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Meet Father KempThe Third Sunday after Easter/St. Mark’s 25 April 2010
I have been asked to read Tom Rath’s book Strength Finders 2.0. I am a rather arrogant and skeptical person (I do not like those qualities and they are in constant need of mortification) and nothing gets my arrogance and skepticism agitated like books on strengths. However, Tom Rath surprised me with his opening sentence, “At it fundamentally flawed core, the aim of almost any learning program is to help us become who we are not. …From the cradle to the cubicle, we devote more time to our shortcomings than to our strengths.[1] Rath’s book is a debunking of the American myth that you can become whatever you want to become if you work hard enough. Rath suggests we live by a new platitude, “You cannot be anything you want to be – but you can be a lot more of who you already are.” I wholeheartedly agree with Rath, we cannot be whatever we want to be, but we are somebody and we can certainly become more of who we are. In Jr. High and High School, I spent countless hours practicing basketball and paid much money to attend basketball camps, but I do not and will never have the natural skills of a basketball players (my coach told me so himself!). In fact, Rath’s platitude is a good summary of the past three sermons. Because of Jesus’ resurrection, all those who belong to him have also been resurrected and their lives are now hide in him. That means all those who belong to Jesus Christ have died to sin, sin is no longer their master. It also means they have been resurrected to a new life, a life of godliness and righteousness. All those who belong to Christ are a new creation, that is who they are and that is who they are supposed to become. Christians are to become who they already are. Just as I could never become a basketball star, so Christians cannot be who they want to be, but just like I could develop the gifts I have been created with, so Christians can become who they already in Jesus Christ. Incidentally, this is St. Paul’s basic point in our epistle lesson, Ephesians 4 and I would like to do something called expository preaching this morning, which is to go through a portion of this passage verse by verse to see the flow of thought and theology.
St. Paul opens this section of his epistle with these words, “Unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.” Everyone one of us has been given grace, the same grace, and this grace is a gift from Jesus Christ. St. Paul continues, “Wherefore he saith, ‘When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive.” Jesus Christ has led captivity into captivity, in other words, Jesus has set us free. Freedom is a buzzword today, just as it always has been in America. If you read the paper or watch the news, you will hear this seven-letter word repeated repeatedly in a sickening number of various contexts. The word ‘freedom’ has come to mean so many things; it is now indefinable and means nothing other than something that we all want. However, I think one of best and truest definitions of freedom, a definition that Christians should subscribe to, is found in the Collect for Peace in Morning Prayer, “O God,…whose service is perfect freedom” or as the old Latin puts it, “whom to serve is to reign.” When Jesus set us free, he gave us gifts so that we may serve him, as St. Paul said, “He led captivity captive and gave gifts to men.” The word ‘gifts’ clarifies the gift grace St. Paul mentioned in the preceding verse. Grace is a gift and it is also a gifting through which we receive a strength or ability that we are to use in our freedom. In other words, Jesus has not set us free to be idle; he has set us free and given us a gift to use in his service.
However, what are these gifts? St. Paul continues, “And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers.” The gifts of grace that Jesus has given us to use in our freedom are the various vocations or callings in the church. Jesus has gifted each and every one of us in various and complimentary ways. That means every one of us has been given a gift that needs to be used within the church. We all have a vocation that needs to be fulfilled, we are all called to do a specific task and work toward a specific goal, and we have all been given the appropriate gift to fulfill it.
However, what are the goals that our gifts need to be working toward? St. Paul lists three, “for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.” These goals have at least one similarity, they all are directed at other people. That means the gifts we have been given are not for the benefit of ourselves, but for the benefit of others. To put it simply, Jesus has gifted us to serve other people. That also means that it is just as much your responsibility as it is my responsibility to work toward the perfecting of the saints of this church, to work toward the ministry of this church and to edify this body of Christ. We all have a job to play in the church and every job is equally important.
However, what is the ultimate purpose our gifts work toward, what is the purpose driving our Christian service? St. Paul continues, “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” The purpose driving our lives, directing our use of the gifts Jesus has given us is the perfection of each other or the time when all of our lives are completely conformed to Jesus Christ. Jesus has given us gifts so that we may play a part in making others resemble Christ in every possible way: in knowledge till we all come to the unity of the faith and knowledge of the Son of God and in life in general till we all come unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Just as the fullness of God the Father was revealed through His son Jesus so the fullness of Jesus will one day be revealed in us. The gifts we have been given through grace were given so that through our labors, Jesus might be more and more revealed in our fellow brothers and sisters. In other words, we have been given gifts so that we may play a part in the sanctification of our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
This would be an appropriate to stop, summarize and conclude. All those who belong to Jesus Christ have been given through grace a gift and a vocation. We are called to use this gift in the church to perfect the saints, to the work of ministry and for the edification of the body of Christ so that we may be conformed to the image and like of Jesus Christ in both doctrine (what we believe) and in life (how we live). Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, we are what we will one day become and God has lavished His grace upon us in such a way as to make us necessary participants in each other’s sanctification, which is the process in which we become like Jesus Christ. We have been given an important and vital task within the church, a task we have been gifted to fulfill. Therefore, let us not be like little children who are carried away by every blast of vain doctrine and let us not be like immature teenagers who idly waste their time contemplating vanity, but let us be like disciples who through grace hold fast to the truth and who diligently and faithfully use the gifts they have been given to the glory of God and to the building up of the Church, body of Jesus Christ.
[1] Tom Rath, StrengthFinder 2.0, Gallup Press: New York, 2007, pg. 3
