Signs of Growth and Health – sermon on August 2, 2015
Ephesians 4: 1-16 I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God. Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future.
There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Parent of all, who is over all, in all, and living through all. However, God has given each one of us a special gift through the generosity of Christ. That is why the Scriptures say, “When he ascended to the heights, he led a crowd of captives and gave gifts to his people.” Notice that it says “he ascended.” This clearly means that Christ also descended to our lowly world. And the same one who descended is the one who ascended higher than all the heavens, so that he might fill the entire universe with himself.
Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.
Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.
John 6: 24-35 So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and went across to Capernaum to look for him. They found him on the other side of the lake and asked, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, you want to be with me because I fed you, not because you understood the miraculous signs. But don’t be so concerned about perishable things like food. Spend your energy seeking the eternal life that the Son of Man can give you. For God has given me the seal of approval.” They replied, “We want to perform God’s works, too. What should we do?” Jesus told them, “This is the only work God wants from you: Believe in the one God has sent.” They answered, “Show us a miraculous sign if you want us to believe in you. What can you do? After all, our ancestors ate manna while they journeyed through the wilderness! The Scriptures say, ‘Moses gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, Moses didn’t give you bread from heaven. God did. And now God offers you the true bread from heaven. The true bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” “Sir,” they said, “give us that bread every day.” Jesus replied, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
Sermon: Signs of Growth and Health by Rev. Doreen Oughton
The week before last, I took an intensive class in American Sign Language. I learned a lot, but not as much as I wanted to. I found myself very frustrated with the instructor. He’d be going over a list of vocabulary, and skip several of the words. When I or another class member asked directly to be shown the sign for the words he skipped, he usually said nothing, and went on to something else, maybe a story that didn’t seem related to the vocabulary words at all. Or sometimes he would ask us to guess what the sign was, just make something up, and then give us a look like, “oh, you so don’t get it.”
I hate to say this, but sometimes when I read or hear the gospels, I think that Jesus may have been very frustrating as a teacher. Take this morning’s passage. In the gospel of John, this scene takes place the day after the miraculous feeding of 5000 people with a few loaves and fishes. The crowd recognized that this miracle, or sign, meant that Jesus was a great prophet, and they wanted to force him to become king. Jesus took off by himself, but later that night walked on water to catch up with the disciples in their boat.
The next day the crowd was puzzled. They had seen the disciples sail off without Jesus, and there had only been one boat. But neither Jesus nor disciples were there anymore, so people got in their boats and sailed to Capernaum to look for Jesus. And they found him, there on the other side of the sea! How had he gotten there? There had been no boat for him. So they ask. And does he answer them? No. Not at all. He talks to them, but his response has nothing to do with their question. He talks about their motivation in seeking him out. He says it is not because they recognize the meaning of his miracles, but because he fed them. He encourages them to look beyond this one sign, this feeding episode, and seek instead this incredible gift of eternal life. But they are probably still wondering how he did that thing with the bread, and how in heaven’s name he got to Capernaum without a boat. Those are the things they want to know! Why won’t he answer them? So, like my classmates and I, figuring we can eventually get what we want if we only humor the teacher, these people go along with Jesus’ conversational thread. “Alright,” they say. “We’ll do the seeking you recommend. What should we do?” And Jesus replies that there is just one thing – they must believe in him. Here Jesus does not just mean an intellectual affirmation of who he is. He means they should look to him to find this eternal life, see how he lives and imitate it, believe what he believes – that the kindom has come and is among and within them – and live into it. But the things that Jesus want to teach go beyond the words he has to teach with, and maybe beyond the capacity of the crowds then and the seekers now.
I think about high school English classes, where some wonderful novels are assigned for reading. I remember many of them. I liked reading and did a lot of it. I enjoyed some of the books, but found many of them so boring. I couldn’t related, didn’t get the point, even though the themes and symbolism were discussed in class. It wasn’t until I was well into adulthood and re-read many of them that I appreciated them, was moved by them, understood their greatness. Sometimes the problem is not the teacher or the material, but the student’s readiness and maturity. Does that mean it is a waste of time to introduce high school students to great literature? I don’t think so. Some may be mature enough to appreciate it then, and the practice of reading and seeking meaning are good things at any age.
I think this is true with the teachings of Jesus, what he did and who he was. We may not always get it, we may ask questions that won’t lead us to deeper understanding or appreciation, but we can still get something from it. As my son might say, “It’s all good.” And the apostle Paul outlines some good principles to further help us understand what it means to be the Body of Christ in this morning’s first reading. He describes what it means to be mature in faith, how to measure up to Christ, how to believe in him in the deepest possible way, the way that leads to eternal life. And it is all about unity. Sure we have each been given individual gifts, but the key is using those gifts for the upbuilding of God’s kindom, Christ’s body – all these terms used to describe the oneness that is the truest truth about who and what we are.
His advice is sound even if we take it at a surface level – be patient, make allowances for one another’s faults, bind yourself together in peace and love. We may do these things because we want to obey God, score points to get ourselves to heaven when we die. That’s fine, but there is more to it. I see that there is more, and yet I know I see only a glimpse of what there is. I can’t imagine this eternal life that Jesus speaks of. I went to see Rob Bell speak last week – he of the nooma videos we’ve watched. It was his “everything is spiritual” tour. He starts with the “big bang” which set the universe into motion, and moves through 13 billion years to the present day. I will give the short version of what I got out of it. He talks about how each evolution came about because of the gathering of similar things which led to something greater than the sum of their parts. Particles gathered and moved beyond themselves to become atoms, atoms gathered and moved beyond themselves to become molecules, which gathered and moved beyond themselves to become cells, which gathered and moved beyond themselves to become a variety of life forms.
He wondered how the particles were convinced to gather this way. What could you say to the atoms to persuade them that moving beyond themselves would be a good thing, could bring about amazing changes? Did they need persuading? Did the cells need to be coaxed or threatened?
Rob Bell asserts that science points to an ever expanding universe that grows in complexity, that continually moves beyond itself. It can be seen on the macro level – how big and vast is space, and on the micro-level, the sub-atomic particle level. He believes, and I agree, that this points to a force of love at work. This force is at work whether we understand it or not. The universe is expanding. This is God’s work, or play. And we are invited to join it. Maybe the atoms didn’t need convincing, or maybe they did, and that is why it took so long for them to evolve into cells. And maybe, just maybe, – if we can be convinced that in coming together, in believing that by moving beyond ourselves there is new life that is wonderful beyond our imagining – it won’t take a million years to reach that time that Paul talked about – a time when we reach the full measure of Christ, with a body that is healthy and growing and full of love. May it be so.
