Back to the Future: 1st Century Christians Talk to 21st Century Christians:
Togethering
August 6, 2006
Ralph DiBiasio-Snyder

Ephesians 4:1-16
Introduction to the Scripture:

The first half of Ephesians - the first three chapters - are introductory. They are full of theology - who God is, how God works in the world, and how the Christ has brought about salvation, if we would only believe it. Depending on your disposition, you may have found those three chapters deep and rich and provocative and stimulating; or frightfully dull. Theology is that way.

Beginning with chapter four, though, the writer turns, to over simplify just a bit, from head to heart; from thinking about faith, to living by faith; from the ethereal world of theological concepts to the real world of people . . . people like you and like me. The writer seems to say, Given what we believe about God in Christ,, how then shall we live? If it is true that God's grace and love abound, breaking down the walls we have built between races and religions, men and women, rich and poor, how should we be living with each other as people who bear the name of Christ? In today's reading we learn that we are all gifted - graced. And as graced, blessed people we are each to contribute to the well-being and ministry of the faith community, together in Christ.

In 1968 songwriter Michael Peter Smith composed the song that Vivian and Steve are about to sing, The Dutchman. It's a song about the love between two people; but not the usual lovesong, about new, young love. This is about a long love, after many years of being together. The Dutchman really should be called The Dutchman's Wife, or maybe The Dutchman and His Wife. For it is a wonderful portrait of one person tenderly, lovingly, respectfully caring for another. It could be a portrait of the love between two old friends, or a daughter and her mother, a brother and a sister . . . any two people who have learned through many days, good and not so good, to accept with grace and understanding and humility the other's strengths and frailties. As our text told us: Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing one another in love.

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I discovered two new words for me this week. How many of you know what a neologism is? It was new to me. Neologism is a new word - a newly coined word. Language, as we all know, is always changing and expanding. We lose words - "eight-track tapes" came into being, went out of being, and in another fifty years only a handful of historians of the recording industry will know what the phrase means. And we gain words, new words. I thought that the word neologism itself - remember it means a "new word" - was itself a new word - "new-word" a new word, which I thought was pretty neat! But then I found it in a dictionary that was given to Carol when she graduated from high school, and that, my friends, means it is NOT a new word!

But togethering is. Togethering . . . "Traveling together with family or friends or colleagues to a destination to celebrate a milestone (e.g., a birthday, an anniversary, a business event, [a family reunion])." So says Langmaker.com, a website dedicated to cataloging new words. Togethering means going on vacation with your family, or ad hoc groups, like your extended family, or groups of families, or friends, or even strangers, often to exotic destinations. Togethering. It's a new word invented by the travel industry.

Yet another effect of 9/11, togethering took off in 2002, driven by "a desire for bonding in times of uncertainty and a hectic pace of life that leaves many with a horrible sense of guilt that they don't spend enough time with family." [Janet Fullwood, the Sacramento Bee, Jan 23, 2005]

Mary McNamara, writing in the LA Times, April 10, 2005, describes the togethering movement this way: "Armed with credit cards, frequent-flier miles, Expedia deals and philosophies dreamed up by Lonely Planet or Rick Steves, we want educational white-water rafting trips and bike tours through Italy and five-star safaris and golf resorts in Appalachia. We want to breakfast with princesses at Disneyland and to dig for real dinosaurs in Montana."

Togethering . . . Being together . . . not being alone. Being together is what faith is all about, isn't it? The faith described in the New Testament - certainly in Ephesians - is not just having right thoughts about God - like the theology of chapters one through three; or even good morals, say, from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. The faith of the early church was not about individuals so much as it was about the community. It was not about me so much as about us. It was about being together.

For the Letter to the Ephesians you'll remember was addressed to the community of faith. In the first week of our summer sermon series on Ephesians (we have to say that at least once every week!) Grace to you, and peace was how it began. Grace to the saints, all the people of God, living in Ephesus and beyond. We talked about how what our world needs more of is not power or wealth, but more gracious people. More gracious societies. More gracious nations. And we said that what the world needs is more peace - peace in our families, our cities; peace among races and religions; peace among nations. Since that sermon was preached July 9th, that need for peace has become even more clear, given what is happening in what we call euphemistically "the Holy Land."

In the second week of our series Ephesians told us more about the grace lavished upon us in Christ. Rich beyond imagining, this grace has made us children of God - adopted in the family of God, a relationship not of mere biology, so to speak, but of choice. God has freely chosen us and all people to believe in the depth of God's love, and so we are a blessed people. God's love is "a love unspeakably sweet and powerful, far beyond" the love even if a human parent for their child.

The next week the great dividing wall between Jew and Gentile that had been so carefully constructed and jealously guarded, that wall, said Ephesians, has been pulled down in Christ. We who were "aliens and strangers," are now "citizens with the saints, members of the household of God." Carol shared with us that wonderful line from Robert Frost's poem, Mending Wall?

The wall of division having been taken down between us and the people of God, our task then is to pull down the walls that separate us in so many other ways, divisions that spring up so easily and quickly even among friends and family.

And then last week we returned again to the love and grace of God - deep and wide, high and long. Remember that scene from Narnia where the Christ-figure, the lion Aslan, tells Lucy that every year you grow, you will find me bigger. That is, the more we know about God, the less we know. The more we experience the grace of God, the more we know how vast and unending is the love of God.

Created in love to live as children of God; loved unconditionally, grace upon grace; the wall between who is "in" and who is "out" gone - for all are embraced by the love of God in Christ - adopted into the household of faith by a God whose love is higher and deeper and wider that we will ever know . . . this is what the writer of this ancient letter wanted his 1st century Christians to believe, and we 21st century readers too. NOT so that we would imagine ourselves to be better than others; not so that we would build new walls of separation - "our faith is better than yours, our experience of God is more genuine, we are God's people and you are not." The writer of this letter wants us to know all of this so that we can live in the world in grace and love, mercy and kindness.

And what are the signs that we are living in grace? Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. And how do we live that way? Together. Always together.

And then we have that wonderful metaphor that the church is like a human body: many parts, not all the same, but working always in harmony for the common good. "Each one has been given grace . . . " says the writer. The word grace and the word gift in the Greek are nearly the same: charis - grace - and charisma - gift. We are graced, we are gifted, says Ephesians. Gifted . . . for what? "For works of service." Graces are given to individuals, every one of us, not to merely be enjoyed on our own, but for the good of others. The purpose of being the church is not that we prosper, still less that we arrive together someday in paradise. The writer says nothing here about life beyond this world. The purpose of all these graces is that the church be a channel of blessing, of grace to the world. As someone has said, the church is supposed to be an organization that exists not for the benefit of the membership, but for the benefit of non-members.

Kay Sanders our Lay Ministry Coordinator could testify to the many and varied gifts of ministry that reside in the members and friends of this church. At each membership class she leads the group through the Gifts Inventory exercise, designed to help each person identify and embrace the spiritual gifts they have been given by God. Such a gifted people we are!

The challenge for each of us is to find just how our gifts can be used within the body of Christ, this church, so that the body will "grow and build itself up in love, as each part does its work."

The great symbol of being together in Christ, of tearing down walls, of building bridges with one another, of being one in Christ is of course the simple ritual of Holy Communion. Here there is one Table, one loaf, one cup. Here we say that no matter who you are, or where you are on life's journey, you are welcome. We say don't come because you are strong, but because like every one of us you are weak. Don't come because you are perfect, but because like all of us you are in need. Don't come because you understand, but because like all of us you don't. Don't come for any reason other than you would grow closer to God, because you seek a new beginning, because you are in this faith community where we help one another to remember; to remember who we are and who God is, and how graced we are to be together.

Amen.