2009 July | The Shepherd's Voice

Archive for July, 2009

A Dwelling Place for God

Jul 19th, 2009

Readings for Sunday, July 19^th
Jer 23:1-6
Ps 23
Eph 2:11-22
Mk 6:30-34, 53-56

For most of us our home is our castle. It’s the place we likely spend most of our time. Whether we own it, have a mortgage on it, live in a condo, an apartment our homes are important places.

A few months ago Sharon and I were noticing some mildew and staining on the molding in our downstairs bathroom. I didn’t think too much about it until it started to look pretty gross and of course began to smell. Well about two weeks ago I ripped off the molding only to find mold behind it. The drywall was starting to look pretty bad so I decided to open the wall by smashing the drywall, the most fun part of any investigation such as this.

Well, the area inside the wall was moist, damp. A few days ago I noticed some dripping inside the wall. Not a good sign. I’m wondering now how well was this house built. Did the contractor take some shortcuts or is this normal to have walls leaking.

This reminded me of something we talked about in an earlier class, which was called A Journey of Faith. One Sunday we looked Psalm 127:1 which states “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it (labor) labor in vain.”

Paul in his letter to the Ephesians (Ephesians 2:11–22), our second reading this morning, talks about a holy temple, a dwelling place for God. Paul is talking about God’s kingdom here on earth. He, Paul says “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.”

Here is how it reads in the Message, “That’s plain enough, isn’t it? You’re no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He’s using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building.” Unless God builds this house it’s useless, the house will not last.

This morning I want us to look at this text in Ephesians as if Paul wrote it for us, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, because he did. So this is Paul’s letter to the church in Buena Park. We need to understand that God is still building this church, this community of faith. I think we have been around for 55 years, but in the grand scheme of things, God’s time, we have been around but a moment. Yes, we have history, but unless the Lord builds this house, we labor in vain.

So from the 2^nd page of Paul’s letter to the church in Buena Park we need to look at it and ask ourselves what are the take-aways? What are the nuggets of truth that God wants us to understand? What is edifying, what will build us up as a community of faith?

First let me say that Paul wants us to understand that we are all aliens here. That is to say, “you were at that (one) time without Christ.” Perhaps some of us feel that we’ve always been a Christian or a Lutheran or we’ve always considered ourselves saved.
Paul says, so what, he begs to disagree with you. What happened in the past in your faith is history, what is happening right now is what’s important. I’m sure Paul had many opportunities to talk with many of the people to whom he wrote this letter. He likely found out that each of them/us has/have a story.

Each of us has rejected God in some way in the past. Paul uses the term uncircumcised indicating a foreigner in terms of Jewish tradition. Paul says you were “strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and (you were) without God in the world.”

There are days in my own walk of faith when I feel like God is distant, like I’m a foreigner in the land. I’m afraid if God would opened up a wall in my heart there He would find leakage, subterfuge, sin, and deception. God has given me this awesome responsibility to lead this congregation and I, perhaps like Paul would have to say when he wrote his first letter to Timothy, he said I’m glad God has called me, but I can do this only because of God’s mercy.

Then he tells Timothy something that is a bit haunting. He says (1 Tim 1:15-16), “I am the worst of sinners.” When I first noticed that I was stunned. He didn’t say I was, past tense, he says I am present tense the worst of sinners. So let’s not get too haughty because we may have been a member in God’s church since birth, or we’ve been a member at Good Shepherd 30 or 40 years because Paul, the pillar of faith, the one who wrote much of the New Testament, said “I am the worst of sinners.” Even after conversion he considered himself the worst of sinners.

Of course this is a very Lutheran concept or I should say this concept is one that Lutheran theology strongly embraces. It of course is a dichotomy – how can we be both saint and sinner. We are! Even after Martin Luther had a significant transformational experience where he realized it was all about God and not about him, about God being righteous, not him, he like Paul, thought of himself as a terrible sinner, yet one sanctified by the blood of Christ.

Isn’t that the joy of knowing God, knowing even though we sin can still have a relationship with the Lord of life? If you don’t have that close personal relationship with God, we need to talk.

Our first benchmark then or our first take-away in understanding Paul’s letter to the church in Buena Park is that we must realize in building the dwelling place of God, God’s kingdom here on earth has been built with sinners. Shriek! We are all sinners, all aliens, all struggling together to understand our faith or even God’s faith, God’s ability to forgive us.

God on the other hand (way ahead of us) realized that in order to build a dwelling place for God He needed something to anchor the building. As a mechanical engineer we take numerous classes in statics and dynamics. Often we have to take what are called lab classes so we can not only understand the formulas, but we can see visually how materials stand up under load. When we design structures or build planes or machines we must explore what’s needed to balance out the structural forces that will impact what we are developing. Generally, we need to build structures or models and put strain gauges on them to see how they might hold up under stress.

I don’t think Paul ever went to engineering school but he uses some terms, like foundation and cornerstone so he must have known something about buildings and structures. Paul says, people of Buena Park you were once malcontents, aliens, people who were at odds with one another, people who had hostility toward one another, (v19-20) but “God has made you citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.”

That’s really good news for this engineer.

God didn’t do this by solely building upon the sinners, although we are all part of the kingdom of God, he did it by finding something much stronger, better, He found a cornerstone, an anchor something that could withstand the stress of the world and not be bent or be bowed out of shape or destroyed under the load.

Scripture is like a blueprint, like very detailed drawings or plans that we can be used to see how this dwelling place for God is to be built. Here are the blueprints for this very church building.

People of the church at Buena Park the blueprint calls for “one new humanity.” The plans call for “death to hostility” and for us to become “one body through the cross.” These are Paul’s words.

The first take-away was we are all sinners and saints living together in community.
The second take-away is that we have a plan, a blueprint for building a dwelling place for God and that is not these blueprints, but the gospel, the Bible, God’s Word to us.

It’s not the blind leading the blind, God has shown us the way. Paul says, “In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord.”

Our mission and vision embody this idea. Our tag line is God’s grace, Christ’s love, our hands. Say it with me…….… Before God called us out of darkness, we were aliens, sinners without hope because we had no chance of fulfilling the law on our own.

We see this story unfold all through scripture. I continually see it unfold in people’s lives. I have a friend who was married five times because he couldn’t ever seem to get it right. Maybe he was just unlucky you say. No, he was just stupid, he says. When he last married about 13-14 years ago he thought in the early stages this one would go down in flames as well, but it didn’t.

What was the difference this time around? A few years into this marriage he and his wife agreed, very reluctantly to go on what is called Walk to Emmaus. It’s a weekend where people are challenged about their faith, their priorities, about how they live out their faith and something miraculous happened. God met him there. God’s grace was poured out in such abundance that he couldn’t resist falling in love all over again, not only with his wife, but with God. Since that time he has been involved in BSF, Bible Study Fellowship, his marriage has blossomed, he was able to see Christ’s love come alive. Now he has become God’s hands in this world. Very active in his church, very loving, would give you the shirt off his back, if necessary.

Paul tells us in his letter to the church at Buena Park that we are all sinners, but through God’s plan of grace and Christ’s love, Jesus being willing to die for each of us, we are all “built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.” Friends this is no small thing.

We are all broken against the law. We are unable to keep all the law, but God in his infinite mercy has built a dwelling place for God in our hearts. Revel in it. Experience it!

I’m not a particularly good cook, but Richard Lutz is quite good. He made a salmon dish for Sharon and I one time that I thought was incredible. The flavor, the moistness, the aroma, eating it was a heavenly experience. This morning taste and see for the Lord is good, his flavor, the aroma, his Spirit endures forever.