“A Community of Love”
Ephesians 4:21-5:2
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
8/12/18
While the epistle to the Ephesians is definitely Pauline, almost no biblical scholars attribute the letter to Paul himself. The Apostle did go to Ephesus, but the writer of Ephesians doesn’t drop names at the beginning as Paul does to verify relationship and authority. He actually indicates personal distance from Ephesus, saying, “I have heard ofyour faith…and your love.” (Eph. 1:15)
And because most early manuscripts of this letter don’t even mention the Ephesians in the greeting, some scholars believe that a Pauline disciple wrote this letter well after Paul’s death and used it as a kind of general prologue to a circulating collection of Paul’s work.1
Ephesians begins with a long string of pious clichés. Like water seeking its level, the words of chapter 1 just sort of puddle up on the page and go nowhere. In chapter 2, we begin to sense something of a flow. “By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God…so that no one may boast.” (Eph. 2:8-9) Works matter, says the author, but our works witness to God. They’re not a means to curry favor with one who already loves us unconditionally.
“So then,” he says, “you are no longer strangers and aliens, but…members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord.” (Eph. 2:19-21)
The author encourages his readers to understand that God’s gracious initiative is making them one withChrist. And the purpose for being one with Christ is to make them one in Christ. Individually, they’re created in the image of God. And as a community, they’re the body of Christ. It’s always both/and for the Church, beloved disciples coming together as a holy community bound by God’s love for them and their love for God – which is demonstrated in their for one another, and for all that God creates.
Transcending mere belief in religious precepts, discipleship means following a Jesus way of life. It means forsaking the world’s individualism, greed, and fear. It also means honest confession of our sinfulness. And in confession we don’t condemn ourselves, we humble ourselves. When we confuse being chosen and called by God for special privilege, we smugly ignore all the brokenness and pain around us – especially beyond the church doors.
After exposing human self-centeredness, the author of Ephesians offers advice on what following Jesus looks like:
21For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. 22You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, 23and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
25So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.
26Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27and do not make room for the devil.
28Thieves 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.
29Let 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.
30And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption.
31Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, 32and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.
5Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, 2and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (Ephesians 4:21-5:2 NRSV)
It may be tempting to read this passage as nothing more than a list of superficial morality statements, ending with the impossible command to “be imitators of God.” But such a narrow reading mistakes discipleship for an individualistic means of “getting to heaven when we die.” And if we proclaim that Jesus comes to save us from God’s eternal vengeance, then, at some level, we’re saying that he comes to save us from God. Any god who cannot forgive unless something dies a violent, sacrificial death – that’s not the God revealed in the life of Jesus. And a life of fearful submission to rules for the purpose of saving our individual skins from a god on whose anger the sun rises and sets day after day – that’s certainly not the Christian life Ephesians talks about.
“Be renewed in the spirit of your minds,” he says, “…clothe yourselves with the new self, created in accordance with the likeness of God.”(Eph. 4:23-24)This is the “true righteousness and holiness” through which we live not as ones who fear some vengeful deity, but as ones who are responding in grateful witness to God. In Jesus, God reveals the height, and depth, and breadth of agape love from which nothingcan separate us.
That love empowers us for new life here and now.
That love empowers us to speak the truth in love, because to deal dishonestly with others is to deal dishonestly with ourselves.
Selfish anger has the same effect on the community. Pitting one person against another almost always ends up pitting one side against another. It leads to “evil talk” that tears down the community by tearing down individuals within it.
Like termites in the foundation and the walls of the “holy temple” of the faith community, mercenary and fearful actions breed everything named by the author of Ephesians: “bitterness, wrath, wrangling, slander [and] malice,” along with a ravenouslust for retribution. When we nurture those feelings in ourselves, we inevitably project them onto God. That’s when God becomes angry, vengeful, violent, and everything else Jesus is not. And isn’t that when we “grieve the Holy Spirit of God” most deeply?
Perhaps the most illuminating part of today’s reading is verse 28. The instruction to thieves is oddly straightforward, as if thievery were some kind of recognized but second-tier vocation. Oh, and all you thieves, don’t steal. Do honest labor.And, the stated purpose of this instruction, “…so as to have something to give to the needy,” clarifies things not only for thieves, but for everyone.
The purpose of discipleship and Christian community is not maintaining budgets, buildings, and doctrines. Our purpose as a body and as particular members of it is to bear witness to God’s love and grace in the world by caring for those who suffer from poverty, illness, neglect, abuse, and grief. That includes human beings, animals, and the very earth itself.
I know that we live in an anxious, dangerous world. I know that the most dependable god often seems to be Constantine’s god of conquest and domination. And I do know that worldly entities must consider practical questions of how to protect themselves.
I also know that Christian scripture says implicitly and explicitly, “God is Love.”
As a community of faith, do we trust that God is love?
As a community of the Christian faith, do we trust that this God of love is revealed in Jesus Christ whose love for all things is revealed in his willingness to love us until we can’t stand it anymore, until we can’t stand himanymore, until we nail him to a Roman cross, and still we hear him cry, Father forgive them! They don’t know what they’re doing!
Do we trust that God’s love is revealed to us when, after we have denied and killed Jesus, he returns in resurrection “righteousness and holiness” to ask us, as he asks Peter, Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? He asks us this question over and over. He asks it until we realize that for every time we demonstrate our fearful self-obsessions, he is there to give us the chance to profess our love for him all over again, the chance to be resurrected with him all over again.
ThatGod, the one revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, is the one whom we are to imitate “as beloved children.”
We belong to and worship that God, and that God alone.
The table is set with the sacrament this morning. You will serve one another a mustard seed portion of Christ himself. And since you truly are what you eat and drink, may this meal transform you, may it transform us, into some truer, bolder, and more gracious revelation of God who is Love, who is real and trustworthy, and who is even now making all things new.
1C. Milo Connick, The New Testament: An Introduction to Its Thoughts History, Literature, and Thought. Duxbury Press, North Scituate, MA, 1978. p. 334.
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