Believing and Belonging

 

Text: Ephesians 4: 7-8, 11-16

Focus: The Church

Function: To help people commit to our ministry.

Form: Allegorical analogy

Taken directly from N.T. Wright: Simply Christian, ppg 199-204

Intro:

Well, we have looked at the importance of worship. We have looked at the power of prayer. We have looked at the power of giving. We have looked at the power of God's Word. And this morning, we are going to look at the power of the Church.

You are here, so it isn't a bad word. But out there, many people have serious doubts about the purpose and nature of the Church.

What is the Church? Who belongs to it, and how? Equally to the point, what is the Church for?

Our text from today explains it pretty well. Verses 7,8, everyone of us is given a gift to be used in the Church. We are all a part and we are all important to Jesus, the Redeemer.

Verses 11-13. He gifts some organization to this group. And the point is that we are all charged with its success. The leaders work to equip people and everybody works to build the Church.

We pass through Chattanooga, OH on the way to get the grandkids. In that area, the towns are either Catholic or Lutheran. Chattanooga is Lutheran and for a year now, their sign keeps on saying: “We are the Church!”

God has placed us in the Church and given it some form of Spiritual leadership.

And some people say, So what?

Why is the growth of the Church so important?

Is it there to bring people back into the family of God, or is it there to prove which brand of Christianity is more correct?

Is it about our success, or is it about our love for Jesus?

N.T. Wright uses the image of a river and a tree as being opposites, and yet both describe the Church.

The river starts in many places, springs, creeks, lakes, other rivers and from all over converge into one single stream, “from diversity gives way to unity,” he puts it.

The tree starts from one small seed, to a trunk to branches to limbs, twigs and finally to thousands of individual leaves. Unity generates diversity.

What is the Church? Who belongs to it, and how? Equally to the point, what is the Church for?

Want the big answer? The one you won't grasp even if I repeat it two to three times?

Here it is: The Church is the single, multi-ethnic family promised by the Creator God to Abraham. It was brought into being through Israel's Messiah, Jesus; it was energized by God's Spirit; and it was called to bring the transformative news of God's rescuing justice to the whole creation.

N.T. Wright tells us that every bit of that definition matters.

Well, that is too many thoughts for me to hold in my head at the same time.

So let us go back to the river and the tree to break it down.

In no particular order, first, let us look at the church as the river formed of thousands of tributaries, scattered across the land coming to one single point.

In the OT, the “church” was primarily made up of one family, the Jews. It had room for others, some important ones, like Ruth and Rahab.

And once Jesus did what He did, that inclusion became the new normal. People from every race, every geographical, cultural and economic background, every shape, sort and size were called and welcomed into this new family.

And secondly, the Church is the many branched tree that was planted by God. It started with Abraham: it is the tree whose single trunk is Jesus and whose many branches, leaves, twigs, leaves and so on are the millions of Christian communities and billion+ of Christian individuals around the world.

A central way to consider this is to back to our text and in verse 12 where the reference is to the Body of Christ. It is one central body in which every community is a limb and an organ and every cell and individual.

From Diversity, unity and from unity, diversity, both are happening at the same time.

But the reference in this passage is more than a symbol of unity -we are all one, and diversity -we have different functions. No, the image is a way of saying that we are all called to do the work of Christ, to be the means of Jesus' action in and for the world.

The image is the Church is Jesus, literally. It is the only way that Jesus can bring people back into the redemption of God.

In both of these ideas, the river and the tree, the word family is not too far off. But it is important that we keep it in context. Brothers and sisters can fight, can grow up to be two completely different individuals. But the Bible often refers to us as brothers and sisters. We have the same Creator, the same Father and Mother.

The early Church practiced that familial care for each other very well. They even lived together in an extended community and shared physical resources. When they talked about “love” the main thing they meant: living as a single family, a mutually supporting community. The Church must never forget that calling. It went as far as this: If any man had any possession, it belonged to all of them (Acts 4:32-22). They were serious about their commitment to being the body of Christ, His agents for healing the world around them.

But at the same time, the idea of family can take us in the wrong direction. Even Billy Graham has said something important: “God has no grandchildren.”

And it is illustrated in one of the first conflicts the Church had to endure. The first Church was primarily Jewish. And they practiced all the Jewish laws, they wouldn't eat pork, worship was on Saturday instead of Sunday, they couldn't eat a medium rare steak, they circumcised their sons and they were no allowed to eat with Non Jewish people.

So, how could they be a family when they couldn't eat together? They had a problem to solve. And their reasons were not based on prejudice, but based on what they felt their religion taught them to do.

So they all got together to talk about whether or not they should eat separately, and the answer they came up with was a resounding NO! God welcomes Jews and Non Jews and doesn't require the Non Jews to become Jewish with all of their laws.

Big deal so far except this. At the same time, they decided that Jewish ancestry did not automatically bring them into the renewed family which God was creating though Jesus.

At the same time, a person does not belong to Jesus and His people, His body, simply because they were born into a Christian family.

Family plays an huge part as to whether or not a person chooses to be a part of the body of Christ. Kids get introduced to Jesus at a young age, through family, the Church, Sunday School and other activities that we do. But we all know that it is perfectly possible for someone to grow up in a Christian household and turn their back on the faith and life.

Many branches fall of the tree, and many streams come together into the single river. Being born into a particular human family does not determine whether or not you will be come a member of the family of God.

You have to choose for yourselves.

What it truly means to be a part of this family, to be a branch on this tree, to be part of the current flowing in this great big river seems to be lost in the emphasis of individualism in Western culture.

In our culture, we almost worship individualism. In individualism, we are tempted to base our decision about where we worship on what “meets my needs,” or what makes me feel good. But our decision is based on the calling God has placed before us.

I know this, it is never going to be perfect, and since I am involved, the people are not going to be perfect.

Sometimes, being in a family means that we have stress about certain differences in personality or style. In family, we have to work it out. But if it is based on individualism, we do not get the discipline in love, we just leave.

But our Western culture causes us to focus only on ourselves as if we are individuals who have no need for each other. The concept of belonging to each other: as a real-live family, or even deeper: as part of a singular body seems foreign to us when we realize that it just might cost us. Individualism tells us that the only cost it has on us are the ones that are convenient. But if a single body loses a hand, or a foot, or eyesight, that pain and loss is never convenient.

We are interdependent.

Now, as we mentioned, each of us must respond to God on an personal, or individual, level. You can hide in the shadows in the back of the church for a while, but sooner or later, you are going to have to decide whether or not this is for you.

In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul tells us that the body is made of different parts. There are feet, hands, eyes and etc. The foot is no less a member than the hand, the hand no less than the eye. And if they are all there, the body works much better than having to suffer through life without an individual component. No one member should deem itself more important than another. They are all needed. All.

Turn to the person next to you and tell them: “I need you.” “You help complete my Christian life.” (I was going to say “you complete me,” but Valentines day is past.)

At the same time, if the foot, hand, eye or whatever, decided that it doesn't need the rest of the body and is cut off, it dies.

So, turn to the person next to you and say: “you are vital to my Christian life.”

Cutting ourselves off would deny the very purpose for which the Church was called into being. According to the early Christians, The church doesn't exist in order to provide a place where people can pursue their private spiritual agendas and develop their own spiritual potential. Nor dies it exist in order to provide a safe heaven in which people can hide from the wicked world and ensure that they themselves arrive safely at an otherworldly destination. Private spiritual growth and ultimate salvation come rather as the by products of the main, central, overarching purpose for which God has and is calling us.

This purpose is clear. Through the church, God will announce to the wider world hat he is indeed its wise, loving, and just Creator; that through Jesus he has defeated the powers that corrupt and enslave it; and that by His Spirit, He is at work to heal and renew it.

The Church exists for its Mission. To announce to the Word that Jesus is the Redeemer. The gospel changes and transforms. We are partners with God putting the world to the rights.

Preachers think to highly of themselves. They think that they can create growth. Indeed, this passage tells us that God gave them as Catalysts to the growth. But Growth isn't the responsibility of the preacher. We grow, when we are on the Mission.

We are partners with God to do God's work. But the message of those who have adapted that individualism mindset is the other way around, they think that God is partner with us to fulfill our lives. Sometimes I wonder if that is why people flock to the mega-churches. Have they successfully converted Christianity into a consumer commodity that is a resource for them to realize their own wants, desires and dreams.

Now, I promise you that serving Jesus is an invitation to a great adventure that will give your life eternal meaning. I promise that. It is biblical, Jesus said our lives would be lived to the full and out of us would flow rivers of living water that will indeed change the world.

Western Individualism has subtly changed the message to this: God is partner, or more than likely, servant to us in order for us to reach our full potential.

We will reach full potential, but only in the context of what we learned in prayer, “God's will be done (not ours) in earth as it is in heaven.”

We are Christ's body, doing Christ's work.

So, God has no grandchildren. The choice to believe, to join is not forced on any person. It isn't something that we inherit because we live in a predominately Christian nation, or came from Christian families. It is an personal choice we make. We believe. And then we belong. And belonging takes up our being.