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A lot of our view of the Bible and the people in its pages is misconceived. We have the romanticized notion that back in the time of the New Testament, all these saintly religious people agreed about everything in their religion and life was just a wonderful love fest. The truth is, when we read the Bible honestly we discover that it is the story of people who, like you and I, struggled, wrestled and argued to make sense of the one true God they experienced in Jesus of Nazareth. In the New Testament we see the story of church that does not grow and progress in logical organized steps, but struggles with explosive and uncontrolled growth from a variety of cultures and locations.

Take the Letter to the church in Ephesus. Although it claims to be written by the apostle Paul himself, many biblical scholars believe it to be the work of one of his students. This was a common practice in the ancient world and was in no way considered fraudulent or deceitful. By the time this letter was written, late in the first century Christianity was a diverse movement.

Unlike many of the churches that New Testament epistles are addressed to, the church in Ephesus was not even started by Paul. So this letter may be an attempt to summarize Paul’s theology for them. The letter explains in great detail the Jewish roots of the Christian movement since for the Ephesians living in what is now southern Turkey there was no direct link to Judaism and the Jewish homeland. Their story of following Jesus came about in a completely different way.

Yet this author has a broad enough view of what it means to follow Jesus to tell these Ephesians, people from a completely different ethnic and cultural background that we are all united under “one Lord, one faith, and one baptism.”

In our day, some take those words “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” and make them into a train track. It is narrowing and confining. There is no steering wheel, one just remains moving forward on the defined path.

For those on the train, the route and edges of the track is obvious. It is as if the track just somehow miraculously appeared one day. In a loop of circular logic, they claim that there is only one track, because it is self-evident that’s what the map says.

However, those train riders give little thought to the fact that the map was drawn by someone. The map is an interpretation of the landscape and not always the same thing as the landscape. The track was constructed, that choices were made where to lay the track and where not to lay it. Although the destination is divine, the track is a human construction, a product of reading the landscape centuries ago and making choices choices which over the years became unquestioned assumptions. To make matters worse, some on the train confuse getting on the train with arriving at the ultimate destination.

Train tracks have their limitations. They are not adaptable. It takes a huge effort of time and money to create new ones. When new territories and worlds are discovered across the oceans, a train can only bring you as far as the shoreline. Train tracks have their limitations.

Looking around the Christian landscape today, we see a lot of one track minds. People want to ground their religion secure its rigidity by hammering spikes into the ground. The spikes can be seen in slogans like, “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.” Some Christians are so enmeshed in the tradition and interpretive framework of fundamentalism and biblical literalism, that they cannot even see it as a tradition or an interpretive framework. For them it is simply, the truth the way things are supposed to be. So as far as settling differences of opinion about the Bible, there are no differences of opinion. It says what it means plain and simple.

When these train riders come to a passage like this one in Ephesians they will often emphasize the words “We must no longer be like children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine.” And you know something? Like the author of Ephesians, they are right. As followers of Jesus, we must not be blown around by every new idea, spiritual best-seller or movement. Mistakenly, some train riders imagine that the only alternative to riding the narrow defined track of the train, is to be blown around aimlessly like a hot air balloon.

One of the great things my family enjoys about the location of our home is the view. From our front yard we can see for miles to the west of Warwick. We overlook the whole wide open spaces of the black dirt onion fields. Every summer, in the early morning or at dusk, we see hot-air balloons rising from those fields and drifting freely and aimlessly over the mountains.

I am a big fan of lighter than air flight. Sometimes I believe I was born about 75 years too late because my secret dream is to be an airship pilot. Unfortunately, aside from a few blimps, airships are mostly a thing of the past. So these balloons are the closest I get to see something like an airship. At least once a summer, I watch these balloons descending from their flights and quickly gather up my kids for a ride. “Come on,” I’ll say, “Let’s go see where it’s landing.”

The challenge of following a balloon is that you never can be quite sure of where it will land. When pursuing one in our car, we will spot the balloon over the trees, thinking we know where it is heading only to discover that the winds are taking it somewhere else.

Aeronauts have little control over where they are going. There is a reason that hot-air balloons never became a major form of transportation. As a means of reaching a destination, they are less than ideal. They are at the mercy of the winds. There are currents that can lead them into high voltage lines and currents that can lead them to a picturesque touchdown in a wide open field. The pilot has minimal input over which course to take. That is why they always carry a bottle of champagne with them. While a way of celebrating their safe landing, it is also a peace offering to whoever’s property they have trespassed on in their landing.

When we allow ourselves to be blown about by every wind of spirituality, the train riders are correct. We can be like that aimlessly drifting hot air balloon. There is no reason to work through disagreements about God since for a balloon rider, any path is as good as another.

Several years ago, I was at a dinner party at a friend’s house. After dinner, somehow the discussion turned to me being in seminary, spirituality and beliefs. There was a woman there who described her very strict Christian upbringing, and how it had understandably turned her off to organized religion. Consequently she was now on a more generic spiritual path that she was assembling for herself.

A friend of mine, a very intelligent man, chimed in about a new religion he was exploring. He discovered it on the web. It was based on the claim of an alien race coming to earth long ago and passing on some great truths about the universe to a chosen race of ancient people. The first woman added that she was exploring a similar path, although the web site she went to found its connection to truth from a different race of aliens from a different planet.

I tell this story not to mock my friend’s beliefs at the time, they were very sincere people, but to make an observation. As I saw them from time to time over the ensuing years, I noticed that they did not grow much. For people who boasted of being so spiritual, I saw very little spiritual growth in their life. Instead, they accumulated interesting collections of spiritual paths but never seemed to journey very deeply into any of them.

It reminded me of an observation made by Syd Field in his book about screenplay writing. He said that whenever you begin writing a screenplay and you reach that point of writer’s block, you will always get an idea for a completely different screenplay. It is difficult, he said, to resist the temptation to stop writing the first story, and begin work on the second one. If you do abandon your first story for the second, you will quickly find that you abandon the second for a third one, and so and so on. In the end, you will never develop as a writer, and you will never finish a story.

The author of Ephesians tells us that there is an aim to our story. We have a definitive destination. Surprisingly, he does not limit it or define as simply going to heaven after we die. The destination in our journey, we are told, is to mature in spiritual growth to be more like Christ, to promote the growth of one another and the church. In short we are called to grow up.

Claiming that following Jesus can be reduced to simple answers is not a mature outlook. Jesus said we needed to have faith like a little child. But I believe he was inviting us to give up our need to control, not to rely on easy answers. Jesus said the road that leads to life is narrow. But I believe he was speaking about the difficulty of the path, not preaching against a broadness and diversity of intellectual thought. Simple answers are for little children and our text today challenges us to grow up.

On the other hand, saying anything goes or all paths lead to God is equally childish. Being blown by every wind of doctrine leads inevitably to a doctrine of self-gratification. It creates spoiled and bratty kids, not mature spiritual people.

Unfortunately, the only modes of spiritual transportation most of us have been exposed to are track-locked trains and aimlessly drifting balloons. I believe that Jesus and the early church had a much different method of spiritual transport in mind. Our journeys need to be less like trains, less like balloons and more like gliders.

Gliders, or sailplanes, are very different. The word gliding may bring up connotations of drifting. We use expressions like, “he just glided right through that test.” Interestingly though, the sailplane community does not refer to their sport as gliding but uses a much more evocative phrase. They call it soaring.

Unlike a balloon with minimal control over its flight, or even a powered aircraft with total control sailplanes are somewhere in between. They are at the mercy of wind currents but they can control which current they fly in. Sailplane pilots know how to read the currents. They can look at the landscape and discern where they can expect wind currents, called thermals to be rising from to provide them a lift. They know where the wind currents will shorten their flight or are dangerous. As they get more seat time and gain experience they learn to discern those currents with greater wisdom.

As we soar together on this Christian flight, we too need to discern the wind currents. As a church, our beliefs and doctrines are like those air currents. They determine our trajectory through life.

Some currents may take us places that we do not want to be. Some winds of doctrine will take us on a beautiful journey and some will take us nowhere. Like its aviation counterpart, this soaring is more of an art than a science. It offers neither the mindless certainty of the train tracks or the noncommittal drifting of a balloon. Instead, it offers the adventure of flying on the winds of the Spirit.

So as the soaring church, how do we navigate these thermals and winds? As people with diverse experiences and opinions, how do we all get along?

The Letter to the Ephesians gives us some practical advice. We are to be patient with those who hold differing views than ours. That is not a popular view in our culture. Our media is filled with talk shows and news programs that pit opposing views against one another. Both CNN and Fox place pundits in on screen graphic boxes where they can impatiently attack and interrupt each other with one liners and insults. So the tendency in our churches is to behave with much the same rancor as a cable news “expert.” We label instead of listen and diatribe instead of dialogue.

But when we are mature Christians, our calling is to break outside the narrowly defined boxes in which our culture attempts to confine us. A mature Christian engages in dialogue with patience and gentleness, not with liberal elitism or conservative meanness - conservative elitism or liberal meanness. A mature Christian has the wisdom to “speak the truth in love” knowing that any truth spoken outside of the winds of love is no truth at all. A mature Christian knows that any wind that does not take us more Christ-like place, is not a wind on which the church should fly.

So today, I invite all of us, as the church of Jesus Christ to venture beyond the false security of a one-track faith and beyond the false freedom aimless drifting. Instead Christ calls us to a more difficult, but more mature, life of soaring to new heights of growing to be more like him. Stop settling for easy answers or aimless drifting. Jesus invites you, and this whole church, to soar.

“Trains, Balloons and Sailplanes” by Don Heatley
Ephesians 4:1-16
An alternative to one-track religion or aimless drifting
A lot of our view of the Bible and the people in its pages is misconceived. We have the romanticized notion that back in the time of the New Testament, all these saintly religious people agreed about everything in their religion and life was just a wonderful love fest. The truth is, when we read the Bible honestly we discover that it is the story of people who, like you and I, struggled, wrestled and argued to make sense of the one true God they experienced in Jesus of Nazareth. In the New Testament we see the story of church that does not grow and progress in logical organized steps, but struggles with explosive and uncontrolled growth from a variety of cultures and locations. Take the Letter to the church in Ephesus. Although it claims to be written by the apostle Paul himself, many biblical scholars believe it to be the work of one of his students. This was a common practice in the ancient world and was in no way considered fraudulent or deceitful. By the time this letter was written, late in the first century Christianity was a diverse movement. Unlike many of the churches that New Testament epistles are addressed to, the church in Ephesus was not even started by Paul. So this letter may be an attempt to summarize Paul’s theology for them. The letter explains in great detail the Jewish roots of the Christian movement since for the Ephesians living in what is now southern Turkey there was no direct link to Judaism and the Jewish homeland. Their story of following Jesus came about in a completely different way. Yet this author has a broad enough view of what it means to follow Jesus to tell these Ephesians, people from a completely different ethnic and cultural background that we are all united under “one Lord, one faith, and one baptism.” In our day, some take those words “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” and make them into a train track. It is narrowing and confining. There is no steering wheel, one just remains moving forward on the defined path. For those on the train, the route and edges of the track is obvious. It is as if the track just somehow miraculously appeared one day. In a loop of circular logic, they claim that there is only one track, because it is self-evident that’s what the map says. However, those train riders give little thought to the fact that the map was drawn by someone. The map is an interpretation of the landscape and not always the same thing as the landscape. The track was constructed, that choices were made where to lay the track and where not to lay it. Although the destination is divine, the track is a human construction, a product of reading the landscape centuries ago and making choices choices which over the years became unquestioned assumptions. To make matters worse, some on the train confuse getting on the train with arriving at the ultimate destination. Train tracks have their limitations. They are not adaptable. It takes a huge effort of time and money to create new ones. When new territories and worlds are discovered across the oceans, a train can only bring you as far as the shoreline. Train tracks have their limitations. Looking around the Christian landscape today, we see a lot of one track minds. People want to ground their religion secure its rigidity by hammering spikes into the ground. The spikes can be seen in slogans like, “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.” Some Christians are so enmeshed in the tradition and interpretive framework of fundamentalism and biblical literalism, that they cannot even see it as a tradition or an interpretive framework. For them it is simply, the truth the way things are supposed to be. So as far as settling differences of opinion about the Bible, there are no differences of opinion. It says what it means plain and simple. When these train riders come to a passage like this one in Ephesians they will often emphasize the words “We must no longer be like children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine.” And you know something? Like the author of Ephesians, they are right. As followers of Jesus, we must not be blown around by every new idea, spiritual best-seller or movement. Mistakenly, some train riders imagine that the only alternative to riding the narrow defined track of the train, is to be blown around aimlessly like a hot air balloon. One of the great things my family enjoys about the location of our home is the view. From our front yard we can see for miles to the west of Warwick. We overlook the whole wide open spaces of the black dirt onion fields. Every summer, in the early morning or at dusk, we see hot-air balloons rising from those fields and drifting freely and aimlessly over the mountains. I am a big fan of lighter than air flight. Sometimes I believe I was born about 75 years too late because my secret dream is to be an airship pilot. Unfortunately, aside from a few blimps, airships are mostly a thing of the past. So these balloons are the closest I get to see something like an airship. At least once a summer, I watch these balloons descending from their flights and quickly gather up my kids for a ride. “Come on,” I’ll say, “Let’s go see where it’s landing.” The challenge of following a balloon is that you never can be quite sure of where it will land. When pursuing one in our car, we will spot the balloon over the trees, thinking we know where it is heading only to discover that the winds are taking it somewhere else. Aeronauts have little control over where they are going. There is a reason that hot-air balloons never became a major form of transportation. As a means of reaching a destination, they are less than ideal. They are at the mercy of the winds. There are currents that can lead them into high voltage lines and currents that can lead them to a picturesque touchdown in a wide open field. The pilot has minimal input over which course to take. That is why they always carry a bottle of champagne with them. While a way of celebrating their safe landing, it is also a peace offering to whoever’s property they have trespassed on in their landing. When we allow ourselves to be blown about by every wind of spirituality, the train riders are correct. We can be like that aimlessly drifting hot air balloon. There is no reason to work through disagreements about God since for a balloon rider, any path is as good as another. Several years ago, I was at a dinner party at a friend’s house. After dinner, somehow the discussion turned to me being in seminary, spirituality and beliefs. There was a woman there who described her very strict Christian upbringing, and how it had understandably turned her off to organized religion. Consequently she was now on a more generic spiritual path that she was assembling for herself. A friend of mine, a very intelligent man, chimed in about a new religion he was exploring. He discovered it on the web. It was based on the claim of an alien race coming to earth long ago and passing on some great truths about the universe to a chosen race of ancient people. The first woman added that she was exploring a similar path, although the web site she went to found its connection to truth from a different race of aliens from a different planet. I tell this story not to mock my friend’s beliefs at the time, they were very sincere people, but to make an observation. As I saw them from time to time over the ensuing years, I noticed that they did not grow much. For people who boasted of being so spiritual, I saw very little spiritual growth in their life. Instead, they accumulated interesting collections of spiritual paths but never seemed to journey very deeply into any of them. It reminded me of an observation made by Syd Field in his book about screenplay writing. He said that whenever you begin writing a screenplay and you reach that point of writer’s block, you will always get an idea for a completely different screenplay. It is difficult, he said, to resist the temptation to stop writing the first story, and begin work on the second one. If you do abandon your first story for the second, you will quickly find that you abandon the second for a third one, and so and so on. In the end, you will never develop as a writer, and you will never finish a story. The author of Ephesians tells us that there is an aim to our story. We have a definitive destination. Surprisingly, he does not limit it or define as simply going to heaven after we die. The destination in our journey, we are told, is to mature in spiritual growth to be more like Christ, to promote the growth of one another and the church. In short we are called to grow up. Claiming that following Jesus can be reduced to simple answers is not a mature outlook. Jesus said we needed to have faith like a little child. But I believe he was inviting us to give up our need to control, not to rely on easy answers. Jesus said the road that leads to life is narrow. But I believe he was speaking about the difficulty of the path, not preaching against a broadness and diversity of intellectual thought. Simple answers are for little children and our text today challenges us to grow up. On the other hand, saying anything goes or all paths lead to God is equally childish. Being blown by every wind of doctrine leads inevitably to a doctrine of self-gratification. It creates spoiled and bratty kids, not mature spiritual people. Unfortunately, the only modes of spiritual transportation most of us have been exposed to are track-locked trains and aimlessly drifting balloons. I believe that Jesus and the early church had a much different method of spiritual transport in mind. Our journeys need to be less like trains, less like balloons and more like gliders. Gliders, or sailplanes, are very different. The word gliding may bring up connotations of drifting. We use expressions like, “he just glided right through that test.” Interestingly though, the sailplane community does not refer to their sport as gliding but uses a much more evocative phrase. They call it soaring. Unlike a balloon with minimal control over its flight, or even a powered aircraft with total control sailplanes are somewhere in between. They are at the mercy of wind currents but they can control which current they fly in. Sailplane pilots know how to read the currents. They can look at the landscape and discern where they can expect wind currents, called thermals to be rising from to provide them a lift. They know where the wind currents will shorten their flight or are dangerous. As they get more seat time and gain experience they learn to discern those currents with greater wisdom. As we soar together on this Christian flight, we too need to discern the wind currents. As a church, our beliefs and doctrines are like those air currents. They determine our trajectory through life. Some currents may take us places that we do not want to be. Some winds of doctrine will take us on a beautiful journey and some will take us nowhere. Like its aviation counterpart, this soaring is more of an art than a science. It offers neither the mindless certainty of the train tracks or the noncommittal drifting of a balloon. Instead, it offers the adventure of flying on the winds of the Spirit. So as the soaring church, how do we navigate these thermals and winds? As people with diverse experiences and opinions, how do we all get along? The Letter to the Ephesians gives us some practical advice. We are to be patient with those who hold differing views than ours. That is not a popular view in our culture. Our media is filled with talk shows and news programs that pit opposing views against one another. Both CNN and Fox place pundits in on screen graphic boxes where they can impatiently attack and interrupt each other with one liners and insults. So the tendency in our churches is to behave with much the same rancor as a cable news “expert.” We label instead of listen and diatribe instead of dialogue. But when we are mature Christians, our calling is to break outside the narrowly defined boxes in which our culture attempts to confine us. A mature Christian engages in dialogue with patience and gentleness, not with liberal elitism or conservative meanness - conservative elitism or liberal meanness. A mature Christian has the wisdom to “speak the truth in love” knowing that any truth spoken outside of the winds of love is no truth at all. A mature Christian knows that any wind that does not take us more Christ-like place, is not a wind on which the church should fly. So today, I invite all of us, as the church of Jesus Christ to venture beyond the false security of a one-track faith and beyond the false freedom aimless drifting. Instead Christ calls us to a more difficult, but more mature, life of soaring to new heights of growing to be more like him. Stop settling for easy answers or aimless drifting. Jesus invites you, and this whole church, to soar.