Ephesians 4:14-16
14We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. 15But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.
Sermon: In the Fullness of Time: Grow up!
The Indian Jesuit priest and psychotherapist Anthony DeMello told the story of a father seeking to get his son out of bed and go to school. The son finally said: “I will give you three reasons why I don’t want to go to school: 1.) Nobody likes me, 2. No one listens to me, 3.) Nobody cares about me.” The father said, “And I will give you three reasons you need to go to school today: 1.) They need you; 2. You are important; 3.) You are the principal of the school!” It’s hard to grow up into maturity.
Our scripture lesson today points us to one important truth; one crucial take-home message from our passage. Christians must grow up—the crises in the world are too deep. God wants us to grow up, to know the whole truth in love, to be the change this world so desperately needs. Christian maturity is the trajectory and aim of our life’s journey. The Methodists who formed me call this the life-long process of sanctification—going on to perfection. That’s not UCC language per say, but the essence is still the same: We are not to be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, trickery, craftiness and deceitful scheming. We are not to swap our faith for fads. Rather, we are to grow up in every way into Christ by imitating him. We are to become through our life’s journey more and more like Jesus—that is the on-going, womb-to-tomb process of spiritual maturity.
Even two-thousand years ago the church was susceptible to fads. Paul, who may or may not have been the author of Ephesians, warns against fads and wants the Ephesians to resist being blown about by the winds of faddish change. He doesn’t want the novelty of the latest fashion in religion turn your life upside down. Back then the fads or issues invading the church were pagan influences and a variety of false doctrines which embraced idolatry and led to a loss of moral sensitivity and decency. These vices led people off the journey to become Christlike and impacted the people’s holiness. One thing Ephesian’s author goes on to caution against is seeking unfair gain at the expense of others—that really impacts our holiness. I hope you take the time to read the whole of this letter so you can see for yourselves.
Christianity has seen numerous fads and numerous false doctrines through the millennia. One that came about in 1830 that still informs whole denominations of Christians today was the teaching of John Nelson Darby. Anyone who ever read the Left Behind series got immersed in Darbyism. Darby taught a brand of eschatology (a fancy word meaning “last things”) called Dispensationalism. This holds that all “true” Christians will be raptured before the events leading up to the Second Coming and Last Judgement. You should know that no church ever taught this in any creed, catechism, or statement of faith prior to 1830—imagine, rapture theology did not inform Christianity at all in its long history except for in the modern era! Rapture doctrine is one of the most recent new doctrines in the history of the church and is considered heretical by most scholars. Similarly, that sinner’s prayer for salvation you might have heard about in other churches or in tracts or from people knocking at your door—that came about in 1930. No such sinner’s prayer is found in the pages of our Bible. See, it’s not so much about what or how much we believe as it is about how much God believes in us.
And then another fad are these worship wars over the past several decades. This is when whole congregations get up in arms over varieties of music in church and perhaps using those big screens—something we have resisted here—and worship evolving into something more like entertainment (which is what we actually associate with big screens). These things are all fads, and the message here is to not trade your faith and your on-going journey toward Christian maturity for the emptiness of fads.
Let’s talk about Christian maturity. I have personally noticed that spiritually mature people see the big picture don’t get hung up on the details. Furthermore, spiritually mature people are ones who are the least judgmental. Christians are forever splitting hairs over the unimportant stuff, trying to determine who is in and who is out. This has contributed heavily to the splintering of Christianity ever since Luther broke the floodgates at the Reformation. I remember years ago when an aunt and uncle starting to attend Fundamentalist church. It was their turn to host Christmas night, which rotated among my father’s six siblings. My aunt proclaimed loudly and judgmentally that no alcohol would be served in their home because it was a “Christian” home—the implication being that the rest of us were all reprobates because we allowed alcohol in our homes. Similarly, churches have continued to splinter over many things like the inclusion of LGBTQ people. In full view now are the (not so united) United Methodists. Out west we now have the Western Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church, who strive to be completely inclusive and have even dialoged about separating from the non-inclusive traditionalists in the denomination. The splintering of the United Methodist may well be adding several more groups to the 40,000+ denominations and sects that make up American’s religious landscape.
It’s not only Christians who get hung up on the details and get into bitter disagreements. This is actually a human issue when it comes to the details of our religion passions—people develop all kinds of sensitivities because of an almost innate need to adhere to firm boundaries and creeds in order to feel secure. And I would suggest here that indulging in that need is not consistent with spiritual maturity.
To illustrate, I want to tell you a story from Clint’s and my recent trip to Turkey. I found Turkey, the ruins, the history, the scenery to be fascinating to be sure, but I also found the group dynamics of our 10-day international bus tour group to be even more interesting. Our group of twenty-five consisted of five Americans. The rest were from South Africa and India. Our represented religious groups were Christian, Hindu, and Muslim. Our Turkish tour guide, a retired university professor and archeologist, was Muslim, though from a very progressive, inclusive sect of Islam called the Alevites. During our long rides between cities, our guide would lecture us on all aspects of Turkish life to include religion, and here is where he ran afoul of the other Muslims on the tour. Turkey, you know, is 98% Islamic. As we approached a little mountain village called Kozak, which was inhabited by Alevites (who would soon be serving us lunch in their humble but gracious homes), our guide began to tell us about the distinctives of their beliefs. He insisted that Alevites are indeed Muslims but they do not attend mosque, they do not necessarily pray 5 times a day, and they ensure that their young women in particular (and their young men as well) go off to the universities for an education—that was more important than ever making the (optional) pilgrimage to Mecca. Our guide said that Alevites will welcome all into their communities as long as they pledge to love one another, pursue education, and not gossip about one another. In other words, their practice was simply to love each other and embrace progress as more scientific knowledge becomes known to humanity. As an example, he explained that recent archeology called into question the long-held and sacred location of a particular rock at Mecca.
As he was lecturing, a Muslim man from South Africa sitting directly behind us began to breathe loudly and get upset. (Incidentally, this was the same sweet man who had so kindly bought and presented Clint and me with one of those tourist photos we had declined to buy ourselves a day earlier.) This man yelled out, “No, these people cannot be Muslim! And no, your interpretation of recent archelogy is wrong! To be Muslim you have to pray five times a day, go to mosque, and make the pilgrimage to Mecca!” The other Muslims on the bus nodded in agreement. A fierce argument erupted and the tension on the bus was so thick you could cut it with a knife. I whispered to Clint that this was the very same thing I had observed so often in Christians circles when the various viewpoints clashed—in seminary and as a chaplain when numerous denominations of us tried to all work together. There was always an undercurrent if not a direct disagreement as one theological perspective dialoged (or argued) with another. On the bus that day, Clint whispered something back to me, saying human beings from all religious groups act so similarly because it is the human psychological condition to have a dire need for structure and security, all due to our fear. Rigid beliefs and structures are humanity’s feeble attempts to make sense out of that which we cannot easily explain—and this often eclipses the big picture, which is simply self-giving love—and truly what is rooted at the deepest levels of all our world’s major religions, including ours.
Friends, this passage from Ephesians calls us beyond our fear and obsession with details. It tells us what spiritual growth looks like: We are to speak the truth in love. The truth is that we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. All of us as the body are joined and knit together to grow and build up this body in love—for the just transformation of the world. This is what the reign of Christ is about that we celebrate this day. This is the kingdom come.
This is spiritual maturity, growing up—becoming more and more Christlike as we journey through our lives. And here’s the thing: There is no one-size-fits-all as we go about maturing. Christian author and pastor John Ortberg says that spiritual growth is hand-crafted, not mass produced. He says a lot of people think there is just some general format or blueprint for how growth happens, and we all have to do the same stuff. Not true, he asserts: According to Ortberg, what would feed a mouse would starve an elephant. What would grow an orchid would drown a cactus. He says that all living creatures have commonalities. They all need light and nutrients and air and water. Each needs them in different amounts and different conditions. The key to spiritual growth is not treating every creature alike. It’s finding the unique conditions that will enable one to grow. For some, it may well be removing all the alcohol from our homes—if we struggle with that and it impairs our relationships. But that is not a litmus test for whether a place is a Christian home or not.
I invite all of us to reflect upon what most impacts and moves us along our paths to spiritual maturity. For me it is reading far and wide—trying to understand how all people do their spirituality and articulate ultimate reality. For me it is sitting at deathbeds and being with struggling people. For me it is sometimes reading about near-death experiences and quantum physics. For me it is working out my own salvation or wholeness (in fear and trembling) in the context of marriage—which is one intense and intimate place to practice the self-giving and yielding of being Christlike. For me it is the process of sermon preparation. What is it for you? Knowing you as I do, it may be serving at UMOM. It may be mission trips to Guatemala or ensuring Christmas presents for someone who would likely get none at all or visiting in prisons. It may be carefully cultivating and intentionally practicing patience in those times when life seems to work against you. It may be daily devotional time—or remaining in a community even when you have to yield up having your own way some of the time. Again, there is no one-size-fits all.
There are some false images of spiritual growth though, I should mention. Part and parcel of that sinner’s prayer I mentioned earlier is that notion of being born-again and in a moment being changed. That 180-degree change and becoming a different person in an instant is mostly pure myth. In the 1983 movie Tender Mercies, Robert Duvall plays a stepdad. He and the 10-year-old boy are getting baptized together. The kid says, “They say after you are baptized that you are brand new. A whole new person.” He asks Duvall, “Do you feel brand new?” Duvall replies as he looks in the rearview mirror, “Not yet. Not yet.” Growing up, becoming a new person is a process, but we must do the life-long work of it. It is not instantaneous.
John Ortberg says, “Some things will not change no matter how much you grow spiritually. Your raw material, your basic wiring, your metabolism, your DNA; they’ll just get redirected (and I would add to this: redirected in time). Don’t forget Paul, whose is the traditionally-ascribed writer of the letter we are reading. He was once a passionate, zealous man who was a Christian killer before he met up with Jesus on the road to Damascus. Afterward, Paul was a zealous, passionate man, but literally sacrificed himself for the sake of the Jesus he met on the way to Damascus–his passions got redirected. The point is, you will always be you. The stuff you wrestle with, you will always wrestle with—some things, though, you will overcome. A woman once wrote in her journal the three things she wrestled with in her spiritual life. Ten years later, she looked back and discovered that she still wrestles with the same three things. It is in the wrestling though that we can grow stronger and grow up. God’s grace, praise God, covers our periods of wrestling.
I want to end with two quotes. The first one is from Bishop John Shelby Spong. He once said, “The people don’t need to be born again, they need to grow up; they need to accept their responsibility for themselves in the world.” See, we are not babies needing to be fed as much as we are called to mature in Christ and become more and more like him. This is what the world so desperately needs now—not our passivity. The world needs us to be intentional about progressing to Christian maturity.
The second quote is from Richard Rohr who wrote, “Christianity is a lifestyle, a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared, and loving. However, we made it into an established “religion” (and all that goes with that) and avoided the lifestyle change itself. One could be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain in most of Christian history, and still believe that Jesus is one’s “personal Lord and Savior”…The world has no time for such silliness anymore. The suffering on Earth is too great.
Friends, we don’t need fads, we don’t rigid beliefs or detailed formulas for spiritual growth; we don’t need myths of instant change. What we need is intention to grow and active participation in becoming more and more like our head, Jesus. And this looks a lot like growing in self-giving love, which is the big picture. Amen.