Ephesians 6:10-20; John 15:1-4
As we wrap up this series on Ephesians, I want to remind you where we’ve been. We started out with the knowledge that we are saved by God’s grace, not by our own actions that we may boast (Ephesians 2:8-9). Then we talked about God’s invitation to be a part of what God is doing in the world and how God had that in mind from the beginning of all time and space – really before the beginning (Ephesians 1:4). Through God’s grace, we are not only saved from sin and selfishness, but we are included in God’s project of reconciliation, and through God, we have peace as God’s people (Ephesians 2:14). The peace of God is not static, though. It is active, and we live into it when we speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15).
You are loved by God’s own choice – and so are they (whoever they are). Through God’s love, we may have peace with God and one another. Through God’s peace, we are invited to be a part of what God is doing, and that invitation requires us to speak the truth – tempered by love. How do we know that we are doing that?
That’s where we left off last week with the words of Jesus from John 15:4, “Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.”
Some time ago I was discerning a call to ministry and so I went to one of the wisest women of faith I knew – my mom. I said, “Mom, what do you think will happen if God is calling me into ordained ministry and I decide to do something else?” She said, “If this is God’s desire for you, then you might just not be very successful with something else.”
So far, she’s been right about that, but there have also been times when I have come to realize that just because you wear the collar doesn’t mean you are abiding in God’s love. Not only that, success in the eyes of the Lord is often very different than success in the eyes of the world. In other words, Jesus did not say, “Tell everybody to go to seminary and then act like the ones that get theological degrees have it all figured out.”
He said, “Abide in me.” The word “abide” usually means to rest or remain, but in terms of the vine, it means to maintain a connection. It means to be in a position to receive nourishment and pass it on to others, and while he gave this instruction to his disciples we understand this to be a metaphor for all who follow the way of Jesus.
Unless you abide in God’s love as we know it through Jesus, then you won’t bear the fruit of those that do. What, then, is the fruit? Is it good deeds? Is it telling others about God’s love? Is it encouraging other believers to be grounded in God’s love? Yes. It is all of these things, but most importantly, we bear fruit when we respond to God’s love with God’s love for others.
Believe it or not, there are quite a number of people out there who feel that Christianity, or the church in general, is about anything but love. They believe it’s about power, or control, or nationalistic pride, or fear. I’m sure there have always been those that called out the hypocrisy of the church. We just happen to live in a time when the power dynamics are shifting just enough for these voices to be heard like never before.
In the institutional church, we used to call it the “generation gap.” For a while, those in more fundamentalist circles called them the “unchurched” and the “underchurched.” Then we all started talking about the “nones” – those who check “none” on surveys of religious preference. Through the years we’ve talked about them as non-believers, atheists, or the “spiritual but not religious” crowd, but rarely have we asked them what they want or need and why.
If you listen in the right places, you can hear a common narrative – one of needing to unlearn (deconstruct) the fundamentalist views that have harmed their ability to be in right relationships with others. As a Presbyterian, I tend to see things like this and think, “Well, we sure don’t do that. Come on over here!”
The thing is, we all have our issues, and today’s text helps us to be real about them. I don’t mean that we need to air all the dirty laundry of two thousand years of Christianity right here and now. What I do mean is that hearing this passage as it connects to the message of reconciliation, unity, and the invitation to abide in the love of God might help us recognize times when we haven’t so that we might do better in the future.
Here’s what I mean by that, taken by itself this passage sounds like it could be the plotline for just about any action hero movie. There’s an epic battle against Satan himself, but our hero has put on the very armor of Yahweh God to defeat him! (It kind of reminds me of the beginning of Thor, Ragnarok.)
Really, we’ve taught this lesson to children for generations on end, dressing them up with make-believe armor like a centurion, when the author of the letter actually meant just the opposite! All these things: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, and the helmet of salvation were just metaphors.
In fact, they were intentionally used to say – in a time of persecution by Rome – that truth, righteousness, faith, and salvation were not only like these other things; they were better than the things that were being used against them; the things they may have been tempted to defend themselves with.
A few years ago we used this passage at Camp Agape. I remember getting the kids to come up with things that were like the different parts of the armor, but instead of putting armor on I had someone take it off, piece by piece, as a way to show that the author of this letter was trying to say, “Let down your guard. Let your right relationships between you and God and others be the thing that protects your heart.”
You see, friends, the truth is that God’s love is stronger than death, so we must live without fear of death! Righteousness – being in a right relationship with God and others – changes our priorities. Faith – belief in God’s active presence – will shield you from the suffering caused by those that try to make you feel alone in the universe. Salvation – being saved from the sin of self-centeredness – will give you the assurance you need to stand firm in the face of doubt!
The really beautiful thing is that this is no action hero movie. You are not the Princess or the Hero (even when the princess is the hero). Neither was this letter written as a self-help pamphlet. It was written to the church to help them understand how to be the body of Christ together. Ok, so maybe then it is more like Voltron than Ragnarok – the old school Japanese show where the heroes banded together to form a giant robot and defeat evil creatures bent on destruction.
Except that, really, the beautiful thing is that evil and its hold on us has already been defeated. Our job is to simply withstand the evil in the world, knowing that we’ve been given all that we need to do so. Of course, we all know that quote, “the only way for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing about it.”
This letter of love and hope to the Ephesians tells us that, in order to do something about evil in the world, we have to lay down our arms in favor of the opportunity to love as we have been loved. That sounds dumb in the face of high crime and international instability, but if loving the way we’ve been loved starts to look like fixing the root causes of crime, inequality, and speaking with and for those whose voices have been silenced, then I believe we will see the power of God like never before!
Then the fruit that people see us bear will be undeniably sourced by God, not some confused and perverted doctrine of power and control that has to be unlearned in order to heal from its abuses.
In the end, it’s never been about our ability to wield power anyway. It has always been about God’s grace and our ability to respond. It starts here, at the table of Christ, and it flows into the world like rivers of justice and righteousness for all the world to taste and see! All to the glory of God – now and always. Amen!
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