The Calling to Which We Are Called

(Scriptures:  2 Samuel 18:5-15   Ephesians 4:25-5:2       John 6:35-51)

“I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, ²with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ³making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

Ephesians 4:1-3

We’re now in mid-August, and for students, the summer break is waning fast.  Lots of merchants are offering back to school sales.  Some churches do a special service for students – which I think I’d like to try here – called the “blessing of the backpacks”.  Of course, many who graduated high school in the spring are going to college, and will be living away from home.  The students look forward to greater independence, but parents worry – will my son or daughter be ok?  Will they know enough to stay out of trouble, to avoid bad influences?  Many parents are giving their son or daughter a talk to remind them: “Remember what we’ve taught you.  Remember who you are.”

“Remember who you are.” Today’s reading from Ephesians can be summed up in those four words – “Remember who you are.”  Over the past several weeks, the Epistle readings have been from Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus.  A mixed congregation of Jews and gentiles, Paul wrote them urging unity.  He wrote to praise the congregation for their faithfulness, reminded them of all God has done for them through Jesus Christ, reminded them that, through Christ, the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile had been torn down – and it was high time for the folks at Ephesus to start living that way.  Last week’s reading began with the words, “I therefore, a prisoner of the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.”  In today’s Gospel reading, Paul goes into more detail about what it means to lead such a life, what it means to “remember who you are.”

Paul gets down to cases:  “Let us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.  Be angry, but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger and do not make room for the devil. Thieves must give up stealing; let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy.  Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up.  Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption.  Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice.  Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another…..”  These words sound almost impossible, but then Paul reminds us why forgiveness is so important – “forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven you.”

"Remember who you are."  Paul’s words give us picture of what it is to live a life worthy of the calling to which we have been called.  A whole sermon series could be preached on each of these injunctions – speak the truth to one another, do not let the sun go down on your anger, labor and work honestly with your own hands, let no evil talk come out of your mouth, and so on – but for today I’ll spare you the sermon series – and you’re welcome.  Instead, I’d like to focus on the importance of remembering who we are, of living lives worthy of our call as Christians, in a world which preaches the exact opposite – and in God’s name.

“Be angry, but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger and do not make room for the devil”  We live in a society which continually seems to grow more divided, more angry, Talk radio and TV commentators stir up resentment, distrust, and hatred, and get paid big bucks to do it.  They laugh at their audience behind their back, all the way to the bank.  Our country’s anger has given the devil lots of space, and the devil has stirred up lots of trouble.  The shooting in Aurora CO, followed by the shooting in a Sikh Temple in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, didn’t happen in a vacuum – when radio, TV and entirely too many TV and radio preachers are filling the air with hate and mistrust 24/7, it’s inevitable that some number of mentally unstable individuals will lose their precarious grip on reality, and lash out in violence.   Amid the constant drumbeat of resentment, resentment, resentment – it’s essential that we remember that we remember the calling to which we’re called as Christians, the calling to be peacemakers and to love our enemies. It’s essential that we remember who we are.

You don’t have to drive to Colorado or hang out at Sikh houses of worship to see this sort of thing play out.  Plenty of trouble stirring right here in Bridesburg.  Exhibit A, the kerfuffle over the food cupboard sponsored by the Bridesburg Council of Churches.  I know that Bridesburg is a proud neighborhood, a “family first neighborhood” as the banners say, a neighborhood with a strong effort of standing on its own two feet.  The cherished images we have of Bridesburg don’t include visions of hundreds of people waiting in food lines – having food lines winding up and down Kirkbride Street seems like something out of some old newspaper clipping about the Great Depression.  It’s a shock to realize that people here, in Bridesburg, in our neighborhood, right now, are hurting.   There are lots of factors contributing to those food lines.  Some are personal - doubtless in many cases there are stories to be told of marriages and families falling apart under the strain of unemployment, of people numbing themselves with drink or drugs to make the pain go away.  And there are national and international forces at work - the diminished power of organized labor, economic policies that reward corporations for sending jobs overseas, predatory lenders foreclosing on mortgages and throwing people out on the street, 30 years of political efforts to destroy the social safety net, on and on.  But Wall Street bankers and multinational corporations and political leaders at all levels of government seem abstract, faceless, too remote from us even to hear our anger, let alone to be threatened by it.  It’s much easier to blame the victims, to take out our frustration on the folks in the food lines, blaming them for their own problems.  Far easier to call the folks in the food line a bunch of drunks and junkies and scam artists, accusing them of driving long distances to invade our neighborhood, hog our parking spaces, trash our sidewalks, peer in our windows, and drive home with our charitable donations. 

So when our neighbors in Bridesburg start talking like this – and they do, and they will - we need to remember who we are – followers of Jesus Christ, who could have been born into a prominent Roman or Jewish family, but instead was born into a poor family, who could have courted favor with the rich, but instead chose poor and working class persons as his disciples, whose mission it was to preach good news to the poor and liberation to the captive, who told the rich young ruler that before he could follow Jesus he would have to sell all he had and give it to the poor, who, in the words of the Magnificat, “filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.”   Yes, many of the folks who come to the cupboard are dysfunctional, drunk, obnoxious.  Yes, it’s inconvenient having them all standing on Kirkbride Street, some of them three sails to the wind by 10 in the morning, with their trash and their loud talk and their old rattletrap cars hogging up all the parking.  But life is inconvenient for them as well.  It’s inconvenient for them to be in poor, inconvenient for them to be unemployed, or perhaps working multiple dead-end jobs that don’t pay a living wage, inconvenient for them to be alcoholic or addicted, inconvenient for them to have children they can’t support, inconvenient for them to have to stand in line for hours and depend on the kindness of strangers, however good natured or well intentioned. The poor in those lines at the cupboard are the poor for whom Christ died.  The poor in those lines at the cupboard are those of whom Christ spoke when he told those at his right hand, whatsoever you have done unto the least of these my brothers and sisters, you’ve done it unto me.  When Jesus fed the five thousand, he didn’t tell the disciples to administer breathalyzer tests or drug screenings or asking the folks to show photo IDs or copies of utility bills to prove they were local and lived in the right zip code.  Christ just fed them – just as God causes rain to fall on the good and the bad, and sends blessing on the just and unjust.  If we are to call ourselves followers of Christ, we can do no less.

Jesus Christ said that the second great commandment, after love of God, was love of neighbor.   The love of which Jesus spoke didn’t necessarily depend on liking our neighbor.  Rather, the love of which Jesus spoke was solidarity, standing by one’s neighbor whether you like your neighbor or not.  Like members of a labor union realizing that an attack on one member is a threat to all. 

The powers and principalities, those who practice spiritual wickedness in high places, specialize in the game of divide and conquer.  They set native-born against immigrant, white against black against Hispanic against Asian, set Christian against Jew against Muslim, set men against women, set straight against gay, set employed against unemployed.  They specialize in pointing out the person here and there who cuts corners to get some extra food stamps or other public assistance – and confabulate all manner of stories about welfare queens.  While they’re pointing over there – “Look at that welfare cheat” - all the while they’re picking our back pockets by passing laws that favor the rich and make life difficult for the rest of us.

Bridesburg has a strong ethic of “sticking together”.  And this is what Jesus calls us to do – stick together – only we need to widen the circle, be willing to stick together with a wider range of people, be willing to practice solidarity with all our neighbors, not just a few.  We need to stick together, to practice solidarity – with the poor when they’re being abused, with the unpopular when they’re being shunned.  We might remember that most of us are ourselves just a few paychecks or pension checks away from going hungry.  We reap what we sow – and the solidarity we practice may be the solidarity that saves us when the chips are down.

“I therefore beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, ²with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ³making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”    May we at Emanuel Church always lead lives worthy of the calling to which Christ has called us.  May we always remember who we are – and may we always remember whose we are.  Amen.