How You Live

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Ordinary 20B

Text: Ephesians 5:15-20

Theme: Living as if your faith mattered

“15 Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, 16 making the most of the time, because the days are evil. 17 So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit, 19 as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, 20 giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

At some point in everyone’s life -- and I do believe this happens to everyone -- we are confronted with the choice to believe that there is something more to life than just what we can see, hear, taste, feel and smell. There is a yearning that raises it’s head and calls out for that which is at that point unknown, and that yearning is straining to hear a reply to it’s call.

If one is in an environment that lends itself to allowing that reply to be heard, it can be the beginning of a beautiful journey of discovery - of both one’s self and of that which is outside of one’s self. In other words, a growing realization that to be truly connected to the material, physical world, one must also be connected to the immaterial, metaphysical world. It is a growing understanding that the two were never meant to be separated - to be divided, to be at odds, at war, in competition.

We live in a world that -- at least since the fall of humanity -- has consciously or subconsciously chosen on the whole to ignore the transcendent aspects of existence for those more immediate, but much more impermanent aspects of existence. That would rather overwhelm the senses with that which can ONLY be seen, heard, tasted, felt, and smelled to the detriment of those other aspects of the universe that are experienced on what would almost seem to be another plane of existence.

Facing the possibility that none of this faith-stuff is real can be -- and IS -- just such a moment. For one who was raised with no memory of life apart from the presence and the influence of faith, having to face that question head on was both a thrill and a terror. It was a thrill because that act of questioning, that act of stepping into the mental/spiritual discussion with what I now understand and choose to call the Holy Spirit, and not knowing how that conversation would wind up - whether with me walking away from all matters spiritual or possibly ending up in a tradition far removed from that in which I was raised - gave me a stake in the outcome that I had never had before -- not that I never recognized the importance of faith, but that I had never gone through the spiritual exercise to own my own faith. This conversation was the closest I was going to come to the experience of someone who had never been exposed to the Gospel, never heard of Jesus, never read the stories of the faith or heard the hymns and songs of the faith that reach down and ‘GET YOU‘ right ... right ... THERE.

It was a terror for the same exact reasons. The prospect of leaving all that had to one degree or another, even absent the ownership I was looking for, been so integral a part of my formation up to that point in my life was ... breathtaking in the WORST way -- I literally found it hard to draw breath when I thought of the possibility that I might come out the other end with a caustic attitude towards all matters of faith.

For a time I had intentionally marginalized myself from active involvement and participation in the life of a community of faith -- a church. I had gone for all my life meeting the expectations that I perceived others had of me as the son of missionaries, so my first step in ... stepping out ... was to actually, physically DO that ... distance myself from the familiar Sunday routine of getting up, getting ready, and going to Sunday morning Bible Study and Worship. To be honest, that ended up meeting with somewhat mixed results ... there were times when I would go for a couple of weeks or maybe three, where I would not find myself in a gathered community to worship ... but it never became the norm. It was always the exception. There was too much of a habit ingrained in me to get up and go on Sunday mornings for me to feel comfortable NOT doing it.

What ended up happening was that I would go to worship and the conversation would be going on in my head as I was preparing to go, as I arrived, as I interacted with the people that were there, and as I went through the motions - the prayers, the bowed head, the standing and singing, the listening to the readings and the messages.

Ultimately, the question that all the angst boiled down to was “is God real, does God exist?”. I had to answer for myself the question of whether or not I believed in the existence of God. At that point, having taken philosophy of religion classes, I was already somewhat familiar with the different arguments for the existence of God, such as Pascal’s Wager (if God exists, then to live as though he does results in infinite rewards; if he doesn’t, you have lost little or nothing, etc), The Ontological (because we can conceive of a God that exists, God must exist), Cosmological (the first cause/purpose argument), Teleological (i.e. the argument from design), and the Moral Arguments (knowing right from wrong implies there is an ultimate authority), and The Argument from Religious Experience. While some of them were persuasive, none of them really sealed the case for me. It ultimately came down to a decision about whether or not faith was going to matter to me.

Is the proposition that God exists, and that in that existence God chose to come to this plane of existence in the form of a human so outlandish an idea as to be rejected outright for it’s basic outrageousness? I think what finally swayed me was what Paul called the foolishness of the Gospel. That it is counterintuitive -- it flies in the face of so-called “common sense” to believe that ... and BECAUSE of that, because I had experienced and seen what the wisdom of man ended up producing ... I’m not saying humanity isn’t capable of doing some wonderful things, we ARE ... but there are basic, critical things, like world peace, hunger, poverty, that we are CAPABLE of addressing but cannot successfully for a whole list of reasons that we really would rather not talk about ... because they show us that we are really not all that advanced as we would like to believe.

So why have I taken up so much time talking about my wrestling with the decision of whether or not to believe and pulled up all this religious philosophy stuff? Because I’ve also discovered that this is a question that needs to be revisited -- sometimes often -- to keep in the front of our minds how we are to deal with a world that is -- sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously -- asking itself the same questions.

Paul’s entreaty to the Ephesians to be careful how they lived -- as wise, not unwise people -- and to make the most of their time, brought together two cultural streams. His reference to living wisely drew from the Hebrew concept of wisdom, which is more an attitude towards life, and not a knowledge-based concept. And his reference to making the most of the time they had was a Greek economic term - it literally means a snapping up of all the opportunities that are available -- picture a marketplace, and a customer is faced with multitudes of REALLY good bargains ... a first century equivalent of a clearance rack or shelf. He says clearly, don’t occupy yourself with foolishness, with things that don’t matter in the long run, that are so much fluff, but find out and DO what God wants you to do!

A friend joked about that next verse - don’t be drunk with wine, but if your beverage of choice is beer or vodka, you’re off the hook ... :-)

Seriously, Paul is both closing the argument of the previous statement as well as setting up the next statement he makes. Drunkenness - and daily drunkenness -- was literally a way of life at the time. Think of how hard it was to just get through the day in the first century ... not that I’m excusing the practice, but on some level, it would seem to make sense to escape the harshness of living by drinking yourself into a stupor each night. It was even an expected part of the rituals for the multitude of gods that were worshipped in the Greco-Roman world. So for this new, upstart group to come along and say that they were no longer going to be involved in the daily ritual of drinking your supper, but were rather going to engage in helping out the widow down the street, or the orphans around the corner, or the beggar that always sat at the city gates ... it just went against the NORM ...

Paul’s suggestion that, instead of being full of wine, Christ’s followers should be more about seeking the fullness which the Spirit gives is pointing them in the direction that will engage them in the worship that WILL fill their lives, that WILL draw them closer to God, that WILL fill them.

I hope we’ve all had that experience -- of hearing a song, or singing a song that brings a knot to our throat and a tear to our eye. One that we just throw back our head and sing long and hard because it is SO where we are at THAT PARTICULAR moment ...

That is the spirit moving ... that is God drawing close, tuning our hearts and singing along with us ... and molding and making us into his beloved children.

Let’s pray.

Imitators, Beloved Children

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Ordinary 19B

Text: Ephesians 4:25-5:2

“25 So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. 26 Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and do not make room for the devil. 28 Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. 29 Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. 31 Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, 32 and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

5 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, 2 and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

Paul is well aware as he is writing to the churches he worked to establish that he might not have long to live. There is a sense of that in what we are reading this morning. He has just finished warning the people in the church to beware of continuing to live as those who do not know Christ, who have not heard the Gospel, who have not become aware that what they believe IS to have an effect on HOW they act -- with each other as well as with everyone around them in the ‘outside world.’

In this section of his letter, he runs down what could sound like a laundry list of things to check off as this mixed bag of people - from all walks of life, it seems - are learning to live together in community with each other. There are essentials to healthy relationships that are foundational in order for those relationships to last - to grow - to deepen, and to thrive, and Paul starts at the very heart of them.

The first is so basic as to beg the question, why is it listed -- be honest with each other. The fact that it is first here speaks to the context into which Paul was writing -- and in which the people were living -- more than it does to any specific problem with one or two people within the congregation. It would seem that, at the time, telling the truth in any dealings one had -- whether business or personal, was maybe not the norm but the exception; so to become a part of a community in which truth WAS the standard - the norm - and NOT the exception, was not only an adjustment, but a necessary element of belonging TO that community.

Paul’s explanation is simple: because we belong to one another - ‘we are members of one another‘ If we can go back to the analogy of being part of one body, how well does a body function if the message that is sent from one part of the body, say, the brain, to another, for example, the feet, is scrambled? We would end up tripping and falling, wouldn’t we? Or if we saw something we wanted to pick up, and the brain sent the message to close the fingers too early or too late ... it would be difficult to do even the simplest task, wouldn’t it?

Paul is underscoring the foundation of the relationships modeled on the message of the Gospel - it is truth. It is so basic that without it the rest is useless. If you have ever been in a relationship where you discovered that someone wasn’t telling you the truth ... or maybe WE have been the ones who were not truthful ... how does that relationship stand out in our minds? How deep does the pain go even now, when we remember what it was like when we discovered the falsehood, what felt like our hearts were being ripped out of our chest?

The natural response, in addition to pain, is anger, and Paul goes right to that with his next statement - he acknowledges that there IS a place and a time for anger; he says “BE angry!” There ARE things that it is APPROPRIATE to get angry about or to BE angry about. But he knows what unresolved anger can do to a person. It can, very simply, poison the whole of a person’s character. Unresolved - meaning unexpressed, unaddressed, or suppressed anger can and does fester. It infects the whole of a person’s character and personality. I don’t presume to know all the psychological ramifications of supressed anger, but I can speak from experience and say that unresolved anger becomes uncontrolled anger at the worst possible moments - and ends up being directed to everyone BUT the person, persons, or situations that were the originators of it. I’m afraid that in American Evangelical Christianity today, we have done ourselves a disservice in equating being angry with sinning. Anger in and of itself is no sin. It is how that anger is handled - or not - that can lead to the sin. What Paul is telling us is that when we get angry we deal with it. We go to the person with whom we are angry, talk it out, hash out whatever needs to be hashed out, clarify what needs clarifying, iron out whatever differences are apparent, and have it done and over with -- preferably before the day is over.

And that can be tough. There is a certain righteousness in the anger of one who has been unjustly injured, isn’t there? You can feel better about yourself for a good long time if you know that you have been injured by the words of someone who has told a lie about you. It can last for several days, if not weeks, or maybe even years ... so we are sometimes ... reluctant to resolve an issue that has caused us pain and anger because we are the ones who may seem to be benefitting from it.

The truth of the matter is, as Paul states, ‘do not make room for the devil.’ That would seem to be the farthest possibility from the situation as we could think of, don’t you think? When WE have been the injured party, when WE were the ones in the right, when WE, when WE, when WE ... do you see what the danger is of letting anger remain unresolved? We begin to focus on ourselves more than on the other person, more on our feelings of pain and suffering than on how to respond as Christ did, in love and sacrifice. We soon forget that God in Christ was about reconciliation, not about retribution.

Next, the fact that Paul writes to someone or some PERSONS in the church and addresses them as THIEVES ... again, speaks to what the society of the time was like. I like how Eugene Petersen phrased it in his paraphrase of verse 28; “Did you use to make ends meet by stealing? Well, no more! Get an honest job so that you can help others who can't work.”

And then he really gets down to the heart of the matter: “don’t speak evil of one another, but only say encouraging words, that affirm or build up as needed ... “ I have been pleasantly surprised at the last couple of sayings on the marquee at Calvary Baptist Church’s sign, across from the Hardee’s in town: the latest is actually a variation of this verse: “don’t speak unless your words can improve the silence.” It seems a point well taken.

I would again go to Petersen’s ‘The Message‘ with verse 30: “Don't grieve God. Don't break his heart. His Holy Spirit, moving and breathing in you, is the most intimate part of your life, making you fit for himself. Don't take such a gift for granted.” How often do we unthinkingly do or say something that is completely out of character with God and with Christ and not even realize it? That is taking God’s grace in the person of the Holy Spirit for granted.

Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, 32 and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

Finally, in his instructions for dealing with those lingering negative aspects of our lives, Paul is as clear as he can be in telling us to LET GO -- to let go of bitterness, of wrath, or anger, of wrangling ... contentiousness would be an alternative to that word, along with malice - that is, LET GO of any desire to inflict the same pain as that which we have been subjected to.

He barely misses a beat when he goes into the instructions on what TO do - on how TO BE with each other:

Kind

Tenderhearted

Forgiving.

Again, Paul doesn’t leave it on this plane of existence when he speaks of how we should treat each other, but he points to the bar that we should all aim towards: As God in Christ has forgiven you. No more, no less. And it is not an unfair comparison. He is not setting us up for failure. He is reminding us that THAT is where the ability, the strength, the resolve and the ... grace to BE THAT WAY with each other will come from - The Holy Spirit dwelling in each of us, and grown and nurtured and matured to the point where we will listen to HIM, and not our own voices, when we are learning to live in community.

Finally, children will imitate their parents.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, we heard it in Hannah’s toddler ‘thank you’, and we’ve all (I hope) had the joy of watching a child mimic his or her mother or father - whether it is washing the dishes, having a tea party and carrying on a conversation, or doing things around the yard. There was even a memorable Anti-smoking Public Service Announcement that came out in the late 60’s, a man in his mid 30’s and his 6 or 7 year old son, doing various things - painting, washing the car, driving, going for a walk and throwing a rock, punctuated by the voice over saying ‘Like father, like son.’ It was one of the more effective, and definitely heart-wrenching, PSA’s of the time, since it ended with the phrase being posed as a question when the little boy picks up his father’s cigarette pack and looks at his father, who has just lighted one and is smoking it.

It is no different with us as followers of Christ and children of God. It is through Christ’s example that we understand God, and it is in our practicing that living - as Christ lived - in love - that we begin to understand more and more the heart of God and the love of God. Insofar as God gave himself in our place in the person of Jesus, we are likewise to give OURselves for God’s sake.

Let’s pray.