What a privilege it’s been over these last four Sundays, to explore together Paul’s letter to the Ephesians with four very different preachers Ruth, Bishop Richard, Libby and Rob. Different styles, different approaches, but breathing through each of them as they spoke, was the same sense of joy and thanksgiving that I’m sure Paul felt as he wrote his letter from his cell in a Roman prison, two thousand years ago.
Paul loved the Ephesian church. He had spent a long time with them.
In his Roman prison he had heard news that the once healthy community was divided, Jews and Gentiles at odds. They were starting to drift and in danger of forsaking their first love.
Paul doesn’t criticise them.
Instead, he writes this beautiful letter of guidance and encouragement to draw them back into what they were in danger of losing, all they had learned when they first turned to Christ.
Paul begins with an outburst of praise and thanks to God, as he reminds the Ephesians of the many spiritual blessings God has given his church.
Chosen by him, adopted into his family deeply loved, redeemed, and forgiven and marked with the Holy Spirit, the guarantee for a future inheritance as God’s children, for that last day when Christ returns to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under his rule.
Ruth explored these blessings something every Christian needs to understand and reflect on and give thanks for if they are to grow into maturity as Christians.
Bishop Richard spoke about God’s gift to us of mercy and grace, giving us beauty instead of ashes, raising us to eternal life with him through the death and resurrection of Jesus his son.
Libby led us in a reflection on Paul’s powerful prayer for the Ephesians, that knowing God’s blessings in their lives they would continue deepening in their understanding of his boundless love for them, and that their thanksgiving for all God’s gifts would be expressed in their daily lives, through the Holy Spirit.
Rob last week looked at unity in the body of Christ, and the importance of humility, tolerance, gentleness, and patience in personal relationships. He reminded us that we have been called to one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and father of all, and that our various gifts from God have been given for the edification of all.
That’s where we finished last Sunday half-way through Chapter 4. Paul’s picture of what Christ’s ideal local church should be, presented to the Ephesian congregation but equally to ours, in our time. A congregation enriched by God’s blessings, sealed by his Holy Spirit, and saved by his loving grace through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, united in community:
Joined and held together by every supporting ligament,
Growing and building itself up in love,
As each part does its work. (4:16).
In today’s reading Paul changes focus.
He turns away from the ideal community of faith to explain how the individual member is to function within it. He begins strongly, emphasising his status and authority and the importance of what he is about to say as Christ’s apostle to the Gentiles.
“I tell you this,” he writes~ “and I insist on it in the Lord.”
So, these instructions on Christian living are not to be ignored. They are based on the teachings and lived example of Jesus himself.
Paul then goes on to describe the common life of the wider pagan community of Ephesus, the community from which the Ephesian church members had come. They had been pagans themselves and they knew all about it.
To make it more difficult for them, their new Christian lives continued in the same old pagan environment, with evidence of their previous lifestyle still there all around them to tempt them every step of the way.
Ephesus was a pagan city, an active seaport, a busy seething trading hub, with a multinational population worshipping an assortment of gods, chief amongst them being the goddess Artemis, to whom the city was dedicated. The thriving trades associated with the worship of Artemis were embedded in the life of the city. Stealing was rife. Sexual promiscuity was an accepted and commonplace part of everyday life and extended into the area of the worship of Artemis.
Paul doesn’t launch here into a catalogue of the sins of the pagans in the city, he focusses instead on their attitude of mind and heart.
The pagan mind is concerned only with empty, useless things, he writes:
“By wilful ignorance, its understanding is darkened
and its thinking is futile,
so hardened over time
that it has no power to feel at all.
Petrified like stone “
In the city of Ephesus, Paul saw people’s hearts so hardened that they were not even aware that they were sinning. He saw people so dominated by sin that shame meant nothing, and decency was forgotten. He saw people so governed by their desires that they didn’t care whose lives they wrecked in the satisfaction of those desires.
Does all this sound sadly familiar to you?
I read in last Saturday’s Australian that a recent study of Australian children has revealed that the average age of their first exposure to pornography is between eight and ten years old.
Ephesus is alive and well in our 21st century, and every word that Paul wrote to the Ephesians is for us, his church today.
You can’t alter behaviour without changing the state of heart and mind, the core of the person.
Paul now goes on to remind the members of the church community of their conversion experience
their turning to Christ, their first love.
That experience wasn’t about a lot of rules to please a new god. It wasn’t about being good, with blessings to follow if you did the right thing, and dire punishment for failure if you fell by the wayside, trying as was the case with the pitiless pagan gods made in their own image, that they had previously worshipped.
For them, coming to Christ as it has been for every new Christian down through the centuries had been total transformation, from the inside out. They had discarded the old self like a dirty worn-out old coat, and had taken on the new self, created by God to be like him in true holiness, making them his children by adoption, marked with the seal of his Holy Spirit.
They were ready and able then to do the good works the Lord had prepared for them to do, as they began their new lives as his children of the light.
First came the blessings described so vividly by Paul. Blessings freely, joyfully, lovingly given by God the Father. Then the response by the believer to God’s amazing grace and generosity.
That’s the ongoing sequence of every healthy Christian life: the blessings, freely given in love, followed by the Christian’s response of love and gratitude and worship, also freely given.
Three years down the track, Paul is asking the Ephesians to look at specifics in their lives as Christians in a pagan environment, familiar to them in the externals, but totally at odds with their efforts to live out their new faith as God’s people.
Which is just about where we are now, here in our time.
How much we can learn from this letter of Paul’s! First: we don’t leave our brains at the door, when dealing with matters of faith.
Our faith is not a static thing. We grow and change as we get older, and our understanding of God deepens and widens too, as we come to know him better. We don’t alter the fundamentals of the faith that we first learned, described in the opening paragraph of Paul’s letter. They are the building blocks from which we start.
But the Lord wants us to go further, and not stay as infants in the community of faith, blown here and there by every wind of false teaching that comes our way, because we never think about it.
“Let no-one deceive you with empty words!” Paul writes.
“Find out what pleases the Lord”
“Be careful how you live,
Not as unwise, but as wise,
making the most of every opportunity,
Because the days are evil.”
Implicit in all of this is quiet reflection, and prayer and regular reading of the scriptures.
These are the source of true wisdom, each of them a discipline that bear wonderful fruit in a richer, deeper understanding of Jesus our Saviour,
as we “see him more clearly,
follow him more nearly
and love him more dearly
day by day.
If you would like some guidance in this area particularly of Bible reading, ask Ruth or myself. I encourage you, too, to come to Wednesday bible study…it’s a gentle environment where we explore questions of faith together, an experience where no judgements are made, and much learning happens.
Sexual licence was commonplace and unremarked in Ephesus. The converts had the difficult job of changing their whole mindset in this area when they became Christians. Paul reminds them that there should be not a hint of sexual immorality or impurity in the life of Christians, they are God’s holy people.
They are to govern their emotions.
“Don’t sin in anger,” he writes.
“Have no part in brawling and rage.
Get rid of bitterness,
keep short accounts,
resentment and malice and a desire for revenge
and do not give the devil a foothold.”
Be forgiving and compassionate, forgiving each other as Jesus forgives you. Don’t steal. Do useful work, not only for yourself, but so that you have something to share with others.”
Paul has advice too for us about the governing of the tongue in the life of the believer.
“To speak the truth,” Paul says, “is paramount in our relationships with our brothers and sisters, because we are all members of Christ’s body, his church.”
He reminds us that our conversation “always and in every circumstance”, should be free of obscenities
coarse jokes, gossip, and slander.
Instead, we are to speak words of encouragement that build others up, and benefit those listening, and when tempted to do otherwise, in your heart speak words of thanksgiving, and count your blessings.
Paul concludes this part of his letter with words that really warm my heart:
“Do not get drunk on wine, that leads to debauchery.
Instead, be filled with the Spirit.
Sing and make music to the Lord,
Always giving thanks to the Father for everything,
In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
And as we sing and give thanks, we need to always remember that God’s church, from Paul’s time to the present, is first-of-all called to be a missionary church.
Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles, and his passion and his calling was the spreading of the Gospel of Christ. That’s what the church is for!
We as a community of believers in our parish support mission in many ways, Maurice and Amanda overseas with prayer and practical contributions; closer to home, Anglicare and the City Mission. I have no doubt at all that many of us privately support other organisations and individuals in their varied ministries. Sunday @ 5 and our Alpha courses, and the weekday activities in the meeting room are mission initiatives right here at home.
It’s good for us to remember that Paul’s advice on our relationships with each other within the family of the church, apply equally to our encounters with all who are not.
Our mission can be as close as someone who crosses our path in the course of our day, be it a chance encounter with a stranger in the supermarket, or a neighbour from way back when living alone and lonely, notorious for long conversations, or a guest at a party standing looking lost and uncomfortable in a noisy convivial room.
These situations seem so small in the wider scheme of things.
But when we make the wrong choice about how we are going to react at these times, the unkindness dishonours the name of our Lord, as well as our own and bring his church into disrepute.
When I was teaching drama many years ago, the annual primary musical production was always massive, involving every student in the school. Around 120 at that time. The crowd scenes were the most difficult to put together, a lot of work but such good fun!
The most difficult aspect for the budding actors to grasp in the crowd situation, was that they needed to stay in character the whole time they were on stage, even though there could be up to 40 others on the stage with them. Each one was there to do a job as one of the cast.
I used to tell them that although there was crowd on the stage, there was a bigger crowd sitting in the audience, and until the curtain came down, at any given time during that particular scene, no matter how many people were on the stage, someone in the audience would be looking at each of them.
There was no safety in numbers, and there was no hiding.
Never forget that you and I are the light of Christ
in our own little corner of the world,
and that someone is always looking at you!
Amen