Can you remember High School? I’m sure for some of you it seems like yesterday…for others, it’s been a while. Do you remember how everything seemed so elevated? Everything that happened had some sort of importance...every lucky break was an ultimate victory…every bad situation was the end of the world. Relationships were magnified a thousand times! Friends were closer than siblings, and losing a friend was like losing family. The Arcade Fire captures this spirit in their album, The Suburbs. Arcade Fire front man Win Butler often chides our modern loss of innocence. In Suburban War, Butler describes his journey of getting older and losing his friends: “Now the music divides us into tribes…You grew your hair so I grew mine…You said the past won’t rest…Until we jump the fence and leave it behind…With my old friends I can remember when…You cut your hair, I never saw you again…Now the cities we live in could be distant stars…And I search for you in every passing car…” When did this happen? When did we outgrow ourselves…cutting our hair, and dressing up for each other? When did we start growing apart…separated by our cliques of music, clothes and interests? When did we lose each other? When did we lose ourselves?
Over the last few weeks, we’ve been discussing the Church…what it looks like, and what we look like within it. Last week, Kevin emphasized the importance of our unity as a Church, and how that affects our witness to the world. He mentioned something that resonated with me, which I’d like to paraphrase. In this community, we celebrate the most marginal of the marginal, and we assemble our identities from the radical, the obscure and the ambitious. We champion our experiences, having as many as we can, with the most important people in the most interesting outlying areas. Now, I don’t want to discourage anyone from having an adventure, but I do want to encourage you to see yourselves the way that God sees you. This morning, we will be exploring an important element in how we can “Be the Church”…discovering ourselves.
Our Scripture for last week emphasized the unity of the Church, calling for Christians to exercise humility, gentleness and peace. The church at Ephesus had been around for a while at this point, and the Ephesians were beginning to wonder about their roles in the community. Obviously, the Ephesians had a problem with unity, but it seems that Paul sensed a greater problem in the community. Throughout his letter to the Ephesians, Paul continually references the bigger picture of God’s relationship with the Church. The Church is the “fullness of [Christ] who fills all in all.” Our encounter with love is fulfilled when we might “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that [we] might be filled with all the fullness of God.” The unity of the Church bears witness to Christ’ love for the world. Even in the specific sections on personal relationships, Paul emphasizes that he is actually talking about the relationship between Christ and the Church. Paul wanted the Ephesians to see the bigger picture of God and the world, and in order to understand Paul’s descriptions here, we too need to see the bigger picture.
In chapter 2, Paul pens a phrase about salvation often quoted by Protestants. However, the second half of Paul’s idea proves just as important as the first half. Paul begins with our salvation…a free gift from God, not earned by our actions, but bestowed upon us in the work of Jesus. Yet, Paul also emphasizes that our salvation reflects our creation, which signals an inner awakening of our design as human beings. Our salvation brings us near to God, and to each other, but it also brings us near to ourselves. God crafted us specifically, as an architect carefully forms each tiny detail of a building, so that working together, the parts make a beautifully efficient whole.
In the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis offers an effective portrayal of the connection between God’s gift of salvation, and God’s gifts that empower us to act in the world. At the moment that the White Witch’s spell over the land of Narnia begins to weaken, and time can move on towards Christmas, Father Christmas visits the four children, and bestows upon them different items for battle. Lewis paints a clear picture: Christ’ victory over sin and death frees us to participate in His campaign to redeem the world. Our gift of salvation likewise urges us to discover those gifts awakened within us when we encounter Christ. We are not simply being rescued, but we are being commissioned to participate in God’s ongoing mission to redeem the world.
Paul employs a Psalm to reimagine our relationship to God under the new covenant offered in Christ’ blood. Psalm 68 originally speaks of God’s conquest in the world, defeating the enemies of Israel and accepting Israel’s gifts and love in return for victory. However, now that God has offered the Gentiles peace and unity in His new covenant with the world, Paul reinterprets Psalm 68, depicting Christ’ conquest of captivity and death, and the gift of new life to the world. Whereas we were once enemies of God, God has brought us over to His side. We receive gifts, so that we too can participate in the reconciliation of God and His world. This is the bigger picture…this is what we live for…this is what we were called to as the Church.
And these gifts build up the body of Christ, so that it functions correctly and efficiently. Think about the body for a second…how many things we take for granted! There are obvious body parts with certain functions, like our eyes for sight, our hands for grasping, our noses for picking…I mean breathing…our feet for standing and walking, etc. But, now think about how body parts compliment each other. Eyes must coordinate with hands to judge depth in grasping objects. Hands and feet swing in a certain proportion to one another in order to balance the body in walking. Our noses smell food, which signals the mouth to prepare for intake of food, and really, triggers the entire digestive system. When we coordinate our gifts, and do them with excellence, we empower the body of Christ to work with optimal efficiency. Training our gifts enables the entire body to work as a whole.
Likewise, the Church is the vehicle for realizing these gifts at work within you. Often, people mark the Church as an institution out to suppress and subdue people from finding themselves, but I beg to differ. In fact, I would argue that the world aims to mold individuals into a mass that will think what it wants you to think, buy what it wants you to buy and do what it wants you to do. We are constantly bombarded with ideas; advertisements; campaign slogans; opinions about sports, politics, and finance; study here…become this type of professional…take this medicine…is this really freedom? Under Christ, we follow a new rule. We are free to become who we were made to be. We can worship God freely, grow in virtue unhindered, and love the world recklessly. Rather than be pulled in a thousand different directions, we serve one master alone. We are what He has made us, and we can finally tap into those desires without the world condemning us for being who we are.
Up to this point, I realize that I have been using ambiguous terms such as “strengths”, “desires” and “gifts”. Let’s get a little more specific. What do you spend the majority of your time thinking about? I’m going to pick on someone to focus this discussion a bit. Based on former discussions with Jonathon, I know that he spends a great deal of his day thinking about, or actually creating, art. I remember talking with him about the art process, and he described how he always liked to have his journal near in case he needed to sketch an idea. That’s how frequently ideas floated into his mind throughout the day. He might be brushing his teeth, fixing breakfast, working with one of his RSI members, shopping at the store…but when an idea struck him, it had to find it’s way onto paper, or canvas, or whatever. Other people might feel the same way about hospitality. You might be tuning me out right now because you’re planning a get-together for your friends this week. Maybe you want to have some people over for coffee and dessert, or you want to organize a trip to the bowling alley, or you are worried right now about someone who is spending the weekend alone, and you want to fix them dinner tonight. I know for certain that some of you have thought today about lesson plans, or a test that needs to be graded, or a child that is falling behind. Some of you cringe when I talk about Kierkegaard, but might perk up if I talked about mitochondria, neutrinos or carbon-chains…and you’d laugh at me, because I would make an idiot of myself. Think about it for a second…what do you have inside of you that you cannot control…that you spend most of your time thinking about, or talking about, or doing?
Throughout the course of this morning, I expect that at least a few of you are excited by Paul’s words and the idea of developing your gifts. The Church offers you fertile ground to grow these gifts. In forging the identity of Campus Crossroads, we believe in common ownership of our church. This means that each and every one of you are not only able, but are encouraged, to shape this church into a body that can serve the community and help you grow as an individual. We try our best to live life together, whether that means playing sports together, eating together, shopping for groceries together, watching each other’s dance recitals, or discussing dreams for the future. Sometimes this looks like a group outing, sometimes it means being more available to give someone advice, and sometimes it looks like people cleaning up a room and putting together sound equipment…however it looks, it’s an opportunity to grow.
One year ago, Francis Chan spoke at Passion about his experiences in underground churches around the world. In visiting China, Chan was asked to describe the U.S. church, and so he explained that we have buildings where we go on Sunday mornings…that some people will go for a while, and then switch to another building to get better daycare, or different preaching, or more interesting small groups. He explained that people demand better songs, or an interesting location, or better lighting. As he was describing the U.S. church, his audience started laughing uncontrollably. We might not realize it, but we are really odd as Christians. We are consumers of “church”…it’s really silly if you stop to think about it. And this consumerism can ultimately hinder our development…when we are challenged to grow and mature, we move on to the next church that accommodates our wants. This morning, I am channeling Paul in encouraging you to take a step…to act on those gifts God has given you and build this church. You are welcome to anything we have, but use it to build Christ’ body. As mundane as it may sound, we have a sheet of paper up front…if you want to contribute to building this community for the future, please let us know. You might feel lead to do something big…you might just want to set up the room on a Sunday morning…however you feel, I encourage you to invest your life in something bigger. God crafted you for good works…for building up His body and for serving the world. Wake up, sleepers…rise up and be the Church!
