Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
The Fifth Sunday of Easter
May 14, 2006
W. Gregory Pope
CENTERING OUR LIVES IN GOD
Ephesians 1:1-14
Greeting and Call to Worship
Before we enter into worship today I want to make you aware of a theme we will be considering this summer - Christian Spiritual Formation, using the biblical letter of Ephesians as our guide. We will spend the next four weeks on the first three chapters, and then give four weeks in August on the final three chapters.
In addition to Ephesians I want us to reflect on a poem by Wendell Berry, entitled “The Sycamore.” (Berry, Collected Poems, North Point Press, 1994, 65). It is printed on the front of your bulletin. Dorothy Spurr introduced this poem to the Worship Team a few weeks ago, and I heard within it images of spiritual formation to which I will elude from time to time throughout this series.
As Dorothy comes to read the poem, will you listen prayerfully to the ways in which the spiritual formation of your life bears resemblance to Berry’s sycamore?
“The Sycamore” by Wendell Berry
In the place that is my own place, whose earth
I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,
hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.
There is no year it has flourished in
that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it
that is its death, though its living brims whitely
at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.
Over all its scars has come the seamless white
of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history
healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection
in the warp and bending of its long growth.
It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
It has become the intention and radiance of its dark fate.
It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.
In all the country there is no other like it.
I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling
the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.
I see that it stands in its place, and feeds upon it,
and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.
Sermon
To walk in the way of Jesus is to live as baptized followers of Jesus, repentant and always in the process of conversion, walking in the way of love and compassion, grace and forgiveness, peace and justice, simplicity and generosity, servanthood and the cross, resurrection and hope.
It is one thing to understand that path as the way of Jesus. It is quite another thing to become a person whose life is characterized by such a path. Becoming such a person is the work of Christian Spiritual Formation. It is the primary reason we gather in this place each week for worship, prayer, Bible study, and ministry. It’s not enough just to show up. We are seeking to become the people God created us to be, formed in the image of Christ, walking in the way of Jesus.
We become this kind of community by each of us centering our lives in God. The letter of Ephesians teaches us how to do that.
It is fitting, I think, that we begin this study of Spiritual Formation on Mother’s Day. Because it is the God-given responsibility of mothers and fathers to nurture the spiritual formation of their children as long as they are in their care.
As a parent you may decide that the church is not the place of spiritual formation for your children. Just make sure it is your choice and not your children’s. The responsibility of providing opportunities for spiritual formation is yours not your children’s. Most children and teenagers, given the choice, will not choose church for spiritual formation purposes. They only want to go where they can have fun. Most all of us were like that. Some of us still are. But it is the task of parents to teach their children that there are more important things than fun.
We must spend time becoming the person God created us to be. And as parents, we have to make the decisions as to how that best can happen for ourselves and our children. Perhaps on this Mother’s Day, those of us who are parents will commit or recommit ourselves to the spiritual formation of our children and make the sometimes unpopular decisions necessary for spiritual formation to take place. It is the most important work we can do.
If we do not have children, perhaps we can make a commitment regarding our own spiritual formation, as well as commit ourselves to being involved in the spiritual formation of others.
As we talk about Christian Spiritual Formation, it is important that we understand its true nature.
It is important that we, the church, put the word “Christian” in front of Spiritual Formation. Though we can learn from Buddhism, Islam, Taoism, Judaism, and other faiths, we are here to make Christians out of people. We’re not here to shape generic spiritual people.
It is easy to be seduced by dazzling flashy events that create spiritual experiences, but do not shape us as Christians. Spirituality is a popular marketable interest, but much of it has very little to do with God as revealed in Jesus.
This letter of Ephesians corrects some false assumptions Christians and our culture often have about spirituality by teaching us what Christian Spiritual Formation is all about.
Like most of the New Testament letters, the opening verses introduce themes that will be developed later in the letter. So, some of the themes I will introduce today will be developed later in this series.
The opening verses tell us this letter was written “to the saints who are faithful in Christ Jesus.”
Our earliest biblical manuscripts actually do not specify this letter as being addressed to the Ephesians. It is perhaps a later addition. Scholars also disagree, based on the style and vocabulary, as to whether or not Paul actually wrote this letter, or whether a disciple of Paul’s, following his death, penned these thoughts. Since Paul’s name is on it, I will refer to Paul as the writer. It really doesn’t matter a great deal. For these are the church’s scriptures and through the inspiration of the Spirit they faithfully guide us in Christian Spiritual Formation.
The addressees of this letter are “the saints who are faithful in Christ Jesus.”
Two things about the word “saints.”
One, “saints” is the way the Bible describes Christians. We usually don’t care for the term because it sounds pious and self-righteous. But to be included among the saints has nothing to do with how good you are. Rather, the designation “saints” has everything to do with how God deals with you. The word means we have been set apart for God’s purposes.
It helps put to rest any self-image problem you may have. God sees you as part of the saints. Not as a perfect super Christian. No. To be considered among the saints means that God deals with you as a holy person with dignity. You do not have to let your identity be defined by others, but rather, by who God says you are - a holy person as part of a holy people set apart for God’s purposes.
Note also that the word “saints” is always plural. There are no singular saints in the Bible. That plurality is a reminder that almost the entirety of scripture is written not to individuals but to the faith community: “to the saints.” And that is just one of many ways the Bible reveals the Christian Life and Christian Spiritual Formation as a communal experience. Faith is personal but not private. Christian Spiritual Formation is personal but not individualized.
This is absolutely crucial to our understanding of Christian Spiritual Formation because it helps us see through some common misunderstandings about spirituality.
It is common to hear people in our culture, even within the church, who will say, “I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious.” It sounds so nice, especially to those outside the church, because the message that comes across to them is, “I really don’t like the church either.” Those who make the comment usually mean they want very little, if anything, to do with institutional religion. They want little to do with commandments. They would rather not have to listen to the faith community about how they live their lives. And they would rather not have to do the hard work of living together in community with people who are different or people they don’t like. Just do spirituality solo. It moves faith from being simply personal to individualistic, cut off from community. And is often focused on the self.
Religion has become a dirty word for bad institutional spirituality. And there’s a lot of it. But that’s not the meaning of the word “religion.” That is only one expression of religion based on certain people’s experience. Religion is rooted in the word “ligaments,” ligaments that bind together a body, like the body of Christ.
In just a few moments Adam and Maleena Hackbarth will be baptized. It is a public expression of their desire to follow Jesus. But it is also something more. Scripture says when we are baptized that we are baptized into the body of Christ, the Church, becoming connected to every other Christian throughout history. In baptism there is a binding that takes place that means you never follow Jesus alone, but rather, in community.
So yes, you can be spiritual and not religious, if you are speaking of spirituality in a general sort of way. But the Bible is not that concerned with you just being spiritual in a general sort of way. The Bible wants you to be Christian. And, biblically speaking, you cannot be Christian without being religious, without being joined together with other Christians.
Spirituality without religion, without community, tends to be self-centered with no accountability. Religion roots spirituality in community and ritual and makes accountability at least possible. Religion binds us to others and to God.
It is at this point of individualized, self-centered religion that we also need to beware of psychological language replacing theological language when talking about Christian Spiritual Formation. This month Sigmund Freud would have been 150 years old. He helped us understand many things about the human condition. But Freud was not a theologian.
Psychology can be helpful in Christian Spiritual Formation. We need psychology to help us understands the inner workings of the human being. But Christian spirituality is of a different nature than psychology. Psychology’s focuses primarily on the self. Psychology is self-language. And self-knowledge is important, but it is not most important. We must be careful not to make the self the center of Christian Spiritual Formation. We must be careful not to place
ourselves at the center of our lives. Christian Spiritual Formation is about centering our lives in God.
Our text this morning centers our lives and our Spiritual Formation in God, the relational Trinitarian God - Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit.
Verses 3-14 of Ephesians 1 make up one long sentence in the Greek. One scholar called it “the most monstrous sentence I ever met in the Greek language.” He thought the Holy Spirit should have been a better editor.
But Paul is not writing a composition paper. He has entered the language of praise and adoration, expressing his passion. And he gets carried away as he describes with exuberance all that God has done, is doing, and will do in the lives of Christians. It happens to Paul often in other letters. He doesn’t finish his sentences. He just breaks into poetry. And this is a sentence, I think, best read phrase by phrase as poetry.
It is the poetry of worship and adoration and praise to the God who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing, and has taken the initiative to choose us and make known to us the mystery of God’s will to unite all of creation in Christ. Throughout history and throughout our lives God has been drawing us home to God’s self so that we may live holy lives. God was determined to include us into God’s family. So like a Mother and Father God adopted us, redeeming and reclaiming us as God’s own children, lavishing grace upon us, freely forgiving our sin. When we believed in Christ, we were sealed as God’s own by the Holy Spirit, which is God’s promise that we will one day receive our inheritance of complete redemption as God’s own people.
Do you see the emphasis here? There’s all this stuff done to us and for us. But who is doing the work? GOD. Christian Spiritual Formation is all about what God is doing in our lives. It’s hard to imagine the world this way - to put our egos aside and realize that God is doing the important things. But that’s what Paul is saying here.
And the purpose of all this - Paul says three times in this sentence - is “the praise of God’s glory.” Christian Spiritual Formation is not about living for your self or improving yourself. It’s about living your life in such a way that it brings glory and praise to God. It is to be shaped and formed in such a way that the love and grace and glory of God are seen in our lives. Christian Spiritual Formation is all about God.
Cultural spirituality is usually all about the self. Christian Spiritual Formation is about getting our minds off ourselves and on to what God is doing.
Eugene Peterson says, “Christian Spiritual Formation is about getting bored with yourself and focusing on something larger.” (Eugene Peterson, Soulcraft, Audio CD, lecture given at Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia)
It is a life we enter that we do not really understand because God is bigger than we are.
This text, centered in God’s plan, God’s will, God’s purpose, uses the language of predestination, which is often been used as an exclusive, fatalistic understanding of God choosing some for salvation and not others. But that is not the nature of God’s grace. God’s grace is for everybody!
The emphasis here on God’s plan and purpose does the important work of taking us out of the driver’s seat in the journey of Christian Spiritual Formation. We’re still in the car, but we’re not driving. The biblical story, centered in God and God’s activity, draws us into God’s large world. It provides an assurance that our lives are ultimately in God’s hands.
With all this talk of God having chose us and destined us, we must be careful to understand that God does not coerce or make us do anything, even though God knows what’s best for us. God does not impose; God invites. We must give God permission to do the work God wants to do with us, because transformation will not be forced upon us.
So perhaps the most crucial question regarding our Christian Spiritual Formation is: Are we willing to relinquish control of our relationship with God to God? Will we allow God to shape and mold us according to God’s purposes? It’s what we mean when we pass through the waters of baptism confessing “Jesus is Lord. Jesus Christ is Lord.”
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CRESCENT HILL BAPTIST CHURCH
2800 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, Kentucky 40206
(502) 896-4425
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