Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

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Sermons

August 2003 (click here to return to "August 2003 Sermons" page)

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time (August 3, 2003)

“Worthy of the Calling” Dr. Julie Adkins

Text: Ephesians 4:1-16

SERMON

I like the way that chapter 4 of Ephesians begins.

Of course, Paul himself didn’t

divide the letter up into chapters and verses

any more than we divide a letter up when we write one …

a later editor did that.

But there’s a natural break in the flow of things.

Chapter 3, as we heard last week,

ends with the words, “forever and ever. Amen.”

which pretty strongly indicates

that a conclusion of some kind has been reached.

Chapter 4 begins a new train of thought:

“I, therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you …”

Well, doesn’t that just sound like he’s getting ready

to send them off somewhere on a guilt trip?!

Can’t you hear the Ephesians whispering among themselves?

“Uh-oh, what do you suppose it is

he’s going to ask us to do?”

“Whatever it is, we can’t very well refuse it.

Poor Paul, rotting away in a prison cell.”

“Yeah, and notice how he makes sure we don’t forget it:

‘I, Paul, the prisoner in the Lord…’

lays it on a little thick, eh?”

They must have wondered, if only briefly,

what it was he was setting up to ask.

“I beg you to send money to bribe my jailers and get me out.”?

“I beg you all to leave your homes and travel around preaching,

since I can’t do it at the moment.”?

“I beg you to arm yourselves and overthrow the Romans.”?

No, none of the above.

Simply this:

“I beg you to lead a life

worthy of the calling to which you have been called.”

Well, how could they refuse that?

Hardly such a big thing, after all.

And, well, let’s do it for poor old Paul,

locked up in a prison cell.

It’s the least we can do.

Well, before we talk too much about

“what is worthiness, anyway”;

let’s notice the sequence of events.

Paul is not saying to the Ephesians,

clean up your act, and then maybe God will notice that you are acting worthy,

and then will call you to do something important.

No. He is saying:

God has already called you to a particular calling,

and your job is to try to lead a life that is worthy of that call.

A call you already have.

If you were a theologian,

you would call this process sanctification.

It’s a process of growth:

growth in grace,

growth in the knowledge and love of God;

growing into the image of God

in which we were created at the very first;

becoming worthy of the calling

to which we have been called.

It’s a little like on-the-job training:

you get hired before you actually know all that you need to know,

or have all the skills that you need,

so you learn by doing, and improving,

and becoming qualified for the job you already hold.

Belonging to God is kind of like that.

The call comes first;

then God helps us to become worthy.

Not the other way around.

Here’s the way I like to remember it:

God does not call the qualified;

God qualifies the called.

Let’s do a review of some of our Bible heroes for just a moment …

people who, in retrospect, it is obvious were called by God

to do God’s work in the world …

but who, at first glimpse,

might have seemed like particularly unworthy choices.

Try Moses.

He was a murderer.

He got all tongue-tied at the very thought of speaking in public.

If you were looking for a dynamic leader

to help free the people from slavery,

Moses is not the person

whom the employment agency would send you!

Yet God called Moses.

And God gifted him with what he needed to get the job done.

Or David.

Good old David.

We’ve been hearing about David in our Old Testament readings,

haven’t we?

A shepherd boy, not a warrior; not a prince.

Young, rather quiet, supposedly a gifted poet and musician.

Not the usual resume for a head of state!

Yet God called David.

And David, despite all his faults –

and they were many; we’ve been hearing about them! –

became arguably the greatest king of God’s people.

Not because he was qualified,

but because God qualified him.

Or Peter.

If you were trying to start a new church,

would you call as its leader

someone who was always talking before thinking,

and who lied to save his own skin

when the going got rough?

Or Paul, for that matter.

Would you really be interested in a traveling evangelist

who just a few weeks ago

was trying to round up and murder

people who shared your beliefs?

Not hardly.

On paper, those two look like walking disasters.

Yet God called them, and sent them out,

and did great things through them.

These four were no different from us …

at least, not in any way that matters.

And though each of them backslid and made mistakes

and sometimes got things all wrong,

each of them worked to live a life

worthy of the calling to which he had been called.

What about us?

To what have we been called?

And what are we doing about it?

Our response to the call of God

is what determines and defines

whether we are worthy.

Paul suggests some signs we can look for,

some indications of whether we are on the right track.

The worthy life, as he describes it,

is one filled “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.”

Let’s spend a couple of minutes dissecting that.

Humility and gentleness are not often

qualities that we admire, or seek for ourselves,

in the world we live in.

We don’t want to be thought of as wimps …

we don’t want to be taken advantage of,

and there are plenty out there who would be glad to do it.

But that’s not really what humility and gentleness are about.

The kind of humility that Paul is describing

grows out of knowing that

whatever gifts, or worthiness, we have

come from God and not from ourselves.

It doesn’t mean hiding away,

acting in a self-deprecating way as if we had nothing to offer.

And it also doesn’t mean putting ourselves down,

or denying that we have any good in us at all,

though many of us learned that it did,

and learned it way too well.

Humility and gentleness

have mostly to do with honesty.

Honesty about the gifts, and the talents, and the calling

that we really do have.

But even more, honesty about where –

or more accurately, who –

those gifts and that calling come from.

Patience, and bearing with one another in love,

also go hand in hand.

And I’m certainly not the best person in the world

to talk about patience!

That is not one of the gifts that God has seen fit to give me

in any significant dose.

Patience, and bearing with one another,

have to do with leaning to live with

one another’s imperfections.

Which is pretty hard to do

until we have learned to live with our own,

which takes us back to humility and gentleness …

These all kind of build on each other, don’t they!

At any rate, without patience,

and without the bearing with one another,

there could be no church,

because we wouldn’t last long enough in the same room together!

The last ingredients Paul describes

are unity, and peace.

And it’s appropriate that those come last,

because there is no way we will ever get to these two

until we have made progress on the other four.

Please understand, though,

that unity does not mean unanimity,

We aren’t ever all going to agree on everything.

But it does mean that we recognize and we live in the truth that

our calling from God,

and our “gifting” by the Spirit

bind us together in ways that are far more important

than the things that separate us.

Christ’s church is not very good at unity.

But then, they weren’t very good at it in Paul’s day, either …

we’ve already talked about that these past few weeks in Ephesians!

Here, he reminds them once again:

“There is one body and one Spirit,” he says,

“just as you were called to the one hope of your calling” …

notice he didn’t say that there is only one calling,

just one hope that inspires and guides all of those callings …

“[there is] one Lord, one faith, one baptism,

one God and Father of all,

who is above all and through all and in all.”

Unity is an important piece of

determining whether or not we have yet become worthy.

So … what is your calling?

Apostle? Prophet? Evangelist? Pastor, or teacher?

Equipper of the saints?

Builder-up of the body of Christ?

What does God need for you to do?

Have you answered “yes” to that call?

And are you working to be worthy of it?

To grow into it?

To polish up the image of God that is already in you?

God has called you.

God will qualify you;

is qualifying you, sanctifying you.

And the world is waiting to hear the word we bring.

The world is hungry to hear the word we bring.

May we be willing

to be made worthy

to bring it to them.

Amen.