Sermon: Extended Family
Scripture Text: Ephesians 2:11-22
Quotes for Reflection
David Brooks, How to Know a Person
People need social skills. We talk about the importance of “relationships,” “community,” “friendship,” “social connection,” but these words are too abstract. The real act of, say, building a friendship or creating a community involves performing a series of small, concrete social actions well: disagreeing without poisoning the relationship; revealing vulnerability at the appropriate pace; being a good listener; knowing how to end a conversation gracefully; knowing how to ask for and offer forgiveness; knowing how to let someone down without breaking their heart; knowing how to sit with someone who is suffering; knowing how to host a gathering where everyone feels embraced; knowing how to see things from another’s point of view.
Tim Keller, Prodigal God
Christians commonly say they want a relationship with Jesus, that they want to “get to know Jesus better.” You will never be able to do that by yourself. You must be deeply involved in the church, in Christian community, with strong relationships of love and accountability. Only if you are part of a community of believers seeking to resemble, serve, and love Jesus will you ever get to know him and grow into his likeness.
N.T. Wright, Ephesians for Everyone
For Christians a church building is not a ‘Temple’ in the strict sense. It is the people themselves who are the ‘place’ where God is now deciding to live. One might almost say that God himself has, in a sense, become a stranger and asylum-seeker within his own world, the more so since, as the early Christians knew, the Jerusalem Temple itself had been solemnly condemned by Jesus. The living God was now seeking to make his home in the hearts and lives, and particularly the communities, that had declared their loyalty to Jesus, and were determined to live by the gospel.
Application Questions
1. Why do you think it’s so difficult to experience unity in our culture today?
2. What can it mean that Christ makes us into a new community, the dwelling place of God himself?
3. Consider the David Brooks quote from his work How to Know a Person. Among the social skills listed, what stands out for your growth as an “illuminator”?