S.W.A.B. "Sealed With A Baptism"Ephesians 4:25-5:2
August 9, 2009
On Christian Belonging
Author Ann Weems is reminded of the time she was in Wisconsin leading a worship service at a Conference. Before supper that first night, a man with a southern accent came up to her and asked, Where are you from? When she said, Nashville, he smiled and said, “I knew that.” Who are your people? he asked.Ann recalls that a surge of memories swept over her. She saw faces and names and even smelled some of the sweet aromas associated with home. She had answered the question before: when she went to college in Memphis and when she had married and her name changed. She writes, “I knew what it meant: To whom do you belong? Ann writes. It is an ancient question. It's a means of identification, a claiming of ties. It can instantly open doors or shut them in your face.‘My father is Tom Barr’, Ann replied.His face lit up with a look of recognition. He told the people with him, She's one of us! She's Tom Barr's daughter. They gathered around and led her to their table, talking about people they knew twenty-five years ago in Nashville. ‘We dashed back in time and it felt right, Ann recalled. I belonged. I was accepted. I know who my people are.’” --Ann Weems, Family Faith Stories, (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985), 18-19.
To whom do you belong? Do you know who your people are?
Today with the baptism of Oliver Kramer, we have a chance to talk about this in a personal way. But it’s a question that every one of us can answer. It’s the question that Paul was addressing when he wrote the letter that we now have in Christian scriptures called the letter to the Ephesians. He was addressing people who if they had formerly had any religion at all it was likely to have been pagan – to use a term that doesn’t sound very nice but in reality was just the religious environment of the day…a less offensive word might be “gentiles”. Whatever…they were people who were persuaded to became Christians because of interaction with Paul, and after seeing the behavior of their friends and neighbors who were followers of what Christians in that day called “the Way”…these people came to the faith from the outside, unlike the first Christians who were no doubt Jewish people living in Jerusalem. The world in which the Ephesians lived was full of religion – lots of gods everywhere to choose from. But when they met Christians they saw something that had been missing – a way of life that was different than any religion the Greek culture around them had to offer. It was rooted in the life and teaching of a Jewish carpenter who was believed by some to be the Son of God, the savior who had been promised for centuries. These Ephesians didn’t have the background of the Jewish faith out of which Jesus came; they were grafted into the family by their own choice to follow him. They were rough around the edges, but they were serious seekers. If you want a contemporary image of these people, think of baptized Hell’s angels. A little rough around the edges, but nevertheless a community of believers who found acceptance in Christ and who were trying to live a different life as a result of it.
So Paul wrote with the purpose in mind to tell them who they were now – who their people were. He wrote to tell them that because of who they were now, they were called to live with new rules.
You might say these people had some “issues” to address, with regard to behavior. When Paul writes to them he comes at them directly: “Go ahead, be angry, but don’t sin; thieves among you – stop stealing; do an honest day’s work and share your surplus with the needy; clean up your language, say things to each other that build people up; be gracious…for heaven’s sake, don’t give the Holy Spirit any grief…you were sealed for the final judgment – marked for it – so protect that seal.” Paul doesn’t mince words.
Today's reading is a sketch of what it looks like to say yes to God. If we claim our identity in Christ, if we know ourselves as members of a body, how can we be at war with one another, outwardly or underneath the surface and behind one another's back? If we belong to one another and to the Body of Christ, how can we, for example, hurt one another with angry words and actions? If God has been generous and forgiving to us, how can we who belong to God be anything but generous and forgiving, anything but kind to one another?
It seems like kindness ought to be the foundation of our behavior toward one another; even Plato, long before the time of early Christianity, said that we should "be kinder than necessary--everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle."
Last week I said the central thought of the letter to the Ephesians is that we live in a world filled with discord, disharmony, and disunity. Nation is divided against nation, humankind against humankind, class against class, and within us there is an inner battle between the higher and the lower part of us. In other words, this great letter could have been written yesterday.
Paul believed God’s plan is that all fractures between God and us, and between us and us – all disunity and disharmony – can be resolved in Christ; all people and all nations can become one if we live our lives after the example of Jesus. God’s great dream is that we will all be one, and the way to that end is to be like Christ.
He says “be imitators” of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us…” (5:2)
He was talking about character, a way of living expected if the Christians are to be people who reconcile people to people, and people to God.
John Wesley wrote a sermon called “On Grieving the Holy Spirit” in which he said, "There can be no point of greater importance to [one] who knows that it is the Holy Spirit which leads us into all truth and into all holiness, than to consider with what temper of soul we are to entertain his divine presence; so as not either to drive him from us, or to disappoint him of the gracious ends for which his abode with us is designed; which is not the amusement of our understanding, but the conversion and entire sanctification of our hearts and lives."
That’s the 18th century version. If he were around today I suspect he’d say something like, “For those who are believers and who don’t want to disappoint God, there is nothing more important than character”.
So in this letter Paul writes about rules to live by…tell the truth, don’t steal, speak with grace to one another…
It’s as if bad behavior isn’t just bad manners; bad behavior grieves God because it isn’t becoming of us; we were made for something better – to love as Christ loved us.
It is in Christian baptism that followers of Jesus are marked, and we become "members one of another" (4:25). This means that we live in relationship with others in the family of God, and that means behaving in certain ways.
It’s God’s great dream that we belong to one another in a community of faith....belong to a fellowship that behaves in such a way that God’s great dream for God’s people takes on life in us. It’s about good manners, but more than that; it’s about living as a community of faith.
I want to end with a story from Fred Craddock, the preacher/teacher/writer whose gift of storytelling is legendary. The story has to do with adult baptisms, because that was the tradition of the church where he served at the time. but it’s still a good story and it doesn’t lose any strength because of that detail.
(Craddock Stories, p. 151, “They Call That Church”)
"It's in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for" (1:7b)." Here is what it means to remember who we are, and to remember whose we are. Here is what it looks like if we say yes to God. Here is what it looks like if we claim our identity in Christ, if we know ourselves as members of a body.
