Sermon for
May 2, 2004
4th Sunday of Easter
The Household of God
Eph. 2:19-22; John 14:27
Series: The Household of God:
Three Keys to a Healthy Life
What is life like
at your house? Does the apostle Paul speak for you as he describes life
in the household of God:
So then you are no longer strangers and
aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members…with
Christ Jesus himself...in whom you also are built together spiritually
into a dwelling place for God.
Paul describes here
a community of love where people know and support one another and where
every idea is respected and everyone is committed to the common goal for
which the whole community strives. He describes a place where God
lives! Just as Jesus said,
Peace I leave with you; my
peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives;
the household of God is where the peace
of Christ reigns! What is life like at your house?
The notion of the
“household of God” is as old as Christianity itself. It finds its root
in the Old Testament understanding of the family that derives its name
and its identity from its beloved ancestor. “The house of David”
describes the identity and the destiny of those who stand in its
lineage. From the earliest days of Christianity the community of faith
has been called by this term. In Jesus Christ by the presence of the
Holy Spirit, the Creator God lives in the community of faith,
transforming its relationships and restoring its life. When the
Christian faith makes reference to the “house of God” it is never
primarily referring to the brick and mortar of the building where the
congregation meets. The house of God is the community of faith. Its
relationships are the brick and mortar that hold it together.
As children often
sing,
The
church is not a building
The
church is not a steeple
The
church is not a resting place
The
church is the people!
That was
particularly brought home to me recently while I served as pastor of
Trinity United Methodist Church in Poquoson. From September 16, 2001 to
September 30, 2002 the congregation of Trinity Church did not meet in
our building. The 1931 educational building which was attached to the
back of the sanctuary was retired in favor of a new facility. Its
demolition made the use of the rest of the building during
reconstruction prohibitively expensive. So, every Sunday morning at 7
a.m. for 54 weeks the church utility trailer was unloaded at Poquoson
Middle School. Every Sunday for over a year we transformed school
auditorium into the church sanctuary and its classrooms and gymnasium
into the Sunday School. It was during this experience that that
congregation and it’s pastor experienced in a new way what we had
already known as we would say to one another during this entire ordeal:
“Hey, the church is not the building, it’s the people!” When we finally
returned to our newly-completed and renovated facility on October 6,
2002 the children said it best when they led us in singing the anthem
that day:
I am
the church; you are the church; we are the church together.
All
who follow Jesus all around the world
Yes,
we’re the church together!
Relationships—that
is what life is all about. We asked the Confirmation Class the other
day, “Why did God make us?” Our confirmands said. “God is love.” What
they were saying is this: God cannot really be God without someone with
whom that love can be shared. We are creatures created by God who have
no real identity apart from our relationship to one another. We are so
created that we share in a reciprocal relationship with one another.
This reciprocal relationship in which we live is like a system, an
emotional system, if you will. We are always reacting to and responding
to one another. Our relationships are lived in the balance between how
close we are to one another and how separate we are from one another.
Sometimes we react to one another automatically, instinctively,
impatiently, without thinking. Other times we respond to one another in
a thoughtful and patient manner. That’s what makes life in the
household of God so interesting!
What is life like
at your house? Are our relationships in our homes, our schools, our
workplaces, our church, our world healthy relationships? You would like
to believe that a healthy home finds parents who share patient love even
in the middle of the night with their crying infants and teenagers who
are actually thoughtful and rational with their parents and parents who
are mostly understanding of their teenagers. You want to believe a
healthy school helps students develop respect for teachers and helps
teachers develop insightful, caring understanding of students. Healthy
workplaces ought to foster a sense of unity, teamwork, and trust toward
in the accomplishment of a common task. A healthy congregation finds
ways for persons to appropriately express their wishes and desires for
its mission and ministry and bring them together in a common bond of
unity and purpose. A healthy world always finds ways to settle its
differences with its diplomats rather than its soldiers.
The fact is we are
all faced with anxious situations in our lives. Anxiety is a fact of
life. Change is difficult.
Have you ever
wondered how some persons, homes, schools, workplaces, or churches seem
to handle anxiety and change so much better than another? Have you ever
wondered how you can develop the skills and maturity to better negotiate
the inevitable “ups and downs” of life? Have you ever wished for the
peace of Christ “which passes all understanding” deep in your own
heart? Have you ever wondered what life is really like in the household
of God?
In our homes,
schools, workplaces, churches, and especially in our world we develop
patterns of functioning with one another over time. Sometimes those
patterns of functioning are healthy; sometimes they are not. How we
manage our functioning with one another, how we manage our relationships
with one another—that’s the key. It is the purpose of the community of
faith called the household of God to foster patterns of relationship
with one another that promote the maturing of individual spirits and
enhance the connection within the community toward a common mission.
How can you find
and develop healthy relationships? In this series of sermons entitled
The Household of God: Three Keys to a Healthy Life I want to
suggest to you three keys to healthy relationships:
--healthy
relationships accept differences
--healthy
relationships focus on strength
--healthy
relationships focus on mission.
