Scripture Passage
Ephesians 4:1-16
Worship Video
Worship Audio
Sermon Script
Unity and Hostility
Paul begins the passage with an earnest plea to the Ephesians:
“I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” (Ephesians 4:1) We have learned over the past two weeks that this calling is the calling to strive for unity. This calling is so important to Paul that he is begging them to do so.
Unity is the most beautiful thing in the world. Through the pandemic, we’ve missed out on the beauty of weddings. There is nothing like witnessing a couple truly in love, as they make vows of unity. Such moments of unity and love evoke emotions in those who are there to witness and support this couple. Nothing inspires us more than pure unity in love.
Unity is the most beautiful thing in the world, and it is the greatest gift that God has given us so that we can enjoy this life we have.
But the lives we live, and the world we live in, are marked by great disunity. In our relationships with family and friends, at our workplaces, among groups and nations in this world, we often see fractures in unity. The United Nations is united in name only. Instead of unity, relationships are clouded and darkened by hostility. And that hostility creates dividing walls.
As Rev. Kim reflected two weeks ago, hostility is a poison in our souls. It is like a stain we cannot remove from our hearts. No matter how much we want it to go away, it clings on stubbornly and it drives our behaviour.
We need an antidote for hostility. Something to melt away the hostility and lead to unity.
St. Paul describes the antidote to this hostility: “…with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love…” (Ephesians 4:2)
Humility. Gentleness. Patience. Bearing with one another in love. These attributes are the antidote to hostility that brings about unity.
But in our everyday lives, we often see the very opposite: We compete to lift ourselves over others. Our words are harsh, judgmental and cold. We are impatient. Bearing with one another is to put up with the flaws of one another, in love. We do not put up with the faults of others. At best, we quietly tolerate it. At worst, we judge, call out and ostracize the other. All of these things further fuel hostility.
Our relationships are supposed to give us the joy of unity, and God created this world for us to experience the joy of oneness in it. But these relationships and our experiences in the world often leave us hurt and disappointed. And that hurt and disappointment breed hostility.
When hostility resides in our hearts, life becomes darker, and we feel separated and alienated from everything and everyone.
The Journey of Removing Hostility
Jesus came to restore unity and wholeness in our relationship with God and with others. He came to free us from the hostility in our hearts. In his ministry, Jesus would say “let those with eyes to see, see” There is a theme of being blind but having your eyes opened.
The first step in the journey of disunity to unity is to see how your relationships and environments have been shaping you. Are they helping you become more gentle? Humble? Patient? Able to bear another’s faults with love and grace? Or do they leave hostility in your heart? We need to step back and critically examine the effects that our relationships and environments have had on us.
The solution is not necessarily to cut off these relationships and environments. Sometimes, you need to let go of a relationship that is abusive or causing harm. But more often, we will see that we are just as much a part of the problem as those around us are. The starting point is to recognize that I need to change for there to be greater unity.
I need to go through the journey of removing hostility from my heart.
I believe this is something that only God can do with God’s power. We cannot remove hostility with our willpower. It is too strong. On our own, we are too inconsistent. When things are good or we feel good, we may be gentle, but when things are not good, we react with hostility. No matter how much we want to have the attributes that bring about unity, the hostility in us often overpowers our thoughts and actions.
What we need is a commitment to allowing God to change us. Gentleness and patience are habits of character that God cultivates in us over time. Our commitment is giving God the room in our hearts to change us.
I realized this: our transformation does not take place by being obsessed with being gentle, humble, patient and forebearing. Being fixated on these things just highlights how much we fall short. It sets us up for disappointment, failure and despair. Our transformation happens as we fix our eyes firmly on the God who transforms us.
When we fix our eyes on God, we will see our sin, but we will also see God’s great mercy. When we fix our eyes on God, we see the grace of God that overflows. That grace transforms us. It melts away hostility. When we experience grace after grace, we are slowly transformed by God into the image of God.
Unity in Our Worship
For St. Paul, real transformation into unity comes as we fix our eyes on God together as one body. “We must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.” (Ephesians 4:15)
This is the secret to transformation: It happens in our individual hearts, but it comes about through our collective spiritual practice. The change happens within us, but it comes through our experience as a community. This was St. Paul’s amazing insight. This is why he goes from talking about unity to the body of Christ.
The body of Christ is built on one foundation: worship and loyalty to God.
To strive for unity, we must strive for unity in our worship of God. This is at the core of what the church is and what the church does. We fix our eyes on God through worship, and we make space for God to dwell and reign in our lives.
Commitment to worship as a church is our spiritual discipline. We think of spiritual discipline as our private, personal disciplines we practice on our own. Those are great. But worship with the body of Christ is the collective spiritual discipline we have been called to do. When we are unified in worship, we become unified in our hearts. So your coming to worship is not just about you – it’s about the body of Christ. Your worshipping presence is what builds up the worshipping body.
We need to think of worship as a different quality of time. It is not just another chronological hour of the week. It is not just another thing we do for an hour before going on our way. Worship is a moment in time where everything else in life recedes to the background. It is a moment where collectively, we step back and open ourselves to experience an encounter with the reality of our lives and of God. We begin to see our lives as it is. We see our sin. We experience grace and mercy. And we experience the empowerment that comes from the assurance of God’s presence with us. In worship, hostility loses its hold and power over us. There is a mystery and power in this holy time together. Our individual transformation takes place through our collective encounter with God. This is a great mystery and beauty of our human existence.
Cultivating a Community
For St. Paul, the commitment to making room for God meant committing to the body of Christ that was given for those touched by God’s grace. We are not independent as human beings. We like to think we are, but we are so deeply shaped by the communities we are a part of. The question is: what community will you be shaped by?
For St. Paul, the body of Christ was fundamental to living out God’s calling to bring unity into this world. Unity in the church is the antidote to disunity in the world. There is no other agenda in the church: We are not out to win a sports match. We are not hired to achieve business goals. We are simply a community of human beings who have experienced the grace of God and are called by God to learn how to live together as human beings.
My main goal in youth ministry was to cultivate a community that is unified in love. To me, there is no goal in youth ministry that is more important. For them to experience true unity in love is to experience what it is to be a complete human being. Their experience of unity is the antidote to the disunity and alienation they feel as they begin to navigate their independent identity in this world. In experiencing this unity, they get a concrete, real sense of what God’s love and grace is about. There is no experience more powerful than experiencing unity in love.
The church is God’s amazing gift for us to live out God’s beautiful vision of unity for this world. It is not perfect by any means, because we are human. Because we are human, we get hurt and get into conflicts. But it is where we learn to work through our conflicts and differences. Through worship together, we are transformed to learn humility, gentleness, patience, and bearing with one another.
The church is a gift worth loving and cultivating. This is why we have been relentlessly going all out to get you all to church.
As we slowly emerge from this pandemic, let us lead lives worthy of the calling to which we are called. Strive for unity wherever we are. Commit to worshipping God with this beautiful community that is called the church. Make room for God in your heart so that God may heal you, transform you and make you an agent of unity in this world.
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