"Build Up...in Love" - Sermon, August 5, 2018
Community UMC, Quincy
“Build Up…in Love”
Rev. Andrew Davis
August 5, 2018
Ephesians 4: 1-16
This
past Friday, I had the honor of officiating my first wedding and am happy to
say that everything turned out really well, even though it was a VERY small wedding
and none of those whatever could go wrong would go wrong scenarios did not take
place. There was a lot of love in the
air both Thursday evening at the rehearsal dinner and in the service
itself. Plus it’s appropriate we talk
about love this morning as my parents celebrate their 40th wedding
anniversary today. Like my parents wedding
40 years ago, our friends had their wedding at the Rio Linda UMC and am glad
that there was air conditioning this time around, as my dad mentioned yesterday
that on their wedding day, it was 108 degrees outside and there was no air
conditioning in the church at that time.
While I could go on and on
about love, we are going to be spending a month thinking about what it means to
be “…in love.” Now before everyone gasps or thinks I’m creating a scandal here
when I talk about love after a wedding or anniversary, we are talking about
agape love, or brotherly/sisterly as we consider how our community of faith is
built on love, particularly how love is “the key to communal solidarity.”[i] As we think about how love is a key to
solidarity and unity as the body of Christ here in Quincy, how do we:
Build each other up in love?
Live in love?
Give thanks in love?
Then move in love?
According to Charles Wesley,
brother of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, “Love is the ‘nature and
name” of God”[ii]
As we embark on a new series for the month of August, coincidentally called
“…in Love,” we will be spending some time in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians,
one of the churches he addresses in Asia Minor.
Throughout our series and our exploration of Ephesians, “there are
concrete actions that Paul suggests [in his admonishments/advice], and they all
have their foundation in the love of God.”[iii] I would even add love of
neighbor, as it’s something that cannot be said enough, especially today. Of course, it’s up to all of us to build up
the body of Christ in love, not just here locally, but in our world. And that’s where Paul is getting at in his
letter to the Ephesians.
In his letter to the
Ephesians, Paul is working towards connecting the people in Ephesus (Asia
Minor) together, even though they may have different moral compasses, understandings,
or beliefs, as he is urging them to connect themselves together with
Christ. Like many of Paul’s letters,
Ephesians begins with his salutation, his prayer for the people he addresses,
then his practical advice or admonishments.
Unlike his letters, particularly to the Galatians or Corinthians, Paul
isn’t quite as in-your-face in Ephesians, yet still gets his point across as he
admonishes the Ephesians to live in unity and in love with God.
As Barbara just read for us,
we hear Paul say what “very likely [was] an early baptismal liturgy” in which
“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 Father of all, who is above
all, and through all.”[iv] When he gets to his
advice, or telling the Ephesians and even us what to do, the work ahead is work
that can equip all of us who follow Christ to work towards living in unity and
encouraging others to live together with love as its foundation. At the same time, we are being challenged to
think about whether we “value our own preferences more than God’s unity,” as
the challenge is whether our life together is Christ centered, or preference
driven.[v] Likewise, Paul lists a number of gifts and
using our various gifts is one of the ways of bringing people together and
ultimately bringing about transformation and a new sense of hope for an anxious
and hurting world.
So how do we use all of this
and these different gifts in ministry to build up the body of Christ in love
here and in his other letters, encouraging us to use those gifts to bring a new
hope, and ultimately lead to the transformation of the world that our mission
calls us to do. Ultimately, everything
begins with love as a foundation. It
begins “speaking the truth in love” (Eph. 4: 15) and holding each other to act
in love. Our conduct is to be measured who
God is and what God has done” and we show it through our speech and our
actions.[vi]
A couple weeks ago, I decided
to go down memory lane and pulled out my high school yearbooks, as this Fall marks
20 years since I began my senior year of high school. For all of us, I think it’s always
interesting to look back at where we have been and where we are now and I think
back to how I have changed and transformed from that time. It’s kind of like going up to the heritage
room and looking back at previous church directories or photo archives, seeing
the changes in people over the years, or when I first looked through, ask ‘who
are half these people?’
It’s kind of ironic I’d want
to go down memory lane and reflect back on high school. As I’ve shared before, high school was a
mixed bag for me, although not always the happiest time of my life. Yet, I remember the friends who stood by me,
along with a couple of teachers who believed in me, one who I keep in touch
with regularly. I was not always one who
acted in love at that time, as I put up some fortified concrete walls around my
heart and was very guarded, something I do regret although I still put walls
around my heart here and there. Even
while being actively involved in church, I didn’t exactly have a notion of
building up the body of Christ whenever I built those walls around my heart or
wanted to exclude people I didn’t think were worthy of being in the church at
the time. Maybe it was selective love,
yet as I reflect on how wrong I was back then and our passage this morning, I
realize today how essential we need to build up each other in love, not cutting
down, because there are people who need a message of love more than ever
today!!
As I continually study more
into John Wesley’s theology and trying to perfect myself in love while honing
and perfecting my skills in ministry, I realize that there is always that
opportunity for redemption by God’s grace. Furthermore, we all have the
opportunity of moving towards maturity in our faith, or sanctification while on
our journey towards salvation by allowing God to tear down the walls that might
be built around our hearts we work towards building up the body of Christ in
love. Of course, it’s not going to
perfect and we just need to do our best because each of us are a part of the
body of Christ that Paul talks about in this morning’s passage.
As we prepare to come to this
table, then go out to build up the body of Christ in love, I want us to reflect
on a concept of building up each other called Ubuntu, a Nguni Bantu concept “which was popularized by Arichbishop
Desmond Tutu and others during the work of transitioning South Africa from
Apartheid to democracy.”[vii] As Bishop Tutu explains,
Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. It speaks of the very essence of being
human. When we want to give someone high
praise to someone we say “Yu, u nobuntu;”
“Hey, so-and-so has ubuntu.” Then you
are generous, you are hospitable, you are you are friendly and caring and compassionate. You share what you have. It is to say, “my humanity is caught up, is
inextricably bound up, in yours.” We belong to the bundle of life. We say “a
person is a person through other persons.” It is not, “I think therefore I am.”
It says rather, “I am human because I belong.
I participate. I share.” A person
with ubuntu is open and available to
others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and
good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he
or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated
or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they
were less than who they are.”[viii]
As
we go into the new week, full of new opportunities, and full what are you doing
to help build up the body of Christ in love?
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, let the Church Say Amen!!
[i] Pheme Perkins, “The Letter to the
Ephesians” in The New Interpreter’s
Commentary (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 423.
[ii] Ministries, Discipleship. 2018. "Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost
2018 — Preaching Notes - Umcdiscipleship.Org". Umcdiscipleship.Org.
Accessed August 5 2018. https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/worship/august-2018-post-pentecost-worship-planning-series/august-5-eleventh-sunday-after-pentecost-year-b/eleventh-sunday-after-pentecost-2018-preaching-notes.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Ibid.
[vii] Ibid.
[viii] Desmond Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 31.
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