This morning we begin a five-week sermon series titled, “Excuse Me, but What World Are You Living In?” Each of the Sundays in August we will explore five of the major Christian world views – or five of the primary ways that we can understand ourselves, our world, and our God. We will call these “theological worlds.” Theology being the study of God or our quest for God, or our seeking to understand God. So, our theological world is the way we know, seek out or approach God.
Naming and knowing these theological worlds is important and exciting work. It is my hope that at the end of the month we will be able to do a couple of things. First, I hope that at some point during the next five Sundays you will hear or see or experience something in worship that makes you sit up and say, “Hey! That’s me!” When you get to that point, take note because it probably means that we have arrived at your theological world – your primary way of understanding yourself, the world, and God. This is important because when it comes time to share our faith in word or action, we need to know what we believe, why we believe it, and how we can share our beliefs.The danger in this – and I would prefer to call it “the challenge” before us – is that there will probably be four weeks that don’t make you shout “Finally, he’s talking about me!” I ask you to hang in there and stay engaged because each week we are going to seek out the Good News that each of the theological worlds has for us. So, we are going to expose ourselves to a fuller understanding of Jesus Christ. Beyond gaining a richer view of the Christian faith I hope that we also gain a better understanding of one another. As we experience the different ways of understanding I hope we gain a greater respect for that person sitting next to us, or across the aisle from us, or across the sanctuary from us who may think and act out his or her faith in a different manner.
So with that in mind, let me ask each of you, “Excuse me, but what world are you living in?” As we seek to answer that question let us turn to the New Testament book of Ephesians 2.11-22 as we begin exploring theological world number one: the world of the alien.
(Caution: video contains some vulgar language.)
In the 1982 movie E.T. the Extraterrestrial the large-headed space alien named E.T. gets accidentally left behind by his spaceship. Stuck on earth, separated from his own kind, E.T. befriends a group of suburban kids. In their home E.T. finally learns how to speak and give voice to his deepest longing: E.T. phone home … so that spaceship will come for him and take him to where he truly belongs. E.T. masterfully embodies the theological world of the alien. In the world of the alien we are like E.T. keenly aware that the place where we find ourselves is not where we ultimately belong. No matter how many friends we make, how great a life we build for ourselves, we always remain homesick.
And that really is the sense that dominates this theological world: homesickness. Living in the world of the alien is like a kid going off to camp for the first time. When I was in junior high and still had some promise of athletic skill, my grandma – a proud graduate of Oklahoma State University – sent me to the OSU summer basketball camp. It was great. We got to meet the OSU basketball team. We learned from their coaches. We played scrimmages on the basketball floor of Gallagher Hall. We stayed in college dorm rooms and ate at dorm cafeteria. For as great as that was, my most vivid memory of that week is riding the elevator down to the ground floor on Wednesday night to use the pay phone to call home. I had to force myself to not to cry there in the phone booth as I talked to my parents because I was so lonely that all I really wanted to do was pack my bags early and go home. It took everything I had to hang up the phone and stay there another two days. I don’t know how many times I asked myself, “Why am I even doing this?”
That’s a question that marks – maybe even plagues – those who live in this world of the alien. The burning question for the inhabitant of this world is “Why are we doing this when it is so lonely and foreign and things just are not the way they are supposed to be?” Why are we even alive?
If you feel like a hamster on the exercise wheel running in circles never getting anywhere, always ending up where you began, then you might be a resident of this world of the alien. If you have ever felt like the universe was a puzzle where all the pieces interlock nicely, but you are a piece from another puzzle you don’t fit in anywhere in the puzzle before you, and even worse you can’t find the puzzle where you fit, you might reside in the world of the alien. But even then, there is the realization that if I am a puzzle piece, then there must be a puzzle where I fit in somewhere. There is a longing to be reunited with that place where we truly fit it. The rhythm of this theological world is separation or lostness and reunion. 
Jesus describes this well in Luke 15 when he talks about the lost coin and the lost sheep (and after that Jesus tells the parable of the prodigal son – the lost son who finally returns home). Jesus knew that were people who felt like they didn’t fit it, like they had been abandoned. Jesus knows that there are people who live like the one sheep who cannot find its flock or like the one coin that somehow slipped out of the money bag and became lost in the dust and the darkness and the clutter of the world. The feeling that marks this theological world is a deep longing to return to the whole and to go back and participate in the fullness of life.
This is why people who reside in this theological world during times of death and mourning will tend to say things like, “You’re loved one who died is in a better place,” or “God was calling your loved one home.” Those are word of great comfort for those who reside in this theological world, but for people with other perspectives, these words will be infuriating because they will seem to dismiss this life.
The key for those living in this theological world of the alien is the realization that everything that exists has been created by God, and right now though it may be difficult to realize, everything that exists is being sustained by God, and everything that exists is returning to God. Everything is going home or going back to where it came from.
Jesus Christ comes to reveal this to the world. Jesus is the revealer who comes to lead the people back home. Jesus risks life here on earth where he is separate from God and separate from his home. Jesus risks life and is crucified; he is buried, and raised from the dead, and Jesus ascends into heaven to be reunited with God. Thus the doorway to eternity, the pathway home is opened to us. In Ephesians we heard it put this way: “18for through (Christ we) have access in one Spirit to (God). 19So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.”
In this world of the alien what is ultimately sought is harmony: a place where everything is as it should be; there is no loneliness, no one is left behind, every puzzle piece has its place. The power of Christ is in revealing that place (our home) to us. While we go on living we get only a foretaste of what awaits. Those who live in the theological world of the alien live with a deep sense of mystery where at any moment anything can become transparent to God and to the eternity that awaits us. This morning we have been using music and art and Scripture and movies to reveal, to be transparent to, who God is and to give us just a sample of what God is like and how God is with us.
The beauty of this world is that we can experience right now what Christ has opened to us. We can experience what await us not in its fullness, but at least in some small part. That revelation may come in the stillness of the lake, or the steam rising from the grass as the sun rises, or the smile of a child, or the gentle touch of a friend. Each moment has the potential to reveal to us the promise of our home.
In the theological world of the alien the historicity – the historical facts surrounding the life of Jesus – are not so important. The historical Christ will be important for those who live in other theological worlds, but in this world Christ matters because what Christ made known can still be experienced here today. As we prepare to receive the gift of communion this morning, the theological world of the alien tells us that as we come to the table and receive the bread and wine that this is just a sampling of the community that awaits us in heaven. This is just a foretaste of the abundance that God has prepared for us. This is just a sign of the promise that Christ has revealed to us: while we may feel isolated and abandoned, lost and forgotten, while we may cry out, “Take us home!” God is returning for us and will not leave us for Christ has prepared for us a home. Thanks be to God, Amen.
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