Ephesians 4.1-16 , John 6.24-35
The Ninth Sunday after Trinity, 1 August 2021, Eldroth
You need to grow up, Paul tells the Ephesian believers. Now, they were grown up - fully-formed adults who’d taken the familiar paths through family life, work life, community life, including that big decision to deviate from the practice of the religion of their birth, to follow Christ. But nevertheless, to this audience of responsible adults, Paul said, you need to grow up. You need to come ‘to maturity [in the faith], to the measure of the full stature of Christ’.
Now if I said to you, ’you need to grow up’ - how would you take it? For you are grown up. Let me approach the question in another way: by asking you, when did you become an adult?
Think hard about this one. I don’t mean what year was it when you reached the age of majority? In asking when you became an adult I’m inviting you to consider something deeper: to recall that experience in life which changed you from what Paul describes as a child, tossed to and fro by other people, into a person with your own knowledge - self-knowledge, and knowledge of the world and how it works and of other people and how they behave: adult knowledge, not necessarily comfortable knowledge, but knowledge which deepened you and strengthened you in a way which makes you think, that was the time when I grew up, that was the experience which turned me into an adult.
A friend of mine who is fond of doing things like this, once asked his wide circle of friends this question, when did you become an adult?, and invited us to share our answers. [1] One person said, “In some ways I’ve been an adult since I was about 8 years old. I had to look after myself for significant periods of time, get myself to and from places like school etc. My mother is very much a child in an adult’s body, and I have had to look after most of my needs as a child as she was just not able to. I think I have always been the adult in my family, as neither of my parents were available to be that person, so I learned quickly how to be independent, look after myself and look after others. At other times, I still wonder if I am an adult now? I’m 40, but there are still so many times when I just don’t feel like I’ve grown up at all! I struggle so much with relationships and being level headed, that I feel like I can still act like a difficult teenager! I can still throw an almighty strop when my buttons are pushed and act out or be moody!”
This person wonders if their having to act grown-up whilst very young meant that they’ve never really had the chance to be a child - and maybe that’s why they sometimes act childishly now!
Another person thought that they became an adult when their parents divorced when they were around 14. They said, “Suddenly I felt the need to be the man of the house, this created huge amounts of friction with mums new partner, eventually leading to me moving out. A bit of a bump start to adulthood!” Again, another person said: “I know it sounds like a cliche but I think I became an adult when I reached 30 when my first child was born: I had to go through the fear of looking after and responsible for another person, although sometimes I still feel as if I'm a little boy now.”
When did you become an adult? My grandfather would say that he could never enter his second childhood as he hadn't finished his first one yet. Maybe you feel like that too!
Another person, when asked this question, replied that, “Becoming an adult is not about responsibility, it's not about age, it's not about taking on a family or a financial commitment because having kids and a mortgage doesn't make you an adult. What defines being an adult is your own stability, realising you are an adult is when you wake every day and stop having those moments where you just want to vanish and hide. As an adult, whatever your circumstances, you will feel stable and have so many good things in your life that you couldn't possibly walk out on them, even if you had the desire to do so. Being an adult is realising the grass is not always greener and feeling secure enough to ride out the hard moments in life without feeling like you just want to run away and start again somewhere else.” This same person ended their story by saying that, “Me personally, I'm not an adult...I still want to run.”
What did Paul mean when he said to the Christian believers, you need to grow up; you need to come ‘to maturity in the faith, to the measure of the full stature of Christ’…? The question he poses to us is, how do you become a Christian adult?
And helpfully, he gives us three answers. First he says, you become a Christian adult when you’re no longer childishly ‘tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming’. You mature when you cease being influenced by other people’s whims and desires and determine to follow the way of Christ, in all things, every day.
The second thing Paul says is that we become Christian adults when, ‘speaking the truth in love, we grow up in every way into Christ who is the head of the body.’ This encourages us to see that growing into Christian maturity is not a solo effort but something we do together; as we share our lives, our hearts, our thoughts, as we work together with Christ in service of the world: we grow together in maturity of our faith. In turn, the demanding common task of maturing together in faith creates community. [2]
Paul’s third and last point is to tell us that Christian adulthood involves our recognising that each of us is equipped to play our part in the body of Christ. That’s right, it’s not just the vicar who has the means to do this, it’s all of us together who make this body function, by the grace of Christ. Paul tells us that when each part is working properly, then the body grows in building itself up in love. ‘The gifts God gives us are that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.’ You are gifted, and you mature as a Christian when you recognise the gifts you have and find ways to exercise them for the good of all.
When did you become a Christian adult? Or are you still on that journey of becoming?
One sign of maturity is when we change our diet, from the sweet but unhealthy foods beloved of children, to those foods which we choose because we know they are good for our health. For Christians maturity comes when we recognise the unedifying parts of our diet in life - those unhealthy influences, obsessions, and desires of ours - and when we determine instead to eat of the bread of life; recognising that this is how we’ll be filled and fulfilled, that our faith will make us whole.
May God help us all - whatever our maturity in years - to keep growing into maturity in Christ, and to enjoy all that means. God help us to keep encouraging each other in our Christian maturity, and in working together to feed the world around us with this wonderful bread of life.
Notes
See also my previous sermon on these passages, John 6: The bread of life and the growth to maturity, preached in Devon, 2012.
[1] Pip Wilson, BECOMING QUESTIONS Number 15. When did you become an Adult: why and when? Pip Wilson blog, 7 August 2016. Pip, a ‘worker with people’ invited his friends to give their permission to share their answers with others online. These testimonies are drawn from this web page.
[2] George Macleod, founder of the Iona Community, is often cited as having said, ‘Only a demanding common task can build community.’ Neil Paynter (ed), This Is the Day: Readings and Meditations from the Iona Community. p.21
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