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| An Old Family Recipe August 10, 2003 - Ninth Sunday after Pentecost TEXT: Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 6:35, 41-51 © 2003 Tina Blair |
For how many of you is summer the time when you brave the heat and gather with your extended family? In the US, large family reunions are popular, and often include as many as 100 or more people: 3 and four generations of adults and children, grand- and great-grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and grandchildren - all meeting up together. American families even make a special T-shirt for the occasion with the name of the family and the date emblazoned on them (Smith Family Reunion, August, 2003). Family reunions are popular in France and the Philippines and in Africa, in fact, family is highly valued in every culture.
Family gatherings are frequently a time of swapping stories, of remembering family anecdotes, of sharing family histories - from genealogies to recipes. Children overhear snippets: "Do you have Aunt Cissy's sour cream peach pie recipe?" "You know the story of great grandmother Ruth..." "Did you go to Mary's graduation?" "Is Uncle Tim talking to his brothers?" "Oh yeah, Susan - her sisters are still mad at her. " Oh dear! Were there times when as a child and you overheard your parents arguing with your aunts or uncles or grandparents? Families can be wonderful, but they are sometimes not very loving or kind, are they? Did you ever wish that the old family recipe box included a step-by-step recipe for how to help family members to get along with each other?
The biblical writers understand this mixed-up nature of families: families can be loving and healthy; families can be hurtful and destructive. Many families have a little of both kinds of characteristics. Yet in spite of our human experience of family, or perhaps because of it, family is a major metaphor in the Bible for our relationship to God in Jesus Christ.
The letter to the Ephesians, a portion of which we heard today, is the place in the Bible where we can learn the most about how we, the church, have become part of God's family and how, therefore we are to act. In other words, Ephesians reminds us: who we are; how we are to live.
Who are we? We are all created God's children, but we have wandered so far from God that God had to bring us back into the family. We are God's adopted children, says the writer of Ephesians in Chapter One. For some of us in this congregation this is very poignant, for we had to travel thousands of miles - to Cambodia, to Tahiti, to China, to Vietnam - to adopt our children. We gave our children a new name, a new birth certificate, a new citizenship, a new inheritance - all part of making them a member in their new family. In the same manner, in Jesus Christ, God traveled out of eternity into mortal time to adopt us, to give us a new name, a new birth certificate, a new citizenship, a new inheritance - each one of these because we are made members of a new family, God's family. The Jewish people were already part of this family, but we Gentiles were not, and through Christ, God has added us and created a new family. So, just as our adopted children from Cambodia and other nations will inherit whatever possessions and wealth we have, so too are we heirs to God's wealth. Isn't this hard to grasp? Heirs to God's estate, to God's wealth? And as heirs, we are told, we actually are raised to sit with Christ in the heavenly places (Eph.2:6). We are sitting with God.
But can we boast about this ("I'm a Christian, so I sit with God, and I am better than those people...!") No, absolutely not. Did we do anything to merit this adoption and this wealth? No, nothing. Absolutely nothing. "By grace have you been saved," the writer reminds us (2:5).
And why has God done this? So that we may be, he tells us, "a holy temple in the Lord; ...a dwelling place for God." We are a dwelling place for God.
The trouble is, my friends, that we are also a family. And like all human families, we are stuck with having for our relatives people we did not choose - we don't choose our parents, our aunts and uncles, our siblings, our cousins. Some of these we love easily and get along with; some of these are a pain to be around, in our estimation. And it is the same way with this church family: the people you are sitting with today, the people you study the Bible with, work on committees with, undertake mission work with, search for a new senior pastor with - all of these people were brought here and adopted by God. You and I don't have a choice. And perhaps, like in our summer family reunions, we need an old recipe for how to act, how to live, and how to get along with those we are with.
So that brings us to the second half of the book of Ephesians: it is a recipe for how are we to live - as an ethical individual person, and as a family, God's family. And this, sisters and brothers in Christ, is where the Bible gets deeply personal. Our reading today has a series of injunctions: put away this, do this instead - each set a suggestions of ways that we "put on a new self" in Christ.
Now, you may already be mentally yawning. Lists like this in the Bible may remind us of the old joke about Herbert Hoover who, having missed the service one Sunday, asked his wife what the sermon was about. "Oh it was about sin," she replied. "He was against it."
So here's another sermon, and another recipe, against sin. But I believe that you will find it to be a practical recipe which gives you guidance for living an ethical, Christian life. And who among us cannot use a refresher course in living as God would like us to live?
The first ingredient of this recipe, then, is truth-telling, best illustrated perhaps by an old Jewish story that tells of a man who comes to his rabbi with a question.
"Rabbi," he said, "I understand almost all of the law. I understand the commandments not to kill or steal. What I don't understand is why there is a commandment against slandering the neighbor." The rabbi said to him,"Before I answer this question, I have a task for you. Take a sack of feathers and place a single feather on the doorstep of each house in the village. Then return for your answer."
The man did as he was told and soon returned to the rabbi, saying that the task was complete. "Now please answer me, rabbi. Why is it wrong to slander my neighbor?" "Ah, said the rabbi, "I want you to do one more thing. Go back and collect all the feathers before I give you the answer. "But Rabbi," the man protested, "the feathers will be impossible to collect. The wind will have blown them away." "So it is with the lies we tell about our neighbors," the rabbi said. "They can never be retrieved. They are like feathers in the wind." (From William R. White, Stories For the Journey).
Truth-telling: "Put away falsehood; speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another." Ah, we have an ingredient, and the reason for the ingredient: "we are members of one another." If we lie or slander we hurt our own family; we hurt ourselves. We are one. We are to tell the truth about God's love, about our being accepted by God without having earned it; we can't boast that we deserve what we have. We are to be honest with ourselves and each other.
You may be thinking: I am honest, I don't need to hear this. Yet don't you find truth-telling to be a struggle in this world? This simple reminder in our text may keep us more firm and on course in our lives.
2nd ingredient: "Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil." A realistic command: yes, we all get angry, sometimes with good reason, often not. Anger that fights oppressions such as racism, sexism, and other injustices, is even necessary, and is very useful when channeled into constructive action. But anger cannot be allowed to get out of control and become all consuming, for if it does, it lets in not God, but the devil, a symbol of the reality of evil and death. Even anger at injustice can become destructive and counter-productive: for example, when it ends up in riots destroying the property eked into existence by the very victims of the injustice (as happened in Los Angeles several times). We must deal with our anger constructively; we can get help also from our family members to deal with this anger and find healthy solutions: and is there anyone of us that has not at one time or the other needed such help?
The 3rd ingredient concerns stealing. There must have been a fair number of thieves in the congregations that this letter was originally written for. We know about stealing, we think. We're not thieves. But there may still be room for us to learn from these verses. Why is stealing bad and working good? Because, says the text, we need to be able to give to the needy. So - do we need to examine what we do with the fruit of our work? Are we perhaps acting a little like thieves if we don't give to the needy some of the results of our labor? Are there ways in which our labor is stealing from others, or from the planet? These are verses worth pondering.
The 4th ingredient returns to activities of the mouth: "let no evil talk come out of your mouth, but only what is useful for building up...." I love the King James translation here: "put away corrupt communication." What is corrupt communication? Talk that tears down rather than builds up; communication that impedes rather than facilitates the healthy growth and work of this group called "church." What should our talk do? "[May] your words give grace to those who hear." But, my friends, most of us have to admit that there have been times when we have allowed ourselves a nasty word instead of a good word. We are blessed here at ACP where I have found very little "corrupt communication" or "evil talk." Yet we are challenged today by these biblical words to build up every person that comes through our doors. We are challenged to bring grace to each member, each adult and each child. I pray that God will help us to become great artists of grace to all who enter and to all people with whom we live and work.
The last set of ingredients for this recipe for living begins with the reason for it: we are not to grieve the Holy Spirit. How? By putting away: "bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice." Instead we need the ingredients of kindness, tenderheartedness, and forgiveness, the kind of forgiveness that God has shown us. Kindness, compassion, forgiveness - they don't always come naturally do they? Have you watched children on a playground? Have you seen how, when they feel threatened or hurt, they react with anger and bitterness which results in name-calling and wrangling? It is hard to teach these children to be understanding and to forgive, isn't it? Yet don't we all long to experience these aspects of humankind, to experience compassion, to know kindness, to receive forgiveness!
So we have it. A recipe for living. An old family recipe for acting like God's family and for being the dwelling place of God. But there is more, for it turns out that this recipe can be summed up in the following phrase: "be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God."
An old old goal of Christian spirituality: to live as imitators of God, imitatio Dei, in the Latin. Have we not struggled to figure out how to grow spiritually, modeling ourselves on Christ, imitators of God, God whose very nature is love? We study the Bible, we pray, we worship, we serve - and those who take their faith with deep seriousness still may feel uneasy and dissatisfied: are we doing enough? "How am I to live as a child of God, in the image of God?" many serious Christians ask.
It is simple and it is not simple: that is the paradox. Ephesians provides an answer: you don't have to do anything - you are adopted and loved by God, out of God's love not out of your actions. Once you recognize your adoption and your new family, here is the recipe, an old family recipe for living God's love: truth-telling; restraining destructive anger; working honestly in order to share with the needy; using uplifting, positive communication and talk; all undertaken in kindness, compassion and forgiveness. These are the ingredients of God's old family recipe for acting in love. Simple, but not simple - so hard to do sometimes!
But God doesn't make us struggle to live out this recipe of love using our own slim resources: God empowers us with the Holy Spirit with which we were sealed at baptism. God lifts us up, not with our strength, but with God's power.
Sometimes it takes a dose of vacation to remind us of God's power and of the love offered to us. For in the energy of fun at Paris-plage on the banks of the Seine, we experience the energy of God. In the energy of wind sweeping high mountain meadows and of water cascading in waterfalls into mountain valleys, we witness the energy set in motion by God. In the rhythmic crashing of waves on a rocky cliff or sandy beach, we remember the power of God. In the pulsing waves of cricket humming in southern climates, we remember the many creatures which God's power creates. In the gentle refreshment of jade green rivers and emerald summer trees, we remember the powerful beauty of a God whose love drives a universe. This is the God we love and serve; this is the God who loves each one of us.
Furthermore, every Sunday is vacation for us Christians: for every time we gather at the Table, every time we partake of the Lord's Supper we are reminded that the Power who creates and runs this universe is available to us to refresh and encourage us. We are fed with the very Bread of Life, the source of all that is. We are nurtured in love, given the food of love, in order that we might love.
Let us therefore, beloved children of God, love each other as God in Jesus Christ has loved us and gave himself for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.