SPECIAL DAY: Communion Sunday

July 5, 1998 - LESSON: Ephesians 2:11-13

SERMON TITLE: Strangers No More

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INTRODUCTION:

  1. Let's eavesdrop on a conversation.
    1. We are doing nothing wrong
    2. It is not confidential
      1. "John, please don't explain anymore. I've been in America for three weeks now, and I've learned that this is a great and wonderful country. But because you have never lost your freedom, because you have never been conquered, because you have never had all your possessions taken from you, you are now willing to surrender your freedom, independence, and autonomy by inches. You simply don't notice it, but, one inch at a time, it slips away." She continued, "Those students in there-I feel sorry for them. No matter what they do when they grow up, many of them will always be acting like children."(1)
      2. Perhaps to better understand what is being said, we need a little background.
    3. John Fund, who is on the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal writes in Imprimis about one of the most meaningful experiences of his entire life when, in 1984 he visited East Germany.(2)
      1. He was accompanied by a friend from the American Embassy. On their tour, they stopped by the Museum of History in East Berlin. While they were at the museum, a small group of teenage girls approached them. They were about fourteen or fifteen years old, and they hailed from a small town in the remote countryside. This was their first trip to the capital. They asked them what time it was. Clearly, they knew the answer. They wanted to have a conversation. They were the first Westerners they had ever met.

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      1. "My first question to them was, "How did you know we were from the West?" They replied, "it was simple. We looked at your shoes and noticed that they weren't made of plastic." For sometime, we exchanged anecdotes and impressions about East Berlin until their chaperone arrived to break things up...
      2. "Three hours later my friend and I were shopping in a downtown department store. The same teenage girls were there-without their chaperone. My friend and I had been in the capital for three days, so we volunteered to be their tour guides...
      3. "We showed them our passports; they showed us their identity papers and told us a little about what it was like to live in a small town in East Germany. One of the girls told us, for example, the economy was so run-down that, when she lost an air valve on a bicycle tire, there was no way to replace it. People didn't have much money, but what was there was nothing on which to spend it...
      4. "Our travel visas expired at midnight, so by dusk we were on our way back to the glittering lights of West Berlin. The girls came along to the train station to bid us farewell. They had never seen the Berlin Wall, but they knew it was close. They gradually slowed their pace and stopped on a street comer just before we reached the rail yard. one said, 'You know, we really shouldn't go any further. We are not Berliners. If we are stopped, the guards will ask us why we are so close to the border zone.'
      5. "To keep the conversation going, because I didn't want to part from them, I asked what they wanted to be when they grew up. One said a beautician, one said a nurse, and one said a teacher. But the oldest and wisest, whose name was Monica, looked up at me with the most sorrowful face I have ever seen and said very slowly, 'it doesn't matter what we become when we grow up. They will always treat us like children.'
      6. "We parted almost tearfully. Monica and I exchanged addresses, and every year or so a post- card would come from her, and I would send some little trinket in the mail. She wrote that she had applied to a university, but she was rejected for her for her unacceptable views. She managed to get a job in a veterinarian's office.

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    4. Five years later, in 1989, Monica turned nineteen and the Berlin Wall came crashing down. I watched the first television broadcast that showed wave upon wave of East Germans crossing over into the West for their first taste of freedom, and I wondered if Monica and her friends were in one of those waves.
      1. "At about 10:00 a. m. the next day, the telephone worse, rang. A T & T, already trying to introduce the consumer culture to the East Germans. had set up a cellular phone service. As an incentive, they gave prospective customers the opportunity to make a phone call anywhere in the world for free. Monica called me. Her first words were, 'John, this is Monica. I am over the Wall.'
      2. "We talked for a few minutes, and I was reminded of our last conversation on a street comer in East Berlin. I said, 'Well, does this mean that your country has grown up, and you are no longer going to be treated as children?'
      3. "She responded with a laugh, 'I think my entire country has graduated from kindergarten to high school overnight.'
    5. "Over the course of the next year, I learned that Monica had made it into medical school. Today, she is completing her internship. A happy ending, to be sure, but one with a bittersweet quality...
    6. "In 1994, Monica and her fiancé came to the United States for a vacation. She had only one request: She wanted to speak to an American high school civics class about her experiences growing up in East Germany...
    7. "Very reluctantly, I arranged for her to speak to just such a class at a high school in California. It was my alma mater, and I had spoken there a number of times since my graduation...
    8. "Finally, Monica opened the session up to questions. A girl asked, 'Why in the world would some- one want to build a wall in the middle of a city?' She clearly had no understanding why this had happened or what historical forces were at work, even after Monica had told her story.

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    9. "As we walked out of the classroom, I tried to explain to Monica that not all young Americans were like this. She looked at me, and once again I saw that same sad, pensive face I remembered from a street comer in East Berlin.
    10. "She said, 'John, please don't explain anymore. I've been in America for three weeks now, and I've learned that this is a great and wonderful country. But because you have never lost your freedom, because you have never been conquered, because you have never had all your possessions taken from you, you are now willing to surrender your freedom, independence, and autonomy by inches. You simply don't notice it, but, one inch at a time, it slips away.' She continued, 'Those students in there-I feel sorry for them. No matter what they do when they grow up, many of them will always be acting like children.'"
      1. Is her observation correct
      2. Will many always act like children.
      3. If this is the case, can we understand how this state may have come into being?
  2. U.S. Senate Chaplain Richard Halverson, prior to his death, is reported to have said:
    1. "In the beginning, the church was a fellowship of men and women who centered their lives on the living Christ. They had a personal and vital relationship to the Lord. It transformed them and the world around them. Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy. Later it moved to Rome, where it became an institution. Next it moved to Europe, where it became a culture. Finally, it moved to the United States, where it became an enterprise. We've got far too many churches and so few fellowships."(3)
    2. Is that what has happened to us.
      1. We have become an enterprise.
      2. An enterprise where we are unable to grow up because we are treated like and expected to be children.
      3. We are willing to accept what has happened
      4. Few questions as to what impact it has on us.

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  3. Soren Kierkegaard said
    1. "the church is in danger, not because of sin, but because of its lack of passion."
    2. How do we recapture the passion
  4. We need to be able to answer the question
    1. What question?
    2. We have many questions of God, but what of the "big" question that God has for each of us?
    3. Recently a teacher, a garbage collector and an HMO physician wound up together at the Pearly Gates.
      1. St. Peter informed them that in order to get into heaven, they would each have to answer one question.(4)
        1. St. Peter addressed the teacher and asked, "What was the name of the ship that crashed into the iceberg? They just made a movie about it."
          1. The teacher answered quickly, "That would be the Titanic."
          2. St. Peter let him through the gate.
        2. St. Peter turned to the garbage man and, figuring heaven didn't REALLY need all the odors that this guy was bringing with him, decided to make the question a little harder:
          1. "How many people died on the ship?"
          2. Fortunately for him, the trash man had just seen the movie and answered, "About 1,500."
          3. "That's right! You may enter."
        3. St. Peter then turned to the HMO physician. "Name them."

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      2. That's so unfair! or Is it!
    4. If we do not know the question, how can we know the answer?
  5. What is the question? Or better the questions?
    1. Who are we?
    2. What are we?
  6. To answer the question we need to remember when.
    1. 11 So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called "the uncircumcision" by those who are called "the circumcision"--a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands--
    2. 12 remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
  7. The answer to the question is also found in the lesson
    1. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
      1. No one forces us to be brought near.
      2. This is a decision that we make because we willingly accept the offer.
    2. We are no longer strangers
    3. We will no longer act like children.

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  8. God will help us to retain the passion which is communicated by those who have gone before us.

1. John Fund, Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal, "Politics, Economics, and Education in the 21st Century, Imprimis, Vol. 27, No. 5 (May 1998), pp. 3-5

2. Ibid.

3. --U.S. Senate Chaplain Richard Halverson, prior to his death, as quoted by Harry N. Wendt, "Address Delivered to the Chicago Synod Assembly," ELCA, June 14, 1997.

4. --P. Baumann. "Tuesday 2/24 Titanic." <TTTL98@aol.com> February 24, 1998. Personal e-mail. (February 25, 1998).

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