A sermon delivered by Patrick H. Wrisley on August 4, 2024

This morning’s scripture lesson comes from Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus. Many presume he wrote it some 35 plus or minus years after Jesus died, most likely from a prison cell in Rome. There are two prominent themes running through the whole letter. First, Christ has reconciled all creation to himself. Second, Christ has reconciled people from all nations into the church and so expects people within the church to be reconciled to one another. Today we pick up in chapter 4 and its first sixteen verses. Listen to the Word of God.

Ephesians 4:1-16

^4.1 I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, ² with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ³ making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. ⁴ There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, ⁵ one Lord, one faith, one baptism, ⁶ one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

⁷ But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. ⁸ Therefore it is said (in Psalm 68.18),

“When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive; he gave gifts to his people.”

⁹(When it says, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? ¹⁰ He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.) ¹¹ The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, ¹² to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, ¹³ until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. ¹⁴ We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. ¹⁵ But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, ¹⁶ from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love^.[1]

Let us start today with a simple, straightforward question: Are you a grown up? A twist on that might be, have you grown up yet? Young people hear their parents tell them, “When you start acting like a grown-up, then you can go and do such-in-such!” Parents attach certain characteristics to what it looks like to act like an adult in the world and we try to teach those to their children.

What are signs you look for in a person that decides their level of maturity? Is it how someone dresses? Is it how they act in various circumstances? Do we measure maturity by age or by how knowledgeable someone is? Then again, maybe we measure someone’s maturity by how well they handle increased responsibility.

The Apostle Paul is writing the church and is imploring them to grow up and act like mature followers of Christ. Apparently, Paul had some rubrics and a set of metrics that measured both a person’s and a church’s maturity, and we will unpack those from our text today. He gives us at least three basic indicators for measuring the maturity of a disciple and as a church. First, a disciple’s life will quietly but consistently show the tone and timbre of Christ’s personality. Second, every follower of Christ is given unique gifts to use for the greater good. Finally, a disciple of Christ is committed to a life-long learning of the faith.

The first metric used to measure a Christ-follower’s maturity is whether their life even reflects the tone and timbre of Jesus’ personality. In other words, can people even tell whether we are a disciple of Christ’s or not? Now, looks can be deceiving and what we see going on on the outside may not always show what is going on on the inside. We have all met those Christians who say and who act all pious and such like carry a Bible everywhere, go to church, and bring a casserole to the pot-luck picnic; the problem is, but these same people will also gossip about folks, put people down behind their backs and withhold the love of Jesus if they disagree with you. When I say our life needs to look like a disciple’s life, I mean our life consistently reflects internalized core virtues and values which emulate Jesus’ personality from our inside out.

Paul says for us to lead a life worthy of our calling, literally our vocation, as a disciple of Jesus, then our life will bloom with the buds of virtues and values that smell like Christ. He says our lives will be steeped in humility and gentleness. Our lives will show patience and longsuffering. A disciple’s life reflects its ability to put up with and have a good relationship with others in the Christian community. Another way to say that is a mature disciple will patiently get along with others for the help of the greater good of the church. Humility, gentleness, patience, and putting up with those you disagree with are virtues and values developed over time and practice but there is intentionality in their development. It’s only when these virtues and values show the tone and timbre of Jesus’ life that all the pieces fall in perfect alignment and the grandeur of the One Spirit, the One Lord, the One God, and Father of us all is displayed. People will look at you and see the face of Jesus.

The second indicator of a mature Christian is seen in their use of the unique gift the Spirit has endowed each of us. The list of gifts in our lesson today is not meant to be an exhaustive list because Paul is echoing other verses from Romans and Corinthians that also have lists of spiritual gifts. As a result of Christ’s death and resurrection, each Christian is particularly gifted to foster an environment where the ministry of Christ is practiced in Christian community. Why? It is so the collective Christian community, that is the Church, can learn to take vibrant ministry out into the world.

The Church is where we learn and practice the art of being an apostle, a prophet, an evangelist, a pastor, and a teacher. The Church is the place where we practice using our gifts of giving liberally, the context we learn to be hospitable to strangers, and the living room we can safely stretch our faith. The Church is to be the safe environment to explore our gifts and graces so that we can fully use them in the larger community. The Church should be teeming with people who are eager jump in and use their gifts. The Church should be the place disciples come together to work on and through tough issues and show the world how to lovingly agree to disagree and carry forth together with the mutual ministry God has called us into. And let us be brutally honest here: If we in the church can’t get along and practice our faith together, we can’t expect people in the world to do it. The Church is bar setter for the culture and larger world.

So, Christian maturity is measured by the show of basic virtues and values that show Jesus’ personality. Maturity is measured by how well we are using our spiritual gifts both individually and corporately. The third measure of Christian maturity is a disciple’s commitment to life-long learning about God and their faith. Paul is imploring us to grow maturely in our knowledge of the faith so we will not be blown about in the wind by the many spiritual, cultural, or political snake oil salesmen out there in the world today.

 Beloved, how are you growing in your knowledge of the faith? Are you?

Think with me a moment. Think about a person’s emotional development. As a person grows older and at various phases of her life, her personality changes, the way she processes information changes, and the way she relates and communicates with others changes as well. In a person’s psycho-social development, isn’t it obvious when an adult behaves like an adolescent? If a person is not growing in their psycho-social development, we get worried and call-in specialists and counselors to help them get unstuck. Well, did you know growth in our spiritual maturity is the same? It’s no different. One’s spiritual maturity and knowledge is supposed to grow and develop, too!

 Unfortunately, over the 35 years of ordained ministry, I have seen too many Christian adults act like they are stuck in spiritual adolescence. Their faith is still stuck with what they remember from children’s Sunday school and youth group but now their lives are besieged by mature adult problems in a very swirly world. They have matured intellectually, physically, emotionally, professionally, and socially but spiritually they stay stuck in the past and have not grown in their maturity of the faith. The existential adult whirlwinds of crisis, of health, of politics, of climate change, and environmental sustainability can’t be solved nor addressed with a teenaged-depth faith. American Christians need to grow up.

Jewish New Testament scholar, Amy-Jill Levine, in her book, The Misunderstood Jew, The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus, notes the overall culture of religious ignorance in our country. She poignantly writes, “Christians from Tanzania to Tennessee gain their dominant impressions of Jews and Judaism by combining selective readings from the church’s Scriptures with Fiddler on the Roof, current Israeli policies, and an occasional episode of South Park.”^[2]

Friends, the reality is the Devil knew his scriptures. The Pharisees and Sadducees knew their Torah and the Law inside and out; that was not the problem. Jesus reminded them, he reminds us, it is how we apply what we know in the Bible with others that measures whether we are both a God-honoring disciple and church or not. Jesus is not so concerned how well you and I can quote scripture as he is if we can apply the ethical, moral, and theological teachings in our everyday life. But yet, we must be well enough acquainted with the scriptures to even learn what the ethical, moral, and theological teachings are that we are to to follow.

Beloved, what virtues and values does your life show?

What spiritual gift or gifts are you graced with and are you using them?

Is your faith maturing ethically, biblically, theologically, and missionally or are you riding the coattails of what you learned years ago as a child? Join me on reflecting upon these things this week. In the Name of the One who is, who was, and who is yet to come. Amen. Let us pray…

© August 4, 2024 by Patrick H. Wrisley. Sermon manuscripts are available for the edification of members and friends of First Presbyterian Church of Glens Falls, 8 West Notre Dame Street, Glens Falls, NY 12801and may not be altered, re-purposed, published, or preached without permission. All rights reserved.

^[1] New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

^[2] Amy-Jill Levine, The Misunderstood Jew. The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (New York: Harper-Collins Publishers, 2007), 11.