A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, IL, on Sunday, August 12, 2012.
“LIFE
IN THE CHURCH, WITNESS TO THE WORLD”
(Homily text:
Ephesians 4: 25 – 5: 2)
Whenever I have the wonderful
opportunity to act as Spiritual Director for our youth retreat weekends, I
often have the chance to talk about what it is like to be a Christian. As a way of introducing the idea that living
the Christian life is going to be difficult, I ask these young people how many
of them have been confirmed by a Bishop….many hands usually are raised in
response. Then, I ask them to remember
that day and to try to remember exactly what happened.
Specifically, I ask them if they can
remember being slapped by the Bishop.
(Usually, at this point, most of them can’t remember that part of the
ceremony.) So, I tell them that our
Bishop always slaps people when they are confirmed. (The young eyes that are looking at me are
getting a bit bigger now, and any who were nodding off are beginning to awaken
a bit more.) Then, to those who are not
confirmed yet, I say, “Well, you know, come to think of it, I’ve never seen the
Bishop slap anyone so hard that they had a mark on their cheek after the
service was over and when the reception began.”
(More eyes are now open a bit wider than before, and nodding heads are
no longer nodding at all…by now, I have everyone’s attention.)
Then I heighten the drama a bit
more, and I say, “I’ve known some Bishops who are real slappers…but, I assure
you (those of you that aren’t confirmed yet) that I’ve never seen a single
Bishop slap anyone so hard that it left a permanent mark on their cheek.”
And, now that everyone’s attention
is in hand, I ask this question, “Why does the Bishop slap a person being
confirmed?”
Usually, at this point, many of my
listeners who are not yet confirmed are focusing in on the possibility of some sort of hardship which
they are associating with the rite of confirmation…..Their thinking might go
something like this: “OK, so I’m going
to be confirmed…I’ll be all alone up there, in front of everyone, kneeling
before the Bishop…it will be so embarrassing.
And now, you’re telling me that the Bishop is going to slap me!”
So I try to point their thoughts
away from all these concerns, and to ask them again why the Bishop administers
a slap on the cheek at the time of confirmation. It isn’t often that some one of these (normally)
astute young people can tell me exactly why the Bishop gives them a gentle blow
to their cheek, so I have to tell them:
“It’s not easy being a Christian in the world we live in, and so the
Bishop slaps you to remind you that following Jesus Christ won’t be easy.”
It wasn’t easy being a Christian in
the first century in the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea regions,
either…..Life in this pagan culture for a Christian was a constant
slap-in-the-face.
For one thing, the Greco-Roman world
of the Roman Empire in the first century was a dog-eat-dog culture: For those of high station and wealth, life
was pretty good. But for everyone else,
slaves and free citizens alike, life was uncertain, highly competitive, and
short. To survive, many took to stealing
or engaged in other sorts of dishonesty.
Acceptance of these sorts of behaviors to be able to cope with the
economic realities of those times was high.
Righteous and upright behavior was
in short supply, and a tendency to try to forget the hardships of life led many
to seek hedonistic pleasures. We might
capture the sense of the times by saying that many believed that they should
“eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we (might) die.” Put into today’s language, we might hear
people say, “We’re going to grab for all the gusto we can get.”
The possibilities for falling into
serious moral decay and sin abounded….cult prostitution in the pagan temples
was commonplace and rampant, and those who had the means often engaged in
sexual sin outside of marriage.
To turn to Christ and become a
Christian believer meant that the overwhelming tide of the culture in which
they lived was a constant threat, something to be resisted.
The relationship between pagan
values and Christian values was stark….Living by Christiana values was hard to
do, and easy to see….as a Christian, following Christ, people could easily see
the difference in behavior, in speech, and in attitudes.
And it is this difference in
behavior, speech and attitudes that St. Paul is driving at as we turn to our
reading from Ephesians this morning.
In the verses which immediately
precede today’s passage, Paul reminds these Ephesian believers of the lives
they used to lead before they became Christians….He reminds them that they lived
immoral lives, that they – along with the pagan culture - were “greedy to
practice every kind of impurity.”
So Paul tells them that they have
“put off their old selves,” and have “put on the new self, created after God in
true righteousness and holiness.”
Paul has now set the stage to remind
the Ephesians of the necessity of living out their faith by the way they talk
and by what they do in their daily lives.
Paul’s concern is that the Ephesian Church will be united to God through
Christ, and will be united by the purifying work of the Holy Spirit into union
with each other, as well.
Gone is the dog-eat-dog, “me first”
behavior of the pagan culture they had come out of. Such behavior has no place in the body of
Christ, the Church. True concern for
others replaces the dog-eat-dog mentality, and putting God first as all grow
into unity with Christ, the head of the Church, replaces the “me first”
attitudes that went before.
The task before these early believers is also our task today….
We must be able to love each other
so well and so completely that we can be angry with each other when it is truly
called for, and to follow up our anger with the ability to speak the truth,
always in love. Then, we are called to
put limits on that anger, not allowing (in Paul’s words) to allow the sun to
set on our anger.
When we do this, the adversary, the
devil, will have no opportunity to try to divide the flock and to attack it.
Coupled with this admonition is a
reminder that we, as Christians, are to be honest in our daily tasks, doing
everything we do to the best of our ability, giving fully of ourselves. Paul’s address to this aspect of living an
honest, sober and upright life takes the form of his reminder that everyone is
to “do honest work with their own hands.”
Paul
says that everyone is to do “honest work with their hands,” so that the
Christian way of life is set apart from the ways of the pagan culture. Paul adds that some of the fruits of our
honest work are to be devoted to the needs of those who cannot provide for
themselves. As we said a moment ago,
gone is the “me first” culture of the pagan past.
The first way of living the
Christian life has to do with our speech, its faithfulness to our emotions and
concerns. The second concern has to do
with our behavior.
Now, Paul turns to another matter
having to do with speech: He reminds the
early believers (and us) that our speech is to be used to edify and build up
the body of Christ, showing concern for others and for their walk with the
Lord. In a way, being able to be anger,
to express that anger as we speak the truth in love, and to put limits on our
anger, are all ways in which the body of Christ is built up. So we see that Paul’s concerns for our manner
of speech and interaction with each other have as their basis a concern for
contributing to the welfare of all.
All of these practical concerns,
which visibly demonstrate that we Christians are living a new and different
life, cannot be incorporated into our common life without the power of the Holy
Spirit.
Paul says that we are not to “grieve
the Holy Spirit,” that is, to shun the Holy Spirit’s power by denying and
ignoring that power. The reason is that,
in this admonition, we are dealing with the matter of holiness, which is
different than goodness.
Many people, by earnest practice and
intense schooling, can master the techniques of being “good”. In secular terms, we might say that such a
person could be a graduate of a fine finishing school, or perhaps someone who’s
attended the Dale Carnegie Course, and has become – as a result – able to “win
friends and influence people.”
But holiness can only begin – and
continue – with the enlightening and empowering work of the Holy Spirit. For the Spirit alone has the ability to
overcome our “default positions” of thought, expectation and behavior. It was against these things that the
Ephesians are called to struggle. It is
against these things that we Christians today are called to struggle, with the
power of the Holy Spirit.
Living the Christian life is a
slap-in-the-face. To live such a life
means that we will be swimming against a mighty and powerful tide, a tide which
our surrounding culture produces, a culture which values many of the things the
ancient Greco-Roman pagan world also valued.
If new Christians are to be born
again into the family of God, that is, the Church, many times the way that they
will learn about this new way of believing and living will be as they read the
Good News of Christ in the ways we talk and the ways we acts….As has been
wisely said, “Sometimes, the only Bible many people will ever read is our way
of life.”
May God’s Holy Spirit enable us to
swim successfully and powerfully against the tide which flows against us, for a
faithful witness to God, and for the welfare of the family of God and the
world.
AMEN.
