What is Our Pre-Season Ranking?

Our lesson comes this morning from the fourth chapter of the book of Ephesians. The first 16 verses of that chapter. Paul writes,

I therefore the prisoner in the Lord beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you’ve been called. With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in all. But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it is said, when he ascended on high, he made captivity itself a captive. He gave gifts to his people. When it says he ascended. What does it mean that he but that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all heavens, so that he might fill all things. The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery and their craftiness and deceitful scheming, but speaking the truth and love. We must grow up in every way, and to him who is the head into Christ, from whom the whole body joined in it together by every ligament with which it is equipped. As each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth and the building of building itself up in love.

Friends, this is the Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Dora the dog was found with her three other siblings on a highway outside of Martin, Louisiana. Dora weighed 1 pound when we found her, and she and her siblings went to the vet, and the vet kind of pushed Dora, put Dora aside and said, I don’t think this dog’s going to make it. We can try a bunch of stuff, but she’s just not very strong. That was in 2002, and Dora grew up to be a full blooded mutt rat terrier. We went from Labrador retrievers to a rat terrier mutt. Now, a lab will greet you warmly. They will tell you where the valuables are hidden. They will take you to the valuables. They will make sure you get them. They will help you carry them to the car. A rat terrier does not want you coming into her house. Every contractor, every vendor. Everybody was terrified of Dora. She wasn’t this big, but she could do some yapping. I love Dora. She was such a cool dog. She had a scar that was a Nike swoosh on her back hind quarter. I mean, how many preachers can get a dog with the Nike swoosh? She had one. She was cool. Dora hated football. And I know Dora hated football because every time a football game would come on, Dora would start whining and moaning and growling and she would get behind sofas. She would get behind other pieces of furniture where the television was on, and she would make all these horrible, painful noises until the football game was over. What in the world? Dora. So every fall it was the same thing. Dora making noises and Dora whining and Dora upset. And what’s wrong with Dora? So we started experimenting with this dog who became a long term part of our lives, and we discovered that Dora really only hated college football when a pro game was on. Dora was fine. She was laying right there in the middle of the floor. She would occasionally look up at the TV. She wouldn’t growl, bark, whine or make any noises. Dora hated college football. A specific kind of college football. Dora did not whine when the game was on ABC or ESPN. Dora only whined when the game was on CBS. Dora hated Gary Danielson, absolutely hated him. And the way I know that is because we went through all these iterations of trying to figure out what was upsetting. Dora and I would be watching CBS because a team called Alabama was playing, and I would mute the television, and Dora was fine. Turn it back on to hear Gary Daniel’s voice, and she would go crazy again.

Dora, she had taste. She wouldn’t have to worry about it now because, alas, the SEC has moved. They’ve moved to ABC. The SEC no longer has to deal with Gary Danielson. Thank you, Lord, for that. And in case you’re counting, Louisiana Tech is less than 30 days from starting. LSU is less than 30 days from starting. And Phil said, I had to say the Ohio State University is less than 30 days from starting. And least you think I have forgotten. The University of Alabama is less than 30 days from starting, and the whole Southeastern Conference is rejoicing because Nick Saban is out on the lake in his pontoon boat and not on the sidelines. I love football. I cannot wait for football. Do not have anything happen to you on a Saturday. I will be watching football. It starts with College GameDay and I’ll watch it all the way through to the Big Ten. Is it the Big Ten now? It’s not the Pac or whatever. They’re kaput. I’ve lived through the dark time. No football. I’m ready. And I was thinking about that as I was reading the fourth chapter of Ephesians. And I was wondering, like I always do, what would happen? I think so many thoughts I shouldn’t think. On Monday morning we review worship services. We just do kind of an autopsy of worship and Sunday, and I wonder what would happen if a college football coach stood up and reviewed our worship services. Can you imagine where we got off to? A fine start until the choir went off on their own and they sang off key or or the preacher just blew it. You know, we we had this opportunity to win and the preacher couldn’t bring it home. I’ve wondered. So I got to reading this and I thought, you know what Paul’s describing in the fourth chapter of Ephesians? A football team. Want me to prove it?

With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing one another in love, making every effort to maintain what? The unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. There’s one body, one spirit, and you’re called to one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all. He is describing a theme. He is saying that our unity, our unity comes from Christ and is in Christ. We don’t have to force unity. We don’t have to demand unanimity. Our unity comes as we have faith in Jesus Christ, as we follow Jesus Christ, as we live out the process of following Jesus Christ, we are one. Sounds like a football team, doesn’t it? And you hear coaches talk about and we bonded. And during the fall practice we came together and we became one unit. We became a team. We became brothers who had each other’s back. We watched out. We persevered. We bought in, we became one. And then Paul said that even though they’re one, guess what? They’re playmakers. Have you heard that phrase from all these people that do the commentary on college football? We’ve got to get our playmakers involved. We got to get our skilled positions involved in. Those are usually wide receivers, fast running backs, big armed quarterback, defensive edge rushers. These people that make plays that their name will start being mentioned as a Heisman Trophy candidate. These are the people that make the plays that make the game exciting, that help our team win. And Paul says, but each one of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift and the gifts he gave. Paul’s going to list the playmakers in the church, the gifts he gave with it. Some were apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers. Different gifts, different callings. They do different things. They are trained in different ways so the team can win. And then he says, we do all that to equip the Saints. We’ve got these playmakers. We’re all unified. So the Saints Can win.

That word equip is an interesting Greek word. It appears one other time in the New Testament and it’s not translated equip. It has another translation. Here it is. It’s in the fourth chapter, Matthew’s Gospel. Has he went from there? He saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee mending the nets. There’s the Greek word mending. It’s translated mending there. It’s translated equipping here. And I want to tell you that I want to translate it correctly some translating it correctly as. Perfecting the saints. You knew I was going to come up with a Wesleyan term. Perfecting. Are you going on to perfection? So the gifts he gave are that some would be apostles, prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers to perfect the saints to perfection and being perfected is part of a process. It’s we’re moving on. It means we are not there. We have not arrived. We are growing in grace. We are letting God’s Holy Spirit sanctify us. Perfection means that people are different places along the spectrum of being perfected. Some of you are way out there and some of us are way back here. But God’s Spirit is working in us so that we might be perfected. Richard Foster, who’s sort of the guru on Christian formation, says, most people think to grow like Jesus and to be like Jesus, they’ve got to try hard rather than training hard. Foster said it’s the exact opposite. You need to train hard to be a Jesus follower. Let’s say it this way you’re out of shape, you’re overweight, you’re asthmatic, and you decide you’re going to run a marathon.

How do you do it? You go, well, you go buy a brand new pair of Nike’s. You walk outside and you try very hard to run 26.2 miles. Is that going to work? Of course not. You know what’s going to happen. You’re going to make it a few miles, and then you’re going to collapse on the side of the road with leaking lung fluid, and somebody is going to scoop you up and take you to the emergency room, because you are not the kind of person for whom it is possible to run 26.2 miles. It’s not impossible to run a marathon, but it is for you. Now, as you are. So how do you do it? Simple. You train. You lace up your. You lace up your Chuck Taylors. You walk outside and you run a mile every day for a week. Minus the Sabbath. The following week you run two miles. The next week, three. And if you’ve ever run a marathon, you basically know that each week you train, you add one more mile to your long run. Three miles becomes five miles, becomes ten miles becomes 20 miles. And what happens over a long period of time? Through training, you change. You become the kind of person who can do the hard thing, who can run 26.2 miles. And it’s hard and it’ll always be hard, but it’s no longer impossible because now it’s within your capacity. Living a Christian life is about training. It’s not about trying.

And that’s what this program called sip, snack and Serve is about. It’s about training you. For what did Paul say? We are going to perfect the saints. What for? The work of ministry. Now, wait a minute. Ain’t that why y’all are paying me for the work of ministry? No. You perfecting the saints? You what for? The work of ministry. So? So on the 18th, we’re going to have opportunities for you to join Sunday school classes. If you’ve never been a part of one, find a small group. If you don’t have one to sign up to, to serve in our special needs ministry. To sign up and serve in youth ministry and children’s ministry, to do part of the care teams to to do some of the things that happened in the church that, you know, a lot of people never see and don’t know it’s going on. We have 33 single, single spaced pages of ministries here at Trinity. Did you know that? 33 pages of the work of Ministry. But Paul didn’t stop there. He says, why do you do the work of ministry? It’s for what? For building up the body of Christ. And how do we build up the body of Christ? Well, he finishes that off in the last verse. Promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love. You want to be more loving. You gotta train for it. You want your church to be more loving. You’ve got to train for it. You gotta work for it. Look, folks, we overcame Covid. There are more Methodists coming to Trinity now than were coming prior to Covid. We’ve gotten over the attendance headache, but we haven’t come through. Is the service to other headache?

How do we get you training? We’re going to introduce you to a lot of things that you don’t know about your church that are life changing. Because what are we trying to do? Build up the body of Christ. How are we building up the body of Christ? And why are we building up the body of Christ? Paul says it. We’re building up the body of Christ. What in love. We’re all about loving other people. If you want to renew a church, if you want to revive a church, you don’t have a revival service. You don’t bring in a big speaker. If you want to revive and renew a church, what you do is you start reaching out to people whose hearts are broken. And you bring them into the church, and you let them share their brokenness, and you let them share their angst, and you let them experience the love of God in Jesus Christ. And as you’re watching lives transform, guess what? Your life gets transformed. You get changed because all of us are on a trajectory. We’re either deciding if we’re going to live or if we’re going to die. None of us are there quite yet. The some of us aren’t on the same pathway. There are different pathways. You want me to prove it? Take elderly people. Most people over 80 are either the best people you know or the absolute worst people you know. I don’t mean this in ages sort of way. It’s just the opposite. In fact, most 20 somethings that I know are just kind of mid. That’s what the teenager does say. They’re just kind of mid. They’re not saints.

They’re not potential terrorist. They’re just normal. But this isn’t true of elderly people. Run through your memory of everybody you know past 80. Most of them are gracious, happy, grateful, patient, loving, self-giving. There’s some of the sweetest people you know, Or they’re the most bitter, manipulative, spiteful people, you know, oozing with emotional poison into their family lives and reveling at other people’s pains. Sure, there’s some right there in the middle of the bell curve, but most noticeably on either pole of the bell curve. It’s because they have spent nearly a century becoming a person, being formed through some strange, invisible chemical reaction of habits, mindsets, chosen attitudes, life circumstances, suffering or successes, failures and random events. They have become who they are. Well, what I want people to come at Trinity are people who are building up the body of Christ in love. How do you do that? You gotta start training for it. Now, how do you do it? I have to get you here at 10:00 on a Sunday morning. Hello? Wouldn’t that be great? Because the other thing we’re doing on the 18th is we’re helping each other out. Because right now you’re sitting 4 or 5 seats down from somebody you’ve been sitting with for 20 years and you’ve forgotten their name or you never knew it. And so on the 18th, we’re all going to be have name tags right there so you can get rid of that doubt. You can call people by name. It’s a Sunday about training us to be what more loving. And how do we know? If we’ve got the unity and the spirit, and we’ve got all these gifts. And we are perfecting the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the church. How do we know if we’ve gotten there? We become more loving. You know. Because he loved us. He died for us. Because he loved us. He allowed his blood to be shed for us. What would happen if you poured out your life in love to another human being? What would happen if you poured out your life in love under the direction of Jesus Christ? We would win because people would experience God’s amazing grace and his holy, infinite love. Lord, make it so in us.

Amen.