Worthy One - Galatians 4:1-6

Many of you know and remember that I tried my hand at head coaching almost a year ago, taking on Joshua’s flag football team, with the help of Joel Harvey and Charles Roach.    I was not great at it by any means.  I had never served as a head coach of any sport…and I had never played football, tackle, flag, or any kind.  I was one of those that could say, “I’ve never coached or played football in my life, but I’ve watched both on tv.”  (Before anyone says anything, yes, I know it is baseball season, but all I have ever done regarding baseball is serve as the assistant coach of a softball team whose only job was to keep the batters in order in the dugout.)

My inexperience may have kept us from experiencing what it feels like to be a winning team (because we didn’t win a game all season), but there’s a couple of things that it didn’t keep me from experiencing…things that I know have to frustrate every coach.  It’s hard to say it is a frustration during the season, because you are dependent upon them to get your players to the game.  The biggest frustration is the family of the players…for they can cause as many problems during the game as anything else.  I can’t tell you the number of times during the game we would huddle, I would explain the play we were going to run and make sure everyone knew what they were supposed to be doing, only to have a family member throw it all off.  There would be a brother calling to a sibling on the team and telling them what to do.  Down the field a parent would holler out directions to their kids that were in conflict as to what they were supposed to be doing.  Grandparents, aunts, uncles, and others would be calling out to their individual players on the team and so everyone is trying to follow the directions of someone else rather than what I, or one of the other coaches had told them in the huddle.  There was even one game where I looked up from the huddle and a player wasn’t with us, they had gone over to the sideline to receive instructions from a family member.  When that happens, when folks start responding whatever voice they want to, the whole team and every play falls completely apart.  The other frustration was dealing with the kids who would start pouting and refuse to do what they were asked to do in any given play, because they were not getting to do what they wanted to do…or instead of pouting, they just listened and did what they wanted to do anyway.  When either of those things happened, the whole team concept, and every play, fell apart.

So what does any of this have to do with us?  What does it have to do with the life of the church?  What does it have to do with Pentecost?  Today’s Scripture reveals it clearly.

Too many times a church and its mission struggle or even fall apart for the same reasons that our football team struggled and the plays fell apart.  We live in a world where there are a whole lot of voices that try to tell us how to live, as individuals and as the church. 

There are voices that call us to put ourselves first.  They tell us that we are the most important person in our lives.  They tell us that we have to look out for number one, and that number one consists of a very earthly, unholy trinity we are told to worship, “me, myself, and I.”  They encourage us to stand our ground.  They tell us to develop an “my way or the highway” attitude.  They tell us we are to be self-sufficient.  They tell us we don’t need anyone else.  They tell us to act out of self-preservation.  They advise us that getting revenge or holding a grudge is the only way to act.  The whisper to us to be suspicious of everyone else and trust no one.  They emphasize to us to do our own thing.  And when we do these things, we find ourselves pulled away from everyone else.

At other times, it is not outside voices that pull us apart, it is our own arrogance.  We think we know best…that we know what needs to be done and how it needs to be done better than anyone else.  We think our experiences are the defining experiences and should be so for everyone else.  We think that any wrong is an intentional attack on us.  We think all apologies are owed to us, and that any conflict is the result of an attack on us, that there is nothing that we have done to contribute to the problem.  We think we are entitled to do what we want, when we want, how we want, and if it inconveniences or differs from others…that’s their problem.  We set ourselves on a pedestal, or even a throne.  We do our own thing regardless of what anyone else is doing or thinks. When we do these things, we set ourselves above and separate from everyone else.

Both of these interfere with our life together as the Body of Christ…they keep us from being a functioning member of Christ’s church…they keep us from faithfully living a life worthy of God’s calling upon our lives.

God has never intended for us to live solitary lives, separated or elevated from one another.  You have heard me say it before, and I will say it again, from the very beginning, in fact the only thing that God declared “not good” at the time of creation was that it was “not good that man should be alone,” and so God created a helpmeet, a companion, one who would complete Adam.  This means that we are not complete when we are alone.  God’s design for us is to live in community with others.  God’s saving of Noah, was not just Noah…not just Noah and his wife…not just Noah and his family…but includes His son’s wives…for relationships are important.  God, when He called Abram, did not just say to Abram, come with me, He told Abram to gather His family together to go to a land that would be revealed.  The story of Joseph and his brothers, while seeming to be about Joseph and God’s use of Joseph, is about broken and restored relationships, without which we would lose the connection of Joseph to Jesus, for Jesus is not descended from Joseph’s lineage, but his brother Judah’s.  The Law, given to Moses at Mount Sinai, is not a bunch of laws to tell God’s people how to live lives worthy as individuals, but how to live as a community.

Fast forward through many more stories of God’s emphasis on community and relationships, failed and restored, to Jesus.  Jesus, from the very beginning of His ministry, called a community together—those we consider The Twelve, the Disciples, and all others who would follow.  He set about a ministry that was about restoring people to the community of faith, to a relationship with God and a relationship with one another, regardless of their past.  His only condemnations came upon those who placed roadblocks to restored community, either for power or economic gain.

That call to community extends all the way to the end of Scriptures from the letters to the seven churches (which would have been all the churches) to the promise of New Jerusalem when God comes to live fully amongst those who have worthily responded to His call to live together in the Name of Christ.

In between Jesus and New Jerusalem, at least in our Scriptures, lies Pentecost, and then Paul’s letters.  At Pentecost, we find that God poured out His Spirit upon not just a bunch of individuals, but those that had gathered together in an upper room, not in their own name, not for their own needs, but in the Name of Christ.  And as God poured out His Spirit upon them, as God poured out the very Spirit of Christ upon that gathered community, it was not for their own sake, but in order that they might witness to all who had gathered in Jerusalem.  It was God bringing together in the Name of our Lord and Savior, people differing nationalities, differing ethnicities, differing languages, into One People…His people.

Paul continues to emphasize the importance of community, over the individual, over doing one’s own thing, throughout every one of His letters—whether it is His reminder that each of us bear different gifts that come together to form and complete the One Body of the Church, or His emphasis on not placing ourselves as more important than others in the Body of Christ, or His reminder that Christ came to break down the walls that would divide us from one another.  This morning’s reading reminds us that the only life worthy of God’s calling upon us, and in that sense, the only life worthy of the blood of Christ that was shed for us, is a life in which we faithfully live together with others who have surrender their lives to Christ.

A life worthy of the calling God has placed upon us is a life that is filled with humility, gentleness, and patience…all marks of living together.  We are to bear with one another in love, meaning that life together will not always be easy…that there are going to be tines where we struggle with what one another does, times where one or more or all of us mess up, but that as far as we are concerned, Paul says, we are to strive to continue to live together in unity.

And my brothers and sisters, this goes beyond just who we live as individuals within the community, but how we live as communities within the world…how we live in relation to our brothers and sisters in other congregations, within our denomination, within God’s universal Church—for the adversary, and the world, will try to separate us from one another, voices calling us apart rather than God’s voice calling us together.

Yet Paul reminds us that those voices in the world that try to pull us apart from one another are not the Voice that we are called to heed.  Paul reminds us that we are to be one body, because it is One Spirit that has given us life…the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Pentecost, which is none other than the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Father, the Spirit of the Son, the Spirit of Jesus, so what God’s Spirit calls us to do, is going to be no different and call us to no different life than what God has done throughout time, no different than what Jesus did throughout His ministry.  We have one hope, that we might be found faithful and worthy…we worship One Lord (Jesus, not others, not ourselves) …one faith…that Jesus was born, lived, died, and was resurrected that we might live free from the power of sin and death…we experience one baptism which makes us part of a family much greater than our bloodlines…because we worship the One True God who is Father of us all.

This morning we will come and receive this sacred meal that Christ prepares for us.  As we come to receive the bread and the cup, as we come to eat and drink together…may we remember that in Jesus’ time, when He first said, “take eat”…”take drink”…when you shared a meal with someone, you were bound to them as long as that food was in your body…as long as that food and drink was part of your very being…and because in this meal, in this bread, in this cup, we receive the very grace of God, a grace that never leaves our body, we are eternally bound to one another and to all who will eat and drink the meal that Christ has prepared for us.  May we worthily live as One…One Body in Christ Jesus…

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…Amen.