We Are Holy Warriors

Text: Ephesians 6:10-20

Last July, Campus Crusade for Christ announced that its U.S. ministries would be changing their name to the abstract syllable “Cru.” Cru is a name that some of the organization’s college ministries began using of their own accord as early as the mid-1990s. On its own website, one of the reason that Campus Crusade for Christ International for their name change is this: and I quote,“The word ‘crusade’ – while common and acceptable in 1951 when we were founded – now carries negative associations. It acts as a barrier to the very people that we want to connect with. It’s also a hindrance to many Christians who would like to partner with us but find the word Crusade offensive.”[1]

A crusade is a holy war, plain and simple. And a holy war is simply normal warfare that is carried out in the name of a deity. The word crusade is attached particularly to the Christian holy wars of the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries carried out by kings and popes in order to reclaim Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the grip of Muslim rule. They were waged in part in response to previous Muslim efforts at expansion from northern Africa into Spain and France.

We Are Residents

Text: Ephesians 6:1-9

Last week I quoted the opening line from a song written by Albert E. Brumley that says, “This world is not my home, I’m just passing through.” There is a lot of truth to that line, truth that we need to latch onto and live by. We are just passing through, so there is no need to focus on gathering and accumulating the stuff and trappings of the world. It makes no more sense to do so than it would make sense to buy and renovate a home, search for doctors and schools, transfer driver licenses, forward mail, and so on all for one two-week vacation in a distant place that will not be revisited again.

Because we are just passing through, we can also be much freer than someone else might be. We can live with a certain abandon, going and doing more dangerous things than someone who doesn’t see their home as being elsewhere. They might not be willing to do certain things, but we who see our home as being in heaven are free to do them.

We Are Resolution Keepers

Text: Ephesians 5:15-21

In Friday’s Garfield comic strip, Jon asked his cat if he had decided on his New Year’s resolutions yet. Garfield’s response was, “Yes, same as last year. Not to mess with perfection.” Well, unlike Garfield, I have not yet arrived at perfection. Therefore, the new year continues to be a good time to reflect, rewind, and reconsider where I’ve been and where I’m going. That’s what resolutions are all about: improving the path we’re traveling so that we wind up further along toward the goal we are striving for at the end of this year than we find ourselves at its beginnings.

But resolutions are also demanding. Resolutions first demand that you know who you want to be. This is the primary reason why so many new year’s resolutions are abandoned by the fifth day of the year. Too many people define who they think they want to be as the idea they have of someone else. The photoshopped image from a magazine defines the body they want. The idyllic picture from a postcard defines where they want to live. We allow our definition of who we want to be to be shaped by the things we see in others around us, even if they are only imagined.

We Are Worthy

Text: Luke 2:1-20

The shepherds never really had much reason to feel like they were worth much. They looked dirty because they were dirty. They smelled worse. They were imparted with the important and high job of raising the animals that were to be used in the sacrifices of penitence and worship given in the Temple in Jerusalem, but they were also considered unclean and therefore forbidden from entering the Temple themselves.

Society despised them. They were ridiculed, rejected, outcast, and alone. No one took his son out into the fields and encouraged him to aspire to the grand job of shepherding a flock. Shepherding was not considered a grand job. The task once fine for the likes of Jacob (Israel’s namesake), Moses, and David was no worthy goal for a young Jewish lad in the time of Caesar Augustus.

We Are the Bride of Christ

Text: Ephesians 5:22-33

As we have been working our way through Paul’s letter to the saints at Ephesus, we have seen how Paul is determined to help the saints there and everywhere to gain a full grasp on what it means to be a saint. Just before this passage, Paul has been talking about the new way believers are to live based on what they had been learning about God. They were to put away their former life and choose instead to imitate God in the way they conduct their lives.

This portion of God’s Word we are examining today is one that is all too often unused, misused, or abused. Certain portions of Christianity really love to take a large stand on verses 22-24, others would rather have them excised from the Bible. Those who are staunch supporters of verses 22-24 often go on to ignore the following verses,25-31. And they are often completely neglectful of the immediately preceding verse, number 21. That verse sets the course for the rest of Ephesians 5 and the first third of Ephesians 6.