SCRIPTURE: Ephesians 3:1-2
TEXT: 10so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. THEME: Christ’s inclusion of all changes community of faith with rich variety. INTRODUCTION The season of Epiphany is one of enlightenment and lights. Those who studied the stars in the East mark their arrival at the birth of Christ. During this season we will be looking at the changes the birth of Christ brings to our understanding of God, our understanding of ourselves and our understanding of how we relate to others. We will be using the wisdom found the Epistles to unfold the depths of its meaning for our world. Jesus shows us that we have free access to God through prayer. We can talk to God without having a priest intercede for us. Prayer is not just for making requests, but for dwelling with God, to be in conversation with God, for us to be heard and for us to hear God’s perspective and and insight, that can strength, further our resolve and inspire our living. We will being using the lectionary readings from the Psalms as our Call to Worship. Kealahou, who will be filling in for me next week, did this as he created the Worship Bulletin for next Sunday, so I did some reverse engineering and decided to follow suit, by working the Psalms into our up and coming Call to Worships. To emphasize prayer during Epiphany, we will also be singing “Somebody Prayed for Me”. As we get into this song, feel inspired to write additional verses that we can sing together. When Jesus comes, he comes for all people, Jews and Gentiles. The Jewish way of viewing the world was in term of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Either you are a ‘us’ a Jew or you are a ‘them’ a Gentile Unfortunately this sometimes causes those of faith to be arrogant and judgmental. It was not a nice way to live out their distinctiveness as being God’s people. The wall that separated Jews from Gentiles is taken down in Christ’s creation of a new humanity. The new community of faith is blended together with stories of God’s grace. It is a collaboration of those who are Jewish and those who know God through Jesus. This is a radical idea. Imagine them having to rethink the theologies handed down to them, because of the grace displayed through Jesus’ love and life. This lends itself to the building of an inclusive community of faith, of which Paul finds himself called to be part of its building. SCRIPTURE Paul’s dedication to what he learned about God through Jesus changes this perceptions on faith. He used to think, “Who can forgive sin but only God. So when Jesus proclaimed ‘your sins are forgiven’ it rub him the wrong way. What an arrogant claim for anyone to make. Who does this Jesus think he is. Only God can forgive sin…unless Jesus is God. Then bam, bright light, knocked off the horse, blinded and the voice of the resurrected Jesus calling to him. Paul had a paradigm shift where he equated Jesus with God and everything made sense in a new way. Relationship with God is not only for the Jews (the ancestor of Abraham and Sarah), but for everyone. The prejudice he carried for Gentiles (those who were not Jews) was wrong and arrogant. This grace makes Paul passionate about bringing the Good News of Jesus to the Gentiles so they don’t fall under the same yolk of the Law that he was under and for them to share in the relationship he has with God as parent through Jesus. The Good News is found in the mystery of Christ which is all about the gift of grace for everyone. This Boundless riches of Christ brings a rich variety to the church. More than what Judaism could contain on its own. The church has its roots in Judaism, with the revelation of Christ, gifted with God’s grace and rich variety by all who come to make up the church. APPLICATION What are the characteristics and practices of an inclusive-collaborative community? What is being described in Ephesians is an inclusive community of faith, rising from its foundation in Judaism but having ability to accept anyone, no matter what their ancestral background might be. Living gracefully, the church is a community of those who have come to have faith in God and find grace together through the mystery of Christ. This brings a rich variety that includes different cultures, traditions, habits, practices, races and experiences. God is not limited to one people, but open to the experiences, insights and values that have influenced, molded and made them into who they are. As with anything, they need to be discerned, adapted, included or left behind. This is true with the church, one new member can changes the church with who they are, the gifts they share, their faith, love, grace, experiences and the needs that they have. This means that the church is always changing. There is a rich variety, that confirms the diversity of God’s love. This is harder on us, who like things to be the same. We evolve to a point where we have a standard to keep but a pandemic happens, the county fair stops, the flow of income changes and the cost of living increases. Our mode of operation is to dominate, to over power and have our way. But the way of Christ is to acknowledge the richness in diversity and then to work collaboratively; Judaism and Christ create the church. The church has evolved from Catholicism, to Protestantism, and Charismatic-ism and is moving into ‘what next'? When we moved from a chaplaincy model of the church towards being missional, it wasn’t because we were doing church wrong all of those years, it meant that the mission of the church was moving and we needed to shift gears with it. Sometimes it takes someone from here to go away and come back to notice the change in our demographics. We are a lot less local on Maui. And there is a lot less ‘Aloha’. Our brand of Christianity is very special, because of ‘aloha’. It can be lost if we don’t teach and practice it, not only to the next generation, but to those who have moved here from someplace else, who now call Hawaii their home. Can you imagine such a person moving to Molokai and wanting to change a Molokai Market to be like the grocery store they left on the Mainland. Moving into the new, there is a bit of letting go and a collaborative work of building something that holds our shared values together. Part of the flavor of our church is a little bit of many cultures. We don’t try to dominate but appreciate the diversity and blend, the fusion and collaboration into something special. But don’t stop there. God is on the move to the next and the new version of the people of God and the church. We have progressed and established ourselves, but what we have built is struggling to sustain itself today. Groaning to move into something new. Diverse collaboration blended we need to teach our values, life style to the new comers and the next generation so they can take what is special about us, into the future. This could be what our country is going through in trying to preserve the status quo, instead of changing into something more collaborative, blended and diverse. If we are not careful, we will be sacrificing our values and distinctiveness instead of embedding them into the future. CONCLUSION Paul learned about the Aloha of God, realizing that what he thought was too small. We need to teach ‘Aloha in Christ’ to everyone. A Hawaiian Style of being a Christian. If we teach our way of loving and worshiping God to others, then it won’t be lost to the future but it will finds its place, incarnated, in the next generation and the next evolution of the church
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May 2024
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