What if the church were like a family?
Family
How do you know how much you’re worth?
When I was a kid, our family played a lot of card games. Games like War where 2 people lay down a card at the same time & which ever card has more value wins.
Then I learned games like Black Jack where you have to get the right cards with the right value together to get 21 or you bust.
Then I really enjoyed watching the old Kenny Rodgers movies called, “The Gambler.”
“You got to know when to hold ‘em. Know when to fold ‘em. Know when to walk away. Know when to run!”
I learned from Kenny Rodgers that if you get 4 of a kind or a full house, you’re probably going to beat the cards the other person is holding.
Then there was the other game I loved, Spades. And what was amazing about spades is that if you have a 2 of spades, a 2… seemingly low value, it would beat an Ace from any other suit. Because in spades, the spades, because of it’s color & it’s suit, trumps any card of any other color or any other suit! Those are the rules. That’s how the game works.
You don’t have to like it. But we’ve made the rules, determined the values each card holds & you win or loose based on the cards your dealt.
Value and Worth
Sometimes we assign value to people like we assign value to cards.
[Tweet “Sometimes we assign value to people like we assign value to cards.”]Some of you are where you are in life today because of the cards you’ve been dealt.
You didn’t get to choose the family you were born into. You didn’t get to choose the color of your skin. You didn’t get to choose where you grew up. You didn’t get to choose the education you had access to at an early age.
There’s so much in your life that you didn’t get to choose & the reality is you had to play with the cards you were dealt. And you’ve done the best you could.
Others of us were dealt a favorable hand. We think we’ve earned it or achieved it, & maybe we did. But truth be told we were dealt a good hand.
Whatever cards we were dealt, more often than not we’ve determined our worth, our value, based on those cards.
It sounds crazy. If we were really playing a game of cards & the cards you were dealt were not very good, I would never say, “Your worthless,” because of the cards you were dealt!
But in life, we’ve assigned worth to people based on the cards they were dealt.
Even though we know that this is not how it should be we still struggle with assigning worth to people based on what we see.
A House of Cards
There was another game we played with cards when I was a kid. We would take a deck of cards & try to build a house of cards.
Did you ever do this?
The hardest part was just getting started. Once you got started, you could keep it going. You could add on. Build a second story or third story.
You know what’s interesting about building a house of cards? When you’re building a house of cards you probably never once looked at the value of the card. You never look at the 3 of clubs & say, “O no, don’t put that there! It will never work!”
Or, “Take the 5 of diamonds & set it off to the side, we’re not using that card. And make sure the jokers are off to the side as well. They’re no good!”
You would never say that when you’re building a house of cards because you know, it doesn’t matter.
When you’re building a house of cards, they’re all the same! They all have equal value & equal importance.
The Church as a House
That’s why I think it’s so important that we begin to reimagine the church as a HOUSE.
Peter, who spent 3 years with Jesus, spent the rest of his life trying to help the church understand that in this house that God is building, this house where every person is a person of immeasurable worth, this house where Jesus died for every single person, this house where we are all equal at the feet of Jesus, that because of what Jesus has done for us we are to treat each other differently.
Peter says…
Through Christ you have come to trust in God. And you have placed your faith and hope in God because he raised Christ from the dead and gave him great glory.
For Peter, this is where everything begins & ends. Everything begins & ends with the death, burial & resurrection of Jesus! What we have in common in this house is that we trust God because of what God did through Jesus.
Because Jesus trusted God when He faced the cross. When He endured the crucifixion. When He knew that torture & death were imminent, Jesus TRUSTED God the Father.
And because Jesus trusted God, you can trust God too.
You were cleansed from your sins when you obeyed the truth, so now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters.
Then Peter says, when you obeyed the truth, when you walked through the waters of baptism in obedience & faith Jesus did what only Jesus could do… he washed away your sin! Through the waters of baptism we become FAMILY.
[Tweet “Through the waters of baptism we become FAMILY.”]And by the way, this is where we discover that we are all EQUAL. Because the ground really is level at the foot of the cross. In this house your value is found in the price Jesus paid for you & He gave His life for you!
So Peter says, because of this…
Love each other deeply with all your heart. For you have been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal, living word of God.
House Problems
You know the hardest part of building a house of cards? Keeping it all together!
As a kid, there was nothing more frustrating than having a pretty impressive house of cards built, only to have someone walk by & knock it over!
You know this… we have an enemy who would love nothing more than to knock down the house God is building.
And you know the enemy’s greatest weapon? He’s almost always uses the same weapon… Jesus wants to build a house where every person is a person of immeasurable worth. But the enemy wants to keep reminding us that different people have different value.
[Tweet “One of the enemy’s greatest weapons is to point out how we are different.”]That some people are more important than others. That the value on the cards really does matter.
And it’s a lie!
The truth is that the love of Jesus transcends our labels & transforms us into FAMILY.
[Tweet “The truth is that the love of Jesus transcends our labels & transforms us into FAMILY.”]So how do you know how much your worth?
Take one look at the cross.
I know, the temptation is to look at the cards you’ve been dealt. The temptation is to derive your worth from the world. The temptation is to base your worth on what you look like, on what you have, on where you’re from or maybe on where you’re going.
But Jesus changed the game at the cross.
Now every card, every person, has incredible value.
Incredible worth!
And when we come together, God puts us together to create a beautful house. And this house is the family of God.
