Matt Chandler - Examining Roots: Renouncing, Rerooting and Asking

If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab them. Ephesians chapter 2 will be where we camp out for our entire time together. I might read a couple of other texts, but we’ll pretty much just be anchored in this one. We are in week eight of our Recovery and Redemption series, and I thought it would be a good time to drop a stake in the ground and remember a couple of things before we move forward. Next week and the week after that, we’re really going to discuss relationships and what it’s like to walk with others and engage with one another in our shortcomings and failures as those who have been redeemed by the gospel.

So if we could be honest, my expectation is that you will be. Being a Christian has not saved us from conflict; would anyone say that being a Christian has saved me from conflict? In fact, I have found that sometimes my Christianity has actually caused a little bit of conflict. Ultimately, how do I interact with those who have harmed me? What do I do with the fact that I have most definitely harmed others? How do we walk together? What does it look like to be reconciled to people? What does it mean to make amends? When should I absorb? When do I have to hold on to things? When do I let go? All of these things we’ll discuss in the next couple of weeks. So make sure you’re here for that, especially if your history is littered with broken relationships.

I don’t mean that literally. If your actual history has dead bodies in it, then go turn yourself in to the police. But if you’ve got a lot of tumultuous relationships presently or in the past, the next two weeks will be, I think, extremely helpful regarding how we approach and look at those things moving forward. I want us to revisit some ideas and reset some concepts so we can take the last seven weeks and drive a single stake in the ground that can serve as our compass as we navigate the last four weeks of this series.

I’ll tell you that this time of the year has served me well in prepping for this sermon, and what I mean by that is that today I want to discuss the reality of an ongoing ethic—not a type of silver bullet mentality, but genuinely an ongoing ethic and understanding. Here’s what I mean: this time of the year is helpful. I am 39; I’ll be 40 in June. It’s hard for me to get my mind around that, but trust me, I’m okay with it. I’m perfectly fine with getting older; I’m not unhappy about it. So no sports car in my future; I’m doing fine.

Being the age that I am, I don’t remember people being as excited about Halloween as they currently are. We’re decorating at a clip that only a couple of years ago saw us on the Night Before Halloween, putting our kids in the car and driving around while listening to Halloween music as we looked at decorations. Now, if you’ve decorated your house for Halloween, I’m not judging you. I’m just saying it’s new—or perhaps I’m just now noticing it. Maybe people always did this, but I haven’t seen giant inflatable Frankensteins in yards until recently. People have cobwebbed up their trees and placed floating heads hooked to chains on the trees out front until recently. Am I wrong here? I’m willing to be wrong.

I had part of my brain cut out; maybe I don’t remember, but it seems we’re really buying into this Halloween thing. And why shouldn’t you? Free candy, right? As a parent, I don’t really like the holiday. I think it’s cute that my kids get dressed up, but I’ve found a direct correlation between the amount of candy they consume and my ability to parent righteously. The more sugar they take in, the harder it is for me to parent in a righteous way. So, really, Halloween isn’t a great time for us because I feel like we can never get through the night without me threatening someone—not an adult, of course. I mean I’m threatening like a seven-year-old.

You want this night to get really scary? Because Daddy can make this night scary. If you shove your sister one more time, I’ll show you what really scary looks like. It always turns into that, and so it’s not my favorite holiday. But here’s the thing: as I’m driving home, I see a yard that looks like a scarecrow vomited on it, complete with a giant werewolf. Werewolves have been around for a long time; they’re not merely an American folklore idea. In fact, they go back thousands of years, and early on, werewolves were often blamed for any unsolved murders. If someone was murdered and it was unsolved, it was the werewolves who did it.

Now, if you’re a nerd, what I’m referencing is a lycanthrope.