Sermon 8/23/2017

Wear Your Protection.

One week ago we worshiped at the Fair food stand and we had the joy joy joy down in our hearts.  It was a fun morning.  This morning, this week I have found to be a week and a world that is less joyful, less joy-filled in many ways.  We have a president who is…speaking of nuclear responses.  Stating that a stern response in what is called for in terms of our North Korea relations.  While that might be an acceptable response and question, nuclear responses never have winners.  To not acknowledge that any nuclear response or provocation will cost lives, from numerous countries, ages, and races is to seem short-sighted.  I look around as I walk down the street or the mall, I look into people’s faces and I fear changes that we all would face if any country would make a choice to engage nuclear weapons.  I am fearful.

Then we have news from Charlottesville, Virginia.  A demonstration, a “Unite The Right” rally?  Involving white supremacist.  Friday night as counter protestors gathered behind closed doors in churches, there was a march with torch bearing white nationalists shouting “white lives matter”, “you will not replace us”, and the Nazi associated phrase “blood and soil”.

The tally is one woman dead, 19 injured, 5 critically from someone backing a car into them….intentionally….two state troopers killed, others injured.

Is anyone else uncomfortable today.  I try to keep a low political profile.

But this week is not about politics…it is about hate.

I can not keep low about hate.

And then our text talked about armor.  Sounds like military stuff and while the image is cute for a sweaty mouse, I get uncomfortable.

We have been in the book of Ephesians for four weeks now.  Have you been reading the chapters?  In the opening chapters Paul tells us about God’s grace, about Jesus coming for our redemption.  Jesus came to love us, to adopt us, to share an inheritance with us….with the one who can do all things.

In Chapter four Paul makes a turn and lets us know that we have a response, a responsibility in all this also.  We are to be unified, not all the same but all in unity that comes with maturity.  We are not to be like children, tossed to and fro.  We must grow up…in Christ.

This week, Paul speaks about our protection.  This is so often a children’s text, with play knight’s swords and breast plate.  Yet this week I am not feeling child-like and I stand in sore need of protection.  Are you with me?

This is a reading that has an eschatological theme or taste.  Way back in the book of Isaiah it speaks of God putting on similar implements to judge.  Paul is speaking in the same vein-understanding that-it isn’t all that easy.  We as graced, forgiven, blessed disciples of Christ still have a struggle before us.  And it is not just a personal struggle, this is not a struggle to have a nice day or to get through your day.

It does not take our imagination, it just takes a look at the week’s news to see that when powers and countries, groups, organizations have greed and power as their requirements, there is a huge challenge of bringing justice in the face of such powers.

We are living in a time when objective truth has become completely devalued….it is time to put on the belt of truth.

In a time when might is mistaken for right,

I believe God’s righteous armor is essential.

In a time when aggression between nations and groups with communities is on the rise,

I believe it is time to slip on the shoes of peace.

In a time when so many struggle to see what the future might hold for them, especially our younger generation…

I believe the shield of faith is a necessity to see us through.

In a time when there are so many voices clamoring for our attention our money, and our time, may our assurance in the grace of God provide a helmet to protect our heave from being deceived…

and the Word of God be a sword to pierce the….crap, the pomposity, and the hollow promises that will never fulfill us.

We have protection!  God gives us protection for our fight, for our battles, for our growing and loving.

Look at your card.  It is a piece of armor.

How does it protect you?

Paul returns us to prayer….Quote

Paul means prayer to be our means to keep ourselves rooted….

To keep us rooted in the Way of Christ.

The world makes me fearful.  But I don’t want to leave here today being afraid, for I believe that God does not call us for fear.  God calls us to be protected, to be the protection for others who are without voice or voices are weakened or silenced.

What do we need to do to keep God’s protection near by?

Today, this morning, we will gather at Christ’s table.  We will come to gather strength.  Strength to go from here into the world prepared.  Prepared to be the church, to be a disciple of Christ, to have a voice

I want to read this from The Message Version Ephesians 6:10-20

Wear your protection!

Food stand Sunday

We survived!  We did it!

It feels so great to be here now, done with fair, worship God, singing praises….and just being with one another.

The reading is all about being together as church.  Some years ago you all gathered and formed a Mission/Vision Statement.  I think it might be written around her somewhere.  Might be in your bulletin!  There it is.

Can we read it together?

Our mission is to prayerfully:

Seek God

Grow in Faith

Love and serve others

For the transformation of lives.

So how do we do that?  As individuals?

More importantly today-how do we do that as a church, as one congregation?

Many, if not most, church have these statements.  I am not sure what Paul’s reaction would be to these statements but that is what he is getting at in this chapter of Ephesians.  What is your focus, together as all the people of FUMC, and as the church.

There is a rub, or a tenseness in a mission statement, in a epistle, even in Jesus ministry that he calls us too—individual, versus cooperate.  We all work our relationship with God.  Yet it is not a personal thing-we are called to be God’s church, the church universal, the church local-not the church individual.

The foodstand, the fair week is a week of working together.  It is not a week that I live that mission statement as an individual.  It is a together week.  I may have the love of Jesus in my heart but really it is about the love of Jesus in our hearts together as we run this food stand.

I want us to hear two sentences….I want us to hear the point.Read from verse 4.

You are…

One body

 And there is one Lord

One faith

One baptism and one God and Father of all (over all, through all, and in all)

One!

The subject is unity.  How do we as God followers be together, serve together and unify together?  I think we did this week.

A little bit about being unified when we are diversified.  I mean we are not all the same.

We are all different.

We are all to equip the saints for ministry-our gifts, our likes, our knowledge, our diversity.

About that word equip-greek katartismos meaning the setting of a bone.  It does not mean piling up knowledge, or skills.  It means to line things up, to reconcile, to restore, to create.

To grow our ministry mans to align ourselves with God’s intentions.

I asked last week-that we would see all the people.  How did that go?

Discussion.

There were a lot to see?  How did seeing “all” work when we got busy?

Did you have time to see all on both sides of the counter?

In the grill porch, through     the bitty windows?

God is speaking to us  ….not suggestions, not niceties, not busy work.  God is speaking…

God equips us.

Unity is our goal.  Not agreement, not a likeness, but unity.

God’s goal is our maturity

No tricks, no misleading.

Verse 15-16

It was a lovely fair, seeing all the people and uniting together.

The summer messages I have tried to make light, simple and perhaps shorter.  I think that fits summer.  Today is no different.  So much could be said about reconciliation in Christ Jesus, probably should be.

But this is a pointed sermon.  Not toward a person but toward our shared experience of the fair this year.  All of us will be there, either working, eating, or seeing who else is there.  It will be our common experience.

Our Food Stand is not a missional event, nor is the money donated to mission.  The money goes, profits, go to our trustee budget and to the UMW….both of which do good things.  So, that leaves the people.

I came from a home that was always in conflict.  It was not a great life.  I went to college and roomed with a good that I had nothing in common with.  We split the room in two, respected each other and as room-mates fared better than others that year.

The following year-sophomore year, I roomed with a friend.  Same thing room split.  It changed-we arranged the room so our desks could both face out the window.  Beds were in a L shape so groups could sit on them.  We got along great.  I learned so much that year.  I learned how to live with someone and more.

Learning to live and to love the other is what we are talking about today.

Gentiles and Jews were the other to each other!  Gentiles just couldn’t –ever-be right enough, good enough, clean enough for Jews to accept.  And Jews-well they were Jews and mothering else.

In the first paragraph listen to the descriptive words….

Without Christ

Aliens

strangers

no hope

no God

So remember!

Then along comes Christ.

Jews and Gentiles were reconciled.  It wasn’t an easy thing for Christ.  It took the cross.

This is good news-the good news of the cross.  Jesus announced this good news to those close to God-the Jews, and to those far away from God-the Gentiles.

Listen to the words used now:

No longer strangers/aliens

Fellow citizens-you belong to God’s household

With Jesus things have changed.  It is like living with a room mate that you like that you learn how to love and more than get along-You flourish with-you are of the same household.

Belleville is a community with some diversity.  Perhaps not compared to New York city but there is diversity.  Diversity is good, diversity adds strength.  But it is not always easy.

That is a nice way of saying-You are gonna see all kinds this week!  You will serve them, take their money-and will it end there.

The fair food stand needs to be in mission.  We need to serve and take money but it can’t end there.  We need to See All The People.  See them as different and the same.  Christ has already reconciled us.  So reach out and see them, really great them, make relationship.

I know…

Small community, see these folks for decades, it’s great….

#SeeAllThePeople

Make relationship.

The whole building is joined together in him, and it grows up into a temple that is dedicated to the Lord.

Christ has already joined people.  This isn’t our job, we don’t have to change anyone.  We just are called to join in relationship with people.  Talk to them, know how they are, greet them from the heart.  Recognize them from yesterday, then say so.

We are not fixing our church.  We are forming relationships with people.

Verse 22

Christ is building you into a place where God lives through the Spirit.