Lucas is so focused on the Frisbee that he won t eat if he thinks you might throw it for him.

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Lorin Turner
5 years ago
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1 Motivation Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15; Psalm 78:23-29; Ephesians 4:1-16; John 6:24-35 August 5, 2018 My husband, Gary, and I have two dogs. Gary s dog, Lucas, named after Lucas McCain, the Rifleman. Like the Rifleman, Lucas, a German Shepherd, is quick on the draw, fast as a speeding bullet. By the time the red Frisbee leaves Gary s hand,lucas has already sprung into action, running with great speed and acuity, to catch that Frisbee and return it for the next throw. Yonah, my black lab, is an oversized bundle of slobbery devotion. Lucas is so focused on the Frisbee that he won t eat if he thinks you might throw it for him. Yonah, on the other hand, if he s inside, won t hoist himself off the floor unless he hears the treat jar open. If he s outside, lazily grazing on the grass like a cow, he won t budge when you call him unless he hears that lid come off the treat jar in the kitchen. If you throw the ball for him, he ll retrieve it once or twice with no treat. If you have treats in your hand, he ll retrieve it 100 times, returning it every time right at your feet. Lucas lives to run. Yonah runs to eat. We all have our primary motivations which inform how we live. I invite you to walk through the first half of Ephesians with me this morning. It has a lot to say about the primary motivation of God, of Jesus, and of Christians. First, a little background: Ephesians is thought to be a letter that was written not specifically to one church, but to be circulated among the newly forming churches along the coastline of the Aegean Sea. Many scholars hold that Ephesians was written in the late first century by a Jewish-Christian who sought to apply Paul s earlier teachings to the situation of the church in his own day. A minority of scholars hold the author to be Paul, who was writing at the end of his career while imprisoned, probably in Rome. Down through time this letter continues to circulate and it speaks to us. Some of the people in the context of this letter are mature in Christ. Some are just now starting to become followers of Christ. Chapter 1 - Paul writes to the new Christians to encourage them in their faith in Jesus Christ. The first point he makes is this: We already belong to God as God s children. Before we walk through church doors; before we even want to lead a good and godly life; before we even think about what religion is or what religion fits us; we already belong to God as God s children.

2 In Church-speak we say we live in God s habitual grace. It s a habit of God to love us as his children. A habit God doesn t intend to break. Paul then blesses God because in Jesus Christ, we children of God are told we have an inheritance. You can be the heir of a billionaire. But if no one ever tells you who your true parents are and what you have coming to you as their child, all the riches in the world won t have any impact on your life. So, Paul begins by blessing God because every blessing ever hoped for is freely and lavishly bestowed now upon those who are in Christ; upon those who have found out whose child they are and the riches available to them through knowing Jesus. Then, Paul names some of those blessings: In Jesus Christ we are set free from whatever has separated us from those riches. What separates us is sin - brokenness of ourselves and others who affect our lives. The minute you open your inheritance, you get the good news that you are free from all trespasses, all insufficiencies, all sins; free from all that has blocked you from loving and being loved. Another blessing: In Jesus Christ, we the church, (and those churches first receiving this letter), when we pray together, study together, worship together, we can have access to a wealth of wisdom and insight because we are more than the sum of our parts. We have, as part of our inheritance, access to a mindfulness that is enriched by God s love infusing our thoughts, our deliberations. We often call it the movement of the Holy Spirit. We can trust that when we come together seeking to have the mind, the hands the heart of Christ, it is ours. It is part of our inheritance. We are freed from that which would separate us from God and one another. We have full access to the love and wisdom of God. And, this letter says that because of this new freedom and this full access to God, we live for the praise of God s glory. We live to behold God s glory fully available to us. Why all these blessings? Why is God so available to us through Jesus? God is not like some distracted undescrimating parent who tosses a child whatever the child wants. God, says Paul, has a reason for all these lavish gifts. All of these blessings flow from God for one reason. God wants to gather everything, the Greek says the cosmos, everything, back into full life, a living unity, with God. God wants to gather God s beloved creation back,

3 and remind us of our inheritance and how life can be lived. So, God sent a human, a child of God, a son of God, to be among us to show us what it looks like to truly live as inheritors of the blessing. Lucas chief motivation in life is to run. Yonah s chief motivation is to eat. God s chief motivation is to call us back into the blessing. Jesus chief motivation is to show us the way back into the blessing. Through him we can discover and claim that these gifts are already ours. The letter implores its hearers to live in the context of the riches and the oneness they, we, already have in Christ. Chapter 2 Whether you are a mature Christian or a new Christian, Whether you were among the first Jewish believers who followed Jesus or you are someone new to Christ who was never Jewish and never met Jesus, God wants all grafted into one living structure, the Body of Christ. Now that the blessing is established, the second chapter brings us to the challenge. Even though we are given everything, every blessing, there are still residual obstacles that need to be broken down. Residual obstacles most often are met in the context of human relationships. And so the church in every age needs to be a location, a community, of reconnecting what is still separated, but what is meant to be one; and so to be in right relationship with one another. The church needs to be a community of reconciliation. Always, through every age, the church is called to break down the barriers that divide us from each other and separate us from the richness of God s grace and God s blessings. We are reminded that we are up to the challenge because we have this freedom in Christ to express ourselves and use our gifts and talents. We have the uncanny ability in Christ to gain a collective insight, a collective wisdom that can show us how to live. When we are united together our knowledge of God increases, as Christ dwells in our hearts and minds, we are rooted and grounded in love. Paul, after describing all this, prays that the Church s experience of God and of these blessings will be complete. Chapter 4 opens with Paul begging the churches to lead a life worthy of our calling; and with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4:1-3

4 Toward the end of the 4 th chapter he implores Christians to: Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, put away all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. 4:31 Tertullian, a Christian writer, wrote about a hundred years after this letter to the churches. He noted that non-christians were observing how the Christians lived and said, See how they love one another. Tertullian described a main motivation of the church: The ideal of being the church is about a way of loving God and neighbor that resists, even in the face of great difference, the willful impulse of schism. Jesus says in John s gospel: By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. 1 st Peter 4:8 Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins. I ve outlined Ephesians this morning to call us back to or further into our main motivation as children of God, followers of Jesus, church. In this day and time, there are other motivations in our public life that would cause us to separate from one another, to distance ourselves from one another. And yet, we know that we are here to serve a higher cause, a higher motivation. The great medieval cathedrals, like the one on the front of the bulletin, were built to reflect the city of God, more beautiful, more harmonious, than the cities of earth. One way to assure that we grow together, rooted and grounded in Christ, is to talk to one another rather than separating into like-minded subgroups. Talking about them those who are different from us, politically, racially, socio-economically, keeps us from learning from each other and gaining a larger perspective about who we all are as children of God and inheritors of God s riches. What if our unity in Christ was such a primary motivation for us that we talked to one another about us? What if we engage in conversations that say I know what they say about such and such, but I want to know what you say and how you think about it. I want to understand your reasoning and I need for you to hear and understand mine; not to prove one another wrong, but to discover how each of us is faithfully seeking in different ways to be a child of God and to live into this inheritance we have together in Jesus. Let us rise above the separation that politics and the like can cause among us. Let s do the work of listening to each other, thoughtfully, prayerfully, respectfully, about the things that mean so much to us. Lucas lives to run. Yonah lives to eat.

5 May we live to bless God for the gift of our inheritance found in Jesus Christ and to love one another with a love and a wisdom that this world longs to behold..

Ephesians 1 New American Standard Bible (NASB) The Blessings of Redemption

Ephesians 1 New American Standard Bible (NASB) The Blessings of Redemption 1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are at Ephesus and who are faithful in Christ Jesus: