Sunday 9 August 2015

Life Is Living for Others (Eph 4:25-5:2)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on Aug 9, 2015)

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Here and Now

Many of you who have grown up in the church may have memories similar to mine. Did you ever have a Sunday School teacher, perhaps, or a youth camp leader who encouraged you to write down and always remember the day that you became a Christian, the day that you accepted Jesus into your heart and were saved? A sort of retrospective save-the-date. The idea, I suppose, is that this was the day you booked your ticket into heaven. It was a day to savor and remember. The way you might remember winning a competition and receiving a trophy.

Or the way that some might remember a wedding day.

Except that, anyone who’s been married—and I realize I have no place to speak here—anyone who’s been married will tell you that the wedding day is not the end of a journey. It’s the beginning. You’re not cashing in; you’re rolling the dice. And that’s why I love Paul’s letters. He writes with eyes wide open about the new life we find in Christ. He’s fully aware that joy and good feelings do not themselves complete our lives or resolve the problems of our world. To Paul, new life in Christ is not a diploma that ensures a good, easy life. It’s not a final championship that means we stop practicing our sport. This new life that Paul writes about is not marked by a one-time event that recedes further and further in the past.

New life in Christ is all about the here and now. If the community he was writing had any illusions about an easy life in Christ, about victory already achieved, Paul yanks them back and plants their feet firmly on the ground of human experience. If they had any illusions that their fine feelings or new insights alone made them better persons,[1] Paul reminds them that life in Christ has to do with the nitty-gritty of daily living. His message today reads almost as a list of rules—don’t lie, don’t nurse your anger, don’t steal, don’t insult others—as if to say, you’re still made of the same dirt that you were yesterday, and you’re just as susceptible to these all-too-human tendencies.

Leaving Ourselves Behind

Speaking of all-too-human tendencies…I’m happy my father isn’t here today. Because Paul’s chat about the nitty-gritty of life brings to mind a very vivid memory of my dad, a less-than-flattering image, perhaps, that I’d like to share. My brother and I were generally obedient kids. We didn’t give him too much trouble. But he was also a soccer coach, and corralling a bunch of thirteen-year olds is a different story to maintaining the order of two generally compliant sons. I can’t recall any one instance, so frequent was its occurrence: my dad would explain a practice drill, and invariably a few of the guys would be goofing off instead of listening. Throwing balls at the backs of unsuspecting heads, squirting water at each other. And I can see it. His tongue out, his jaw clenched, his eyes closed. Anger incarnate. I learned then that “biting your tongue” was more than an expression.

And I’m learning today that biting your tongue may have a good bit to do with what Paul’s talking about. “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,” Paul says, as if to say, be yourself—don’t deny your feelings—but don’t be consumed by yourself. All the behavior that Paul condemns here—lying, feeding one’s anger, stealing, slander (4:25-29)—has one thing in common. It’s all about protecting and promoting the self. We might lie to protect our image. We nurse our anger to fuel our projects of vengeance, of maintaining honor or respect. We steal to add to our possessions. We put others down in order to build ourselves up. It is our habit to live more or less according to a system of exchange, where we attempt to balance accounts and keep ourselves in the black, where we live first and foremost for ourselves, for getting what we’re due.

And Paul is aware of this. He cannot ask us to deny our feelings. “Be angry,” he says. But for Paul, we are also called to leave our selfish feelings behind. So it becomes a sort of paradox: be yourself, but leave yourself behind—because who you are not only has to do with you but also with others (cf. 4:25b). This is why for each time Paul gives a “don’t,” each time he says don’t live only for yourself, he also give a “do,” he also reminds us of the call of Holy Spirit that we hear within us, a call that begs us to break the bank with acts that don’t account for who’s done what or who deserves what, a call for us to leave ourselves behind for the sake of others. Don’t insult. Build up (4:29). Don’t steal. Give (4:28). Don’t seek vengeance. Forgive (4:26, 31-32).

After a good twenty years of coaching soccer, my dad’s tongue probably bears countless bite-marks. They are scars that testify to his anger. But they are also scars that testify to his nitty-gritty decision to leave his selfish feelings behind. See, I think my dad was following the Spirit’s call (cf. 4:30). By the world’s system of accounts, he would have had every right to yell at the kids in practice, to whip them into line with a sharp barb here and a well-placed insult there. But instead he bit his tongue, literally. And then, more often than not, he’d leave behind his self-concerned feelings and demonstrate concern for others with words of encouragement. Words meant to build up.

More Than a Golden Rule

If we were to stop here, we might walk away with a refined list of “do’s” and “don’ts.” We might walk away saying, we shouldn’t live for ourselves but instead for others. But there’s a curious, ever-inquisitive child inside us, and I don’t think she or he is satisfied with this lesson. That child is nagging us, “But how? How could I possibly get myself to live for others instead of for myself?”

How indeed?

Rules by themselves do very little to inspire living for others. Instead they keep us thinking about ourselves. We normally follow rules because in the end we seek our own wellbeing, if not advantage or reward. We follow the rules to receive a sticker from the teacher, or a bonus from the boss, or a smile from someone we respect.

Even the golden rule itself may be understood to operate this way. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In other words, treat others according to how you yourself want to be treated...so that, hopefully, both fingers crossed, you yourself may in the end be treated that way too.

But if we listen beyond Paul’s “dos” and “don’ts,” we discover that he isn’t giving us a list of rules, or even the golden rule. He’s suggesting something radically different. He’s suggesting that we live beyond ourselves—that we bite our tongue, that we forgive and encourage, that we make gifts of ourselves to others—not because we’ve sat down and done the math and worked out the benefits for ourselves and chosen this way. But because this way has already somehow chosen us, has already somehow taken hold of us and inspired us in a way that we never could ourselves.

Life Is Living for Others

If you think about it, it’s not that much different from the spirit in which we play games. Have you ever watched a group of children passionately play a game? Maybe they’ve just finished watching the World Series. And they’re so inspired, that they throw on their gear, grab their gloves and bats, and run out to the nearest patch of grass. And they play with uncontained enthusiasm, for the love of the game. They’re not playing because of the rules and they’re not playing for a trophy. They’re not even thinking of these things. They’re not thinking so much as they’re doing, so much as they’re hitting and catching and throwing and sliding and diving and catching their breath and losing it all over again.

For Paul, the new life we have in Christ is like the spirit that’s gotten into these kids. It’s not about winning a trophy, and it’s not about the rules of the game. New life in Christ is about the joy of playing. It may seem like foolishness to an outside observer—the spirit of living for others instead of ourselves—but to us who love the game, who love life and want to live most fully, this is the spirit of life. We live like Jesus lived, not because some rules inspire us to live that way and not because we want a shiny trophy, but because the spirit has taken hold of us. Love, forgiveness, grace—this has given us life, and we realize that this is life, and so we live this way. We live this way when we bite our tongue and leave our self-concerned feelings behind, when we prepare food and serve and eat with those who have no home, when we put our own agenda aside to actually listen to another. We live this way when we welcome strangers, when we offer encouragement to a broken soul. Life, we have discovered, is only life if it is living for others.

And it is hard work sometimes. That’s why Paul has to write these rules, these reminders. But it’s hard work just the same way that playing a game can sometimes be a struggle, can sometimes take sweat and grass stains and sometimes even blood. Hard work is part of the game.

But for Paul, it’s important that we never forget the reason we first started playing. It’s because of the infectious spirit of Christ.[2] The spirit of Christ gives us new life, which is simply another way of saying, it draws us continually to step outside of our own lives for the sake of others.

A Prayer

Spirit of Christ, you have breathed deep into our lungs. You have drawn us passionately into the game of life, into a life of living for others. But sometimes we lose our breath, and sometimes we lose inspiration. Be with us in the difficult times, when it seems too demanding a task to leave ourselves behind and to live for others, when we simply don’t want to do that. Give us kind words to say when we cannot find them ourselves. Give us the courage to live for others when we would rather retreat into ourselves. And give us a new wind when we lose breath. Inspire us anew when we have lost track of your spirit. May we be caught up again and again in the joy of life, the joy of living for others.

Amen.




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[1] C. S. Lewis, A Year with C. S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works (ed. Patricia S. Klein; San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2003), 222: “Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in ‘religion’ mean nothing unless they make our actual behavior better.”

[2] The antithesis between law and spirit is a common theme in Paul’s discourse. Cf. Rom 7-8. Paul appreciates the law. He appreciates the rules of the game. But he prizes the spirit of Christ, the spirit of the game itself. The law in itself only reveals our shortcomings, but it does not inspire us beyond them. The spirit of Christ infuses us with life, leading us to live positively—to play for the love of the game instead of being shackled to the fear of or disappointment at our transgression of the rules.

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