Good News: We Are Purposeful!

Phil 2: 1 - 11

Ephesians 2: 10

September 1, 2024

I am thankful for a sermon written by the Rev. Dr. Don Aycock in which he writes about an experiment conducted with Processionary Caterpillars.

Processionary Caterpillars are born from eggs planted on trees in southern and central Europe as well as Northern Africa. Once hatched in large numbers, the caterpillars move to the ground, feed on pine needles, and eventually burrow in the ground from which they then emerge as moths.

I want to suggest that the lifestyle of these caterpillars demonstrates the difference between living life purposefully or by habit, by ritual, or by what is known, traditional, and comfortable.

As I said, Processionary Caterpillars feed on pine needles. They actually move along the ground in long processions, single file, one leading and the others following with their eyes half closed and their head close to, or actually touching, the hind end of the caterpillar in front of them. This is how they forage for food.

The French Naturalist, Jean-Henri Fabre, conducted an experiment where he actually coaxed the lead caterpillar – and the following procession – up onto the rim of a large flowerpot. Eventually the leader found itself connected up to the last caterpillar in the procession forming a completed circle – with no beginning or end – circling around the flowerpot.

Fabre expected that, at some point, the caterpillars would tire of circling around the same flowerpot and finding no food; and that they would then drop off and move in another direction.

But they never did. Around and around they went, circling the same flowerpot, at the same pace relentlessly for seven days and seven nights. Food was actually placed nearby, but it was outside the known and comfortable path around the flowerpot, and they never diverted. Eventually the caterpillars died of starvation and exhaustion.

Friends, life can be like that, can’t it? We mistake business and activity for meaning and purpose. Routines generate habits, and comfort and change and redirection threatens that known way of being. We can be so resistant to change, so enamored with our routines, completely committed to the delusion that business and activity is life. This reality for many of

us gives new understanding to the famous quote of Henry Thoreau where he asserts that most of us are living lives of quiet desperation.

Sadly, the church can be no different. We can be lulled into a quiet and comfort by the routines of the church. Even critically important things like our Prayer of Confession, worship and praise through singing, the words we say each month around our celebration of Communion take on all the importance of the babble that we used to hear when the teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoons spoke to him. Remember what it sounded like? Wah – wah – wah – wah – wah. Religious, liturgical babble – known, comfortable, and absolutely devoid of any power to transform or elevate us into the presence of God.

We come, sit in our usual spots – known and comfortable. We talk and commiserate with our friends during those times when silence is supposed to be preparing us for worship. Maybe we sit outside where we feel free to drop in and out of the act of worship. Checking our phones during hymns, discussing life during parts of the service. As Tim Keller used to say, we play in a spirit of religiosity – worshipping form and ritual – but never moving past form and ritual to submission, obedience, true worship and transformation.

Like the Processionary Caterpillars, we confuse religious activity for a purposeful spiritual life.

We have been talking for the last several weeks about church. Some have suggested that this is trying to cast a vision for a new or different way of being church. That all of our conversations are really about institutional survival – what we need to do or become if the church is going to survive.

Friends – you need to hear this very, very clearly. The “survival of the church” is not dependent upon our work, our activities, our brilliantly conceived programs that will generate new members. The growth of the church is God’s job. The growth of the church is through the work of the Holy Spirit. The survival of the family of God is not dependent upon the works of the family but instead on the works of God.

Our job – I hate to cast our spiritual work as a job. Our responsibility is to intentionally and purposefully love God and God’s people. Unthinking routines and ritual that have lost their intentionality threaten the vibrancy of that love. If I never tell my wife that I love her; if I never show my wife that I love her through my intentional actions and priorities; if I never show up at events that are important to her – if I don’t do these kinds of things - how does my wife know that I love her?

Our responsibility is to be about the work of building God’s kingdom as an expression of love for God, an expression of love for God’s people, and a desire to be an alternative to the brokenness and despair that pervades so much of our world.

Our responsibility is to be willing to do the tough work of growing into the likeness of Christ. Yes, our eternal destiny is changed in the twinkling of an eye as we accept God’s gift of faith but the hard work of shedding our self-centeredness and growing into the likeness of Jesus is the effort and purpose of a lifetime.

As our text from Philippians suggests, our responsibility is to be of the same mind, having the same love, take on Christ’s example as our own challenge to put aside what we might think is our earthly due, and instead find ourselves in obedient service.

Paul, as he writes to the church in Ephesus reminds us of who we are. In verse 10 of Chapter Two, Paul declares that we are created by God, and as such, we are of great, unique value. Our pew Bible translates the Greek here fairly passively. We are more than what he has made us. Those three words “has made us” is simply far too tame a translation for what Paul means here.

Those three words “has made us” comes from two Greek words: autou poiema. Who are we?

Autou poiema – His workmanship, His masterpiece, his work of poetry created for good works, purposeful works, intentional works. Works, actions, ways of being that God prepared for us before the beginning of time. That’s who we are – intentional, purposeful spiritual human beings – not some kind of human, religious Processional Caterpillars.

I have had great mentors in my spiritual life. My mother, my wife, men, women, and youth in congregations that I have served. I have also had 3 great pastors that I sat under – men used by God to make me who I am today. One of them, Pastor Von, was the one sent by God to help me understand that God was not the cause of the tragedies that I have had in my life but is instead the answer.

Pastor Von had a long and fruitful spiritual life. He certainly was a spiritual masterpiece, a great faith poem. As Von was getting older, he was asked to describe his philosophy of life, his philosophy behind his life’s work. Pastor Von wrote the following, and I quote:

“I have a rather simple philosophy as to this life. I see my time on earth as very brief and radically different from my future forever life with God. Because of this I have come to a rather

logical conclusion that has become my personal mandate: ‘I am here on earth to do things for God that I can never do for him in heaven, and I only have a short time left to do them.’

Here is some of what I can only do on earth that I’ll never be able to do in heaven. This seems both pleasing to God and fulfilling to me.

· I can share the gospel with those who have never heard.

· I can teach those who don’t know.

· I can light the darkness and give hope to the hopeless.

· I can encourage the discouraged and faint hearted.

· I can dry the tear of a crying child.

· I can love the unlovely, unloved, and unlovable.

· I can give someone who is thirsty a drink of water.

· I can feed those who are hungry, help those who are sick, give shelter to those who have none and give a blanket to those who are cold.

· I can give shelter to those who are without.

· I can love my enemies and forgive those who violate me.

In heaven, there will be no sin or darkness, no sickness, no hunger, no want or pain, no enemies of any kind; just eternal joy, thanksgiving, praise and worship of almighty God forever. It makes sense to me to do what I can for God while I am here on earth so that my time in eternity will be more a joy for myself and others.

In heaven there will be no clocks or calendars, we won’t be wearing watches, there will be no time as we know it. On the other hand, here on earth, we only have a few precious moments to accomplish our unique and divine calling.

Please excuse me [he finishes] to do the urgent, that which can only be done here and now”

Friends, this is not a call to conformity, to a universal acceptance of one life agenda. We are each – uniquely – God’s masterpiece. We are unique – unique gift sets, unique passions, unique abilities. We are each wonderfully unique and special in all of that.

But we are called to live life intentionally, purposefully, with an aim or set of aims in mind. Can we love God, love each other, be about kingdom work and growth into the likeness of Jesus? Can we be a church of this kind of both personal and family purposefulness? In the power of the Holy Spirit, we can! Amen.