Belonging

Sermon preached by Dr. Marcus Hong on August 11, 2024.

Growing up, I often felt that I didn’t belong.

I am the child of immigrants – my mother from the Netherlands, my father from China.

When I was a child, very few people claimed to belong to more than one race.

Until the year 2000, the US Census did not allow people to choose the option of being more than one race.

Even in 2022, less than 1% of the population of the United States identified as being both White and Asian.

This meant that I was different – a fact confirmed every time I had to fill out forms for Standardized Testing.

I would carefully print my name. Fill in my birthdate. Circle “male” for gender. Then, my stomach would drop.

I had to choose either one of the pre-determined racial categories (white, black, asian, etc.) or choose “other.” To me, this always felt like a choice between dividing myself into pieces or admitting I didn’t belong.

I was, always, “other.”

Over time, I’ve learned to be proud of being “other,” even though it isn’t always a comfortable feeling.

I am grateful for the multiple different traditions, cultural expressions, and experiences that I call mine.

Like anyone else, these experiences make me who I am. And I have loved learning about and celebrating all of who I am and crafting an identity that incorporates all of these experiences in unique ways.

Most of us want to belong.

We like to be part of a group.

Knowing which group we belong to can give us people to look up to, examples for how we are supposed to live and act, and cultural rules and celebrations that order our lives and our time.

In today’s scripture passage from Ephesians, Paul invites us to a particular kind of belonging.

This belonging is not based on racial background, gender or sexual identity, country, city, state, region, economic status, or political party.

It’s not even a religious identity, like “Presbyterian,” “Catholic,” or “Christian.”

It is an identity of people who have chosen a particular way of living, based on following a specific person.

When Paul wants to remind the Ephesians of how they should live, he writes: “That is not the way you learned in Christ!”

Paul’s audience was taught not to follow an organized “religion,” so much as a person – Jesus.

He tells them: “put away your former way of life,” and “clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God.”

This language of “clothing yourself with the new self,” is language that, throughout history, has been used when people are baptized, which is a sign of belonging to the family of Jesus.

In fact, centuries ago, when they were baptized, people would actually take off the clothes they were wearing, be dunked into a pool of water, and emerge to be greeted by someone holding a brand new set of clothes!

Their old life was gone. Their new life had begun.

After baptism, they would celebrate Communion for the very first time. It was their first meal as part of a new family – the family of Jesus Christ.

For the last two weeks, pastor Marissa has been talking about that family meal and how it nourishes us and teaches us to live the life of Jesus Christ.

The book of Ephesians ties our life in Christ to Communion’s partner – Baptism.

Baptism puts us into a new relationship – a new family bound not by genetics or economics or nationality or ethnicity, but by a way of life: following Jesus Christ.

The things Paul recommends in today’s passage are not new: Speaking the truth; not letting anger simmer; not stealing; being kind; forgiving. These are not new ideas.

But the reasons for doing these things was new: We do them because we belong to Jesus’ family.

This reminds me of the movie Strange World.

In the movie, a grandfather named Jaeger Clade, is a great explorer. He loves to feel the thrill of conquering new challenges and new places.

Jaeger's son, Searcher, is a farmer. He loves to tame the wilderness to provide energy to build a society. Searcher thinks what his father does is dangerous.

Searcher’s son, Ethan, is different from both his father and his grandfather. Ethan is curious and wants to learn about and befriend new people and new creatures.

In a scene from the movie, Jaeger, Searcher, and Ethan are playing Ethan’s favorite game, “Primal Outpost.”

Jaeger and Searcher had opposite ways of doing things, but their motivations were the same: control.

Agriculture might seem less violent than conquest, but it is just “control” under a different name. Both are rooted in fear and focus on the needs of the person in control.

The motivation matters.

Ethan’s motivation was different: be a friend, be curious. Befriending takes into account the needs of the whole community – in fact, all of creation.

The motivation matters.

The same is true for Ephesians. The motivation for doing the things that Paul recommends matters. And that motivation is building up the community of Jesus.

Let’s go through three recommendations together.

Recommendation 1: “Putting away falsehood, let each of you speak the truth with your neighbor, for we are members of one another.”

Don’t lie. Not new advice. We want to do this.

Speak truth. We want to do this, too, don’t we? But this can be more difficult than not lying.

Speaking truth can mean confronting someone we don’t want to insult – either because we love them, or because they have power over us. The truth can upset those who don’t want to hear it.

Speaking truth can mean learning the truth, and that can mean admitting we were wrong.

Why would we choose to do these difficult things? Not just because it is right, but because, says Paul, “we are members of one another.”

A community cannot hold together if they cannot tell each other the truth. Lies eat away at the bonds that link us. A lack of truth makes those same bonds weak.

If we are part of Jesus’ family, then we are members of each other. Like parts of the human body, our actions affect the rest of the body.

Do not lie. Speak the truth. Because you are members of each other.

Recommendation 2: “Those who steal must give up stealing; rather, let them labor, doing good work with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy.”

The words, “those who steal,” assumes that people who steal are part of the community.

Paul could have said: “Those who steal should be shut out of the community.” Or, “Because they are part of the community they do not have to change.” But he chooses a third way: “They should stop stealing because they belong to the community.” Their belonging shapes why they should change.

He goes farther: “they should share with those in need.”

Not just - “Stop stealing,” and “work to get what you need,” but also “work in order to help others in need.”

In the United States we have a saying: “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” which means “people should work hard to make life better for themselves.”

“Work to help those in need,” means that some people have needs that they cannot handle themselves. They cannot “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” They cannot just “work harder” to make their lives better.

Why do we stop stealing? Because other people need our help and our hard work in order to live.

One last example: “Be angry, but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.”

In this one, the new way comes first – “Be angry.” Then, second, the thing we should let go of – “do not let the sun go down on your anger.”

Be angry. What a recommendation.

Many people think that Christians should never be angry. They think that Christians should always be nice. Many people only see anger as something bad.

Susan Hylen, a New Testament scholar, comments on this passage: “The church has often had difficulty teaching about anger….Too often the message has been that anger should be swallowed or ignored. The irony is that, in trying to act like “good Christians” who do not experience anger, anger that does exist often goes underground where it festers and creates more serious problems. The results can be easy to spot. In many congregations, what began as a small incident sometimes lingers for years because of the anger that exists on either side, anger that is never expressed. The situation applies to individuals within congregations as well as to conflicts between groups. Pastors and other leaders in the church often exacerbate the problem by skirting around the issue in order to avoid conflict themselves. Yet the “peace” that results is not rightly called “peace.””

Another commentator, Brian Peterson, notes: “There are times when not being angry would be sin. There should be anger against all the effects of injustice and oppression, both inside and outside the church. At other times, our anger is simply our last desperate attempt to defend ourselves against the new world that God is calling forth and against God’s servants who are urging us into that new kingdom.”

We should be angry at injustice and oppression.

But sometimes our anger covers up our resistance to going where God wants to lead us.

Other times anger comes from the pain of realizing that we are wrong, but we don’t want to admit it yet.

Being angry with the right motivation means that we have to discern carefully what God wants us to do. We have to look to Jesus Christ to follow in his way.

Later, Paul writes: “Let no evil talk come out of your mouths but only what is good for building up.”

We express our anger not to win an argument or prove we’re right, but because something wrong has happened, and it is tearing down the body of Christ.

We express anger, we speak truth, we work hard (and we rest) — in order to build up a community.

Here in the United States we will soon choose both local and national leaders.

Recently, some political leaders have been claiming that their political party is the way of Christ, or they were chosen by Christ. Politicians have done this across time in order to gain the power that comes with linking themselves to the people of God.

Let me say firmly: “no.”

Republicans are not the same as Christ followers. Democrats are not the same as Christ followers. We must judge each based upon the way of Christ.

The Declaration of Barmen, written by Christians who resisted Hitler in Germany, makes this clear. It is one of the confessions of the Presbyterian Church, and it is based on the way of Jesus Christ.

The writers of the Declaration of Barmen spoke a truth that would get them in trouble with those in power.

They quoted part of Ephesians 4, just a few verses before what we have read today: “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body [is] joined and knit together.”

Speak truth, because we are one body, led by Christ.

Commenting on this, they wrote: “The Christian Church is the congregation of the brethren in which Jesus Christ acts presently as the Lord in Word and Sacrament through the Holy Spirit.”

The terms, “Word and Sacrament,” include reading the Bible – the Word; as well as Baptism and Communion - the Sacraments. These are the basis of our identity.

They continue: “As the Church of pardoned sinners, it has to testify in the midst of a sinful world, with its faith as with its obedience, with its message as with its order, that it is solely [Jesus’] property, and that it lives and wants to live solely from his comfort and from his direction in the expectation of his appearance.”

Our belonging is in Jesus, and we live in the way of Jesus. We may mess up, but when we do rightly, it is because we are following Jesus.

Finally: “We reject the false doctrine, as though the church were permitted to abandon the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to

changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions.”

By “message” they mean, “what we tell others about our way,” and by “order,” they mean “how we live together.” They could not abandon their message or their way of life to follow changing political movements or governments or leaders. They followed Jesus Christ.

The way of Christ acts not only to help each individual, but specifically for others, specifically for those in the most need, for those neglected and abandoned, feared, and hated – the “Demon Spiders,” from Ethan’s game “Primal Outpost,” who we cannot live without, even though they might seem strange.

The way of Christ is a way that gets angry at oppression and injustice, not angry because we just want to be right and are afraid of being wrong.

The way of Christ avoids lying, and seeks the truth, even if speaking truth means admitting we were wrong.

We cannot be human without helping the most vulnerable among us. We cannot be human without each other. We cannot survive without each other.

“Therefore [let us] be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Amen.