The Charter of the Church (10)
Therefore, I, the prisoner of the Lord, exhort you to walk worthily of the calling in which you were called, with all humility and meekness, with long-suffering, bearing with one another in love; being eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Ephesians 4:1-3
Being Eager – Our last look at the true church in action. The last weight added to the balance scale of imitating Christ. In Greek, spoudazontes is present tense, active, plural. If I wrote down the root word you might see our English equivalent. Speudo stands behind the English word “speed” (you probably always wondered where that funny word came from, didn’t you?). “Being eager” is the equivalent of saying, “making every effort to get it done as soon as possible”. This is the Christian call to sprint. Run, all of you! Run toward unity. Run as fast as you can toward being of the same mind!
What a shame! God must look down on the race toward unity and just throw up His hands in frustration. Many times it seems as though we are not only not running toward unity, we are actually sprinting toward diversity. We put our effort into running away from each other, not toward each other. What kind of love story is that? The camera pans across the field of flowers. The woman is running on one side. The man is running across the other side. But instead of running toward each other to embrace, they are running as fast as they can away from each other, holding up signs that say, “I’m different. I’m right. I’m in and you’re out.”
What about you? Are the children of God your brothers and sisters? Are they really? Or are you just a little bothered by language, skin, origin, history, gender or abilities? Is the retarded adult living in L’Arche just as much your brother as the celebrated professor from Harvard? (And if you said, “Of course”, then you probably need to read some of Henri Nouwen’s books after he left Harvard to join L’Arche). Is the street-savvy Black man whose eyes reveal the heart of the Savior as much a part of your fellowship as the Norwegian from Minnesota or the Indian from Calcutta? Are you ready to share a meal with hungry believers in poverty-stricken Puerto Cortes or would you rather be at Ruth’s Chris in New York? And, then, of course, there are the really important separations like whether you dunk or sprinkle, whether you choose or are chosen, whether you sing hymns or choruses.
We have made the Christian melting pot of forgiven and redeemed into a smorgasbord of individual selections. Jesus did not die for my little group. He died for us all. The lines I draw in the sand are not the ones He drew.
My church will only run toward unity at the same pace that I run toward my brothers and sisters. How fast are you sprinting these days?
