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Foundry United Rev. |
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Tenderhearted Truth Sunday, November 20,
2005 |
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Ephesians 4: 25 – 5: 1 |
The first half of the book of Ephesians
helps us to understand Jesus as the manifestation of a Christ who fills space
and time and who is transforming creation – including humanity, you and me –
from generation to generation. Christ
is cosmic. Christ is everlasting. Christ has saved us. Christ is saving us. In
Christ we have been reconciled to God and one another. In Christ we are being
reconciled. Jesus Christ is a person who came and lived among us. Jesus
Christ is a reality that fills time and space, including revolutionary
moments and long stretches of gradual evolutionary change (three steps
forward, two steps back). The God whose heart has been revealed to us in
Jesus Christ is at work in us, wooing and winning us. The second half of Ephesians is practical
advice to the churches reading the book of Ephesians. Given what we
understand about Christ in the first half of Ephesians, how shall we then
live? We need
to understand that the second half of Ephesians was written for a moment in
time, so it has to be read very carefully. For example, when the book of
Ephesians says, as it does, “Slaves, be obedient to your master,” this
teaching cannot be read as a timeless law. After saying this, Ephesians adds:
“Masters, stop threatening your slaves for you have the same master in heaven
who shows no partiality.” The seed of the abolition
of slavery is contained in this idea that slave-owner and slave have the same
master in heaven who shows no partiality. Ephesians, at the time it was written, was
not yet able to grasp the divine vision of the eradication of slavery, but it
was able to see the contradiction of slavery, and to move us in the direction
of the Spirit’s leading. We need
to read the Bible within its context to see where the movement of the Holy
Spirit is pointing us, rather than to read the Bible as though history were
static. The limited vision of the biblical writers to understand the
implications of divine revelation should remind us of our limitations to
fully understand the movement of God in time. It should not be used to limit
God’s spirit, which is always larger than our ability to grasp it. So, the
second half of Ephesians deals with how we live together in the light of what
Christ has done and is doing in our world. It
addresses the questions: How do we live together in church? How do we live
together in family and in our most intimate relationships? How do we live
together in our economic relationships?
And, in the passage we have listened to this morning: How do we live
together as neighbors? How do
we live together as neighbors? How do we live together in our communities?
How do we live together in civil society? Ephesians
is very interesting and provocative on this. The first thing Ephesians talks
about in discussing our relationship with our neighbors is the importance of
truth. Ephesians 4: 25 says: “So then putting away falsehood, let us
speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.” According
to Ephesians, truth is the most basic ingredient of a healthy civil society. We
need to tell the truth to each other. The
biblical scholar Francis Foulkes pushes ever
further on this. He points out that the literal translation of the Greek doesn’t
say, the way our translation does, “Let us speak the truth to our neighbors.” The Greek says “Let
us speak the truth with our
neighbors.” The
difference is significant. What Ephesians is talking about is not just my
responsibility as an individual to speak the truth to others, but the
responsibility of the neighborhood – the civil society, the community, the
nation – to be a truthful community where people speak the truth with one
another…where truth is the norm and the value. Truthlessness
undermines community. It destroys healthy relationships between neighbors. It
undermines civil society. And the
reason a culture of truth-telling is important in the civil society,
Ephesians says, is because we are all members of one another. This
statement in the New Testament is remarkable. It is nothing less than the
first glimpse of an understanding of democratic society which did not exist
anywhere in the New Testament world. Ephesians,
remember, is not talking about the church community here, but relationships
between neighbors – the civil community. We would not have been surprised to
hear the apostle Paul say this to church members – that we should be truthful
to one another in our churches because we are all members of one body. This
was a basic Pauline teaching. But now the post-Pauline book of Ephesians is
applying this same image and principle to the larger diverse society. Ephesians
is saying this about the relationship between neighbors: that we need to
speak the truth to one another because all of us as neighbors are members of
one another. The
welfare of neighbors is intertwined. There is no us-them within any
neighborhood, within any civil society, within any nation of people, within (really)
the world. There is no us-them. The
entire What
happens in The
great danger in a neighborhood or in a civil society or in a world is that we
will live by myths rather than by truth. And the only way to know the truth
is to be in relationship with one another and to tell each other the truth. This is
why it is a shame the Greek is not translated literally in most translations.
Literal translation: “Wherefore, putting off the lie … speak you truth each
one with the neighbor of him or her, because we are of one another members.” Wherefore,
putting off the myths, distortions, and stereotypes, let us talk with one
another and listen to one another so that we will be able to discern the
truth because we belong, as neighbors, to one another. Knowing
and telling the truth is possible only through relationship. Lies breed and
grow in the cocoons we use to separate ourselves from one another. I have
experienced this in two ways recently. Not long ago I was talking to So Jana
organized a meeting for the pastors of nearby churches, all of who have
people sleeping on our church steps. We met with people who do outreach with
the homeless in our community. They brought us the statistics for shelter use
as of the last date available, which was last Monday night. Last
Monday night every shelter bed in the city of Then
the outreach workers invited us to visit some of our city’s shelters. They
suggested that if we saw what some of our shelters were like, we might
realize why people would choose to sleep on cold church steps rather than in
some of the shelters. I had
been living by a myth – a lie – that there were plenty of available shelter
beds in our city and that our shelters are good places to spend the night.
Because I have not been in communication with the homeless people of our
neighborhood, because I had not exposed myself to the truth, I was living by
a myth and a lie. Another
example: someone whose analysis I particularly respect told me this week that
he thinks the most important thing that has happened to our society since the
year 2000 was Hurricane Katrina and the press coverage of it. There were
whole populations of people in our country that the news media did not know
existed until Katrina. We had no relation with these neighbors and so we did
not hear the truth. But, he
told me, there was a news reporter for one of the news networks who watched
someone drown during Katrina while she was on the air. She became hysterical.
The anchor backing the network studio became hysterical. Someone was drowning
before their very eyes and no one seemed to care. Because
we do not hear the truth, we live by myths and distortions and lies. Everyone
is adequately cared for in our society, right? Only the addicted and
dysfunctional are really desperately poor, right? Why not cut taxes? Why not
cut social services? I am
worried about the way our society today is divided in such a way that we talk
less and less to people who are different from us. Ephesians
says two more things that are important here:
We need
to find the people whose paths never cross ours in our city, our silent
neighbors, and listen to the truth. I asked
the outreach workers we met with this week how we could keep people from
freezing to death on our church steps this winter. It happened at a
neighboring church last winter. A man froze to death. The
outreach worker said: “You can only help people you know. Only those you have
a real relationship with will let you get them into a warm place on freezing
nights.” We can only help those whose truth we have been willing to hear. And I
want to add this: Many of us are going home this coming Thanksgiving weekend.
Not all of us are looking forward to it. Some of us are going home to relatives
and old neighbors who do not understand us. We need to listen to them, too.
We need to listen with tender hearts. I know it is hard. I had a
unique experience this past week. I was on a panel – a Pentecostal pastor and
me – to speak to a combined meeting of two campus clubs at a college outside One
student read a passage from the Bible about false teachers and asked if I
thought I might be one. I was tempted to become defensive. Instead, I
admitted that I was sure that there are many things about God’s truth I do
not understand or know. But I asked, as gently and as caringly as I could,
what if you are wrong, and you are keeping people from Christ because of your
belief, he could not love them just the way they are. So I
encourage us, with as tender hearts as we can, to share our truth, even with
those who think their truth is different. www.foundryumc.org |
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