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Never Get Used To It

January 4, 2004
Sermon by Peter Terpenning
Ephesians 1:3-14

            Edwina Gately, of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pennsylvania tells in their newsletter of an incident in her life when she was working in a downtown overnight shelter. It was a big basement shelter, and every night the homeless came in, and she would stand at the door handing out old blankets. Once, this guy came up to her and said, "Edwina, could I have one without lice?" "What?" she said. "Could I have on that doesn't have any lice in it?" So she said, "O, er...OK", and started going through the blankets to see if there were any without lice. Finally, she found one that didn't have anything moving on it. And suddenly she thought to herself, "What am I doing? Here I am picking out blankets without lice and urine for certain folks. this is all wrong." So she went to the supervisor of the shelter and said to him, "this isn't right. We should launder these blankets every day instead of every week. We can't do this to these folks. They deserve better than this." And the supervisor looked at her and smiled. he shook his head and said, "Edwina, let me tell you something. When you have been here as long as I have, you get used to it."
            Well, something in her screamed. She thought, "We must never get used to it! We must never accept the ways things are because we are told, 'well, it's always been like this.' This world was not meant to be like this! We were not meant to live in poverty. We were not meant to be hungry. We were not meant to be homeless. We were not meant to sleep in lice-infested blankets. When we accept ourselves or our system saying 'this is the way it is', then there is not hope for change, and we become part of the evil and hopelessness."
            We could add a new Beaitude, “Blessed are they who never get used to it".
            The letter to the Ephesians was written by Paul with advice to the people who lived in the city of Ephesus, which is in Asia Minor- where Turkey is now. He starts the letter with this wonderful doxology of praise for the Christians there in Ephesus and all that God has done for them. The Lord who "has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing the heavenly places...God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world...God adopted us as God's children through Jesus Christ...In Christ we have redemption....forgiveness....according to the riches of God Grace that God has lavished upon us." Then Paul concludes that because the people have received so much from God therefore in return to must transform ourselves. "So that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory." In other words, since we are part of God's household- chosen, set apart- then we need to change the way we live our lives. We are called to put on holiness, blamelessness and love.
            Dr. Donald English, who is a leader in British Methodism says that the world doesn't need any more salesmen for the gospel. What the world needs is a whole lot more free samples. The world needs us to live our lives as free samples of the love of God in Christ. In other words, there is more than enough talk about Jesus Christ, what we need now is people who will live their lives like Jesus Christ called us to. Action- not talk. Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity calls this "The Theology of the hammer". Do less talking about justice and more pounding of nails to build houses for those with substandard housing.
            A writer named John Welwood teaches about a distinction that the Sufi Moslem tradition makes between "states" and "stations". States are those qualities of life that just pop up when the conditions are right. Love, hope, joy and others are states we find ourselves in once in awhile when events happen to work out that way. Stations, on the other hand are these same qualities when they are incorporated into our everyday lives. When we choose to have these qualities and make them happen- to just wait for them to happen by chance, but when we intentionally seek them out-make them permanent parts of our lives. It's OK to talk about being loving, blameless, hopeful and joyful, but better to make them permanent station in our lives.
            I have a file of Christmas sayings, songs and poems that I pull out each year as I prepare the Advent and Christmas bulletins. On the top is one of my favorites, the saying from Howard Thurman we used in the call to worship today; “The Work of Christmas”. “When the song of angels is stilled, When the star in the sky is gone, When the kings and princes are home, When the shepherds are back with their flocks,The work of Christmas begins: To find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among people, to make music in the heart.
            It’s easy to get comfortable, to get lost in the sentiment of Christmas and forget that the birth of Jesus marks the beginning of a life and a ministry that was anything but comfortable. I am as guilty as anyone of becoming apathetic at times. I look at the world and the mess it is in ecologically, and economically and politically, and I get discouraged. I just want to find a good novel and disappear, which is what I did for most of last week when I had time off. But my mistake is getting used to the mess. I easily become to accepting of things as they are, and quit fighting to make it better. We must not quit struggling; we must not get used to the way things are. Christians need to be part of that struggle, as we live our lives as Paul said, "In Christ". In Christ we are transformed, in thought, word and action. The world has enough salesmen of the Gospel, what we always need more of is free samples.