3 Easter 2009
1 John 3: 1-7
Striving To Be All That We Are
Pastor Chris Enstad
Brothers and sisters grace to you and peace from God our Father our Risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
“See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”
Did you catch that? It’s easy to let it slide right by us as Bible verses read on a Sunday morning often do. “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”
Hold on just a minute here ‘o author of John surely there must be something we must do first in order to earn the right to call ourselves God’s children. How can you say that we already are God’s children? But what about living good and virtuous lives? What about the rules, what about our traditions, what about judging each other as clean or unclean in or out, with- the- program or just not going along with the show?
Maybe what John meant to write is, “See what love the Father has given us, that we might be called children of God; and that is what we might be.”
For too long the Church has lived as though Jesus Christ didn’t really die for our sins. Well, sure, we say we believe but we live as though we still have the weight of the world and life on our shoulders. We like to think we follow the great commission, you know, how Jesus sends his disciples out into the world to baptize in the name of the Trinity… but the reality is that we kind of like the way our church feels now not too big, not too small with familiar faces showing up for things and no one too outside the norm showing up or asking the wrong kinds of questions or forcing us to think about ourselves in a new way.
Now that’s a harsh assessment of the Church, and it is ok if you get a little offended, but I want you to try it on for just a moment. Is the church a club where rules both written and unwritten are expected to be followed and where some kind of culture of we show up to be taken care of is at work or is it a mission training center that recognizes that you are already God’s children and that we are here to equip you to live even better and even deeper into who you already are and that includes talking about things like life and death and jumping into God’s story which involves a huge amount of risk but no, not really because all it means is that this place isn’t someplace you belong to but it is a place you come because you already belong to each other. It’s a family reunion and this is the gazebo in some ways… there’s fellowship, some kind of speech, some singing and dancing, a meal, and then you are returned to your lives refreshed and ready to go about your daily lives but always knowing that your name isn’t something you had to earn, that family crest, it is someone you already are.
And all of what I just said is just about the first verse!
Can I do one more?
“The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” Matthew Henry, that great 17th century Presbyterian non-conforming British minister once wrote, “These poor, humble, and despised ones are the favored ones of God.” The children of God are not the honored, expounded, honored and celebrated in the world. Congregations of people who strive to be known in the world usually have rejected either implicitly or explicitly their true love, Jesus Christ. They live lives and do church in ways that their culture or community or world has decided is “Christian” and forget that the true life of a child of God is lived in the shadow of the cross… it is lived in the emptying out of reputation and status for the sake of the lost, it is the picture of the sheep going out of the fenced in pasture into the world knowing that their shepherd is the one who has claimed them and named them and saved them already. The world, in its current configuration, cannot figure out what to do with these rag tag armies of God’s children who seek to serve and to love and to save with little regard for their own status and reputation.
Brothers and sisters, we are living our lives between the font and the heavenly banquet table. In our baptisms we were joined to Christ and our membership in the family of God was bestowed on us not because of anything we did to deserve it or earn it but solely out of the love of Our Father who so loved us that He gave His only Son to die for us. And then, then we approach this table to receive this body and blood of Jesus, a foretaste of the feast to come when we will dine face to face with our Savior. The communion table is a waypoint in our journey; it is a touchstone where we are forgiven, fed, and nourished to return to our lives lived out there in the world.
And this church is being called to be out there. The life of this church is not restricted to Sunday mornings or Wednesday evenings or the myriad other programs or opportunities that have come to be seen as our “church time”. No, the life of the church is in the world. It is vulnerable, it takes risks, and it plunges headfirst into real life… and that’s a dangerous proposition because that means a life lived beyond our control, our goal setting, our expectations but it is a life lived knowing that we are baptized and fed with just a foretaste of the feast to come… a taste of everlasting life that is intended to leave us wanting, seeking, yearning for more.
So when the author of John moves on and writes about purity and sinlessness he is not talking about more rules and regulations, he is not even talking about morality, he is talking about the result of a life lived taking the promises of the font and the table and this very Living World seriously. If you have this name, “child of God”, how can you possibly not want to free yourself of any hindrance, and hesitation, and yes, any caution that would keep you from God’s presence?
So what does this mean for us here in this little gazebo called Mt. Olivet Lutheran Church of Plymouth? What does it look like to be a community striving not become known or even honored, what does it look like to be a community that wants its building not to be a club but an outpost where missionaries are equipped to live their lives in that striving to better be who they already are?
My sense is that just as with my own children it will be a descriptive and not prescriptive community… by that I mean that as anyone knows with children you cannot raise them in a one size fits all mentality, it just doesn’t work. Berit is not Liv and Liv is certainly not Berit and yet they share my name and they are a part of my family. What works for Liv does not work for Berit, what works for me probably won’t work for you. But I can describe what this family looks like so let me try one description for you:
One of the downfalls of a church that doesn’t take its bestowed identity seriously is that they get the “child of God” idea just fine but then becomes the child who has moved back into their parents basement and never quite gets its collective act together to move out and live their own lives! So how about a church that comes together to be equipped to live in the world? How about a church that wants to Jump Into God’s story but then recognizes that that story continues out beyond the walls of the church building but is fully present in the world? How about a community that isn’t satisfied with the consumer mentality of “getting something out of church” but is striving to learn and serve and grow into its identity as God’s children in the world, a world that will not know it? And that that becomes our worship? No longer can we ask each other “so what did you get out of worship today” but we can ask each other “So, what did God get out of our worship today?” The consumer of our worship life is not us but God. We give, God gets. The consumer of our life in the world, then, is not us but our neighbor. We give, they get.
Our identity is not something we earned or even chose but was bestowed on us at the font, “Child of God, you have been marked with the Cross of Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit forever.” And the life we live between the font and the heavenly feast, that, that is our worship, our offering, our thanksgiving, our response to God’s crazy, amazing, lavishing love and grace.
Amen.
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