Rev. Betsy Aldrich Garland
August 2, 2009
Ephesians 4:1-16

How Then Shall We Live?

The letter to the Ephesians was probably written by the Apostle Paul’s followers late in the first century. Jesus has long since been crucified and resurrected. Paul himself, whose mission it was to bring the message to the Greek and Roman community, also has been long dead. This is an important letter because it provides us a look at the early church and how early Christian leaders dealt with conflict.

The letter to the Ephesians comes to the leaders in that church to help them address some very specific problems as non-Jews began to participate in the churches, particularly how they should live with each other. We, who live in a society that is nervous about race and class, should understand the problem.

Consider the top news event of the week: A man, carrying a history of prejudice, comes home, tired and stiff from travel, and probably jetlagged, and runs smack into humidity and a swollen door. Another man, carrying a tense working class background, responds to an alarm, trying to do his job in the midst of ambiguity. Harvard professor Henry Lewis Gates, Jr., is accused of breaking into his own home by Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge police – a situation exacerbated when President Obama puts his foot in his mouth.

This is not only a teachable moment about a history of hurt in America, expectations based on the color of one’s skin, and job demands and short tempers, but also a glimpse of how difficult it is to live and work and worship with people who are different. We might think of the President’s invitation to Gates and Crowley to have a beer in the White House Rose Garden as similar to the intent of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians – How then shall we live together?

This was the question in the early Christian church. How so? The first Christians were Jews. They followed Jewish dietary laws, observed the Sabbath, circumcised their baby boys. Then along come these gentile converts who want a piece of the “good news.” Did they have to convert to Judaism in order to be Christians? The most effective recruitment strategy would not have been to insist upon circumcision for adult males, so Paul has to re-invent a theology for the emerging faith.

Much of the New Testament deals with the struggle of the early Christian church to define itself in relation to Judaism, its parent in the faith. Tragically, evil people through the centuries have taken texts written to define the early church in relation to the synagogue out of context and used them as an excuse to persecute Jews, accusing them of “killing Christ.” Not so; it was the Romans, of course.

All this is background for a letter to the church in the Greek city of Ephesus. People 2,000 years ago weren’t all that different from us. There must have been many church fights, challenges at annual meetings, angry exchanges when drawing water at the village well, and the tension made it all the way to headquarters. How then shall we live together? By building up the community rather than by tearing it down, the writer counsels.

We are all connected by a human web. In his 1990s play, “Six Degrees of Separation,” John Guare picks up on the research that each of us is, on average, just six steps away from every other person on earth. I am one step away from knowing each of you, and two steps away from knowing all the people you know, and three steps away from knowing the ones they know, and so on.

What separates all of humankind, then, is just six steps. It’s not just a Rhode Island phenomenon, apparently. When I met with the Harrington daughters to plan the memorial service for Earl, we discovered – quite accidentally – that I had gone to their home to pick out a kitten when I was a teenager and that every time they drove by our home in Governor Francis Farms, they would say to each other, “One of our kittens lives there!”

We are all closer to each other than we might imagine! All of us are brothers and sisters. What holds us together is stronger than the differences that separate us. This is the point of the lesson for this morning. The writer urges the church to make “every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

This must have been no easy task, given that some members were Jews and some were gentiles, some were long-time members and some were new converts, some were rich and some were poor, some were landowners and some were slaves, some were men and some were women. How can one run a church in the midst of so much diversity?

Two key ideas are presented in the text, ideas helpful to us today.

First, think of the church as a human body, each part different but all necessary to the functioning of the body, every organ as important as every other, every part “joined and knit together,” to promote “the body’s growth in building itself up in love.” No one is dispensable in the community of faith. Everyone is needed. Everyone has a vital role to play in the church’s health – regardless of your color or pedigree or status in society.

The second idea is kin to the first: Be led by the gifts that the Spirit has given to you. Members came from different backgrounds and were used to operating from their positions and roles in the households from which they came. Some were used to being in charge by virtue of their birth and bank accounts, to giving orders rather than receiving them.

Not so in the church. Here, division of labor was made according to one’s gifts and graces. “[S]one would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,...”

The Ephesians might ask each of its members: Are you a good evangelist? Then speak to people in the marketplace, even though you are a slave in your day job! Are you a good teacher? Then share your knowledge, even though you are a woman! The distinction between the one serving, and the one being served, is to be based solely on one’s gifts, not on the larger society’s hierarchy.

It must have been tough sledding in that community, a church in conflict, or the letter would not have raised the issue of conflict: “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.” Harsh words, but necessary ones – if the Ephesians’ church were going to survive!

How then shall we live? The letter calls for unity, colored by humility and gentleness, patience and love. We speak of the church as the people of God, God’s family. While I know that people say that blood is thicker than water, when it comes to the blood of Jesus, we are all family. Even if we don’t carry the same genes, we are blessed with the same grace and called to be there for each other, no matter what!

A favorite hymn of mine, “In Christ There Is No East or West,” has as one of its verses,

Join hands then people of the faith,
Whate’er your race may be,
Who serves my Father as God’s child
Is surely kin to me.

Amen