Morning Prayer: Tom Lyda Hymn of Faith *I Love Your Church, O God* Witness of Scripture: Ephesians 4: 1-16 Anthem *Lord, You Give the Great Commission* Taylor/Wilson. Stephanie Clinton, soprano & Steve Curtis, tenor Sermon *The Body of Work* David Spain
Recorded on August 4, 2024
Perhaps most of you are aware of my intention to retire in early January. That news provides some context for this day, but more importantly it provides an opportunity. Any time of transition gives a person, a family, a community occasion to reflect and reaffirm what it holds as essential. A child gets ready to go to kindergarten—therefore, what will be the new adventures? A teen leaves home to go to college—therefore, what will be the new configuration at home? A couple moves from single to married—therefore, what will be the new spaces created? A job begins or comes to an end—therefore, how does life get reshaped? A house is sold and a new one is acquired—therefore, where will the stuff go? Or, maybe nothing momentous happens at all which is true for most of our days most of the time. Maybe it is simply awakening to the moment as eyes opened this morning—therefore, what will we do with this day? Maybe it is a conversation about a difficult topic—therefore how shall we speak? Maybe the sun leaves an exclamation mark of glorious colors at dusk—therefore, how do we say thanks? Life consists of the magical and the mundane, the unexpected and the usual—therefore, how shall we live?
A long time ago, the apostle Paul wrote a letter that made its way to the Ephesian Church, located in Asia Minor on the west coast of what is today the country of Turkey. This letter, in the possession of the church in Ephesus when Paul’s letters were gathered into one body, describes faith from the big picture perspective, not the tiny detail perspective. Paul is talking about the essentials of faith, the kind of letter that transcends boundaries and centuries. “Grace and peace” from God and Christ, is how he addresses the letter and it is those two words—grace and peace —that describe Paul’s big picture perspective, grace and peace that are the essentials of the faith. Everything, says Paul, is a gift, and in the first half of the letter, he keeps putting more and more bread of mercy and generosity onto the tables already overflowing with goodness. Life with God and God with us is a celebration that makes the Passover Table and the Thanksgiving Table look like a simple buffet. But, as Paul writes in the second half of this letter to the faithful gathered in Ephesus and the faithful gathered in Norman, the life of faith is not simply about receiving. It is also about responding to what one has received.
So, part two of the letter called Ephesians begins with a very important word—therefore. In light of all that God has given, therefore what will we do, what new adventures, what new configurations, what new space, what new awakenings? Therefore, how shall we live? What Paul does is stunningly brilliant and hopeful, counter-cultural and inviting, challenging and encouraging. Paul does what religion has sometimes struggled to do—integrating belief and action. Kelli Joyce describes it this way—“Paul is laying out the beating heart of the practice of Christian faith. There is no separation here between theory and praxis, between the supernatural and the pragmatic, between worship and justice. It’s all here, and not like two items set next to each other on a table but like the union of flour and water to make bread in which neither can be seen or understood on its own any longer…We do what we do because of who and what we are: the lives we live are to be in keeping with the calling to which we have been called. Humility and gentleness and patience are to be the hallmarks of the Christian community not because these are traits that ordinarily characterize human interactions in community, but because they are traits that characterize Jesus Christ…the grace of Christ’s gift is not for our private enjoyment but to equip each of us for the work of ministry—to live as if our physical bodies on earth really are meant to serve as Christ’s hands and feet, to make our actions his actions too and not merely our own, to embody his love in the transformation of our own love.” (newsletter@christiancentury.org, 8/4/24)
Paul is encouraging practice not perfection—he calls the church to grow into maturity, because faith is always a process and never a completed event. The body of Christ is always bigger than the church can embody, yet the church is always seeking to fill out its growth plate. This past week during Vacation Bible School, our children learned about Jesus as a boy—how like them he grew, had skinned knees, learned more and more about God and how to live God’s love in the world. Paul says the church is like that—a work in process not a completed edifice. He doubles down on that imagery when he talks about ‘building up’ the body. What does it take to build up the body that resembles Christ? It is not a body fed on the pablum of syrupy self-satiation and sugar-coated promises of self-righteousness and superiority. Instead, the body of Christ that is the church itself and each of us as irreplaceable parts therein, is nourished by the bread of humility and the cup of gentleness, the bread of patience and the cup of love, the bread of unity and the cup of peace. We know there is a brand of Christianity that feeds not on the body of Christ but on a muscleized, militant, take no prisoners Rambo Jesus who cares only about individual salvation and nothing about neighbor. Paul knew nothing of this Jesus because that is not who Jesus was, and it
is not who Jesus is. So, the church in Ephesus and the church in Norman is ever and always vigilant in its discerning of what grows us into Christ’s body.
Paul also calls the church to its critical and most challenging of all qualities—unity, oneness which he reiterates at least 10 times in these 16 verses. It is not uniformity, not a mindless, cult-like call for lockstep faith that adheres to unyielding creeds, unbending doctrine, and unforgiving demagoguery. In fact, when Paul calls for unity, he encourages diversity because he says some are called for this and some are called for that—an idea he broadens further in his body language to the Corinthian Church. Paul does not erect a New Testament tower of Babel by erasing all difference through control and coercion; instead, Paul calls for unity by “speaking the truth in love,” which is the only material that builds the body of Christ. As Paul Escamilla has written, “Paul’s letter is more horizontal than vertical. To appreciate God’s bounty to us is to live graciously with one another.” (ministrymatterscommentary, 8/4/24)
With the calendar having turned to August and the temperatures sizzling at 100, it is of course football season—only 26 days until kick-off! With the expanded college football playoff format, we are going to hear more about a team’s ‘body of work,’ in other words not just their final win/ loss total but how teams have fared all season. Perhaps that is a better rubric—and one we could apply in light of Paul’s letter. What is the church’s body of work? In a recent article entitled “Why do I still go to church? It’s a good question,” Amy Julia Becker—after being away from church for most of the summer—has written “Come September, we have to remind ourselves why it’s worth it to nudge our teenagers out of bed on a day when they could sleep in. Why get dressed and head out the door to listen to a choir and hear some prayers and sit through a sermon when we could be hiking in the woods?...We keep going to church for all sorts of reasons. We love the intergenerational relationships that don’t come anywhere else. Eating chicken salad and grapes around plastic tables gives me a sense of connection to all sorts of people I wouldn’t know otherwise. I want our congregation to pray for us when we are in crisis. I want to have a reason to serve at our local soup kitchen. I look forward to seeing whatever child dons the star costume in the annual Christmas pageant. I want our kids to be immersed in a tradition that goes back thousands of years. I want to step away from the to-do list of my life and enter a literal sanctuary at least one time each week—to access things that psychologies say bring healing to our bodies, minds, souls—singing together, caring for one another, receiving forgiveness…I don’t return [to church] because it makes me a better person. I don’t return because I always believe. I return
because church reminds us of who we are in relation to Jesus. Christianity rests upon God coming to us in the person of Jesus, to let us know we are loved and cared for and healed and saved and invited to participate in all the goodness and beauty and grace and joy and love and peace of who God is. It is well-documented that thousands upon thousands of Americans are leaving church, I suspect because of some combination of busyness, disbelief, hypocrisy, and politics. Alan Kreider, speaking of the early church writes, ‘the early Christians didn’t try to tell people about their beliefs. But they did try to live those beliefs through hospitality, generosity, healings, and sacrificial love…those early Christians went to church because of Jesus, and then lived out the life of Jesus in and among their neighbors. Their patient love changed the world’…Every Sunday morning, I am invited yet again into the life that is really life, and then I am sent back out in love as one small but significant member of the Body of Christ. (Religious News Service, 2024)
The body of work that is this body of Christ—how shall we be today, and in the days to come and in the years to come, as people consider the body of work that is First Christian of Norman? May it be said that faith is lived not to achieve competency but to increase compassion; may it be said that faith is not for indoctrinating but for discipling; may it be said that faith is not to gain superiority but to provide service; may it be said that faith is not to be dour and doleful but reverent and encouraging; may it be said that faith is not to be manipulative and mind-numbing but thoughtful and engaging; may it be said that faith is not to be punitive and destructive but discerning and loving; may it be said that faith does not suppress and scorn but wonders and quests; may it be said that faith does not fence in the sacrament but stewards the sacred for all people. May it be in the years to come when someone says, “Have you heard about the church on the corner of Webster and Eufaula?,” that the response will be, “Yes, look at their body of work!