Sermon for April 21st, 2024
Ephesians 4:1-32
1I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, 5one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
7 But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. 8Therefore it is said, ‘When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive; he gave gifts to his people.’ 9(When it says, ‘He ascended’, what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? 10He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.) 11The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, 12to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.
14We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. 15But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.
17 Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds. 18They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart. 19They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20That is not the way you learned Christ! 21For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. 22You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, 23and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
25 So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. 26Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27and do not make room for the devil. 28Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labour and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. 29Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. 30And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. 31Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, 32and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.
United We Stand, Part IV
Many of you already know that before I was a pastor, I worked for several years as a high school English teacher. But you probably didn't know that even before that, I tried a variety of different vocations. For example...
I got a job in an orange juice factory, but I got canned... because I couldn’t concentrate. I got a job working for a pool maintenance company, but the work was just too draining. I got a job as a lumberjack, but I just couldn’t hack it, so they gave me the axe. I got a job as a tailor, but I wasn’t suited for it... mainly because it was a so-so job. I got a job in a muffler factory but that was too exhausting. I got a job as a fisherman, but discovered that I couldn’t live on my net income. I got a job as an archaeologist...and before long, my career was in ruins.
I got fired at my job as a psychic. Man, I did not see that coming. I got fired as a yoga instructor. And I bent over backwards for those people! I got fired from my job as a personal trainer: they said I wasn’t fit for the job. I got fired from my job as an investment manager, because I starting losing interest.
I quit my job working for Nike. Just couldn’t do it anymore. I quit my job at the helium factory. I refused to be spoken to in that tone! I quit my job as a dentist... it was like pulling teeth! I quit my job as a historian, because there was no future in it.
I wanted to be a computer programmer, but I couldn’t hack it. I wanted to be a civil engineer, but I burned too many bridges. I wanted to be a photographer, but nothing ever developed. I wanted to be a barber, but I just couldn’t cut it. I wanted to become a doctor, but I didn’t have the patience.
I didn’t like my job as a waiter. But at least I was putting food on the table. I thought I did a good job as an attorney, but the jury’s still out. I considered a job in telemarketing, but it just wasn’t my calling.
Today I want to ask the question: What is YOUR calling? In your vocation, in your community, in this church, and in the world?
The Apostle Paul, in verse 1 of our scripture passage, implores his readers to "lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called." And there are two important implications in that statement: First, that each one of you has been called to a specific task, a specific purpose, a part of God's plan, in this world. It MAY be related to your vocation--the thing you do for a living, in order to put food on the table, but then again it may not. Gandhi was a lawyer. Jesus was a carpenter. The Apostle Paul made tents for a living...but all three of them were called by God to OTHER purposes in the life of their communities.
God has called YOU to a specific purpose in this life. And the second implication of Paul's words in verse 1, "to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called" is that your actions, your words, your behavior--on a daily basis--can either live up to that calling, or they can fall short. And the ways in which you are most likely to "rise up" to your calling or "fall short" of it may actually surprise you. According to the scriptures, it's probably not what you think. It's not about success or failure in the ways we have all been taught to think.
For the past three weeks, we have been working through Paul's letter to the Ephesian church. And if you've paid attention... or even if you just look at the cover of your bulletin today, you already know that a key theme (the MAIN theme) of his letter is UNITY. Paul uses the word "unity" again in verse 3, then hammers it home in verses 4-6: There is ONE body and ONE Spirit, just as you were called to the ONE hope of your calling, ONE Lord, ONE faith, ONE baptism, ONE God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
That's seven ONEs, just in case you weren't counting--a nice, holy and biblical number to make his point.
BUT! And that's exactly how Paul begins verse 7, so you know something's coming down the pike here. BUT, Paul says, "each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift." That sounds really nice, but let me translate for you what Paul is REALLY saying. He just finished talking about how we're all supposed to be ONE unified, cohesive body working together... BUT... some of you seem to thing that you are are exempt from that because of the special role (your individual calling and gift)that God gave to you.
Paul elaborates in verse 11: "The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers." Contrary to the way this verse is often read, Paul is not recruiting, or laying out nice options here, saying "YOU might be a prophet, YOU might be a pastor, YOU might be a teacher..." We know from his other writings and from the book of Acts that these are positions, vocations, offices that were already beginning to emerge in the earliest days of the church... and people were FIGHTING about them! As in, "Well, I'm a pastor, so I'm more important than you teachers... Oh yeah? Well I'm an APOSTLE (like Paul!), so clearly I outrank you in the church! Oh really? Well I'm an evangelist, and you wouldn't even HAVE a church without me!"
I'm special. I'm MORE important than anyone else!
And far off in his Roman prison cell, Paul has gotten word that the Ephesian church, which he planted, is fragmenting into pieces over the gifts and the calling that God has graciously given them, of all things. So he writes to them and says, in effect, STOP IT! The whole reason God gives you ANY gift, ANY calling, is (verse 12-13) "to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until ALL OF US come to the UNITY of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to MATURITY, to the measure of the full stature of Christ."
If your God-given calling, your gift, your vocation, your position is something you use primarily to your own advantage, for your own benefit, or for the benefit of a select few in your life--even if it makes you successful in the eyes of the world--you are still falling short of God's plan and God's purpose for your life.
But if you use that gift, that calling, to bring people together, to build someone up, to drag someone over the finish line who couldn't have made it on their own--then even when the world calls you a failure, know that God is rejoicing and all heaven is cheering you on.
Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. That's not an exhaustive list of all vocations--inside or outside of the church. Elsewhere, Paul mentions plenty of others, and even those lists aren't meant to be exhaustive. The point is not WHAT you do (for a living, or in answer to God's call), it's WHO you do it for. The world says "do it for yourself." But Jesus says "do it for the least of these, my brothers and sisters, and you will be doing it for me."
In the second half of chapter four, beginning in verse 14, Paul tells his readers to "grow up." Literally. He says "we must no longer be children . . . we must grow up in every way." And he goes back to his metaphor of the church as a human body, "joined and knitted together by every ligament"--which, if you think about it, means that we all have to grow together, simultaneously and connected to each other. Imagine what it would look like if you had 10-year-old legs, 30-year-old arms, and a 70-year-old head on a 3-year-old-torso. Weird, right? And probably completely unviable. So too with the church, if everyone is doing their own thing, going at their own pace, not participating in the life of the community. We'd be a disastrous mess.
Paul describes that mess--futile, licentious, greedy, impure, corrupt and deluded by lust--and then he contrasts it with the picture of a renewed life, a new self, created according to the likeness of God. In other words, when a community starts to come together, when everyone is using their vocation and talents for God's purposes, we (the community) AND we (the individuals) actually start to resemble God. Let me say that in a slightly different way--when you are working WITH others and FOR others, IN the purpose God has called you to, you (plural, ya'll) look like Heaven on Earth to people who don't even believe in heaven.
Paul ends chapter four with some intensely practical advice, starting in verse 25:
- Be at least as honest with other people as you are with yourself.
- If you have to get angry, don't let that anger carry over for more than a day;
- Don't allow any space for evil in your life; fill it up with good.
- Don't steal, but instead work hard. Why? So that you can amass wealth? No, so that you can help others not to have a reason to steal.
- Don't use your words to put someone else down, only to build them up.
- You are marked by God's Spirit (think like a t-shirt or a tattoo on your forehead) so don't do anything to embarrass the name you are wearing.
- Don't argue or be hateful or mean to anyone; instead be kind and forgiving, because you're going to need forgiveness someday too.
Were you counting that time?
