Introduction

This talk was given at St. Peter’s Church on 25 May 2025. Revd. Mark Fletcher explores Christian transformation through the Holy Spirit, examining how church community facilitates spiritual maturity through relationships, service, and continuous learning. The sermon challenges believers to grow beyond childish patterns into Christ-like maturity through committed community involvement.

They say that growing older is inevitable, but growing up is optional, and it’s certainly true that you should never lose that childlike sense of wonder and that joy and excitement about life. But of course, immaturity in adults is not a good trait. And the danger is that we live in a society where people don’t learn to grow up well.

And childishness in adults is not only tolerated, it is accepted. And so whether that’s in a kind of emotional immaturity or a tendency towards attention seeking, or impulsiveness, or bitterness, or tantrums or deceitfulness. The trick is to grow up without growing old. Now we are thinking a little bit in these weeks after Easter about what church is and what it is for, and if you were to ask people outside what we do here, they might be able to tell you about the worship or about the prayer, or about the serving one another or about the preaching, but perhaps not answer the question why.

Why do we do this week by week? What is it for? There is a very interesting clue to that in our reading today. Verse 11 says this. Christ himself gave the apostles and the prophets and the evangelists, and the pastors and the teachers to equip his people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and the knowledge as a son of God and become mature, attaining the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Do you see? That whether you are nine or 90, the expectation is that you are growing and attaining maturity. You are not staying as you are. You are being changed little by little.

You are growing to be more like Christ. It is Jesus who is the model, the inspiration, the guide, and the standard that we set. And God created churches like this in order to help you and me to grow to maturity in Christ. So how does that happen? I think it probably happens in many different ways, but I’ve drawn from this passage three ways in particular, that being part of church helps us to grow and to grow up well.

And the first is this. Maturity comes through relationships. Maturity comes through relationships. Church is made up of so many different people at so many different stages of life. It is not made up of people just like us, and it’s perhaps one of the only places in society where these cross sections of people will actually meet.

And that richness and diversity is one of the means by which we grow up in some really good ways. By having good examples and role models and people who’ve gone there before us. The ability to learn from the experience of others and learning to love people who are different from us. There are depth of experience and wisdom here as part of this congregation, and it would be a tragedy not to learn from those.

I always think I’d hate for the first time that you go through one of those really difficult episodes in life for it to be your own experience, that was the first time. That there are people here who have been through all sorts of things, and the ability to learn from that wisdom is an opportunity not to be missed.

We should learn from one another. And I think that works in all sorts of different ways. That if you are older here, you should be learning from the younger people who live in a rapidly changing world and are learning to adapt and learning to live out their faith in a world which is nothing like the one that perhaps you grew up in.

And of course the same is true in reverse. Younger people should be learning from older. What a shame it is to miss out on that wisdom or experience. But I think also relationships bring maturity because they are not easy. That’s why in verse two it says, with all humility and gentleness, and with patience, bear with one another in love.

Can you hear what’s behind that verse? It’s a recognition that community is difficult and the tendency of our world is always, if things are difficult, to just walk away. Whereas church holds us together. Committing to relationships when they are difficult is one of the essential parts of growing up and growing up to maturity. Learning to love, even when it’s not easy.

Learning to forgive, to resolve problems. This is the way of Christ and is the way of maturity. And if we are to be church together, we need that patience, that humility, that gentleness, and that ability to bear with one another. I’m struck that immaturity in adults almost always comes from being sheltered, almost cosseted not having to face up to real life and real people’s things. To never really be challenged.

And the good news is that the community that God has planned for this world is one which includes all sorts of people, but that’s going to require patience and humility in order to be part of. Are you growing in your relationships? Are you growing in your ability to cope with the difficulties that happen in relationships?

Are you learning the necessity of forgiveness and of reconciliation? How are you growing? So maturity comes through relationships. Secondly, maturity comes through serving. Verse seven says, each of us was given grace, according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Each of you has been given gifts by God.

You might be very aware of what they are. You might not be clear what they are, but I can tell you that God has given you gifts and they are to be used and used well. And perhaps not used in the way that our society sees them. We tend to think that if someone has gifts, that they are to use them for their own enrichment or their own success or their own status.

So if you are a gifted musician or a gifted athlete, or you are really good with numbers, then you use them to feather your own nest. But Christian gifts are absolutely not given for that purpose. They are given for the sake of others. They are given to serve others. And there’s a really very interesting line in verse 12 where it says, the apostles, and the prophets and the evangelists, and the pastors and the teachers are given to equip the saints for the work of ministry. Do you see? That all of those roles are there to equip you for works of service. Church is not a service for you. It is a place for you to learn to serve. A flourishing church is one where everyone plays their part and develops their gifts and uses them for the sake of others.

And I don’t just mean that in upfront or senior ways, that the ability to simply serve people by listening well, by being with them in the hard times, by caring for them, learning the wisdom and the ability to pray with people. It’s an incredible blessing and an incredible way to serve people, even in quite a humble way.

I think immaturity comes from having everything done for you. And maturity comes from serving other people. It’s not really until you, take what you’ve learned and you put it into practice that you really learn it. Paul writes in verse 16. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work. It couldn’t be clearer, could it? A church like this only works if each part does its work, whether in humble ways or in grander ways. All of you have a part to play to build this church. So maturity comes through relationships, maturity comes through serving, and then finally maturity comes through learning.

I love to see people growing in their understanding, in their knowledge of scriptures, learning theology. We have been given these amazing brains, and they are to be used to make sense of life, to make sense of the world. The goal is verse 13, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. Immaturity is always a failure to learn.

And the danger is as we go on, we become set in our ways and stuck in our thinking. You should be reading and talking and thinking and questioning, and helping others to find answers to their questions. You should be asking people what they’ve read or listened to recently that was good and to be learning from others.

Are you seeking answers to the questions that you have? Are you helping others in their questions? I’m struck that knowledge is always applied. It’s not simply theoretical. It’s about the ability to live well and live wisely in a culture which has a tendency to lead people into places where they fall apart.

And it’s all about the knowledge of Jesus. Verse 13, we are growing into the knowledge of the son of God. And so this is about keeping faith and practice and prayer together, that we might grow in knowledge of and not just knowledge about Jesus. And like I say, this is serious. So the culture that we live in is not a sort of easy journey anymore.

It’s not a sort of pleasure cruise across a glassy sea. It is a dangerous passage across a stormy ocean. Look at verse 14. Then we will no longer be infants. Tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.

We need to learn together to be skillful navigators, to travel safely through a dangerous world, to help each other to navigate well and avoid the danger of being shipwrecked. This stuff is not theory. It’s survival skills. So whatever stage you’re at, however long you have been on this road, you are still growing and you are still called to be, as verse 15 says, speaking the truth in love, growing up in every way into him, who is the head, into Christ.

This is what you’re called to. Each of you and each of you together in your relationship to one another. This is a picture of what you will one day ultimately be. But we are on that journey now. You are part of a body playing your part. You are one of many, but you have a crucial role to play. And in all things, we are growing into maturity, into the fullness of Christ.

I think the final thing I would say is that there’s a challenge here to each of us, to you and to me because in order for this to happen, we need to lose something of ourselves. We need to lose something of our ego and our individualism. And in losing that, we will set ourselves free and we will find who we are really called to be.

But Paul, I don’t think could be more serious about this need to grow up and to grow up well, and he says in verse one, as a prisoner for the Lord then I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling that you have received. Christ has done something astonishing for you, and he has offered you a gift beyond price.

It would be a shame to not take that as the most precious and serious thing and to live a life worthy of the calling that he has laid upon you.

Amen.