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"Riches and Mystery"
This morning’s second reading from Ephesians, as was the reading last week from Colossians, is about the church. Last week, we heard about what God intends for the church as the holy and beloved – to be clothed with love, gratitude, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience and forgiveness. This week Ephesians takes us a step further to say that, as holy and beloved, we have a purpose, a special and significant purpose. This week Ephesians says that it is the church’s purpose to make known to all God’s wisdom - the wisdom revealed in the riches and mystery of Christ.
Many of us may be much more interested in talking about what scripture has to say about our lives than the purpose of the church. We may be more interested in knowing how to cope as Christians with our own lives – lives that are demanding, complicated, sometimes painful, often confusing. Well, first, the honest truth is that most of scripture isn’t about our individual lives. It isn’t about our problems as individuals. Most scripture is about God’s plan – God’s reconciling purpose for all creation, God’s heartfelt desire that all peoples be united together in God’s love. Second, however, the comforting truth is that the more we live connected together by God’s purpose, the more we will be able to deal with all that goes on in our individual lives in this demanding, complex world. So, at least for a moment, let’s trust that God’s plan and the well-being of our individual lives are connected, and let’s have a look at what the scripture for today is saying to us as the church. Before the word church is used in our text from Ephesians, the verses talk first about bringing to the Gentiles – a way of saying to all peoples - "the boundless riches of Christ" making everyone see the "the plan of mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things" (3:8-9). In other words, the text is saying that Christ makes it now clear that God has always loved all creation. Then the text goes on to say it is explicitly "through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might be made known . . . in accordance with the eternal purpose that [God] has carried out in Christ Jesus, our Lord, in whom we have access to God in boldness and confidence through faith in him" (3:10-12). The riches are God’s love; the mystery is that God’s love is to be
available to all people. The role of the church is to spread the riches,
to share the good news, sometimes in what it says, always in what it does.
It’s a two-fold message: A pastor from Kenya described the good news of God’s love that goes unshared as being like a cup of decaffeinated coffee. He said of both - the decaf coffee and the unshared good news – they have no punch or power. The punch and power of the good news is recovered when, in this pastor’s words, "we let the love of God flow through us into our communities, our neighborhoods, and into the world, with a passion to ‘turn the world upside-down’ . . . with a passion to build a world where there is no slave and free, no Jew and Gentile, where people are one . . . ." [i] The church is holding a cup of coffee brewed especially by God that has the punch and power to change the world. Yet, we loose that punch and power when we don’t share it. When we don’t share "the boundless riches of Christ" (Eph. 3:8), the good news looses its punch and power for the world; it looses its punch and power for our individual lives. From the earliest church meeting as small groups in individual houses to today’s global church meeting everywhere from grass huts to grand cathedrals, God looks to the church to take seriously the power of God’s plan for the world and to take seriously the church’s role in making the plan of God’s love for all known. Certainly, we all can readily find too many instances, now and through the years, when the church has failed to get the plan right – in fact when the church has gotten it very, very wrong. The church isn’t now and never has been perfect. And, the more it strays from its heart, the more the church will get it wrong. We need to stay focused on what gives us life. Our life-giving heart is Jesus. Our heart, our core is Jesus. It is by staying true to that core that we deal with our lives as individuals, and we find hope for changing the world. In down to earth terms, in fact in rural Georgia terms, Will Willimon talked about this core in the story he told about his first church. Willimon, as some of you know, during his life contributed in many ways to the church. He was bishop of the United Methodist Church, Dean of the Duke Chapel and pastor of several churches in both Georgia and South Carolina. It was his first church in Georgia, however, that he used as the example of a church that had really gotten God’s plan wrong. Willimon said that he knew something was wrong when he first arrived at the church door and found a large chain and padlock put there by the local sheriff after a rather heated board meeting. Things had gotten so heated that board members, or elders in Presbyterian parlance, had begun removing things they’d given to the church over the years – a pew here, a podium there, some carpet here. Willimon could do nothing to change that church during his tenure, but several years after he left the church, he heard that something had happened to change it. This small, rural church just began to get it right – a free day care, outreach to needy families, a membership open to all races – one of the few in Georgia, at that time, by the way. Willimon said he thought that what had happened was – of course not the fact that he had left the church – what Willimon said had happened was what I’m calling a return to the core. Willimon called it an intrusion of the Living Christ. Willimon concluded from the experience of this transformed rural church that "[c]hurch isn’t my hard work, [it isn’t] your earnest effort, [or even] our long range planning [although I’ll add that these do have their place and are important] . . . Church is a gift, a visitation, an intrusion of the Living Christ standing among us." [ii] Church, any church, when it’s getting it right, experiences the Living Christ standing right smack, dab in the middle of it. In more scriptural terms, again in the words from Colossians last week, the church, when it’s getting it right, is where "the peace of Christ rules in [its] heart (3:15). The church, when it’s getting it right, knows that it is united in God’s love with all people, all nations and that its purpose is to share this good news. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached this to the world from his jail cell in Birmingham when he said, "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny."[iii] And, he knew as we know that this single garment of destiny is God’s love for all through Jesus Christ. Quite a vision, quite a dream that the world is inextricably tied together, that the world is undeniably bound together in God’s love. Yet, this is God’s vision, this is God’s dream, this is God’s wisdom made known in Jesus. And, God means for the church to lead the way. Where do we start? Again, we start, and sometimes we start over and over again, by focusing on our core. As Willimon suggested, we let the gift happen, we, the church, create a place where "the Living Christ" is always standing among us, right in the middle of all we do. [iv] And, sometimes, loosing ground, sometime gaining ground in our efforts to stay focused on our core, the church tries to go forward on the journey to being as God intends us and for the world to be. We go forward empowered by God through each other. We go forward together as the church both far and near – here in Lexington, in West Virginia, in Mississippi, in Malawi, to name just a few places where Second has formed partnerships with other churches. The church goes forward depending on each other as we try to model the oneness in love God intends for all. On the front of the bulletin are two quotes – one from the church 2000 years ago and one from the church just a few years ago. In the first quote, Paul writes to the church in Rome centuries ago and says,
In the second quote, the PC(USA)’s Stated Clerk, Clifton Kirkpatrick, told the church in 1998 at a conference on global mission how small the world really was,
It’s a tough world and the vision of a world united in love most often seems like only a dream. Yet, it is God’s dream, it is God’s reality, and it is the purpose of the church to share in that reality. We may not, and probably, will never see the dream fully realized in our or in any mortal life time. God, however, has called us, as the church, to be a part of that vision here and now. And, as we begin to live in God’s vision, in small and big ways, we will be living in the midst of the eternal purpose that God has for all our lives, and we will find it somehow easier to live the lives we each have been given. This morning we come again to the table God has prepared for us. This morning let’s come to the Lord’s table with special awareness that we come together, as the church, that we come together with a vision that we all, near and far, are united in God’s love. Let’s come knowing that we come with others one block or thousands of miles away. We come arm in arm throughout the world to share the same bread, the same cup, the same love for all of us made known in Jesus Christ. Come the table is ready. And, as we will in a moment sing, come with joy. Come with joy knowing that the love that made us makes us one. All glory and thanks be to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit now and forevermore. _________________ |
Darla
Blatnik