In the gospel the very same crowds who wanted to make Jesus king are now grumbling because he is pushing the boundaries of how they understand faith and belief. Instead of turning away people who don’t measure up, Jesus adds more and more chairs to the banquet table and welcomes us all to eat,
to enter into relationship with him.
And that starts people grumbling. Like the Israelites being led by Moses in exile, the people are being challenged to enter into a new way of being God’s people, and they really don’t like it.
They want the salvation and redemption that comes with knowing God, but they don’t actually want anything to change.
And Jesus hears them. He hears them challenging his authority to teach like this and he hears them talking among themselves about things they don’t understand or don’t like, and he simply tells them to stop their grumbling. In verse 43 he says, “Do not complain among yourselves.” And then he continues to teach, offering another way of understanding how God is drawing us all into relationship and inviting us into life together.
The writer of the letter to the Ephesians offers instruction for that life together. At first, these sound like rules of civility or morality, but following Jesus isn’t about simply being nice or good.
In American culture, especially, we have a widespread form of belief that sociologist Christian Smith calls “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism,” and this belief effectively turns God into
“a combination of divine butler and cosmic therapist [who] takes care of your problems, …helps you work out your difficulties and doesn’t get too involved.”[i] Moralistic therapeutic deism believes
· A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
· God wants people to be good, nice, fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
· The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
· God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
· Good people go to heaven when they die.[ii]
And while those ideas may sound harmless enough,
this form of belief doesn’t recognize that the very same God who created everything good in the world, by nature, loves the whole of creation, and every one of us who is created and desires relationship with us;
it doesn’t understand that God’s commandments aren’t simply a moral checklist, but ways of living in relationship with God and with each other;
it is not belief that, in faith, we are freed for the sake of the world, and our service to God erupts from our salvation in that as Galatians 5:6 says, our “faith is truly active through love, that is, it finds expression in the works of the freest service, cheerfully and lovingly done, with which [one] willingly serves another without hope of reward….”[iii];
it is not belief that God is Emmanuel, God with us, in all circumstances — joy, suffering and even death; and,
at its center, moral therapeutic deism is not belief that comes from grace, that unearned gift that God gives each one of us - even while we are yet sinners - because God loves us.
Following Jesus isn’t about simply being nice or good.
Following Jesus, we strive to imitate God, surrendering ourselves and our lives in response to the love God has first shown us.
Hearing these texts in the context of our congregation values shines light on “affirmation” which I have understood as being present in each other’s lives, offering encouragement and helping one another live out our baptismal promises:[iv]
to hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s supper,
to proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed,
to serve all people, following the example of Jesus,
and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.
It is characteristic of how we live together as the body of Christ.
The instructions in the letter to the Ephesians are included so that we might know how to live out these promises that form our baptismal identity as claimed children of God through Christ.
As the writer says in verse 25,
“we are members of one another” so
when we lie to someone, we are lying to God and to ourselves;
when we are angry and deny it, instead of addressing our anger,
our unresolved anger becomes toxic and destructive to us all;
when we gossip about others or we are malicious toward another person, we fail to live in love and we reject the love with which Christ first loves us.
The good news in the texts this week, of course, is that all those things that we do that hurt others, hurt God and hurt ourselves and the ways in which we tear down instead of building up are redeemed by God in Jesus, and we are forgiven, in spite of ourselves.
Jesus invites us to eat the living bread of heaven, and the writer of the epistle instructs us that “the body of Christ does not feed on anger, evil talk, bitterness, or slander, but instead feeds on the bread of love and forgiveness, imitating Christ.”
May we all be fed by that bread as we go into the world as imitators of Christ.
Let us pray.[v]
God of love and life,
Thank you for sending us your Son, Jesus Christ,
the bread of life for our deepest hunger,
and for drawing us to him that we might learn from him.
Help us hold steadfast to the grace You give us, forgiving us our sin – our deception and anger, our resentment and vindictiveness, our arrogance and pride.
Teach us to show the image of Christ before us in all that we do, modeling the love that we see in Jesus, the love that you have first given us.
We pray in the name of Jesus.
Amen.
[i] 2008
Marjorie Pay Hinckley Lecture: Christian Smith, University of Notre Dame “Soul
Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRCaQlr9ooU,
accessed 8/11/2018.
[ii] ibid
[iii] Luther, Freedom
of a Christian, 405.
[iv] Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 3: Pentecost and Season after
Pentecost 1 (Propers 3-16) (Feasting on the Word: Year B volume) (Kindle
Locations 11580-11581). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
[v] Adapted from
Laughing Bird Liturgy, http://laughingbird.net/ComingWeeks.html
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