Sermon for the 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Ephesians 4:1-16

It was only this week that I realized I had started a sermon series, and didn’t know it. I spent most of last week reading through our three readings from Holy Scripture, trying to decide which one to focus on. It was only on Friday that I bothered to look back at my last few sermons, and realized that I’d been preaching on Ephesians ever since we started reading it four weeks ago. Truly, the Word of God speaks through me, even when I don’t know how fully that is happening. It’s even more important that we continue the journey we’re on with Paul and the Ephesians, because today marks a major transition, a shift in Paul’s dialogue with the Church in Ephesus. In the past 3 weeks, we have soared through the universe with Paul. We’ve heard about our destiny. We’ve heard about reconciliation, and we’ve prayed to know the love of Christ which is itself beyond knowledge.

But the true subject of Ephesians, which we finally get to today, is the Church: what makes the Church “Christian” in any recognizable sense, and how the Church is to continue being the “Body of Christ,” when its members are so diverse and of different viewpoints. In the first three chapters, Paul has been reminding his fellow believers, Jew and Gentile, of what it is that makes them one church, one body united in love. In a sense, Paul has been reminding the Ephesians of first principles. Now, he begins to take these principles and apply them to their everyday practical life as a community as they – and we – continue on that journey.

Three Sundays ago, we heard that God knew us and loved us long, long before we were born, or even imagined by any human being. We also heard that our destiny is in God’s hand, wherever we wander. Yes, we all have wandered away from God’s destiny. But two Sundays ago, we heard that God-in-Jesus will go with us wherever we wander. He is with us, calling us to accept our responsibility for the wrong choices we have made, and also to accept that by his death, he has reconciled us to God and to each other, and has set us back on the right road together. Last Sunday, we heard that all our supposed “knowledge” is like a blindfold leading us off the path again if it is not based on the love of Christ for all. So: all that said, what does all this mean for the Church in Ephesus, or for us? Having laid out the principles, Paul now begins to tell his Ephesian readers what to do with this knowledge.

First: maintain unity while respecting diversity. Note how many times Paul uses the word, “one,” in this one sentence: one body, one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. If we are not one in the Church, how can we claim to have been reconciled to God and each other. And yet, it is also true that God destined all of us for adoption as his children. So, each one of us has a destiny, chosen by God, not human beings. That is part of what Paul means when he says that some in the church have been gifted as apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers. Now most of those “job descriptions” seems to fall into the exclusive purview of the ordained ministers of the Church. But all can teach. All can lay hands on the sick for healing. All can spend some time with a lonely person confined to a nursing home, or shut inside their own home. Ministry in the church is shared, not hoarded by the insecure and power-hungry. Particularly as the needs of our elderly parishioners increase, we all will need to make sure that they do not become isolated.

Second: speak the truth, not for the sake of having the "right" answer and proving your neighbor "wrong," but so that in love you both may find the right answer. Now, to be fair, Paul is clear that there is truth and untruth, “trickery, craftiness, deceitful scheming.” Love is not the opposite of truth, but in truth, the two complement each other. For the last three Wednesdays, I’ve been leading a summer bible study playfully called, “The Bible, not a straitjacket.” The serious point I’ve tried to make is that the Bible is not a record of God’s dictation, on which we are to be tested. The Bible is that medium through which God has been engaging us in a conversation for thousands of years. God has spoken. We have responded the best that we could hear in our particular culture and circumstances, to which God has responded again and again.

This Wednesday, we’ll be talking about how that conversation has continued since the Gospels; and how, sometimes, what we thought we had heard God say turned out to be wrong. How do we hold to the truth when our understanding of the truth can be so subject to our presumptions and rationalizations? If you remember nothing else today, please remember this. If you think your neighbor is wrong, make sure you know why your neighbor is wrong before you tell them. And always remember that any “truth,” which is not spoken in love is untrue.

Well, it seems that rather than clearing things up, Paul has just given us more paradox. Maintain unity and diversity. Speak truth in love. But Paul has already put us on notice. We are in the business of reconciliation. When the world creates “wedge issues” to divide us, we the Church must reject crafty schemes designed to divide. When the world tells us that Truth is hard-hearted and Love soft-headed, we the Church must point to our Lord, whose most courageous stand for truth was to go to his death for love of his people. We are not a social club, a business, a political party. We are the Church, the Body of Christ, given for a broken world.