Gifts and Discipleship

Introduction and Scripture Reading

Last week we gave you a little taste of what is to come for our All Church Leadership Retreat at Camp Oak Hills. This week we have the brochures and registration forms for the retreat, and though most of you have put your names down for the retreat, it is important that those of us who are able fill out those forms and return them with their fees involved, so we know that we can rent out Camp Oak Hills. The registration fees are based on us occupying three cabins – one for the men, one for the women, and one shared by the families with children. The camp is serving us a breakfast and lunch, and we are bringing out pizza and pop for Friday evening supper. They are also providing snacks. Kaylee is back and we are talking with her about providing a program for the children during the presentations by Jim McCracken for the adults.

The theme of the retreat is “The Difference between Ancient Boundary Stones and Old Wine Skins.” The Old Testament repeatedly told Israel not to move the ancient boundary stones set in the days of Joshua that divided the land between the tribes. In an agrarian society, the land provided life to the tribes, and changing the boundaries took away land from some of the tribes and therefore their sustenance. As a metaphor, boundary stones refer to the things in the Scripture that were never meant to be changed, like the Ten Commandments, the Gospel, the institution of the family based on marriage between one man and one woman. One of the main line denominations in this area, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, just moved one of those boundary stones by recognizing homosexual unions and by changing their policy to ordain those involved in committed homosexual relationships to pastoral ministry.

The old wine skins are those traditions and notions which become the container for religion – they include such things as having denominations, owning buildings where congregations meet, stained-glass windows, playing organ music or having a band, singing hymns or singing choruses, reading only the King James version of the Bible, assigning all “spiritual” tasks to the professional clergy, equating Christianity with decency or a moral life-style. Jesus told us that traditions that may serve us well through a period of time become brittle and incapable of containing the ever-fermenting life-transforming gospel of Jesus Christ. In order to get right with God, we have to hold on to the boundary stones, and occasionally get new wine skins. If anyone wants a copy of last week’s sermon, copies are available in the back of the sanctuary.

Today we are going to continue the theme of our life together in the Lord, but more along the lines of the way the Holy Spirit guides us in our relationship with one another in our practice of our gifts. The Scripture today is a familiar one from Philippians 2:1-11. Let us bow our heads for prayer. Dear Lord, here at Cornerstone we have sought to live together as a household of God in the larger church of God in Bemidji. I pray now that You quicken our minds and hearts to Your Word as You give us insight into our relationship of trust with You and how that places us in willing trust and submission to one another, for Christ’s sake, Amen.

Paul is writing here of how our relationships in the church should imitate Christ’s humility. Hear God’s Word:

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Your attititude should be the same as Christ Jesus: Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

This concludes the reading of God’s Word. May God add his blessing to your understanding.

The Text

There is a sweetness in this passage, and in many of the other passages in the epistles that describe the fellowship of believers in the household of God that influences the way we interact in church. If one reads the first sentence of the above reading, we certainly try to emulate what we see – that is, to encourage one another, comfort one another, show kindness, tenderness, and compassion. We are to have the same mutual love for one another, being one in spirit (that is, we have the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit) so that we see right away that if someone entered the fellowship of the church and was abruptly rude or mean-spirited, such behavior would astound us all. If they were a seeker, we might be kind enough to bear witness to them of Christ’s grace and forgiveness, but if one of us who have lived together for years would act in such a way, no doubt the response of many of the rest of us would be withdrawal, and at some point if they persisted in such meanness and rudeness, the elders might eventually have to speak with them.

Sometimes, in the mainline church, we actually had people who brought their secular behavior into the fellowship. Their class consciousness showed, as they sneered at those they perceived to be lesser beings. Or they spoke rudely. But at some point they too bended before the etiquette of “being nice” or else become ostracized from the group – ignored, pushed away.

But the point I am making is that this niceness, this surface kindness or politeness is not really what Paul is talking about in these passages. He is talking about real humility, real service, real love, which is a manifestation of the Spirit of Christ, who left his riches, his glory, his deity in heaven, where he was above the conditions of poverty, misery, pain, and death and was born into this world in a barn – in a trough where animals fed, that is the definition of a manger, born to a maiden not yet married, a carpenter’s son, belonging to a conquered people. Indeed, Scripture says he emptied himself of his true riches so that he could become one of us, a servant, and having done so, he humbled himself and went to the cross so he could die for the sin that kept us from fulfilling our divinely ordained purpose, which was to glorify God.

I learned as a very young man – in the pastorate – that the polite, encouraging sweet phrases said on Sunday morning were not always but often strikingly inconsistent with their language on a weekday afternoon if you saw them at their work or in a non-church setting. I learned that very often “church people”, that’s us, put on our best behavior as well as our best clothes on Sunday. We tried very hard to be “nice,” to care for and look after others’ interests above our own, but just under the surface, the quite fleshly anxieties, conceits, and personal agendas lurked, waiting for church to get out, so that we could get back to them.

I can say all this without guilt because there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus. We all carry with us the fallen human nature of our old selves, but we now also have a new self in Christ Jesus, and we are told that the old self we are to count as dead, crucified with Christ Jesus and to put on or don the new self, which is being made new by the Spirit of God. But let us look behind the niceness and see of what material this new man is made.

It is made in the image of Christ Jesus who surrendered his glory and riches, his elite or divine status. Now none of us have the kind of glory or riches Jesus had. None of us lives beyond the touch of sickness, tragedy, aging, or death. By Jesus’ standards, we are all beggars. But in our little mortal world, we all have little niches on the material scale. Some live in beautiful homes and own prosperous businesses. Others live in modest homes and have modest but adequate incomes. A few struggle – counting pennies and stretching a bare subsistence budget. How does the Spirit of Christ manifest itself in such circumstances?

We know how people react in the flesh – the haves distance themselves from the have-nots. Paul saw this in the church at Corinth – during their meal that represented the Lord’s Supper, Paul writes in I Corinthians 11, “it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, while another gets drunk. Do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing to eat? What shall I say to you?” He certainly could not praise them.

What does it mean to be a new man in the Spirit of Christ. Christ crossed the gap and became one of us. If we are a family of God, it means at the very least that we identify with each other, that we be concerned for each other. We are to share in each others’ joys and sorrows, if we are to be of one mind and spirit, surely we cannot turn our head away if someone lacks food for their table or has no heat in their home. While Scriptures also say that each man must bear his own burden, it says that we should have great sympathy for each other, and know what is going on in each others’ lives. So that when one hurts, the whole body hurts – which means at the very least we should get sincere comfort and sympathy. And when someone can do something or give something to make something better, not because they have to, but because they want to, it should be done and with cheerfulness.

But what is the very basis for this kind of trust, this kind of intimacy, this kind of sharing. It is that we spend time together, the time necessary to know what is going on in each others’ lives. We live amongst a Scandinavian people, one of the most reserved and Stoic people that I have experienced. Many of us find it very difficult to share what is going on in our lives. But what does that say about our relationships. It says that we are lacking in trust. And if we do not share what is going on in our lives with others, the same ethic that prompts us to such reserve strongly argues that others should keep their problems to themselves as well.

I do not deny that there are matters so private and so personal that they should be addressed to God alone or within the nuclear family – especially regarding the weakness and faults of members. But if we do not share our lives, that is, the daily joys and challenges that we face, then our love remains on a superficial plane and we cannot even apply with one another the exhortations and admonitions of Scripture. In fact it is in the interaction of our fellowship, it is in our sharing that we discover our gifts by practicing the commands to serve one another, exhort one another, teach one another, admonish one another, forgive one another, help one another, pray for one another. It is only as we become knowledgeable of what is going on in the body of Christ that the organs and members of the body begin to function to heal and to renew.

And what is behind our ability to be together, to work together, to share, to serve, to interact as a family of God. It is faith – faith that God has called us together, faith that God is present with us and in us, faith that God will show mercy to us and to forgive us and allow us to show mercy and forgive each other, faith that when we present our bodies as a living sacrifice, God will never leave us or forsake us, and He will not allow his body to humiliate us and abandon us in utter contempt.

You see, the love of Christ is not mere politeness, but it is the victory of faith that allows us to surrender enough of ourselves to become one body – to know one another and care for one another and interrelate with one another in much the same way we do with our extended families. It is the victory of faith that allows us to win out over the fallen part of us that holds on so desperately to our privacy and our time and fills us with suspicions and irritations with the foibles of others that we do not act meanly or rudely, but we show our conceit by withdrawing our presence from those we consider by some scale of our own reckoning too poor, or too irritating, or just too much trouble.

The All Church Retreat is just one such opportunity to surrender ourselves, or to present ourselves as a living sacrifice – to spend time together hearing the word of God, sharing the word with one another, eating together, spending the night with others of the same gender or the two families, and hearing each others’ stories. Let us pray: O God, help us to have enough faith to fulfill your command to love one another with the gifts You have given us, in Jesus’ Name, Amen.

This Sermon was published on 08/27/2009 and filed in