Give Up Living as the Pagans Do!

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

August 8, 2008

Text: Ephesians 4:25--5:2

We have a grand time when someone who espouses a set of moral standards publicly fails to measure up, as if we are confirmed in our belief that anyone who believes in a code of right and wrong must be hypocrites. We definitely have a cynical streak when it comes to morality.

For many, it seems wiser to be one who minds their own business, enjoys life and its pleasures, and not try to espouse any particular moral code. We equate righteousness with being self-righteousness, and morality with being moralistic.

And yet we know that our common life in communities depends on the observance of some basic moral order.

We ask ourselves what a life well-lived looks like. We have all sensed the need for a moral compass to guide us, patterns of life that call for self-discipline and community-mindedness. This may be the carry forward lesson we have learned in the current economic crisis: it matters what people decide in closed rooms!

The old adage rings true: If we have no convictions, this doesn’t mean we believe in nothing. It means that we may fall for anything.

Life abhors a vacuum. Some pattern, some discipline is essential, and some community---- even if the pattern and community are self-destructive. I watched a documentary recently of  young men in prison in Mexico, arrested for gang-related crime. When asked what they would do when they were released, they said that they must go back to their former lives because they belong to their gang. In it, they have a code to follow and friends who will stand up for them.

So it is worth revisiting Paul’s letters  especially when Paul begins to speak of the virtues of the Christian life. In our quest for a balanced and well-lived life, wise in the long run, what can Paul teach us?

The church in Ephesus had received new converts, especially gentiles (non-Jews). These new converts had brought their old ways into the church. And their behaviors have proved to be disruptive and threatening the credibility of the church’s witness.

Among the most popular beliefs they brought into the church was gnosticism: from those “in the know.” Gnostics believed, among other things, that this material world (especially our bodies) were not of God, and therefore they could live “unzipped” lives-----“since the flesh doesn’t matter, we can do what we want.” Some Gnostics  advocated an extreme asceticism, believing that it was wrong to enjoy any of the pleasures of the physical body, to deny themselves of bodily pleasures.

But the Christian view was more nuanced. Christians and Jews and Jewish Christians believed that life is a good gift to be enjoyed and we need a pattern to live it well. We need structure to channel our freedoms.

The gentile Christians in Ephesus to borrow from Palph P. Martin, author of Interpretation: Ephesians, Colossians and Philomen) were

 “indifferent to all distinctions between good and bad;  lost in a willful disregard of moral values; always lusting for more of whatever they wanted; unrestrained appetites,” giving full play to their anger [“nursing their wrath to keep it warm!”). Their membership included thieves, they occupied themselves with gossiping and lying about others, not caring for others in need. They practiced  “calloused self-assertion, and they were “ruthless in trampling on the rights of others.” (pages 55-62))

So the gentile Christians are told to “put off” their old ways and “put on their new natures and (lead) upright and devout lives called for by the truth.”

Paul uses  before and after language a lot. “Once you were…..but now……”  Indicative language about that which God has done for them leads to imperative language about what they should now do to practice their newness.
The Good News is not merely a structured life to follow, moral code to believe in. Paul preached that we are trapped, caught in behaviors that are self-destructive and other-destructive, foolish. We are surrounded by “enemies of the soul.”  The result is that we find ourselves “dead to all feeling……. abandoned ….. to vice,” and there is no indecency [we] will not practice.” (Verse 19 We find ourselves trapped in a “concern for nothing but the satisfaction of our own impulses.” (Martin) If we know another way to live, we can’t find the strength by ourselves to live differently. We are addicted, habituated, programmed to live without an inner guide, at the mercy of whatever comes along parading as the good life.

But, God in Christ has freed us and opened our minds to an alternative way to live and the strength to do so, in relationship with a gracious God who has created us for good works. So receive the love of God into your life and accept the benefits of life in relationship. Markus Barth writes: “The life of the Christian is the life of a free person, not of a puppet, or of a well-made watch. When the Christian obeys God, then he or she obeys personally the personal Lord, not some regulation.”

Paul calls attention to what was once called “the expulsive power of a new affection.” (From Baillie’s Diary of Readings) Love invades our hearts and minds and the old ways of living are displaced, not because of fear of punishment but because of the promise of a fresh new way of being and becoming a person.

Simon Tugwell: “”We can now only grow up properly by a painful dismantling of our false grown-upness. Jesus was a child with us so we can be led back to childhood and grow up again, this time in a true way.”

Note that Paul is teaching simple virtues, a form of decent, self and other-respect:  speak the truth to each other; if you are angry, don’t let it fester (forgive, let it go;) earn an honest living, so you will have something to share with the needy! When you speak, let your talk be a blessing;  be generous, tender-hearted, forgiving.

Now there is more to the Christian life than these virtues. But in recent years we Methodists have neglected these aspects of personal holiness, to our detriment. These practices are nothing more than love in action in relationships with those closest to us. They are the glue which holds community together.

John Wesley wrote of the “ restraining and renewing influence of the Holy Spirit.” Life in the Spirit is not simply just doing what feels right to us at any given moment. But we are to “Live in love as Christ loved you and gave himself up on your behalf…..”

Why should we put a rein on our attitudes and behaviors?

We belong to one another as parts of one body. We are a “third race,” one people from many nations and places, Jews and Gentiles made one family. It is hard to believe sometimes, but water (of baptism) is thicker than blood (race or ethnicity or family). And more enduring.

We belong to God now, through Christ, in the Spirit:
 
Life without God in our lives is like a sail boat without a rudder: we may sail many directions, but we will finally end up straight into the wind, idle, drifting wherever the currents and prevailing winds decide to push us!

And life without the community of faith is like trying to sail the ship all by yourself.

 Part and parcel of the Good News is a wiser way to live: with the love of God dwelling in us and giving and receiving support and accountability within a caring community.

We are people who recognize our own helplessness apart from God, and the wonder of being “built up in love.” The most attractive witness to the gospel is a body of Christians having the time of their lives giving themselves for others in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ.