RVCC Pastor's Sermon

Sermon - August 9, 2009

“Talking the Talk”

By Rev. Nancy Foran
Ephesians 4:25 – 5:2

Over the past several Sundays, we have reflected upon stories about Jesus in the Gospel of John. For the past two weeks, for example, we have put ourselves in the midst of that enormous crowd of 5000 people who followed the rabbi along the shores of the Sea of Tiberius.

Through dramatic skits (thanks to Andy and Hannah) and sermons and songs, we have imagined ourselves to be one of those men or women who forgot to bring a lunch that hot summer day and instead feasted upon the miracle of Jesus’ multiplying two fish sticks and 5 small loaves of barley bread.

Last week, as we shared communion, we imagined ourselves hearing for the first time Jesus’ memorable words: “I am the Bread of Life.” Worship has been a time for us to try to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.

This Sunday, however, is different because we are not immersed in a Gospel account of Jesus’ life. Instead, we are focusing on a letter written by the Apostle Paul, or more likely one of his later associates, to the congregation of an early Christian church in Ephesus.

Today we are one or two generations removed from the crowd that knew Jesus first hand. Rather than oohing and aahing at the miracle of multiplication as the crowd of 5000 in John’s Gospel did, today we are trying to make sense of stories like that one within the message of the resurrected Christ. The purpose of Paul’s letters is understandably different than the purpose of the Gospels.

You see, early church congregations two and three generations removed from Jesus were often more concerned about developing a coherent belief system or theology about Jesus the Christ than they were sometimes about actually living day to day as his disciples.

Methodist preacher, Richard Stetler puts it this way: “The early translators of the Scriptures were more interested in people worshipping Jesus as their Lord and Savior than they were (in) stressing the process Jesus described that would make their discipleship visible, that is, love your neighbor, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you or radiate God’s likeness in darkness.”

Paul understood this disconnect between the abstractions of what was believed, on the one hand, and how life was actually lived, on the other. It is this divide that he seeks to address in the passage we just read.

In this letter to the Ephesians, Paul addresses a group of early Gentile Christians who were striving to create a loving, life affirming community with each other. Because they did not possess a solid religious foundation like their Jewish Christian counterparts, Paul specifically instructed them how to live, what to do, and what not to do. After all, they were pagan converts learning to be faithful Christians, one bumbling step at a time (Dolan) – perhaps not all that different from us all these centuries later.

The question that Paul’s tries to answer in plain and ordinary language is this: What does it mean for you or me to be a convert to Christianity?

I know that we do not like to talk much about converts and conversion in the United Church of Christ, but that is what is going on here. We – you and I – have freely chosen to proclaim ourselves followers of Jesus, and surely the very act of this proclaiming necessarily involves changing or converting our priorities and how we live our lives.

As U.C.C. pastor, Kate Huey wrote, “this week's reading from the Letter to the Ephesians gives us good reason to think about what it means not to be just a name on the rolls of a congregation but a living, breathing, "whole and holy" follower of Jesus, with our hearts and minds and entire selves converted--transformed--by giving our lives over to God in Jesus Christ…. If we are truly given over to Christ, truly transformed, people will be able to see it. It will show.”

Our transformation will show, of course, in the outreach and mission work we do – and we talk about that a lot here at RVCC. However, there is another facet of our conversion or transformation. Kate Huey continues by writing that “earlier in the Letter to the Ephesians, the author invited us to think about walking the walk as much as talking the talk, and this week's passage challenges us to examine our talk as well. Not so much our public or official speech, really, but our everyday, person-to-person talk, with one another and about one another.”

In his letter, Paul shares in typically Pauline fashion, something reminiscent of a laundry list of dos and don’ts for communicating with one another – as Jesus would have us do.

Apparently, anger and talking behind one another’s backs had become a real issue in the Ephesus congregation and so was a concern for Paul. Church goers were taking advantage of one another – you know, the same people doing all the work – and some of them were getting riled up and highly critical of one another as a result. Wow – doesn’t that sound like a small church! Not that such behavior has ever happened here!!

In response to the situation, Paul admonishes the church folk in Ephesus. No more lying, he writes. Speak the truth in love. After all, we are all one community. We are all in this Kingdom of God thing together. We are all heading in the same direction.

Secrets and parking lot conversations blow up in our faces more often than not, causing more hurt than an honest conversation. Speak words tempered by compassion. It is not that we must not disagree or that somehow conflict is unchristian. It is how we handle the disagreement or conflict. It is whether we use words of grace as we work our way through it.

Do not give in to anger, the Apostle continues, at least not the anger that causes us to lash out at one another. Avoid those words that may first come to mind – the ones that hurt, the ones that cut down rather than build up, the ones that are destructively critical rather than constructively helpful.

Someone once described a child as a balloon that is inflated by kind and confidence building words, language that promotes self-esteem. The balloon just gets bigger and more ebullient. However, one cutting criticism spoken out of anger is like a pin popping the balloon and deflating it completely. I think that image works for most of us adults too.

I mean, heaven only knows, we have enough to be angry about in this world without being angry at one another. And there is nothing wrong with anger. Remember Jesus on his rampage in the temple in Jerusalem. The tables of the moneychangers went flying, and sacrificial pigeon vendors did not know what hit them.

Oh, there is a place for anger all right – but it is not between us in a Christian community. Be angry about injustice, unfairness. Be angry when a child has no safe place to sleep. Be angry when a mother has no milk left to breastfeed her own baby because she is malnourished. Be angry when a man cannot secure a job that provides health care for his family. Be angry about injustice – not angry with one another!

Do not make the Holy Spirit sad, stresses Paul. Instead, well, be imitators of God. Be like God. Live like you are God – forgiving, kind and tender-hearted, compassionate, always speaking the truth in love. Simply be like God.

You see, Paul is concerned not only with what we believe – our theology – but also with how we behave to one another as people of faith. As preacher Lynn Dolan writes, “Strange thing is people not only listen to what we say, but also pay attention to how we live. What we do and what we say should all serve to usher in the kingdom of God. What we say, how we say it, the words we use, our tone of voice, whether we have the courage to look someone in the eye, whether we are willing to stand toe to toe to speak our truth, all this matters.

Beautiful stories alone (like the miracle of the loaves and fishes) will not save the world. The world will not be redeemed unless we put those truths into action, when they become enfleshed in our own lives,” a part of who we are.

And it all begins, right here, in this very community, in this church family, Paul says. Here is the safe place to be like God, to talk the talk of love. That is what Paul wanted the church folk in Ephesus to do, and I think that is what Paul wants us to take away from this letter as well.

And what does it look like – this imitating and playing at being God, this speaking the truth in love, this using words and even actions that build up rather than break down? Richard Selzer in his book, Mortal Lessons, uses this example.

"I stand by the bed where the young woman lies, her face post-operative, her mouth twisted in palsy; clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh.... Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, the nerve was cut.

Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and altogether they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private.

Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily?

The young woman speaks. 'Will my mouth always be like this?' she asks.

'Yes,' I say, 'it will. It is because the nerve was cut.'

She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles.

'I like it,' he says. 'It is kind of cute.'

All at once I know who he is. I understand, and lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close, I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works."

That is speaking – and living – the truth in love. And the essence of what Paul seems to be saying to us is this: Go, and do likewise.

Sermon - August 9, 2009

“Talking the Talk”

By Rev. Nancy Foran Ephesians 4:25 – 5:2

By Rev. Nancy Foran
Ephesians 4:25 – 5:2