A Pneumatic People

Ephesians 4:1-16

A Pneumatic People

We’ve been on a long journey through God’s grace. Prevenient grace is calling us in, calling us back from the outside to bring us into the community of Christ. Justifying grace repairs our relationship with God and one another when our sin is pardoned and so we may participate in the community by the power of the cross of Christ. Sanctifying grace transforms our lives together to heal us from the effects of sin and enable us to be witnesses to the love and peace of Christ. We do not earn God’s grace by our good deeds, and it is given to us freely by the Holy Spirit because of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Like Paul wrote, we are given grace according to Christ’s gift, not our own.

That’s the first 3 chapters of Ephesians. Paul explains what God has done in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit to transform our lives with grace. Chapter 4 is the introduction for the final three chapters, which explains how we get to participate in God’s grace-filled plan for the whole world. Grace is given freely, but God does not force anyone to respond and receive grace. Instead, we, empowered by the Holy Spirit, can live worthily into the calling to which we have been called. God has called us to live in such a way that accepts God’s grace in our lives and allows God to send grace to others through us. Paul summarizes here what the rest of the book lays out in detail, how we live into our calling. If you read the rest of the book, and I hope you do, you will see that our calling affects every aspect of our lives, how we treat others, our marriages, our family life, what we eat and drink, what we say, everything. We are called to live in the way that Jesus is teaching us, so that God’s grace flows into and through us more and more, building us together in unity, love, and peace.

We’ve been using metaphors of stones and water. We are like stones in a stream of grace; it is all around us, shaping us and making us whether or not we know it. We like stones being built together into the temple. Now I’m using a slightly different metaphor that I’m borrowing from the Anderson district and Rev. Susan Leonard-Ray of sailing on top of the water. You may not know this, but I used to be a sailing instructor. Now before you start signing of for lessons, you should know that in the Navy, jobs must be filled by whoever shows up to fill them. So when the CO asked, “do you know anything about sailing?” and I said, “Yes, I sailed a couple times in high school and college;” bam, sailing instructor.  So I took a little class with US Sailing and learned a few drills and next thing you know I’m out on the lake puttering around in a john boat telling students how to tack and jibe. On occasion, though I got to take a boat out with the more experienced students, and we would go tearing out across Lake Ponchetrain, crashing over waves and racing through the wind.  So here’s where the life God calls us to and sailing come together. Life isn’t like sailing an 80 ft. yacht, life is like sailing an 8 ft. boat that holds you about 8 inches out of the water. Sailing that kind of a boat can be peaceful at times, it can be easy at times, but it always takes work. (get down on the floor) You sit on the gunnel, the edge of the boat, with the tiller that steers the boat in one hand and the main sheet that controls the sails in the other. You are constantly working to maintain your course, keeping an eye on the sail, the heading, the waves, other boats. And if you really get moving up into the wind, you are hiking out like this, and the boat is ripping across the water and waves are hitting you, can’t always control your course and heading, but you know your destination, and you realize you need to change course and you call “Hard-alee!” and you flip the boat around…Doing that takes practice, it takes courage, it takes experience, it takes faith, and above all it takes wind.

Did you know that the Hebrew word translated as Spirit, or God’s Spirit is “ruach,” which also means wind or breath? Its New Testament Greek counterpart is “pneuma,” from which we get words like pneumatic, which also means air, or wind. In a very real sense, the ancients understood that the Holy Spirit, which as I mentioned last week we do not need to strongly distinguish from God’s grace, is like the wind. Sailing requires wind. No matter how much practice, courage, experience, faith, etc you have, you cannot sail without the wind. Conversely, if you do nothing to harness the wind in your sail boat, you are simply drifting. The boat is at the mercy of the waves, making no headway, maybe even being pushed in the wrong direction by the current or tide, but completely subject to outside forces.

We are pneumatic people. God’s wind, God’s Spirit empowers our lives with God’s grace. There is nothing we can do without the power of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. As Wesley says, “There is no power to save but in the Spirit of God, no merit but in the blood of Christ.” (Outler, Sermons, “The Means of Grace,” V.4.) Yet, if we want to ride the wind of God’s Spirit, we must also work in the ways God’s word instructs us. These are the means of grace. Quoting Wesley again, these are “outward signs, words, or actions ordained of God to be the ordinary channels whereby God might convey to men preventing, justifying, or sanctifying grace” (ibid. II.1.) Ordinary channels simply means that God can give grace anyway God chooses, but these are the ways God has told us grace will come. As I’ve talked in previous weeks, these are ways that Christ comes to be with us. Prayer, searching the scriptures, the sacraments, communion and baptism, worship and other works of piety are things we do, but the power and grace is from God. When we tend to these things, we keep our sails adjusted to be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. Serving our neighbors with humility, gentleness, and patience, these are ways God’s grace works in us for peace and unity. Today we have the chance to unite with those with special needs, brothers and sisters, beloved children of God who need our support to grow in grace and become more fully the people God is calling them to be. Aldersgate Special Needs ministry is one of many ways that our connection provides us unity with members of the body whom we may not contact otherwise and thus be filled with God’s grace. When we tend these things, we keep our tiller steady, pointing our boat in the direction of God’s calling for us.

Thank God we are not in this alone. Our call is to community, and God gives gifts to the community to increase and strengthen our unity. The apostolic faith is preserved in worship and sacrament; evangelists tell good news; prophets call us to faithfulness, away from ways of world; pastors love and care for us; teachers teach in Bible Study, Sunday school, youth gatherings. These are the ways God sends grace to equip us all for ministry, the building up of the body of Christ. Together we keep each other on course, traveling together to the destination we have been called, Christ Jesus himself.

If we are not tending these things, we are drifting. The Spirit is still there, but we are not riding the wind, harnessing the Spirit’s power. Instead, as verse 14 states, and I’m going to read the NIV because it is closer to the Greek, we are “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 of pursuing God’s mission and purpose, our calling, we spend our time drifting, fighting over doctrines and teachings, arguing about people, falling prey to people’s schemes for us.” Sound familiar? Look on any United Methodist news site or blog or twitter feed, and all you will hear about is schism, division, fighting. Recently, 80 United Methodist pastors and theologians said that we need to figure out how to divide from one another.

But pay close attention to Paul’s words. Our calling is not to living independent moral lives, it’s about living together in love. Our goal, the end, in Greek the telos, God’s call, is maintaining the unity of the Spirit, growing together into a mature body of Christ. Paul doesn’t mention going to heaven as our goal because resurrection and unity with God is the final consummation of our present goal. And to this end, we must make every effort, every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace by bearing with one another in love. Bearing with can also mean endure, tolerate, or put up with. As Wesley says, “Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt, we may.” (Ibid., “Catholic Spirit,” 3.) Our call is to unity! Yes, we must speak the truth, but we must speak it in love! Whatever side of the debate on homosexuality you come down on, we must make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Our growth in knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the full stature of Christ does not preclude us having different opinions, but it does not include division. Our growth is towards unity, towards building the body together in love. Unity is not uniformity. If we are all the same, what witness is that to the world? Thieves have guilds, criminals have gangs. We are not called to be the same, and have the same opinions, we are called to unity!

Here’s the deal. Riding the wind is hard work. If you are doing it right, you are getting wet, you are working hard, and sometimes the boat flips over. Never forget that we follow a crucified savior. Jesus tells his disciples that the servants are not greater than the master, and if they crucify me, what do you think will happen to you? And we don’t always know where we are going. John 3:8 “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” We are in rough waters, and I do not know what direction we are going in. But when we making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit, riding the wind can be the most fun you ever have. The work becomes easy, the burden becomes light. The waves and the flips are exhilarating. Only God’s grace by the power of the Holy Spirit can maintain our unity. And we make every effort to receive that grace by the means of grace; prayer, study of scripture, our worship, and our life together of service and love. And though we may be tacking, changing directions, the destination is clear and we will climb up to those lofty heights, by and by.

Some crazy people have decided to join our body. They want to be knit together with us. Well, my wife and daughter don’t have a lot of choice, but the others do. But the Spirit has called them here, and they want to sail with us, sharing our lives together in love, patience, humility, forgiveness. So you will make promises to them and they will make promises to you; promises which sound ridiculous and hollow to the world and absolutely cannot be fulfilled unless we are a pneumatic people. The promises we make are promises of unity. Our unity is pneumatic, the Holy Spirit filling our sails as we actively pray for each other, visit each other when we are sick, bring each other meals when we need help, and speak the words of life, the trials of life are blowing us around, and the waves are tossing us, we speak the good news of Jesus Christ, the hope of the Gospel, and offering each other the truth with love of an ear to listen, a shoulder to cry on, an arm to hug. May it be so for you and for me in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.