Sermons

“Growing Up In Every Way”

Luke 14:7-14; Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-16 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – September 1, 2019

 Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words, that we might open our hearts and our lives to your wisdom and teaching, and grow up in every way into your Christ.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Here we are on the cusp of a new season of learning; and I am delighted, and I am terrified.  When we welcome a seminarian into our midst, we are forging a connection to one of the centers of cutting-edge thought about what it means to be church.  Tesa will bring us word of fresh, creative ways of following Jesus, with heightened relevance for our world today.  We have plenty to teach her, but we need to be aware going in that this is a mutual learning experience.  By inviting a seminarian into our congregational life, we open ourselves to critique from a new, differently informed perspective, risking hearing that the practices we thought warm and welcoming are, in fact, dated and insensitive. In helping to form Tesa to serve the church of the future, we will be called to become that church ourselves, sooner rather than later.

But before we put too much pressure on Tesa, let me clarify that her presence with us as a ministerial intern is only one example of the new moment we find ourselves in as a congregation, in which the growth we are called to is not primarily in numbers, but in wisdom and spiritual maturity and love.  We embarked, a little over a year ago, on a multi-year journey focused on cultivating growth in ministry and members, for the sake of sustainability and faithfulness.  We’ve approached this effort fairly organically, without too much structure, in order to stay open to God’s leading.  We started off with a burst of frantic energy, aware that while God had prepared us for such a moment, we had also reached a point where it was utterly necessary to grow.  And so we opened ourselves to growth and prayed for it and pursued it as best we could. And in that first year, we added nine new members and managed to keep our budget more or less balanced.  It is not an overstatement to say that God blessed our efforts toward fruitfulness.

I wonder now if that first year was about God building up our trust, to prepare us for what comes next.  It felt a little easier than I expected, if I’m honest, and as I look ahead, the waters don’t seem as smooth.  There is a word that is inherent to any process of growth, a word we didn’t use much in that first year.  That word is change.  Why is it that ‘growth’ sounds so lovely, but ‘change’ sounds so unpleasant?  How is it that we’re so good at pretending that growth is possible without change?

Did I mention that I’m terrified?  I hate change, with the strict exception of when it’s me choosing to change something I didn’t like in the first place.  If I’m honest, I don’t even like growth all that much.  Sometimes I’m not even sure I believe in it.  I struggle to find the balance between thinking that this is the way God made me so I should just accept myself the way I am and trying to believe that I could become a better version of myself so I can get motivated enough to do the work that would require.  And that’s what it is: work.  We do not “grow up in every way … into Christ” by accident.  Spiritual maturity is not something we randomly wander into, either as individuals or as a congregation.  I have recently come to the conclusion that this second year is going to be much harder than the first, because no matter how challenging we may assume it is to bring in new members, growing into “the measure of the full stature of Christ” is much harder.  And that is essentially what we’re being called to in this second chapter.

We’re celebrating the opening of another season of learning today.  We commissioned our ministerial intern and her teaching placement committee.  We’re preparing for another year of Bible study to begin next week.  Will you be in the Library next Sunday at 9:00, as Michael leads the first class on the Psalms?  We have a new small group starting later this month, adding to the ones we’ve already got going.  There will be a District training workshop in October, which I hope a good number of us will attend, so we can better open our arms to those who are suffering from domestic violence.  This fall holds lots of opportunities for learning, for which I give thanks.

But even as we appreciate all these occasions for learning, we need to name and acknowledge that some of the most important growth we are called to seek in this moment is not just knowledge, but wisdom.  The growth that will lead to abundant life for this congregation – and indeed, for each of us as a member of the body of this congregation – is the internal growth that will empower us to grow with the congregation as God shifts and changes our community.  Without dedicating ourselves to spiritual maturity, we will not be able to assist in building up the body in love, for we will just be “tossed to and fro” and unable to hear or see the truth, even when it is spoken in love.

So how do we learn how to “grow up in every way into Christ”?  We can look to Jesus’ teaching in the gospels.  One might think, at first, that in these stories we heard today, Jesus is simply sharing shrewd strategies for avoiding embarrassment. The way he tells the story, about a wedding banquet, sounds so specific, set within a particular cultural context, before place cards and table numbers.  But if we zoom out a ways and assume the banquet is a metaphor, we start to see that Jesus is describing a way of living.

How would our lives be different if we always chose the humblest spot to place ourselves? What could happen if we overcame our fear of being overlooked?  Or if we learned to appreciate the blessings of hanging out with fellow overlooked people? How would our lives be different if we never did anything because of what we hoped to get in return?  What could we learn to risk, if we truly believed that the point of life is to give it away?  It seems that Jesus might be drawing us in by letting us think he’s concerned about helping us avoid embarrassment, while he’s really trying to help us embrace an entirely different way of living, in which embarrassment is beside the point.  What would it take for us to grow up in this way?  How could our congregation be blessed if we behaved this way with one another and every soul that walks in the door?  If we could rest from struggling to prove our place in this community and concern ourselves more with making a place for others?  In Ephesians, we read that God has given each of us different gifts, “to equip the saints for the work of ministry.”  What if we could give more energy to using our gifts to equip others than to getting our gifts recognized?  And what about those who haven’t even been given the space to identify their gifts, because the same few people have been doing the same 13 jobs for as long as anyone can remember?

I wonder, what does the challenge to “grow up in every way into Christ” mean to you?  Here’s a way to approach the question.  Try to think of 1 or 2 things you believe to be true about Jesus that seem like things that also come pretty easily for you. Perhaps you have a decent prayer life, or maybe you know that you’re generous, or usually willing to give people the benefit of the doubt.  I know many of you to be humble and faithful and kind and wise.  Think of 1 or 2 things about Jesus that you emulate without much struggle.  Now try to puzzle out how you got that way.  Were you taught by example?  Did you turn that direction early on because of a counterexample that you chose not to imitate?  Did you see such behavior or characteristics in others that you admired?  Does it feel like you were just born that way?

Now think about 1 or 2 things about Jesus that seem impossible for you to achieve, characteristics that seem opposed to who you assume yourself to be.  When you hear the call to become more Christ-like, these things may be on the list of exceptions that appears as a footnote in your mind. I don’t know about you, but for me, some of them were included in our scripture reading today.  The writer of Ephesians ‘begs us to lead a life worthy of the calling to which we have been called, 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.’  How’s that for something to grow up into?

So if you now have 1 or 2 things about Jesus that you feel pretty good about your chances at emulating, and 1 or 2 things that feel impossible, compare them for a moment. How have you over-valued the easy ones, or denigrated the impossible characteristics over the course of your life? Or maybe it’s the other way around: perhaps you have refused to give yourself credit for the ways you already show Christ to the world, and spent all your time beating yourself up for not achieving the others.  Maybe it depends on the day.

Regardless of which aspects of Christ’s nature any one of us may embrace or struggle with, chances are high that we have plenty of opportunities to practice them – the easy ones and the hard ones – in the course of our life together as a congregation.  Can you imagine sharing that struggle with someone else?  Finding a prayer partner to share in mutual confession and encouragement with?  One thing is clear about the growth we are called to this year: it’s going to require a lot of prayer.  Building up the body of Christ requires a level of courage and grace that doesn’t come easily for most of us.  It requires the kind of self-examination most of us rarely risk.  Speaking the truth in love requires both a capacity to discern the truth and a heart that is truly guided by compassion.  All of these are things that are cultivated through prayer.

As we embark upon a new leg of this journey of growth, I believe we will find ourselves repeatedly both delighted and terrified.  God has spent not just the last year, but indeed, all our lives, building up our trust.  Let us not fail to respond with humble faith and courageous hope.  Alleluia and Amen.