you
were called to one hope when you were called—one Lord, one faith, one baptism;
one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”
Amen.
The grace and love of God that is beyond all human
understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen
Merv James
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