One body, one spirit, one hope...

 Read Ephesians 4

You belong to the Lord.  He is your Master, Savior, and Friend.  By his blood we have been made right with God.  That should bring out an amen, hallelujah, or praise the Lord, but how will we respond. Paul has something to say about that.

I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.

We have been called to be a disciple of Christ Jesus.  How do we respond to this call? Are we ready to live up to this call?

What are some possible responses to this wonderful gift of mercy and grace? Paul gives us some.

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

So what’s all this unity business?  We all have different gifts and talents and abilities.  Doesn’t that mean we are all on separate courses?  We might be, but we have much in common.  Again, consider Paul’s counsel.

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

How can we be unified as one?

·       One body

·       One Spirit

·       One hope

·       One Lord

·       One faith

·       One baptism

·       One God and Father of all who is over all and in all

Consider also that grace has been apportioned to each of us as Christ deemed appropriate.

But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.

What else has Christ given to us as he deemed appropriate?  Faith and gifts.  There are extended discussions on those in Paul’s other letters.

We are not all given the same.  There is no equal rights distribution.  Christ gives us what he knows that we need.  In the context of grace, some may have ventured farther from God than others, but he knows what we need to come home.

Our apportionments are different, but we are to be one body with one Spirit and one hope and one Lord.  We are of one faith and one baptism and know that God is our Father and over all, and our Father put Christ over all of us.  How do we get to this oneness?

We have talked before that the work of this age has been entrusted to the church.  Within the church, there are some specific assignments but all are called to something and all are called to unity.

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

The goal is unity in the faith and in the knowledge of Christ the Son and all that he is and all that we are in him.  Remember, that’s how Paul started this letter telling his readers who we are in Christ.

Paul also uses a unique term—the fullness of Christ.  Christ lived, loved, healed, taught, rebuked, died for our sins, and rose from the dead.  We know these things but do we know him.  In the fulness of living a life given to Christ, we will come to know Christ more and more.

Paul is talking about maturing—growing in our faith and hope and as the body of Christ.  Too often churches dwell in infancy as believers.  We should grow and mature in our faith.  We are blessed that we grow in grace—that God will never disown us.  He loves us and will keep on loving us.

One indicator—and I spent more time on this in our First Light Service—is that we can speak the truth in love.  It’s easy to speak the truth in condemnation, but it is a sign of Christian maturity to speak the truth in a spirit of love.  It takes courage and a genuine desire to help others as God wants us to help them.  Sometimes speaking the truth is essential, but delivering the truth in a spirit of love is effective.

Remember this lesson from Paul’s letter to the Galatians .  We should all carry our own load but if someone who is trying is also struggling, we should help lift part of his burden.

If someone gets off course in her race of faith, we should gently call him home.  We are about invitation not condemnation.

Paul reminds all that we are saved by grace through faith.  It’s not by abiding by the law.  It’s not by circumcision.  There is no Jesus Plus salvation formula.  It’s all by the love of God so don’t try to earn salvation by means of the law.

That might be a dead horse as far as we are concerned, especially as we didn’t grow up in the synagogues. Perhaps Paul’s warning to believers not to return to their pagan ways is closer to our history.

Don’t go back to being your old self.  You are a new person.  Live as the new creation that God made you to be in Christ Jesus.

Paul got a little didactic and directive here.

So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.

We are not people of falsehood but of truth.

Anger does not control us.  Love does.  Giving anger a foothold can lead to sin.

We don’t steal.  We work.

We don’t curse.  We encourage.

We don’t make God’s Spirit who lives within sad by our ungrateful choices.  We live by the Spirit.  We produce the fruit of the Spirit.

We are not brawlers.  We live by kindness and compassion. 

We are no longer the old person.  We have taken off the old self and put on the new. We are a new creation.  Lord, help us to live as this new person you made us to be.

Amen.

 

Speaking the Truth in Love

 Read Ephesians 4

 

The Redbuds are budding, the sun is shining more each day, and it’s baseball season.  What more could we want?  How about some counsel for the Apostle Paul.

 

Let’s look at some words that you know, but let’s understand them fully.  What words?

 

Speaking the truth in love.

 

These words and this thought are good thoughts and perhaps should be applied beyond their original context, but let’s understand this context first.

Paul writes to the church in Ephesus.  He was not liked much in the community as his teaching cut into the business and profits of the makers of idols.  Ephesus had a fantastic temple to the goddess Diana or as she was known in Greek, Artemis.

 

Paul’s preaching here on his second and third missionary journeys accomplished much for the Lord but stirred up those who did not believe and were losing business when their false gods were labeled as false gods.

 

So, Paul is writing to a church that he knows well from whatever abode he has as a prisoner in Rome.  Paul begins encouraging this church by reminding them how blessed they are in Christ.

 

In Christ we have been given every spiritual blessing.

 

We are chosen to be holy and blameless.

 

In Christ we are God’s adopted children.

 

In his blood we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins.

Our hope is in him.

 

We are sealed by him in the Holy Spirit.  We are his.

 

We are made alive in Christ.

 

We are raised up with Christ into the heavenly realm.

 

In Christ, we are God’s handiwork—his workmanship—prepared in advance to do good things.

 

We are joined together in Christ.

 

In him, Jew and Gentile alike become one body and share his promises.

In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.

 

We are called to be strong in him and in his mighty power.

 

Paul is writing to a church that he knows well.  He knows their struggles and the ungodly surroundings in which he planted this church.  So he does his best to remind them of the blessings that they have received in Christ Jesus.

 

But, he can’t leave them there.  There is counsel to follow on how to live being so blessed in an environment that opposes you.  So before the counsel begins, Paul includes a prayer.

 

 For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.  I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being,  so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith… Amen.

 

Paul precedes his counsel with prayer, but here comes the counsel. The first challenge is very general.  Live a life worthy of the calling that you have received.

 

Then he adds some specifics.  Be humble, gentle, patient, and bear with one another.  Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit.

 

We are people of one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father who is all, and through all, and in all.

 

Don’t you get it?  We are one family—God’s family—in Christ.  We have different gifts but we are one.  Elsewhere Paul discussed gifts in the body and how one part of the body can’t say it’s better than another or that another is not needed.

 

But as he writes to the Ephesians, unity in the body is central to his message.  And so we come to this very familiar passage.

 

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.  Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.  From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

 

Speaking the truth in love is about our own growth.  We talked before about speaking the truth to each other.  That is essential to the Christian life.  It is essential to following Jesus, but Jesus said that we who follow him will be known by our love.

 

So we who have professed Jesus as Lord must speak the truth in a spirit of love.  We don’t sugar coat anything but we are not motivated by anything but love.

 

Hey, Tom, you’ve been picking your clothes out by yourself lately haven’t you?

 

I guess that was in a spirit of love, or not.

 

We must speak the truth to each other and do it in a spirit of love.  What this means is that we can speak truthfully to each other even with subjects that are difficult to talk about.  We can do this because we are becoming mature in Christ.

 

It’s easy to say, you had better quit smoking.  Those things will kill you.  That’s a true statement but there’s not much love attached.  Perhaps we first address how important the person is to us and that we don’t want to lose them.

 

I am sometimes referred to as the mean guy when a family with four unemployed adults in the household comes to see me about helping with the water bill.  Sometimes we help and sometimes we don’t but once I say that somebody in the house needs to get a job, then I get labeled the mean guy.

Sometimes, I tell people that they don’t need the most modern smartphone when they can’t pay their electric bill or make their $700 a month car payment.  Maybe, you should trade down until you get an income that will support these things.

 

People start looking for the exit from my office and the church building quickly when I bring up the word budget.  But how can we truly practice love if we won’t address the obvious in people’s situations?

 

Among Christians, we must not permit an Elephant in the Room.  We can’t say we are going to help and ignore the problems.  Speaking the truth in love is about our maturity.  We can talk about real things openly and truthfully in a spirit of love.

 

When we can speak the truth with a spirit of love, we know that we are growing in his grace.  When we speak the truth without the spirit of love, we are often condescending or mean.

 

Too often we back off from the truth because we do not want to be accused of being judgmental, but we must understand that the judgment with which we are counseled to abstain is a condemning judgment.  We are being equipped to jump into the middle of difficult issues and problems.  We can really sort things out instead of dancing around issues out of fear.  Fear gets no purchase when we speak the truth in love.

 

Speaking the truth in love is a measure of how far we have come.

 

Paul continues the chapter with not living in our old ways, taking off the old self, and putting on the new self.  It’s all good counsel for all of us, but it’s hard to follow.  One indicator of whether we are living as this new creation is whether we can speak the truth in love.

 

If we haven’t gotten there already, let’s work on speaking the truth in love.  It’s about our growth and maturity in the body of Christ.

 

Now, you won’t find this in this letter, or maybe anywhere else, but consider this provocation.  If we speak the truth to one another as we are counseled to do and if we speak the truth in love, then we had better be prepared to hear the truth.  We don’t speak the truth in condemnation but in love, but we must be ready to hear the truth and let the Spirit and God’s holy word work on us after we have listened to those speaking to us in love.

 

We need to hear the truth in love from other believers and from God’s holy word.  We must allow God’s word to judge the thoughts and attitudes of our hearts.

Amen. 

Speaking the Truth in Love

Read Ephesians 4

It’s October.  Traditionally, that’s the start of the Federal Governments Fiscal Year.  Of course, funding an entire year at a time seems to be ancient history.  It is the beginning of our local church’s fiscal year.  Several years ago, we decided that we didn’t like budgeting at Christmas time and moved our budging process up to August with an effective date of 1 October.  It seems to be working.

The first Monday in October is still when the Supreme Court of the United States convenes.  That hasn’t changed.

October is sports month.  Baseball, basketball, football, hockey, golf, and others are all underway.  If you are a sports junkie, October is your best fix of the year.

October in Oklahoma is a month when not all of the days feel like summer.

October is also when we realize, man has this year flown by.

In the last several weeks of this fleeting year, we have been on this topical trek of truth and today’s alliteration comes at no extra charge.  We turn to Paul’s words to continue this journey.  We look at words used frequently with good intentions but often out of context.  What words?

Speaking the truth in love.

These words and this thought are good thoughts and perhaps should be applied beyond its original context, but let’s understand this context first.

Paul writes to the church in Ephesus.  He was not liked much in the community as his teaching cut into the business and profits of the makers of idols.  Ephesus had a fantastic temple to the goddess Diana or as she was known in Greek, Artemis.

Paul’s preaching here on his second and third missionary journeys accomplished much for the Lord but stirred up those who did not believe and were losing business when their false gods were labeled as false gods.

So Paul is writing to a church that he knows well from whatever abode he has as a prisoner in Rome.  Paul begins encouraging this church by reminding them how blessed they are in Christ.

In Christ we have been given every spiritual blessing.

We are chosen to be holy and blameless.

In Christ we are God’s adopted children.

In his blood we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins.

Our hope is in him.

We are sealed by him in the Holy Spirit.  We are his.

We are made alive in Christ.

We are raised up with Christ into the heavenly realm.

In Christ, we are God’s handiwork—his workmanship—prepared in advance to do good things.

We are joined together in Christ.

In him, Jew and Gentile alike become one body and share his promises.

In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.

We are called to be strong in him and in his mighty power.

Paul is writing to a church that he knows well.  He knows their struggles and the ungodly surroundings in which he planted this church.  So he does his best to remind them of the blessings that they have received in Christ Jesus.

But, he can’t leave them there.  There is counsel to follow on how to live being so blessed in an environment that opposes you.  So before the counsel begins, Paul includes a prayer.

 For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.  I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being,  so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,  and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,  to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Paul precedes his counsel with prayer, but here comes the counsel. The first challenge is very general.  Live a life worthy of the calling that you have received.

Then he adds some specifics.  Be humble, gentle, patient, and bear with one another.  Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit.

We are people of one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father who is all, and through all, and in all.

Don’t you get it?  We are one family—God’s family—in Christ.  We have different Gifts but we are one.  Elsewhere Paul discussed  gifts in the body and how one part of the body can’t say it’s better than another or that another is not needed.

But as he writes to the Ephesians, unity in the body is central to his message.  And so we come to this very familiar passage.

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.  Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.  From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Speaking the truth in love is about our own growth.  We talked before about speaking the truth to each other.  That is essential to the Christian life.  It is essential to following Jesus, but Jesus said that we who follow him will be known by our love.

So we who have professed Jesus as Lord must speak the truth in a spirit of love.  We don’t sugar coat anything but we are not motivated by anything but love.

Hey, Tom, you’ve been picking your clothes out by yourself lately haven’t you?

I guess that was in a spirit of love, or not.

We must speak the truth to each other and do it in a spirit of love.  What this means is that we can speak truthfully to each other even with subjects that are difficult to talk about.  We can do this because we are becoming mature in Christ.

It’s easy to say, you had better quit smoking.  Those things will kill you.  That’s a true statement but there’s not much love attached.  Perhaps we first address how important the person is to us and that we don’t want to lose them.

I am sometimes referred to as the mean guy when a family with four unemployed adults in the household comes to see me about helping with the water bill.  Sometimes we help and sometimes we don’t but once I say that somebody in the house needs to get a job, then I get labeled the mean guy.

Sometimes, I tell people that they don’t need the most modern smartphone when they can’t pay their electric bill or make their $700 a month car payment.  Maybe, you should trade down until you get an income that will support these things.

People start looking for the exit from my office and the church building quickly when I bring up the word budget.  But how can we truly practice love if we won’t address the obvious in people’s situations?

Among Christians, we must not permit an Elephant in the Room.  We can’t say we are going to help and ignore the problems.  Speaking the truth in love is about our maturity.  We can talk about real things openly and truthfully in a spirit of love.

When we can speak the truth with a spirit of love, we know that we are growing in his grace.  When we speak the truth without the spirit of love, we are often condescending or mean.

Too often we back off from the truth because we do not want to be accused of being judgmental; but we must understand that the judgment with which we are counseled to abstain is a condemning judgment.  We are being equipped to jump into the middle of difficult issues and problems.  We can really sort things out instead of dancing around issues out of fear.  Fear gets no purchase when we speak the truth in love.

Speaking the truth in love is a measure of how far we have come.

Paul continues the chapter with not living in our old ways, taking off the old self, and putting on the new self.  It’s all good counsel for all of us, but it’s hard to follow.  One indicator of whether we are living as this new creation is whether we can speak the truth in love.

If we haven’t gotten there already, let’s work on speaking the truth in love.  It’s about our growth and maturity in the body of Christ.

Now, you won’t find this in this letter, or maybe anywhere else, but consider this provocation.  If we speak the truth to one another as we are counseled to do and if we speak the truth in love, then we had better be prepared to hear the truth.  We don’t speak the truth in condemnation but in love, but we must be ready to hear the truth and let the Spirit and God’s holy word work on us after we have listened to those speaking to us in love.

Remember all of the blessings that we discussed earlier.  Rejoice in them.  Celebrate them and then ask, now what?  What do I do knowing I am so blessed?  How do I respond to all of these blessings?

Among other things, learn to speak the truth in love.  We are people of the truth.

Speak the truth in love.

Amen.

Unity

Read Ephesians 4:11-16

This year which has flown by and is about to wrap up had topical messages:  Love, Action, Peace, and Rest were the major headings.  Next year I will remain topical for the most part with faith, grace, and hope and of course our messages that go with Advent, Ash Wednesday, and Resurrection.

At the First Light service, we will look at gifts, the Spirit, and the Gifts of the Spirit.

This morning, I will rest from the topic of rest and talk about unity.  Why?

Several months ago, I talked with Terra Sisco—the pastor the First Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Marlow about leveraging the fact that the Marlow church was a polling station.

You can’t put up political signs at a polling place, but you can announce a community service.  The church had been recovering from past hurts in the community and needed a jump start.  I suggested that we practice the connectional nature of our denomination and get some pastors and others to come to Marlow and reintroduce the church to the community.

Terra was onboard and without hesitation said, I want you to preach on unity.

Unity—I love the topic.  In today’s diverse and divisive world, it seems to be an anomaly.

Diversity is a wonderful thing.  We are blessed with so many abilities, talents, and so many gifts of the Spirit that we should be producing fruit galore.

But there’s not much fruit in divisiveness, and our nation is suffering in divisiveness.  There is no shortage of opinions as to who is at fault and those opinions often solidify the divisiveness.  If you get into a discussion these days, you had better wear safety goggles so one of those pointing fingers doesn’t poke you in the eye.

Jesus as he was rebuking the religious leaders two thousand years ago set forth this truth:  A house divided—a kingdom divided—against itself cannot stand. 

About 160 years ago a young Abraham Lincoln noted this about our nation.  He would see it lived out in the blood of nearly 700,000 young Americans. 

About 80 years before that E pluribus unum was adopted as our national motto. What a perfect thought for this Grand Experiment we call the United States of America:  Out of many one.

It not only signified the divine miracle that brought forth this new land, it seemed to also mark the challenge of each generation.  One of the paradoxes of this republic is that it seeks unity while preserving liberty for the individual—for each of us. 

It is the nature of our republic, that our domestic tranquility is afloat on a sea that separates revolution and tyranny.

This thing that we call self-government, representative government is a continual struggle.  You might think that balance would prevail over divisiveness, but the world will have none of it.  Even in this nation so blessed in this broken world, struggle is the nature of our existence.

Enough of the political scientist in me.  I must let him out time and again.  What about the body of Christ?  What about us?

We as a community of believers must be a community.  We must live in one accord. Christ alone must be our head, our Master, our King.  Christ is the head of the church.

We must be one in the Spirit.  That doesn’t mean that we don’t observe our separate traditions, we just don’t let them get in the way of our unity. 

If the body of Christ does not practice and exhibit unity, can we expect more of our nation?  We must be a model of unity.

In the first part of the scripture from Ephesians 4 that I read, we most often focus on the Christ gave us apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers part.  That’s important, but sometimes we forget the rest of these purposeful words—words that equip us for service to our Lord.

Paul continued:  so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

What’s Paul saying?  Unity is our destination not our starting point.  Even we in the body of Christ have some work to do.  We are to mature.  We are to grow.

Christ did everything for our salvation.  We have some work to do on our discipleship.  As we follow Jesus, we should look more and more like our Master each day, each week, each year.  Sometimes, growing in God’s grace takes a little work.

Often, we have to overcome our own human nature as we take on God’s holy nature.  Salvation is a gift.  Amen!  Hallelujah.  Praise the Lord!  Discipleship takes work.

What if we want a benchmark of our work and our growth?

One of those indicators of growth is unity.  Unity signifies that we are maturing in our faith.  We are growing.  We are growing in God’s grace.  God will never stop loving us, even if we are at the bottom of our class.  We grow in his grace.

Unity is one of the markers of our growth.  The ability to work with other believers with diverse thoughts, attitudes, culture, language, gifts, and abilities because Jesus is the head and we are one in the Spirit.  Being of one accord is a mark of maturity.

You have heard the phrase, speaking the truth in love, right?  I have taken this phrase out of context many times, most of them with good application.

Most of the time we think this is for the benefit of the one with whom we are speaking.  Often it is, but in the original context, it is about us and our growth. Listen to Paul’s words once again.

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.  Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.  From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Speaking the truth in love is a precursor to growth. If we are to navigate this modern age and move towards unity of the body, we must be able to speak the truth in a spirit of love with those that do not agree with us.

If we were to follow Paul to Chapter 14 in Romans, he talks about disputable matters.  The Greek word that we most often translate as disputable is  διαλογισμός  (dee-al-og-is-mos').  You might think that sounds more like dialogue than dispute.

You would be correct.  The original meaning of the word is essentially, back and forth reasoning.  Today in our modern nation, it seems that every dialogue becomes a dispute or argument or irresolvable conflict, but the original language did not carry the burden of our modern connotations.

It meant back and forth reasoning.  Who misses that other than me?  Who misses a good, wholesome, healthy discussion instead of everyone talking at once, often with ever-increasing volume.  The author Stephen Covey calls this mass babble that we pass of as modern discussion, the dialogue of the deaf.  Everyone is talking, and nobody is listening.

We as the body of Christ not only must be capable of but practice back and forth discussion.  We must speak the truth in love, not out of selfish ambition nor condemnation.  This is a mark of our maturity as believers.

Will we get to the point where we agree on everything?  No.  But we will live in one accord knowing that Jesus is Lord.  He is our Master.  He is the head of the church.

And the things that we don’t agree upon will not get in the way of serving Christ, loving one another, or being unified as his body.

Diversity of opinion, methods, and traditions will not get in the way of unity within the body of Christ.  When we as believers start picking at each other for how others practice their faith—whatever it is—baptizing, preaching, music, celebrating the Lord’s Supper and other things, remember the church body that you are picking at belongs to our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus.

His Spirit abides in the believers of that body.  If the Lord has some corrections or redirection for that body, his Spirit is already there, and none of us have been retained to advise the Spirit.  Who among us may counsel the Lord?

We do have the mind of Christ.  We have God’s Spirit.  We are one body.  We must grow to unity.  We must mature as believers so that we can have back and forth discussions without causing the new believer to stumble or doubt that we have a clue about this Christianity stuff.

We are called to live in one accord, and I don’t mean a Honda.

Oh, by the way, it’s going to be work.  Salvation is a gift from God.  Discipleship, growing in grace, and unity take work.  Are we up for the work?

I am not talking about carrying burdens that we have surrendered to our Lord.  I am talking about taking his yoke and learning from him.  Are we ready to learn from our Lord and grow in his grace?

It’s going to take some work.  Many look around at a divisive nation and are about ready to throw in the towel, but we must stay the course.  We must press on towards the goal.  We must never give up on unity.

You have endured me this far, but I am making a return to something of a Marine story.  I’ve used it in different contexts, so some may have heard it before.

During the First Gulf War which was just called Desert Shield and Desert Storm back then, I was training reservists.  I was the active duty commander.  Many reserve units were called up and I went with them to Camp Lejeune for 2 weeks of refresher training before shipping out to Southwest Asia.

After they deployed, I went back to my command and waited for my orders.  I got them and went to Camp Lejeune to go through the same sort of refresher training I had just taken the reserves through.  This was a group composed mostly of officers and senior NCO’s.  We were near the end of this two-week period and headed to the pistol range and a close combat refresher. 

You might say that we had copped an attitude.  What attitude?  We’ve done this.  If things get down to pistols and knives, the battleplan did not go according to plan.  Most of the officers were thinking, “just wrap this stuff up and get me on a plane to the desert.”

There was a crusty old gunnery sergeant in charge of this last part of the training.  He detected the malaise that accompanied us.  He couldn’t really chew us out as half were officers, but he could relate a story from decades earlier.

He was a young Marine on an outpost with his fireteam.  A lance corporal was in charge of this 4-man outpost.  That is to say that a 19-year-old kid was in charge of three 18-year old’s.  The gunnery sergeant was one of those 18-year-old kids long ago.

They had fought through most of the night.  Everyone was wounded.  Ammunition had run out.  Everyone was just leaning back against a tree or a berm waiting to die.  They could hear the enemy moving in on them as the grass and reeds made noises not caused by the wind.

These few young Marines had given up hope.  This lance corporal team leader did the most compassionate thing he could think.  It may be one of the most compassionate things one Marine has ever said to another.

He said:  GET OFF YOUR BUTTS AND GET IN THE FIGHT!  You may die by the enemy’s bullets or bayonets, but you will not give in to self-pity and hopelessness.  GET IN THE FIGHT!

Of the 4 young Marines, three survived the day.  They were ready to throw in the towel but this 19-year-old kid who happened to be in charge, reminded them that throwing in the towel was not who they were.

Get in the fight!

We are not people who give up either.  We know that to live is Christ and to die is gain and sometimes we want the second part now.  Come, Lord Jesus, come.

But we are overcomers.  Our work here is not finished.  Part of that work is to share the gospel.

Part of that work is to model unity for the world.  They can’t get there on their own.  They need leadership.

How can we lead?  We follow Jesus.  We take his yoke and learn from him and put his words into practice.

If the body of Christ will not model unity for the world, the world will never get there.  The world knows uniformity.  The world will gladly conform you to its patterns, but it cannot know the unity that we as maturing believers must know and put on display for the world.

It will take some work.  Salvation is a gift.  

Discipleship takes work.  The part of discipleship that we ventured into this morning was unity.  We can do this.

Will the world follow our model?  Probably not, but those living according to the world will see that we are different.  Some will ask why, and we will tell them of God’s love that we know in Christ Jesus.

That is, if they can tell us apart from the world.  Can we be diverse, yet live in one accord?  Can we maintain different traditions, yet live in unity as the body of Christ?  Can we do this?

I’ll do this exercise once again. 

Raise your right hand as high as you can.

Now raise it higher.

We like to think we are doing the best that we can, but there is always a little more if we reach for it.  My challenge, my request, and my prayer are that we work a little harder when it comes to unity in the body of Christ.

The world doesn’t know this sort of unity and the peace and hope that come with it.  The world will be the world, but Jesus told us to be the light of the world.

One way to be that light is to live in unity as the body of Christ.

Amen!