Proper
13, 2015 (Year B)
Father Adam Trambley
August 2, 2015 St.John’s Sharon
In our second reading today, Paul writes to the Ephesians,
“I…beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been
called.” Paul is also speaking directly
to us, “I…beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been
called.”
Of course, we may not be clear on the calling to which we
have been called. Sometimes this language of being called gets
hyper-focused, so that it only seems to apply to people called to be priests or
called to be deacons or called to be missionaries. Then at other times, we might be asked if we
feel called to something as mundane as wiping the crumbs off the tables after
coffee hour so that some of God’s tiniest critters don’t decide to make this
their church home. But Paul here is
talking about our primary and fundamental vocation as Christians that changes
the essence of who we are, and which has concrete implications for how we live
our life.
We can look at this fundamental call that God places upon us
from a couple of different angles. The
call of Almighty God upon those of us made in his image and likeness who have
come into a relationship with his Son Jesus Christ can be talked about in terms
of Jesus’ instruction to take up our cross and follow him, or in terms of the
Great Commission to go into all the world baptizing in the name of the Father,
Son and Holy Spirit and teaching everything Jesus has said, or in terms of the
Great Commandment to love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and
soul and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself, or in a number of
other ways.
In this passage of Ephesians, Paul is talking about this
call in terms of how we are united into the one Body of Christ and what that
means for us now and for the rest of our earthly lives and for our eternal
lives. Paul emphasizes how we are now
one in Christ Jesus by talking about the unity of the Spirit in the bond of
peace, by noting that there is one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God, etc.,
and in exhorting us to build up that body.
“I…beg you,” he says, “to lead a life worthy of the calling to
which you have been called.”
Starting with the eternal aspect of our calling, which is
probably the most glorious, we need to think about the New Testament promises
of eternal life. That vision of eternal life, shown most
clearly in Revelation’s description of the New Jerusalem, is that the entire
body of believers is going to be resurrected and spend eternity with the risen
Lord Jesus. Now usually when we think
about heaven, we think about being with Jesus, or being with people that we
miss who have already died, or about a release from the pain and the struggles
of this life. All of those are important
aspects of our promise. But those pieces
won’t be the entirety of our eternal experience, because we are also going to
be with everyone else who accepted Jesus’ offer of salvation, healing and
eternal life. That heavenly company
includes at least everyone who has been baptized and wants to be forgiven of
anything that would keep them out.
Now if we are going to be the one Body of Christ that includes
all these people for all eternity, that may have some implications for how we
live our lives today. Look around you.
Everybody you see here today, you will probably be seeing for all
eternity. You’ll also probably be seeing
everyone you know from other churches, however much we may disagree with their
politics or their structure or their music or their understanding of what it
means to be a Christian. Anyone who
wants to be closer to Jesus, however messed up they are now – or however messed
up we are now – will be hanging around the heavenly Jerusalem with us for a very
long time. In a community like the
Shenango Valley, that probably also means that most of the people we see in
traffic, or at Giant Eagle, or anywhere else will be people that we will see
again in the heavenly places.
If we are going to see people forever, then that might
change how we want to treat them now.
Our goal in life is not to be the most successful, or leave the most
money for our children, or have the biggest statue built in our honor, or to
see our name up in lights, or even in stained glass. The goal of our life is to prepare ourselves
to live eternally with the rest of the Body of Christ. If you really think about it, that task is in
many ways much more difficult for us to accomplish than dying with the most
toys. Gratefully, we don’t have to
accomplish it alone. We have
instructions in scripture, as well as the Holy Spirit’s help in carrying them
out.
Paul tells us how to lead a life worthy of our calling: “with
all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,
making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Let’s look a little more deeply at these
qualities of the lives we are called to live.
With all humility. Humility is first and foremost about knowing
our place. Our place is as someone
destined for eternal life in Christ with billions of our closest friends. We can’t really conceive of what it means to
be one very special person in a billion or so, because a billion is a few more
than we can count on our fingers. Yet we
can understand that we aren’t the center of the universe or entitled to
everything we want. We are beloved
children of God, and we do need what we need, and if we trust in God, he will
provide it. But we can’t claim more than
we need in ways that interfere with the needs of the billion others who are
also God’s children. We may feel a pang
of guilt when we know that others suffered because we refused to share our
excess or that others suffered because we despoiled the environment rather than
care for it. Keeping in mind that many
of those who suffer when we are greedy or thoughtless will be in heaven with us,
and that we will meet them someday, might keep us more mindful of how much we
are or are not entitled to now.
Paul continues, with
all gentleness. If everyone we meet
is hopefully destined for eternity with us, than we should be careful with
them. People aren’t disposable, to be
replaced when we wear them out. Some level
of the scars from this life stay with us, as shown by Jesus offering his hands
and side to his disciples when he came back from the dead. Certainly Jesus heals us as he prepares us
for eternity, but our job is really not to give Jesus more healing work of that
to do. Instead, we should be thinking of
how much we can manage to protect and care for one another as if they were
really little children of God. When we
deal with little children, we do our best to absorb any blows we see coming
their way, putting our hands in place, just in case, as they walk by the coffee
table or come too close to the stove. When
we hold them, we are careful not to shake or jostle or scratch them. This attitude is the same one we should have
for our brothers and sisters in Christ, not thinking of what we need from them,
but thinking about how we can use our own strengths and gifts to make their
lives easier and better. This attitude
starts, of course, with those who are close to us, whom we often have the
hardest time being gentle with, and it extends to people that are basically
strangers to us, whom we often do care enough to be gentle with.
Then Paul says with
patience. Patience is hard for us. One of the ways to think about patience in
this context is to recognize that God is in the midst of preparing those around
us for eternal life, and that we should act as if we expect God’s work to be
successful. We just might be able to
give a little more grace to those around us if we think about them as someone
that God the great potter is shaping into a more incredible and wondrous vessel
of his glory because, in fact, God is doing just that. Often we lose patience with people either
because we feel like they are stuck where they are and we are just done dealing
with them, or because we feel like we are responsible to change them and try to
push them into whatever better behavior we believe they need to have. But no one, including you and I, thanks be to
God, is going to be just like we are for eternity. God has some work to do with each of us, and,
to my knowledge, he hasn’t delegated to any of us the responsibility to fix
everyone else. When see that God is in
the midst of healing and redeeming people, all we need to do is patiently love
them. And God will help us do that.
Paul continues bear
with one another in love. To live
into this is almost the flip side of patience.
Patience comes as we recognize God at work in other people. Being able to bear with one another in love
comes as we trust God is at work in us, giving us strength and whatever else we
need. Without God, we can’t bear with
one another in love, because too often love involves real sacrifices. Patience with others means that we might have
to deal with people’s issues beyond the tolerance of our own small-heartedness. Gentleness means that we might need to take
some knocks for somebody else when we feel beat up ourselves. Humility means we may have to sacrifice some
things that are important to us because others need them more. We can’t do any of that unless we know that
God will give us the strength, the energy, the focus, the material and
emotional and spiritual resources, and anything else we need. But with the confidence that God is working
through us and preparing us for eternal life and that every sacrifice we make
now will be an occasion of great joy and celebration with the people we have
made them for in heaven—with that confidence we can live lead a life worth of
the calling to which we have been called.
Paul ends this sentence saying, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of
peace. We could parse out these
rather weighty sounding theological ideas, and I’d be happy to talk with anyone
about them. But the point here is the
same as the rest of the qualities we have been talking about. We are all destined to spend eternity in
heaven with most of the people we will encounter on a daily basis. Every interaction we have with people now
should be undertaken with a view toward building up our never-ending relationships
with them. When we approach people with
that mindset, we will build up the body of Christ around us, prepare ourselves
and others for life in the New Jerusalem, and lead lives worth of the calling
to which we have been called in Jesus Christ our Lord.
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