St. Paul S United Methodist Church

1St. Paul’s United Methodist Church

Ephesians 4: 1-16 Marianne Niesen August 2, 2015

Worthy of the Call

So . . . a bit of background. The letter to the Ephesians is one of the ‘disputed’ letters of Paul. The dispute is not about whether this is a first century document – we know it is. The dispute is about whether it was actually written or dictated by Paul himself. There are some scholars who argue that it was but most believe it was written a generation or so after Paul’s death. This was a relatively common practice – there was nothing illegal. It just seems clear from the style of writing and the words used that this was a document written by someone who lived within a Pauline tradition, who was clearly influenced by Paul’s teaching but not by Paul himself. The writer sought to faithfully communicate to the next generation what Paul thought was most important for new believers to remember as they followed the Way of Jesus. We also think it was probably not actually written to ‘the Ephesians’ – that is, to the people of Ephesus. It was more likely a general or ‘circular’ letter . . . that is, a letter that was designed to be publically proclaimed, read and heard within many different Christian communities. It did not respond so much to a particular issue in a particular community but was sent off to the ‘circuit’ or to a circle of communities.

In a sense, none of that is important except for a couple reasons. First, what I just said is not new information to anyone who went to seminary. This has been taught for at least the last 50 years or so. But, we preachers have not always been good about communicating this stuff and, inevitably, what I hear now during a Bible study or a class is ‘why didn’t anyone ever tell us this?’ And, the reason, of course, is simply . . . because it takes time and most of us preachers would rather get to the good stuff than spend time like I just did saying what I just said. And here is the second reason I decided to start like this today. The fact that this letter was probably written in the 90’s, some 30 years after Paul’s death doesn’t make it less important. In some ways, it makes it even more important. You see, when the circular letter came to those early Christians, they heard it in the context of their everyday lives and tried to apply it to their situation, weighing Christian values against cultural norms and values. In a sense, isn’t that what we do? As a circular letter Ephesians is timeless. Here we are, over 2,000 years later, reading it in public, on a Sunday in the middle of our everyday lives. And, I would also suggest, over 2,000 years later, we are still dealing with some of the challenges it identifies. The ‘names’ have been changed but the issues remain. We don’t have this ‘Christian living’ thing down yet!

Let’s start with verse 1 . . . I encourage you to live as people worthy of the call you received from God . . . which is what? What is that call to which the writer of Ephesians refers? At its most basic, it is to follow Jesus. It is to live as he lived and to take seriously what he took seriously. And that was a difficult thing to do right from the beginning. The letters of Paul as well as the disputed letters as well as the Acts of the Apostles tell us that there were big issues as early communities tried to figure out how to be worthy of the call to follow Jesus. Early on there 1 were issues around male circumcision and if that needed to be required to be a ‘real’ Christian. There were issues around eating particular foods and whether certain foods considered by Jews to be unclean needed to be forbidden to people who didn’t grow up believing that. By the time Ephesians was written some of that early stuff had been resolved but there continued to be challenges as people tried to get along with each other. The early Christian community was not a homogeneous group. It was made up of men and women, Jews and Gentiles, Hebrews and Romans, Ephesians and Philippians and Corinthians and Colossians and others whose names we probably don’t recognize any more! And, the more the Christian message spread, the more challenging it became. Suddenly people from very different backgrounds were thrust together. People raised in good Roman Gentile homes were associating with Jews who claimed Jesus as Messiah. But those Jews had been raised to believe Gentiles were unclean. And Gentiles had likely been told some equally nasty stories about those strange Jews who held themselves apart and held secret meetings in synagogues. And who knows what those Jews thought went on in Roman temples? And, no matter how sincere the believers felt at the time of their baptisms, no matter how closely they tried to follow the way of Jesus, no matter how ardent they were in their faith, sharing life with people you’d always heard were ‘other’ and ‘wrong’ and, even, ‘evil’ did not become possible overnight. Have you noticed that we still don’t have this figured out? And so the words of this letter continue to challenge all who work to be worthy of the call. And so the letter admonished in the midst of all that, conduct yourselves with all humility, gentleness and patience. Accept each other with love . . . you are one body and one spirit.

With those words, the Letter to the Ephesians holds out both the goal of Christian living and the work we need to do to get there. The writer even gets kinda personal when he says God’s goal is for us to become mature adults . . . we aren’t supposed to be infants, tossed and blown by every wind that blows our way! And, folks, you can be absolutely sure that the reason for this letter was not so much to prevent a possible scenario from taking place. It was to address real issues, real disagreements that were already happening. Which is why he said . . . my friends, you are acting like babies! Grow up already! Act like the people you are called to be. Don’t blame them . . . do your part. Be worthy of your calling. A group of tourists were visiting a rather picturesque town on the outskirts of a well- known city. As they walked by an old man sitting beside a fence, one of the tourists, in a rather patronizing way, asked, "Were any great men born in this village?" To which the old man replied, "Nope, only babies." And so it is! Greatness takes work. Being born into a Christian family, being baptized, did not make a person Christian in the old days and it doesn’t work today. Only the work of acting with love, kindness, patience, every day can do that. Becoming a Jesus follower is easy. Actually being one, living it out, is much more difficult. The Russian comedian, Yakov Smirnoff, commented about what he found in American grocery stores. He said, "On my first shopping trip I saw powdered milk - you just add water and you get milk. Then I saw powdered orange juice - you just add water, and you get orange juice. And then I saw baby powder, and I thought to myself, 'What a country.' "1 And we laugh because that story is funny and yet, we also know that powdered milk doesn’t really taste like milk and 1 Story found in a sermon on this text by Thomas Lentz, A Higher Calling at esermons.com. 2 I’ve never tried the powdered orange juice – but I shudder to imagine it. And giving real life to a child is one of the most difficult and awesome things any of us can ever do. There is nothing instant about raising a child just as there is nothing instant about becoming a Christian. Anything worth doing takes work. As I was preparing for this sermon, I read another preacher’s reflections and he told of the graduation speaker at his son’s college graduation. The speaker was the newspaper editor for The Washington Post, William Raspberry. He began his speech by telling the students that their college, which was Wittenberg, had failed in its education of them, because it had not taught them the first thing about the virtue of hypocrisy. In fact, he said, the professors had taught them to abhor hypocrisy. "That," he said, "is a terrible mistake. Because hypocrisy recognizes that we have standards, even when we don't live up to them." That’s a surprising enough beginning . . . then he went on to make his point: "My advice to you is to resurrect hypocrisy; to pretend that you are better than you really are." Pretend that you really do believe that there are things more important than making a buck. Pretend to love justice and honesty, even when it may be to your disadvantage. Pretend that your spouse and family are more important to you than getting rich. Pretend that you are one of the most humble and gentle residents in your neighborhood. Pretend that you really are a very patient person. Pretend that you believe it is more important to bear a neighbor's faults, in order to keep a spirit of peace. Pretend these things long enough and you will find that they become a part of your belief system. Pretend hard enough and long enough and you will be amazed to discover how much better, how much more admirable you, in fact, will become. The preacher then went on to say: This may sound like strange advice, but it is far better than surrendering to inferior values when we fail to live up to a higher standard.2 To live as people ‘worthy of the call’ is to live as if we are Christian until the time that we actually live as Christians. Too often, we Christians have acted as if our main job is to convince other people to be like us . . . that is, to convert the unbelievers. And, for some reason, we’ve thought the best way to do that is to act in decidedly un-Christ-like ways. Crusades. Threatening people with Hell. Excluding people from the Christian community at times they most need it. Hateful rhetoric. And, if that strategy worked, we’d be there by now! We’d be living in a world ruled by love where all gifts are honored and peace reigned. Maybe it is time to go back to the beginning and to listen again as an early Christian preacher considered the oh-so- human struggles of learning to live with grace and love. Maybe it is time to ponder again the challenge of bringing people together to follow the one they believed was the hope of the world. It was a world struggling with violence and an inequitable distribution of wealth. It was a world where too many people were hungry and too many suffered. It was a world not all that unlike

2 Ibid. 3 our own and that preacher, standing firmly in the tradition of Paul and the vision of Jesus said: conduct yourselves with all humility, gentleness and patience. Accept each other with love. Grow up.

Perhaps if we start there, the world can be changed . . . because we will change. Perhaps, it is time to listen as the timeless words of that circular letter are read once again in public to Helena Christians who still long to be worthy of the call.