Grow Up: Part 2 - In the Neighborhood

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Last week we started our sermon series on the book of Ephesians, St. Paul’s letter to a church that was in pretty good shape, but needed to grow up a little bit. Growing up, for church in Ephesus, and growing up for us are not easy things, we discussed. In fact, growing up physically, mentally, and socially are really nothing compared to growing up spiritually. Growing up spiritually takes a lifetime of living.

This week we move on to more of what St. Paul was teaching the church in Ephesus about growing up. If we really are going to grow up spiritually like St. Paul tells us in this letter, we are going to need to start walking around the neighborhood. We can’t spend our time playing with toys in the basement or playing in the sandbox in the backyard. Growing up means riding our bikes out into the neighborhood. And as we know very well, the neighborhood can be a pretty scary place.

The neighborhood is not like the home. For many of us, though unfortunately not all of us, the home is a pretty safe place to begin growing up. It should be. God has given parents the task of caring for and raising children in the way that they should go. Home is usually a pretty safe place to grow up. But the neighborhood; well that’s a little different.

But in order to grow up, we need to venture out at some point. At some point our parents have to let us start riding our bike in the street instead of riding in the driveway. What we learn riding on the street is that in the neighborhood there are a lot of other homes, too. Our home is not the only one. There are other people out there. We’ve been walled off for them in our homes, but when we venture into the neighborhood we find that there are even more walls with more people behind them.

Even though the neighborhood is a different place grow up, God is there, too. God is not just in the nice and neat and safe place of the home. God is on the street. And so if God is there in the neighborhood, it would stand to reason that maybe there is something in the neighborhood that we need to know in order to grow up spiritually.

Ephesians 2 is about growing up in the neighborhood. The neighborhood is full of walls with all kinds of different things and people behind them. The home is walled off, safe from the neighborhood. But now that we are in the neighborhood there are even more walls than we thought. In fact, until now, they’ve been keeping us separate from one another.

That’s what was happening to the church in Ephesus. The walls between God’s people and the Gentiles had been keeping them apart. There were dividing walls between God’s people and the Gentiles. And the church in Ephesus somehow hadn’t quite spent enough time in the neighborhood to realize that there were others outside of the walls, people who were not part of God’s people. Or if they did know they were there, they didn’t really want to spend a whole lot of time recognizing them.

We do the same thing. We wall ourselves off from other people. We like to think we are the people of God here in this place and they are the ones on the outside. But God has no inside and outside. God is in the neighborhood, too. The walls that the people of the church in Ephesus had made were keeping them separate from the God who was out in the rest of the world.

St. Paul reminds the church, “So then, remember at one time you Gentiles by birth...remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”

Remember, St. Paul reminds the church, that you were once on the outside of the walls. Remember that at one time you had no home in the neighborhood. You were strangers, illegal aliens wandering in the neighborhood without a home.

“But now,” St. Paul says, “in Christ Jesus you who once were fare off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” In the neighborhood where God is there are no walls. Growing up and going out into the neighborhood means encountering others who are not part of our home, but who are still in the neighborhood that God has made and is active in.

Being in the neighborhood means being outside the walls. It means that Christ has broken down any dividing walls that once kept us apart from one another. Growing up means encountering others. And let’s face it, other people are scary! They are different from us. They don’t act like us, talk like us, look like us. I’m not just talking about people who are a different race than we are. I’m talking about the people living right next door to you, the people who are in your neighborhood. Even they are pretty scary if you stop to think about it. They might be unrighteous sinners like the Gentiles for goodness sake.

But Christ has not left us with a bunch of rubble when he broken down the dividing walls, the walls of hostility between people. Instead, Christ has built us up. St. Paul says, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you are also built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”

 What an incredible image! Before all of this, God’s people had a temple, a physically building with walls keeping people separate. Christ broke down the dividing walls and instead of putting up new walls, Christ built up the household of God with God’s people. God’s holy dwelling is no longer walls of brick and mortar, but people. The temple of God is up and walking around in the neighborhood. There are no walls, we are not separated, we are built together as the body of Christ in the world, a holy temple moving around and learning what it means to grow up spiritually, built spiritually into a holy dwelling place for God.

Growing up in the neighborhood means walking around in it. And God is there. Rough as the neighborhood might be, as scary as town might have become, God has not built us a temple of brick and mortar, but called us to be the body of Christ, walking around in the neighborhood.

In the name of Jesus. Amen. 

someone else who wrote something interesting:

churchismessy.com: Why I called out Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer"

"...the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity..."

Wrote this one for the 4th of July. Forgot to post it. Got busy and then went on vacation. Typical. Hope you enjoy it anyway. Leave your feedback.

*****

After a long, hot summer of meeting in closed delegation in the year 1787, our Founding Fathers framed a new governing document, the Constitution of the United States of America, "in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity..."

Much ink has been spilled reflecting on this governing document and its enduring worth. This constituting document of our United States not only establishes and maintains the law of our great nation, but is also useful as a piece of history; and, perhaps even more importantly, serves as a clarion call to those of us living united in this great nation to engage ourselves in vigorous and lively civic participation.

Such civic participation is not only a responsibility of all citizens of these United States, but more strongly may be considered one of the "Blessings of Liberty" as defined in the Constitution. One often forgotten element of this Constitution is the general, yet essential, emphasis on the opportunity and Blessing of Liberty. The blessings and opportunities of Liberty and civic participation afforded by such Liberty cannot be overstated. Responsibilities to civic engagement are well and good; however, our Liberty, our freedom, affords us the opportunity and blessing of engaging in our shared civic life.

Collective memory in this country is far too short. How can we, only a short 237 years from the Declaration of our Independence, have forgotten the pressure under which the new inhabitants of this beautiful country had lived?

July 4th of every year Americans gather to celebrate Independence Day. This national holiday recalls our difficult separation from the rule of the King of Great Britain and finds itself rooted in another of our most important and enduring documents, the Declaration of Independence. Here we recall these important words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

These "self-evident" truths concerning equality among all human beings and the endowed, unalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, were carefully discerned by our Founding Fathers and diligently protected by all who have given their lives to ensure that they can never be taken from us.

There is no greater crime in America than lazy and sloppy civic engagement. Our Life, our Liberty, our pursuit of Happiness, are Blessings and opportunities. Civic engagement among civilians is the highest form of honor we can give to these self-evident truths, to our Founding Fathers, and to all who have died in service to this great country. A magnetic, yellow ribbon on the bumper of your car, a sign in your yard that proclaims, "Support our Troops!" are nothing compared to your time, your talents, your resources, given in service to the general Welfare of ourselves and our Posterity.

Our civic service is not to some certain government, not to some certain political party, but to the ideals of this great United States of America; we give ourselves to the self-evident truths of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. We simply must put aside our polarized, political scheming and begin engaging in civic service for the sake of our fellow human being. We must not let our Founding Fathers and all of the brave men and women who have died for this country go unhonored by our lazy and sloppy participation in civic life. We must be engaged, we must be involved.

Whether we choose to involve ourselves in paid, public civil service, heroic and unnoticed volunteerism, or simply stewarding our time in our churches, we must be engaged. No one, young or old, weak or strong, has any excuse. You have not put in your time. Your years of service are not over. You do not have the right to back off. You have the opportunity, the Blessing, of serving. Civic engagement is a Blessing of Liberty, a blessing of our freedom as Americans. Your time of service is only up when you go to rest in the arms of your Creator and Redeemer.

So get to work, America. Quit your fighting, your scheming, your vitriolic backbiting. Get out there. Serve your fellow human being. Engage in civic life. For the sake of our Blessings of Liberty, for the sake of our freedom as Americans, Go!