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Dr. George Purnell
August 2, 2009
“One Mission for All”
Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-16
You have heard variations of this story, I am sure, where a man died and went to heaven and was greeted by Saint Peter, who proceeded to give him a tour of the grounds. As they walked, they came upon a wooded area, where St. Peter said the Catholics congregated. Next they came to a hill, where St. Peter said the Methodists met. They went on and came to a valley, where Saint Peter said the Lutherans located.
After walking further, they came upon a gated community with walls surrounding. The man asked St. Peter who lived inside these walls. Oh, St. Peter said, those are the Baptists, and they like to think they are the only ones here, but just in case they aren’t, they don’t want any strangers getting inside their settlement.
Just so you don’t think I am picking on Baptists, we could switch the groups around. We could have the Catholics in the walled community and the Baptists in the wooded area, or we Methodists inside the gated community and the Baptists on the hill.
Christian denominations are interchangeable parts in this joke, because we are in divided into many camps, and we disagree on what it means to be the church.
The Letter to the Ephesians is as close as we come to a blueprint for what it means to be the Church in the New Testament. The writer opens our section today pleading with the Ephesians to lead lives worthy of their calling to a new life in Christ, followed by a brief listing of virtues to in verse 2.
Verse 3 then shifts our attention to one of the main focuses of this section, unity. The central importance of maintaining unity is emphasized by the sevenfold use of the word ‘one’ in verses 4-6:
“There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”
But throughout history Christian communities have had differences, often culminating in division. Most towns in
Churches split so often that the ‘new’ church that broke off from the original church often splits again...
We just have a hard time getting along with each other, even in church. In fact, I am reminded of the joke about the man who was shipwrecked on an island who apparently could not get along with himself in church. It seems that after several years of being alone on this island, the man was rescued. He showed his rescuers around the island, sort of like we like to show people around our homes when they visit. The rescuers were impressed with what they saw as they toured the island, especially by all the buildings the man had constructed. He had built a house, a library, a store, even a little church. As the tour continued, one of the rescuers asked what this other building was on the other side of the island that resembled a church. The man who had lived on the island alone all those years said, ‘oh, that’s the church I used to attend.”
When I took coursework in the sociology of religion it was common to hear that “the most segregated hour in
(Even entire denominations have identities along ethnic, economic, and educational lines. Historically, for example, Episcopal and Presbyterian Christians were affluent, professional and well connected in the community, while Methodists were lower on the socio economic and educational ladder, and poorer people tended to be Pentecostals and Baptists. African American Christians had their own denominational affiliations, such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), Pentecostal Church of God in Christ, and many others. Indeed, African American churches in towns were numbered beneath the white denominational counterpart, as in the
So, while we claim the scripture that says “bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,” the truth is that on Sunday mornings we are not bound together; indeed, it is in church more than any other institution in
The focus of our lesson then shifts to Christ giving diverse gifts to the Church for the purpose of encouraging its growth toward maturity.
Like other organizations, churches work to develop mission statements to crystallize the vision they have of their identity, purpose and direction. As the work of defining the mission in a concise form continues, congregations often discover that disagreements over the mission of the church surface. And what was once creative tension can result in division about the direction of the congregation.
Now I am a big believer in mission statements. But the church has an overriding reason for being, namely to use the gifts Christ gave us to strengthen the church, so that we become more like him in our mission to the world.
The congregation I served before I came to
After working hard for weeks…after considering many statements, and trying to merge the best parts of several statements into one that would satisfy everyone…the committee came to believe that the mission Paul had given the first century church was still the best concise statement of the mission of the church.
Accordingly, each week Ephesians 4: 11-12 appeared on the Sunday bulletins, as well as in other publications:
“The gifts he (Christ) gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets,
some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry,
for building up the Body of Christ”…
(Parenthetically, I will add that the congregation elected a building committee to design and build an addition that would allow it to reach the ministry priorities that came out of the strategic plan, and this addition almost tripled the size of the church physical plant.)
The rest of the lesson goes on to depict the Church as a living organism that is always growing toward maturity.
Verse 13 continues the thought that the gifts we receive are to be used to build up the body of Christ picking up with “Christ” and adding:
“until all of us come to the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.”
We are warned to do some serious thinking about our faith in verse 14: “We 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.” Think critically, Paul is saying, because a lot of what is passed on as faith is childish and manipulative.
People are at different stages of faith, to be sure. One of the most influential books I read in seminary was a book by James Fowler by that name: Stages of Faith. Fowler describes a sevenfold process of faith development – from Primal Faith along a continuum of growth ending with Universalizing Faith.
The important thing about this continuum of faith is that it is not “wrong” to be at any stage. Some people will never move beyond, say, stage 2 (Intuitive-Projective Faith) or stage 4 (Synthetic-Conventional Faith). Yet, while someone who is at stage 5 is not “better” or more faithful than someone at stage 2, we will grow as we move along from one stage of life to the next (from infancy to adolescence to early adulthood to mid-life and finally to our old age), and as our cognitive abilities allow us.
Paul reminds us that growth toward spiritual maturity is a lifelong process. “Christians “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.”
As you come to the table to receive the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, I ask you to reflect on where life has taken you, and where you are today in your faith walk, I pray that we will each reflect on the oneness of our calling. I pray that we will each think about the gifts Christ has given us, and ask ourselves if we are using these gifts fully to equip each other for the work of ministry – because that is the mission of every church bearing Christ’s name. Amen.
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