September 23

How We Help Each Other Grow

September 23, 2007 Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

I think we could all safely say that we are a shopping culture. We have malls; we have shops everywhere we go. We go and spend and buy things that we like - a consumer culture. I think that’s true even on trips that we take. If we go out of the country or if we go on cruises, what is one of the first things we do when they stop? We go shopping. I am sure the group from Czechoslovakia went ...shopping, a lot. The buses take you shopping, partly because the local merchants want to see you coming; but they also know a lot about Americans. We go shopping. It really is true and we do that in a lot of different ways, and what happens as you go shopping? You go as an individual or family and you go to a place or places and buy the things that you need and then you go home and go about your business. I think that that mentality has also moved over in how we view church as well. We look at church as shoppers. Churches have kind of bought into this, haven’t they? A lot of churches, some of the bigger ones, have a food court and they have stores. You know everything seems to happen in California these days. If you go to some churches in California, they are a whole city block; and within that block, they have the buildings in a block and in the middle there are shops, food, coffee, Starbuck’s, you name it. It’s not all bad. To some degree, if you aren’t a marketer in church these days you are not going to do very well. So you have to do some of it. To some degree we also have to shop for churches because if we go to a new place we’ll have to go and see how that church matches up with us. Ministers call it church shopping. Over the last couple weeks and during the next few weeks, I want to present the biblical idea of church. Why do we come here at all? What’s it all about? This is not Wal-Mart and this is not Sears. We are not meant to go simply to a place, like on Sunday morning, and shop for a Sunday school class for our kids, or a good sermon or a nice sounding choir. What we are intended to do is to go and be a part of community, a family if you will. That’s the intent. Without that we are fragmented; we’re disconnected; we’re not really a part of something we ought to be. The culture pulls us away from what we need to be and from this community of believers which supports one another and loves one another. Particularly today I want to talk about How We Help One Another Grow. How we are responsible to help one another, to give to one another, and to receive in our spiritual growth. Now I’ve chosen, one out of many, a passage from Ephesians, Chapter 4. You may laugh at me, because I’ve said it so many other times; but this really is one of my favorite passages of scripture. I like it and I am actually going to use it several times during this series because it has a lot to say about the job description of a pastor. Sometimes, in our culture, we think of a pastor and any other church job as where we come and we get service from the pastor. We pay them to be the professional staff person who gives us service, and to some degree that’s true. But notice what the bible says the job description of a pastor is and what the purpose of the church is. So I am going to read it to you and I am going to make little comments along the side. The word of God as it comes to us from Ephesians, Chapter 4, beginning in verse 11. (Ephesians 4:11-16)

It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, (to do what?) to prepare God’s 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, (that’s the goal of the Christian life), attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Then we will no longer be infants, (spiritual babies), tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. (There’s a lot of falsehood out there and we need to be careful.) Instead, speaking the truth in love, (speaking the truth, in love), we will in all things grow up into 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.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God!

Would you pray with me?

God our Father, thank you for this organization, this group, this family called the church. We know that it’s imperfect but you use us and you use it to do your kingdom in this world. We are amazed at that Lord and yet it is true. Help us Lord to see ourselves as part of this family as we each do our part and as we each take part in it. Be with us now Lord as we hear your word. May it say something to each of us, things that we need to hear, things that we need to know about you and about what you want us to be and do. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

How are we to help each other? Well many ways, but I’ve chosen a few today to highlight. I think first that we are intended to be examples to one another. We are examples whether we like it or not. There’s great power in being an example, or examples, in our lives. We see it everyday. We see it in the lives of our children. All we have to do is look on T.V. and see Britney or Lindsay or somebody wearing a dress up to here or a blouse down to here, and what do some of our children want to do, because their friends are doing it? Or some of the hip-hop guys who wear their jeans with belts right here and their friends do it, so our kids want to do it. The power of example! The power of what people around us are doing. We are no different than our children. We follow the trends. We follow the examples of others, and sometimes in a grave way. We can all think of a coach, or a grandfather, a father, a mother, a powerful aunt, or somebody, a teacher, who changed our lives because of their example. We may not remember a thing they’ve said but we remember them. A powerful thing! We have to realize, again, that we are examples whether we want to be or not. We are examples. Now, this is exaggeration, it really is; but at the same time I will say it just like this, “Just once, just once, I would love for a parent to come and tell me they have joined the church, not for their children, but for themselves.” Now, there are a lot of exceptions, but often kids, when they get to college, guess what do they do? They don’t go to church very much. Then when they get out of college and they are single, they are so busy doing things they forget about going to church, even if they were brought up in church. Then they get married and start thinking of going back to church. Then when they have kids, oh, now it’s time. Why? Because they want their kids to get religion, and believe me, I’ll take it. I’ll take it. But just once I would love to hear them say, “I’m not here for my children, I’m here for myself.” Because I want to tell you something, faith is sometimes more caught than taught. If you are not being an example to your children, it won’t matter what they learn here. Now that’s an exaggeration. God uses what they learn here in powerful ways but it’s much more powerful if you are an example. So men if your son sees you not going to church, guess what he is going to learn how to do? Women if you daughter sees you not getting involved and doing other things, guess what she is going to do? Example is a powerful thing. We are examples to each other in the faith. You might be saying, “How can I be an example to anyone?” And actually that would be a right attitude. That would be a right attitude. Inside you might be feeling like the kid who applied for college a long time ago; and on the application, it asked what some of his strengths were. He said, “Sometimes I’m trustworthy. Sometimes I’m loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, cheerful, thrifty, brave and clean.” Then the next questions was, tell us something about some of your weaknesses. He said, “Sometimes I’m not trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, cheerful, thrifty, brave and clean.” I feel the same way; and we all do. But I like to say, all of us are on a path, a spiritual path, and some of us are farther down the line than others. Some of us are further down the line than somebody else. We always have people ahead of us and we always have people behind. We are examples to everyone in that way, not because we are perfect; but because we are a little bit farther down the path than some. We owe it to others to be a friend and a mentor and an example to those around us.

Another thing we need to be is encouragers. I like the word encourage. You take the en off and you have courage; because it takes courage to live. It takes hope to live. It takes those things and life as we go through it often is about removing courage from us. We just look at the news; we look at…things happen in our lives. Kids die. People get sick. We lose our jobs. Or just anything happens and we lose hope. We are constantly in need of others, our family, not just blood, to come alongside of us and say, “I’m here with you. I’m going to help right now. You may be down right now, but I’m going to help.” I’ve discovered something as a pastor over the years that when people are in pain, their vision narrows. It doesn’t matter what it is. Some are broader than others, some are narrower than others; but when you are in pain, we’re all in pain – our vision narrows and so sometimes we only see the pain. We really can’t see anything else. As a chaplain in the Army they train us in a lot of things and one of the things they train us in is suicide prevention. It is not because the Army has more suicide than any other society, but for any commander, one is too many. So chaplains are trained in this and we have to give briefings about it and train others about how to prevent suicide. It works to some degree. But I learned something in that training, that often when people contemplate suicide, they are in such pain they don’t see anything else. For them, relief of that pain is the only thing that matters in that moment. Whether it is psychological, emotional or spiritual, they want to relieve the pain and they kill themselves or they harm themselves; and that may seem irrational to us, but to them it is relief of the pain that counts. To a lesser degree, when all of us go through pain, our vision also narrows; so that is why when someone is contemplating suicide, or just going through hurt, we need to come along and put our arm around them. Sometimes we don’t even need to say anything. We just have to be there, because we are family. And not only do we encourage people when they are hurting, we encourage them to do greater things. Sometimes people just need to hear that they can do it. You know we have the power to lift up and we have the power to destroy just with our words, and we know that. Some of us can remember the negative things that were said to us when we were three years old and we live with them for the rest of our lives. But we can also remember that teacher, that grandparent, that person who said, “You can do this.” We need to be that for each other. We need to be an encourager.

We need to be teachers, as well. You may be saying, “How can I be a teacher, especially about spiritual things. I don’t know anything.” Well I think, again, that’s where our culture comes in. We tend to have an expert mentality. We need to have a specialist, like the pastor who has fifteen degrees and can tell us the answer to every spiritual problem. I haven’t met one like that yet. Now it’s good to have a trained pastor, Presbyterians believe in that. But often spiritual growth happens better in a small group of other Christians who don’t know a whole lot more than you; and yet, as we begin discussing things and talking about things, it makes us think. It makes us go out and look. It makes us search. Just the other day I was giving a short devotion and someone came up to me and was asking me questions and they were challenging questions, and yet I learned from them, because that person didn’t hear what I was trying to him anyway. But that was o.k. because he made me see it from a different point of view, and I learned. I learn all the time from you and other people. I would say that I know there are circumstances sometimes but if you aren’t part of a small group, you should be in one, at least for a time. Sometimes we can’t. Sometimes we have other things going on, but you need to be part of a small group. It could be a choir; it could be a Sunday school class; it could be a bible study group; but that’s where the magic of growth really happens in your spiritual life.

Along with that we need to be willing to tell the truth to one another. Paul said, “Speak the truth in love,” and we mustn’t forget either one. I found also as a pastor that as Christians we are not very good at truth telling. I’m not saying we are liars. I’m just saying that we are not very good at being direct or forthright with each other. We are so afraid, “Oh, it’s none of my business” or “They’ll get mad at me.” We really are afraid that if we tell somebody something particularly negative, they will say “How dare you say that to me” and “You’re judgmental” and all those things. But I want to say to you that “It’s none of my business” is not a Christian idea, because we are family. That doesn’t mean we should run around gigging people. In fact, if we can’t do it in love, we probably shouldn’t. But we need to be truth tellers. The psychological term for Christians often is that we are passive aggressive. By passive, we know we are not supposed to be angry or upset, so we try to deny that. “Oh I’m not angry.” That’s the passive part and so we just don’t say anything. On the other hand we turn right around and we are going “rraarraarraa” or we are telling our friends about it. It comes from sometimes sincere belief that “I shouldn’t be as angry as I am,” so we are just nice, and I’m not really talking about being Minnesotan; it actually is more Christian. We need to be willing to tell the truth to one another. Sometimes in churches it works a couple of ways. People either leave because they get mad; or they really do go around the barn and tell someone else in the hope they will tell someone else who will finally get to the person, because we are afraid so we don’t tell the truth. We need not only to tell the truth, we need to be willing to warn one another. Let me ask you a question, “Would you want someone to tell you if you were about to step in front of a truck?” Well, of course! “Would you want your doctor to tell you if you had a serious cancer?” You know, I found doctors have trouble with that. I have seen doctors sincerely lie to their patients after they told me that they had something else. I’ve seen it happen, because we are so afraid. In love, with care and discretion, we need to be willing to tell the truth. We need to be able to tell one another when we see one going down the wrong path. I want you to do that with me. If I am making a mistake, I’d much rather have somebody say, “Hey, stop.”

Last but not least, there is a lot more we could say, as a community we need to learn the art of forgiveness. I think forgiveness is one of the hardest things. I’ve been meditating on the Lord’s Prayer, where it says “Forgive each other our debts, as we forgive our debtors” and sometimes we take that as a warning. In other words, if you don’t forgive, God won’t forgive you. I think that warning is valid, but there is a positive way of looking at is as well. In other words, because we are forgiven, God enables us to forgive. Forgiveness is one of the most powerful things we have received from God because we all know that we are guilty. There is an old story about a writer in London many, many years ago, who picked twenty of his friends and wrote a note to them as a joke. The note said, “All is discovered. Flee immediately.” And all twenty left town, because they were guilty of something. We are too, and God forgives us through Jesus Christ. As Paul says, “As God has forgiven you in Christ, forgive others.” Well, how do we do that? Well it’s not denial; it’s not pretending something didn’t happen, but it’s removing personally the desire to get back – the desire to receive retribution – the desire to make someone pay. And, oh, we do make them pay. That’s what forgiveness is; it’s wanting the best for someone even if they don’t want the best for you; it’s wanting the best for them, even if they’ve hurt you. Sometimes it has nothing to do with emotions; it is simply saying, “I’m not going to live this way anymore.” As we live in a community, we find out that people need forgiving. We are not perfect. Sooner or later someone will let you down. Sooner or later everyone will let you down. Part of being in a family is forgiving – not necessarily forgetting, but forgiving.

I’ll close by asking, where are you in the scheme of things? Are you a mall Christian, where you come to church and leave, or are you somewhere in the continuum of joining the community? My hope is that you are in that continuum of joining the community. I’m not pointing fingers at all. I’ll just ask you, where are you? And where would you like to be? Ask God to show you and then help you.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, thank you for making us a part of your family whether or not we want to be. We pray Lord that you would give us a bigger vision of what your family is and our role in it; so we don’t just live our lives for ourselves but we are part of something bigger. Give us the courage and desire to be part of it. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.