The letter to the Ephesians:
This has been our focus text as a church since Christmas and though there are many different ways to approach a series our approach to this text has not been systematic.
We didn’t exegete specific texts. We didn’t divide it up into parts to be sure we focused on the entire letter. We didn’t preach on it every Sunday – or five or six Sundays in a row, because we wanted to and needed to focus on other parts of the life of our church. Interspersed with this series we had a St. Clair O’Connor Sunday in January. On February 6th, we heard from our past chair J.D. and our new chairperson Jana as they reflected on the overall life and vision of our church when we marked the turn over of our church from one year to the next after the AGM. At that service we also blessed the members of our newly reconfigured committees and ministry teams. And then most recently, last Sunday, we held an Interfaith service – that highlighted beautifully for us how our relationships with people of other faiths is foundationally built on our relationship with God and flows out of the love and hope and peace known in Christ. It is good that our focus on Ephesians did not interrupt the flow or the life of our church, for Ephesians is all about the life of church as it can be imagined and as it is. The point of the letter addressed to the Ephesians is to immerse us in the work and life and love of God that gave us Christ and through Christ the church and if the letter immerses us in the life of God and Christ and the church then we do well not to step out of the life of the church to pay attention to it, but instead allow it to enter into and inform and shape our lives as we live church here together. Living with Ephesians these last several weeks has been like that for me. It has been an immersion. Jodie and Aldred and Tim’s sermons on this text were part of my immersion. The stories they shared of how different themes in this text have shaped them have continued to wash over me in the weeks since they preached. Jodie’s contemplation on chosenness with reference to a Flannery O’Connor story freed something in me. Tim’s stories of his own childhood witness to the effects of Ephesians on the lived experience of his community will not soon fade in my memory. And next Sunday when John Epp shares an oral presentation of Ephesians with us, we won’t be able to help but be soaked by some of the waves of this living water. However the lives we live in this world would love to immerse us in so many other things besides the life and work and love of God as expressed so well in Ephesians. Do you ever feel immersed in new technologies for example? I was looking at advertisements for Google apps and iphone apps this week. Apps is short for applications. Google apps will help you get connected and be more productive. Apparently iphone apps can help you do almost anything you can imagine. Did you know there are over 350,000 apps available for iphone or 350,000 ways to make the iphone even better? There’s almost no limit to what an iphone can do. (I’m quoting a few ad slogans, of course) I was most intrigued by the Roman Catholic Confession App, which sells for 1.99 and is the only religious app in the top 10. This app walks people through confession step by step, reminds users when their last confessions were and keeps track of sins they have previously confessed. It allows a “custom examination of conscience, based on age, sex and marital status,” the ability to add sins that aren’t listed and a choice of seven different acts of contrition – prayers that express sorrow for sins. However, absolution or release from the sin can still only come from a priest. I wonder why I was interested in that app? Maybe I don’t have enough opportunities to confess. More pertinent to my own profession, however, I could download a Bible app – so that I could reference scripture wirelessly from anywhere, or I could regularly receive updates from sermon.net, incase I don’t have enough sermon ideas of my own.
Facebook would love to connect me to all of these kinds of apps or services as well – though I don’t know as much about that. The waters of these immersions sometimes feel deep and dark to me – I find it a bit hard to sort out the life-giving water from the water that threatens to drown me in the realm of new technologies, but I’ll return to a consideration of this in a moment. Or do you ever feel immersed by fears of what will happen in the world given the unrest in the Middle East? We do not yet know what the global geopolitical or economic implications will be for all those millions of people in North Africa and the Middle East demanding fairly paid and meaningful work, affordable food and governments that will listen to them. And some people fear for the people of Israel in the midst of all of this. We long for justice and human rights for all Palestinians and Israelis’ who share the land in that region, but we ask, what will be the cost to those viewed as occupiers and oppressors? And that is only one of the questions that our newspapers were asking this morning. There are many more. Or do you ever feel immersed, more locally, by political positions or persons or parties that serve their own or even our own self-interests while ignoring the cries of the poor and creation? More locally, we long for increased energy sustainability, a city that we can traverse quickly and efficiently when we need to, affordable food and housing for all, but its hard to see how certain economic theories like corporate tax cuts, paying 80 plus cents per kwHr for solar energy, or a completely reformulated transit plan will benefit those who need help the most. And what if the people who need to be served the most – don’t include many of us? If we think about all the different things within which we could be immersed, it’s like the water we swim in has had a few oil spills and all we really long to do is dive deeply into clean pure water. Immersion in Ephesians and its exhortations has the potential to provide some of the clean pure water for which we long.
Therefore… live a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called. In Ephesians 4:1, the text I used in my first sermon on Ephesians, the word “therefore,” throws a life buoy or a life preserver into the water for us. With this “therefore”… we are given protection and something to hold on to in
the midst of all the waters that threaten to overwhelm. And in today’s text there is another “therefore” at chapter 5:1. “Therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” And in chapter 6:13 there will be another one. “Therefore, take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. The word, “therefore” is sprinkled throughout the letter to provide us with something to hold onto when the waves get rough. Does this mean that Paul’s exhortations to lead a life worthy of the calling to which we have been called, or to imitate God as beloved children, or to take up the whole armor of God provide us with Exhortation apps or applications we can apply to any or all situations? I wish it were so easy. But no, actually, not if applications do what I think they tend to do and that is to make us think that we are in charge or in control of our situation. Applications, after all, allow us to do almost anything that we can imagine. They allow us to be connected and productive and even to calculate and tabulate our sins and our frequency of sinning if we want them to do so. How often have we read devotionals in our lives that provide us with applications of a given text for our daily lives? While not a problem at all and helpful on one hand/ on another hand, even these can erroneously encourage the illusion that somehow once we figure out the mystery called God, then or therefore, we can go on our way and know exactly how to approach each and every situation.
Looking again at Ephesians 5:1, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. This is not an app, but rather an invitation to recall that our lives are most fruitful when we participate in the life and work and love of God. This verse asks us to imitate God, and as such echoes a core verse of the Torah, Leviticus 19:1,2 where it says, “you shall be Holy for I the Lord your God am Holy.” And this is not something we do, or are in charge of or can accomplish by keeping track of all the many parts of our lives with our apps no matter how hard we try. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God … for we are what God has made us.” The first three chapters of Ephesians have been eminently clear. God blesses us, chooses us, adopts us, lavishes grace on us, redeems us, grants us peace and loves us beyond reason, because God has created us in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. The exhortations in the second half of Ephesians, to walk worthy of the calling to which we have been called and to imitate God and to take up the whole armor of God are the ways we practice the resurrection life into which we have been called, but it is never only up to us and we are not in charge. So how do we imitate God if it is not really up to us and we are not in charge? Let us think about the lives of children. In this verse we are called beloved or well loved children. Well-loved children live in families where there are fairly simple structures, like meal-time, play time, nap time, time for age appropriate chores, story time, prayer time and bed time. Within these simple structures and rituals that of course vary from family to family children learn to imitate their parents and those in the family who are more mature than they are. For Christians who are called to imitate God, where are the simple structures and rituals that reveal God’s love and work to us? In Ephesians and for us those structures and rituals are played out in the church – the body of Christ and family of God. And just as no family is perfect, there is conflict and rule-breaking and boundary testing and sometimes very little energy to keep up the pattern of these structures, so it goes with the church. And yet, that’s what God has gifted us with through Christ. Church is the place where we immerse ourselves in the stories and structure and rituals that reveal God to us and encourages us to imitate what we experience. Each week as we gather, each year as we move through the seasons of the church, each time we work with each other on a project, or join in a potluck and we sing, pray, hear the words of scripture and are encouraged in our lives of faith. In all of these ways we are immersed over and over again in the story of the life and work and love and resurrection power of God.
And lest we take this story within which we are immersed for granted, in our post-modern, post Christian, post everything context, let me tell you a brief story.
A local minister friend of mine here in the Beach within the last year hired a young woman to help with the church’s technology needs. This young woman had no church background, but was interested in the stories and the rituals of the church. Last year, approaching Easter as the young woman was working on some of the printed materials for the Good Friday and Easter weekend worship services, my minister friend found her at her desk in the church weeping. Of course the minister asked her, “what’s wrong,” and the young woman looked up from her work and said through her tears, “he dies and it’s so awful.” Let us never wonder if the story we immerse ourselves in week after week can be taken for granted. Immersion in the love and work and life and resurrection power of God, as revealed to us in Ephesians, is the pure clear water for which we long and in the church, even if there is the occasional oil spill, it is still this immersion in the waters of God with a few life preservers close by that allows us to know how to see, view and respond to all the other things that threaten to overwhelm us; like 350,000 apps, like fears about the global geopolitical situation and our own attempts to wade through local political concerns. And even if Apps can do more than we can imagine – the question becomes – to what end? Immersion in the life of the church and its story – its foundation and founder Christ – helps us to sort out those ends. According to Ephesians we are invited to rely on and participate with the One who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.