Sermons

Ephesians 3:14—4:6, 11-16 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – August 24, 2014

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words that we might find the path of faithfulness as your children, your disciples, and your ambassadors of reconciliation in our broken world. We pray it in the name of Jesus, Amen.

Throughout the month of August, we have been focusing on the “Family of God.” We began with baptism and how it gives us a way to respond ritually to our adoption into the family of God. We have been specifically and lovingly invited into a family that works very differently than earthly families. The second week, we talked about in-laws, because it turns out that the family of God is constantly expanding. New people are coming in all the time and mixing things up, changing and enriching our traditions, and we have to learn to be okay with that. Last week, we talked about the brokenness of the family of God, and our obligation, as followers of Jesus, to continually remind the world that we are all brothers and sisters, and therefore, we must find ways to resolve our conflicts as peacefully as possible.

Today we’re invited to think about growing in Christ, and if there are tensions between being a mature Christian and a child of God at the same time. I am convinced that aging, in and of itself, is a constant process of disorientation, so certainly “growing up into Christ,” as the writer of Ephesians puts it, could be expected to be a little confusing. One of my favorite reflections on aging is from a very short story called “Eleven” from a book titled “Woman Hollering Creek” by Sandra Cisneros. I mentioned it in my Friday email, but her prose is so wonderful I want to read you the quote now:

“What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t. You open your eyes and everything’s just like yesterday, only it’s today. And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are—underneath the year that makes you eleven. “Like some days you might say something stupid, and that’s the part of you that’s still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama’s lap because you’re scared, and that’s the part of you that’s five. And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you’re three, and that’s okay. That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three.

“Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next year.”

It’s like that in the family of God. There are days we come to church, and we just need to not be a grown-up for a little while. We just need to know that we are a child of God, that we can be even a baby child of God for just a bit, because we need to be held and loved on and adored. That need exists within all of us, and sometimes it’s right on the surface. It’s tough being a grown-up, after all.

How do you know you’re a grown-up? What makes you a grown-up?

[Discussion] One of the ways we tend to notice we’re getting older is that other people out in the world seem shockingly young. First it’s the wait staff at restaurants, then maybe a mechanic or your doctor, and pretty soon elected officials. Eventually people who are younger than you will be retiring. But there are more personal milestones as well. One of the biggest is when your generation becomes the oldest generation in the family. Whether it’s about losing our parents, or having the last aunt or uncle pass on, there is something about becoming the matriarch or patriarch generation that can be quite intimidating. Wasn’t I supposed to be wise by now, we might ask? How did I get here so fast?

As long as we still have parents, there is always someone to remind us that we are children. In fact, we can experience it rather viscerally. As you know, I just had my sister and her family out here for a visit for the first time since we moved here. We had a lovely time. My sister and I tend to get along really well. With a few exceptions. It seems that occasionally there’s something about being together in the house we grew up in that tends to make both of us regress. I’m not sure exactly what age we’re being at those moments, but it isn’t anywhere close to 40. It’s so irrational I think it must be something in the air – the dust off our childhood treasures or some such, blowing into our noses and infecting us with immaturity. I can only hope we’re not alone in this. This happens in other families too, right? Please tell me it does.

As long as we still have parents, we have someone to remind us that we are children. Or you can just come to church! You sometimes hear about support groups for “Adult Children of such-and-such kind of parents.” Well, at church we’re all adult children of an Eternal Parent. And that can be just as complicated as all these other relationships. As we’ve said before, we’re all part of the family of God. And you’re never going to be the oldest generation in this family. You will always be a beloved child. There’s nothing you can do to get kicked out. And that’s great. But it’s also something we can take advantage of or take for granted. Being a beloved child of God is not a license to act like a spoiled toddler all the time.

So what does it mean to be a grown-up in the family of God? And how do we find the spiritual resources within ourselves to do so? There are some hints there in the passages we heard from Ephesians. Humility and gentleness. Patience. (Groan.) Using our gifts. Thinking critically about our faith. Speaking the truth, in love. But mostly, I think this passage is an invitation into a relationship with Christ. Relating to God may give us the satisfaction of being a beloved child, protected, nurtured and adored. But a relationship with Christ is an invitation to grow up. One of the deep truths of the incarnation is a startling revelation that we’re being asked to be part of the work God is doing in the world. We are not helpless children. The list of gifts in Ephesians is pretty incomplete. Some will be pastors and teachers, but some will be cooks, or artists, or servers, or clean-up crew, or leaders, or followers, or encouragers, or prayer partners, or visitors, or technicians, or listeners, and abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine. We are invited to participate. To be grown-ups, with gifts to offer, with patience to bear with one another, with love and humility and gentleness. This is how the body builds itself up.

To be the adult children of our Eternal Parent is to claim the legacy and join in with what the family is all about. It reminds me of my friend Terry. She is one of the most competent, grown-up people I know. And one day, I found out why. She was talking about how in her family, it was assumed that you would fix things rather than buying new things. Whenever she’s faced with a do-it-yourself repair, she reminds herself that “I’m John Keith’s daughter.” Now I’ve never met John Keith himself, but it was pretty clear what it means to be John Keith’s daughter. It means you have been taught how to do what needs to be done, or how to learn how to do what needs to be done, and that you were supposed to go ahead and do what needs to be done.

That’s kind of what it’s like to be a grown-up in the family of God. Yes, you are still a beloved child. But you’re not a helpless baby. Not most of the time anyway. You’re allowed to have your off days, but as a disciple of Jesus, you’re invited to grow into maturity in Christ. It’s all in there, every year, every emotion, but you’re invited to be as grown-up as possible as often as possible. To learn the discipline of being part of a church – the patience of working alongside other volunteers, the hope required to continually work with limited resources, the openness of heart and mind to work with people whose perspectives and experiences are different from yours, the love necessary to forgive those who occasionally forget to act their age. And when we all manage to mostly act like grown-ups, we discover that there are actually advantages to being adults. There are blessings that come with age, and even wisdom, eventually. We will always be able to turn to God with the heart of a tiny, hurting child when we need to. But we’re not destined to be that way all the time. We are invited to know and live out the power of the love of Christ, in all its height and depth and breadth. We are invited to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. Let us not remain merely children, but joyously claim our destiny as disciples of Jesus Christ. Alleluia and Amen!