Ephesians 4:11-16
And God’s gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Child of God, to mature adulthood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;
So that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of people, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into the one who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love.
This morning begins the first sermon in a series I’m doing this summer on Spiritual Practices. It’s a follow up to a sermon I preached a couple months ago based on Marcus Borg’s book, The Heart of Christianity – about the way….dying to an old identity or way of being (appearance, achievement, affluence) and rising to a new identity or way of being centered in God/Christ/the Spirit. Spiritual Practices are ways we can midwife and live out the way.
Dying and being raised to new life is about living from the inside out….having God’s loving, grace filled spirit fill and liberate us from those “damned” voices of society, culture, family and church – that criticize us and others – harshly, relentlessly, ungracefully on:
how you should be,
how you should look, how much you should make,
how successful you should be.
Living your life, not from the outside in…but from the inside out….is discovering or re-discovering, not just once, but again and again, deeper within you - God’s spirit of wisdom, love and grace.
Spiritual practices have been underemphasized in much of Christianity, with orthodox Christianity often focused on belief, not practice. Protestantism talks about being saved by faith, not works, and to many, spiritual practices sound like works.
However Spiritual Practices are being re-discovered; practices that deepen our relationship with God – as we come to know God more deeply through self, others, creation, mystery.
Today I begin with the spiritual practice of community.
Why are we here this morning? To worship God….we could do that outside under a tree. Some people say they do it on a golf course or lake. We could spend an hour in prayer in our bedroom…or singing hymns of praise in our shower.
In fact many people think they can be a Christian by themselves. Common sense and scripture say otherwise.
Paul writing to the church in Ephesus, reminds them that it takes a community to contain all the gifts given by the Spirit. None of us have it all, but to be a complete church, body of Christ….we need to be in community with others and their gifts. Whether it’s apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers in this mornings scripture or his metaphor of the body in Corinthians of the church as body parts…all being necessary, the foot doesn’t say to the ear I have no need of you.
So to be complete, to be church we need one another’s gifts. But practically, it’s just no fun to be a loner, a miser. You can get only so much satisfaction from emails, my space, text messaging. People are looking for community. Especially when we feel alone, tired, unhappy, realize we’re not doing so well on our own….we seek community.
I quoted one of the founders of InterPlay last week at the end of the prayer. “Never underestimate the body’s need for reassurance. Never underestimate the body’s need for reassurance. Never underestimate the body’s need for reassurance.”
That’s generally hard to find by yourself…but we all need it. The assurance that we are not in this alone, that we have one another. We may be hard wired to be in community.
Jean Vanier, author of Community and Growth reminds us that community can be a marvelously welcoming and sharing place. But he also say, (and he’s talking about intentional communities that live together), community is a terrible place. “It is the place where our limitations and our egoism are revealed to us. When we begin to live full-time with others, we discover our poverty and our weaknesses, our inability to get on with people. While we were alone, we could believe we loved everyone. Now that we are with others, we realize how incapable we are of loving, how much we deny life to others.
So community life brings a painful revelation of our limitations, weakness and shadow; the unexpected discovery of the monsters within us is hard to accept. The immediate reaction is to try to destroy the monsters, or to hide them away again, pretending that they don’t exist, or to flee from community life and relationships with others, or to find that the monsters are theirs, not ours.
But if we accept that the monsters are there, we can let them out and learn to tame them. That is growth towards liberation. If we are accepted with our limitations as well as our abilities, community gradually becomes a place of liberation.”
Are there people at Lyndale that upset you? Of course there are. Vanier would say, that’s a chance to look at what that says about you….not just them. But that’s a whole other sermon series.
We don’t live together in community, mostly we are with each other on Sundays….except for smaller groups that meet throughout the week, committees, study and fellowship groups.
But we are still the Church, the faith community and Paul says the reason we exist – the reason the spirit has given us gifts is to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into the one who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love.
Community – church exists to equip us for ministry…for building one another up – for growing in love. And there’s a whole social justice side of community. Especially at this time in our nation, communities of faith and practice are rebel bases of the Spirits healing, grace and power as we seek to transform this world and the powers of this world, and our govt…the powers of militarism, consumerism, and corporatocracy. Corporatocracy is a word Bill Moyers used yesterday as he spoke to the UCC General Synod about how large corporations rule the world and care little about the poor, the bottom line is making a profit now.
But that’s a whole other series too.
That’s a quick look at the big picture of community. Let’s get real real for just a minute.
We are community most corporately on Sunday morning. Much grace in this community, radical welcome. Do well, but pews…isolate us….working against structure we’ve been given.
Practical Practices:
Sunday brunches….invite someone to lunch with you. People not connected tend to drift away….(if it’s only worship that connects them). Invite someone to go to lunch with you after worship, someone new, or perhaps someone you don’t like so well. The worst they can say is no. Might discover more about yourself and someone else and discover the Spirit working in your life in a deeper way.
Or another spiritual practice of community. Pick up the phone and call one another. Call, one person a week from this community…just to talk, How are you? What’s on your mind this week, what are you excited and passionate about this week? Call someone you know and someone you don’t know. Call even if you’re feeling grumpy, lonely, out of sorts, unsettled. Call for yourself if you’re not calling for the other person. Make the call of community….and see if the Spirit might not just be on the phone with you – building you both up.
