Never been a big fan of country music. Sorry to those who love all things Country. Yet, despite all her upbringing and indoctrination, my daughter has chosen to go her own way and become a bona fide country music fan. When we drive back and forth to college she will often find a country station and because I indulge her way too much - just ask her mom who still hasn’t forgiven me for the New Year’s Eve New York City trip - I let her listen. But she doesn’t just listen, she sings along, knowing most of the words to most of the songs. All of which troubles me to no end.
What troubles me the most is that sometimes I find myself enjoying it. Man, I hate it when that happens. I am quite content in my prejudice most of the time, frankly. Happy with the choices I’ve made, the preferences I hold. But darn it, some of “that kind of thing” is good, catchy, singable, memorable, even, dare I say it, moving.
My daddy, he is grounded like the oak tree / My momma, she is as steady as the sun / Oh you know I love my folks, but I keep starin' down the road / Just lookin' for my one chance to run // Hey 'cause I will soar away like the blackbird / I will blow in the wind like a seed / I will plant my heart in the garden of my dreams / And I will grow up where I want, wild and free
That’s Sara Evans’ “Born to Fly.” And its about dreams. Following dreams. About the itch to stretch one’s wings and just go, where the wind blows, where the Spirit wills. OK, maybe I’m reading into it. But we are dreaming here at Aldersgate this Epiphany season. Dreaming of what might be. Dreaming of what God would have us do and be. Trying to wrap our arms around our Big Hairy Audacious God-purpose (BHAG).
Some wonder if we even need such a thing. Maybe it was good for Jacob and his stairway dream, or Moses and his burning bush (a preview of coming attractions - stay tuned to this channel for more!), but for most of us it sounds a bit presumptuous to assume that we can even participate in changing the world. And maybe it is presumptuous, maybe we ought to reign it in a little bit. After all, Paul tells us in Romans 12:3 that we should not think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think, but to think with sober judgement. And who among us would think we could eradicate poverty in Africa, or wipe out prejudice, or end bullying or whatever other BHAG might come into our minds when we aren’t thinking soberly.
Maybe it is the scale that is daunting us. Maybe we’ve been taught not to think so highly, as Paul says. Lower our expectations. Slow down there sparky. Do get any ideas, ideas above your station. Just stay close to your roots, where you began. My daddy, he is grounded like the oak tree / My momma, she is as steady as the sun / Oh you know I love my folks, but I keep starin' down the road / Just lookin' for my one chance to run // Oh how do you wait for Heaven? / And who has that much time? / And how do you keep your feet on the ground? / When you know that you were born, you were born, yeah / You were born to fly
Maybe we were born to fly. Not to think small thoughts, not to do just enough to keep our heads above water, but to actually fly. The second chapter of Pastor Mike Slaughter’s book Dare to Dream is titled “Discovering your birthright.” What were we made for?
Ephesians 4:11-13 The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.
Who are you? That’s one of the questions this process is designed to answer. Who are you really? What is within you, what gifts do you have? And even more importantly what are you leaning toward? I know, that’s an odd way of saying it. But I don’t know how to describe it any better. What are you leaning toward? What draws you? In what gravitational pull are you caught?
Paul likes to talk about lists. He’s got them all over the place. Good stuff and bad stuff, helpful stuff and stuff to avoid, traits and aspects, fruit and body parts. You want a list, go see Paul, he’ll fix you up with one. But this one here in Ephesians is a little different. Paul talks about gifts elsewhere (See Romans 12 and I Corinthians 12 - Hmm 12?!?) But this list is all about leadership. It is all about community, about binding together, about growing and maturing so that we can all be one. A couple of verses earlier in the chapter we have a sevenfold “one” passage. We’re all about unity in this chapter. All about sharing together. All about living for and through one another. Not in a sense of dependency, but in a mutual love and respect, challenging one another to live up to our full potential, acknowledging that we are better together than we are separately.
Now, some argue that Paul didn’t write this list, or this letter. In fact the argument goes the purpose of this letter, or at least this part of this letter was to institutionalize the church. What we have here, some argue, is nothing less than an administrative flow chart for the early church. Apostles above prophets who supervised evangelists who oversaw pastors and teachers. Pastors and teachers, goes the argument, is not two roles but two dimensions of one role. Which makes sense really. In any administrative flow chart the lower you get on the hierarchy the more responsibilities each position is responsible for. Pastors-slash-teachers did the nitty gritty day to day stuff, while the apostles got all the glory.
Of course, some of us think this is - how shall we say it - hooey. To assume such a level of organization to the fledgling church seems a bit of a reach, and to claim a hierarchical structure to an egalitarian movement also seems to miss the deeper point. Don’t misunderstand, there were leaders and followers, there were authority figures even in the early church. But the authority was an authority of the Spirit not of the office. Leaders were those who evidenced the life of Christ at work within them. They were the ones who glowed with the Presence of the Spirit. They were the ones who listened to the call of the Spirit and dreamed the dreams. They were the ones who we born to fly.
But what about us? What if we were born to fly? We don’t have the genetic prerequisite, we don’t have the heritage or the upbringing? We aren’t of the right tribe? What of us? God can make children of Abraham out of the stones. I heard that somewhere. In this context that means we were all born to fly. We were all born to fly. To be all that God intended. That we all have what it takes to be a leader, an apostle who embodies the presence of Christ in their whole lives, a prophet who has learned to see better than anyone else, to see God at work, to see the consequences of living without God, an evangelist who is so in love with the story that they can’t help but tell it in compelling ways every chance they get and tell it with wonder and hope and with joy, a pastor who’s whole heart is given over to caring for those who are struggling to find their feet on the path to God and who stoop to give a hand up to any and all who have fallen no matter how many times they stumble, or a teacher who wants to help anyone and everyone come to understanding of the workings of the Spirit in the world. These aren’t offices of the institutional church no matter what we have done with them. They are aspects of the body of Christ, they are manifestations of all of us, each of us, as we seek to be the community that we are called to be. We don’t run for these offices, we let them be born in us by the Spirit. These are acts of passion, not jobs to be done.
Did you notice that word until in verse 13? Until. That means that what matters is not the office, not the job, not the role, but the body. Until all of us - not some of us, a few of us - until all of us take wing and fly. We are born to fly. Why wait until Heaven? Sara Evans is right, why wait? Why stay on the ground, limited vision, limited hope, when we are born to fly? Heaven is here, right here. Let’s fly.
Shalom,
Derek
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