Our True Story and Our True Power: Living Lives of Generosity and Love

By the Rev. Kristen Yates

Good morning friends, it is good to be with you this morning.  So a number of you know that I am a pretty big fan of the recent Netflix series, Cobra Kai, which is a continuation of the Karate Kid story, picking up 30 years after the original stories and focusing on two competing Karate dojos - Cobra Kai and Miyagido. 

Now, as a kid who grew up in the 80s, I absolutely love the nostalgia of it all, but that is not all that keeps me hooked.  I also love the new and sometimes unexpected storylines of Johnny, Daniel, and their students.  And probably more so,  I love how we see spiritual formation in action.  In this series, we see the power of the stories we tell ourselves and the communities we associate with to form our character.

So for example in Cobra Kai, there is an underlying belief that the world does not show mercy, so the philosophy of the dojo  is “strike first, strike hard, no mercy” and to win at all costs.  In contrast, in Miyagido, there is a more positive view of the world and thus the philosophy is  to seek honor and mercy; balance, self-control, and inner peace in; and to practice karate as a means of defence, not offence.  And so throughout the series, we see how students immersed in these two communities, with their very different overarching stories, transform in personality, sometimes even quite drastically. 

Yes, Cobra Kai is complete fiction (and also, if you watch it, you’ll see it is not quite as black and white as I have painted it here), but that doesn’t really matter, for this series teaches us something important.   Friends, the stories we tell ourselves and the communities we associate ourselves with absolutely form us, sometimes in ways that help us look more like Jesus and sometimes in ways that look less like Him.  So the question I have for you today is: what stories are you telling yourself these days and what communities are shaping you?

Well friends, let us pray.  Dear Lord, the world is filled with many competing stories about what the world is like, who we are, and who you are, and sometimes we can be drawn into other incomplete and even false stories, becoming people who are less and less like the people you created us to be.  But we thank you dear Lord, that in the Scriptures and most particularly in the life of your Son Jesus, you have told us the True Story and you have invited us to see our own personal stories within the framework of that grander narrative.  You have also given us the community of the Church and the power of the Holy Spirit to transform us more into the likeness of your Son.  Lord, as we engage our discipleship journey, may we increasingly be formed into people of love, hope, and creative generosity.  Amen.

So, in today’s Scripture from Ephesians (and in fact in the entire book), the Apostle Paul set out to help the Ephesians understand God’s great story - that grand narrative that subsumed their own personal stories and gave meaning and direction to their lives.  Living in a center of power and under the shadow of the great cult of the goddess Artemis, the Ephesians needed to be reminded of who God was, who they were, and what God’s intentions for the world were.  While the economy and lives of many living in Ephesus revolved around devotion to Artemis, in contrast, the economy and lives of Jesus’ followers were to revolve another God, the One and Only True God who had been revealed in Jesus Christ. 

So Paul reminded them of who God is and what his plans are, and this is what he had to say:

The true God of the world is above all things.  He is far above all rulers and sources of authority and power; and He is far greater than any name that is invoked, whether it is Artemis or any of the other false gods that people worship.   And all things have been placed under Jesus’ feet.   

Essentially Paul asked the Ephesians, “Do you think that either the city’s or Artemis supposed power is great?  Well, this power is nothing compared to that held by God, the One and Only.  But unlike the distorted power that the world so often displays, God’s power is generative, bringing life out of nothing, and even bringing life from death.”  

So lest one fear that everything placed under Jesus’ feet might be crushed (as some are apt to interpret this image), the very opposite is true, for God is a loving and generous Being whose grand narrative begins with love and ends with love, with creation and new creation.  

According to Paul, God continually shows great love and generosity towards the world, and he does this by choosing and adopting his people and uniting them in Christ, even across their differences.  He then freely gives them his grace, forgives and redeems them, bestows them with his power, and seals them with the Holy Spirit.

As such, all who follow Jesus are to be to the praise of God’s glory - a people firm in their identity in God who live as forgiven ones and are full of hope and creative generosity, a people united with their brothers and sisters in Christ who are empowered by the Holy Spirit to be Jesus’ hands and feet.

So according to Paul, this is who God is and this is who his people are.  So the stories that his people uniquely live out in this world are part of the grander narrative of what God has done, is doing, and will do.  The question is:  will God’s people understand this?  Paul’s obvious aim in writing his letter to the Ephesians is that they would, and thus as part of his letter, Paul prayed that the eyes of the Ephesians (and really all of us who follow Jesus) would be enlightened in order that we might know the hope to which God had called us, the riches of our glorious inheritance, and God’s incomparable great power for us who believe.

So what is our hope and our inheritance?  Well, when Paul spoke about our great hope and rich inheritance, he was referring to good news fleshed out in other parts of the Scriptures, and that good news was that because of Jesus’ resurrection, all of us who believe in him will also be resurrected at the end of times.  And not only that, but we will also dwell in a new heavens and a new earth with Jesus for all eternity - a beautiful, spacious place where all tears are wiped away and peace and wholeness and right relationship reign forever.  

Now, I don’t know about you, but this was not a truth I was explicitly taught when I was growing up in church.  Sure, I recited the Nicene Creed each week which mentions the “resurrection of the dead”, but no one ever really explained this with me.  So for me, when it came to my thoughts on the afterlife, I was more influenced by what our culture told me, such as humans become angels after they die or we finally escape our bodies and become part of a vapory-like heaven.

But the grand narrative of God to which we belong says something very different than both of these two narratives.  The incarnation of Jesus, where God takes on flesh, as well the resurrection, and the new heavens and new earth all make it clear that we look forward to an embodied eternity, and one that is recognizable and consistent with our earthly embodiment while at the same time being imperishable and renewed.  

This is actually a profound belief that has consequences for how we live now.  For, first of all, we live with the hope that no matter what happens in this life, we have a glorious future ahead of us.  Secondly, we find that embodiment and earthiness in the here and now is actually a good thing, and thus part of our call as followers of Jesus is to see the goodness of our whole selves and to care for our bodies.  We are also to care for the protection of others’ bodies and to care for all of creation.  

Simply put, matter matters.  How we currently treat ourselves, others, and the creation is important.  Moreover, in some mysterious way, what we do with creation now has eternal significance.  We actually have the opportunity to take up God’s good creation and make beautiful things from it, which we can offer up back to the Lord in praise.  Thus, all our work, our art, our music, our science and all our means for creativity have the potential to bring flourishing in this world and to create meaning, not just for now but for all eternity. 

And according to Andy Crouch, this process of stuff-making and meaning-making which causes others to flourish is actually how we exert true power in this world. And that of course is a good segue to a discussion on the last part of Paul’s prayer that we would know God’s incomparable great power for us who believe.  

For you see, our hope as Christians is not only grounded in our rich future inheritance, but is also grounded in God’s continual presence with us now through the Holy Spirit.  We are not only sealed with the Holy Spirit as a sign of what is to come, but also as a means of receiving God’s power to be Jesus’ hands and feet in this world now - a world where God’s good gift of power has become terribly distorted.  For sadly enough, most people God has created have exchanged God’s creative generosity for independence, self-centeredness, force, and control.  

However, this is not how it was meant to be.  When we look at the grand narrative of God’s story and we ask what power is for, we see something very different at work.  In the beginning, power was about creating, making room for others, and establishing the conditions for all of creation to flourish.  In Jesus’s resurrection, power all was about bringing life from death, bringing unity where there was once disunity, and reconciling relationships.  And in the new creation, power will be about moving creation to a place of even greater flourishing.  This is what true power is for.  True power is creative generosity, and this power is available to all of us who have been made in the image of God.  Friends, this is an absolutely crucial part of our story.

Yet, what happens, we might ask, when others use their distorted power to take away our power to create things of beauty, meaning, and flourishing?  What then?  

Well, while we might be tempted to then wield our own brand of distorted power to coerce, force, and gain back control, God calls us to a different way. He calls us into his grand narrative of creation, redemption, and new creation.  And thus, for us believers, we have different weapons for exercising power.  

First, we are armed with a firm identity in the Lord and a dignity that comes from being made in his image and being adopted children - a dignity that can never be taken away no matter what others think of us or do to us. Second, we are armed with the truth of God’s grand narrative that begins with love and ends with love, therefore, we can go about our lives in such a way that tells this story.  Finally, we are armed with the transformational power of the Holy Spirit living within us who progressively conforms us more and more into Jesus’ likeness, so we can live our lives knowing we are not alone and that we have more than our own strength to get us through life.

Friends, even when others use their powers to try to control us, they can never take away the power we have in the Lord.  It is always available to us, and with it, we have the ability to change the world more into the world that God intended it to be. The challenge, however, is we truly need our eyes to be enlightened, as Paul prayed, to see this kind of power at work, for Jesus’ way of power is often seen as weak or inefficient or ineffective or too meek or too slow.  

So let me tell you a few short stories now to show you this kind of power at work.  

The first story is one that William has mentioned a couple times now about early believers like Pepetua who died at the hands of the Romans in the arena.  Arrested because of their faith in Christ, these early Christians were sentenced to death in the arena.  Rather than protesting or attempting to escape, these Christians stood in solidarity with each other, held onto the hope of their glorious inheritance, and maintained a peace that was truly beyond all understanding.  Many watching their surprising behavior over and over again, were moved to their very core.  Some even eventually came to follow Jesus.  Now, thousands of years later, Rome is just an ancient memory, while the fellowship of Christian believers we know as the Church is still with us, has expanded greatly, and is still growing and reaching to the ends of the earth.  Back in the day, Rome may have seemed unbeatable, but in the end, Rome’s power was nothing compared to that held by believers like Perpetua and even Paul, himself, who was also imprisoned multiple times and eventually martyred.

Another story we could tell is of Christian abolitionists in the 1800s.  As Esau McCaulley tells it,  early Christian abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth did not have the political or social power to end slavery, yet they were armed with something ultimately more powerful - the power of truth.  They knew that black people were made in the image of God and  were also recipients to God’s promised inheritance.  Thus, they exposed the lie of black inferiority and persevered in telling the truth, despite the challenges they faced and the sacrifices they made, but ultimately because of their tireless efforts and witness to the truth, the great injustice of slavery was eventually abolished in the U.S..   

In a similar manner, a group of African Americans embracing Martin Luther King Junior’s non-violence in the 1960s, brought change to the country when they began their sit-ins in restaurants that denied them equal service.  Again, like their forebears before them, they did not have the political power to eliminate segregation, but they were armed with the truth and dignity of who they were in the Lord and given strength by the solidarity they found in their community.  So they politely seated themselves in restaurants and then were consequently spat upon, pelted with food, yelled at, called terrible names, hit, threatened, and even arrested, but at no point through this ordeal, did they react with violent reprisal.  The inherent dignity they had in the Lord - which could not be taken away -  and the self-control they developed together in community allowed them to persevere.  And eventually the watching world took notice of these brave individuals, and the practices and the laws of the U.S. began to change.  

Friends, when we think of power, the distorted power of the world with its force, coercion, factions, and even lies often seems to win the day in the short-run.  Moreover, when we embrace it, it gives us a sense of control.  It is why some of the kids in the Cobra Kai series are drawn to the Cobra Kai dojo, and more seriously, because it is real and scary to me, it is why some of the people in our nation apparently are drawn to violent protests and attacks like the one that just happened at our Nation’s Capitol.  

Yet, in truth, it is the power we see in the vulnerable, crucified Jesus nailed to the cross and then raised from the dead that ultimately wins the day, both now and into all eternity.  And let me say that again - it is the power we see in the vulnerable, crucified, Jesus nailed to the cross and then raised from the dead that ultimately wins the day.  And this is the power that is to animate all of us who call ourselves Christians. And this is the story we are to tell ourselves and the world.

So friends, as we go into the world with all its false stories, its distorted sense of power, and its injustices, let us remember that we go armed with the truth of who God is, who we are, and what God’s intentions for the world are.  We go armed with the power of the Holy Spirit working within us and through us.  And we go arm in arm with our Christians brothers and sisters in Christ, who encourage us, sustain us, and keep us company as we say ”no” to the false stories of this world and say “yes” to the True Story.

So Mission Cincinnati, my invitation to you this morning is for you to know the True Story to which you belong, to hold onto your hope in Jesus and the the glorious riches of your promised inheritance, and to join in with the company of fellow believers in Jesus, employing his creative, generative power in the world for the flourishing of others.  May it be so.  In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.