Possibility and Hope--Ephesians 5

 Ephesians 5:1-20

                            We are following a particular guide for our worship in advent and the scriptures are already decided.  I have to be honest, I read this text for this week and thought, “This is an Advent text?  This scripture about sin and disobedience and God’s wrath is good for Advent?!  And it was chosen for the week we focus on hope, really?!” 

                            So I reread the passage and I thought about the purpose of Advent.  This week, both the youth group and the Wednesday night Advent study examined the meaning and purpose of Advent.  And the thing we learned was that in the original Christmas traditions, Christmas day was not just to celebrate the birth of Christ that happened in the past.  It was also meant to open the door for his return.  Christians were eager for the 2^nd coming of Christ and they anticipated that would happen at Christmas.  That meant that Advent was a time to prepare to meet Jesus face-to-face.  The preparations weren’t for trimming the tree or hanging the lights or wrapping the gifts.  The preparations were of one’s spirit and one’s actions to be ready to meet Christ. 

                            In that light and with that purpose for Advent—Ephesians 5 makes more sense as a choice.  If we are preparing to meet Jesus face to face then it makes sense that we would follow the instructions offered to the Ephesians.

·         We should follow God’s example, mimicking God like a child mimics their parents.  We should do as God does.

·         And we should follow Christ’s example and act with love.  We need to do all in our power to show God’s unconditional agape love. 

                            After encouraging us, reminding us, to become godly in our ways, we are reminded, with the Ephesians, of the things we should not be doing.  It’s not a hard list to compile. Any of us could do it.  Think about it, in becoming like Christ, what behaviors, habits and actions should we avoid?

·          

·          

·          

·          

                            Exactly. The Ephesians were given similar advice:

·         No sexual immorality

·         No behavioral impurity

·         No greed

·         No obscenity

·         No foolish talk or coarse joking

·         Don’t get drunk. 

                            Why?  Because once we engage in a relationship with Christ, we know better.  Once we make Christ Lord of our lives, we become better.  So instead of old bad habits, we are called to do something different. 

                            If we aren’t lying, stealing, drinking, etc, etc, then what’s left?  What should we do?

·          

·          

·          

·          

Exactly, the author points to similar things. 

·         Give thanks

·         Seek Christ

·         Make the most of life

·         Do the will of the Lord

·         Get together with others who seek God

o Sing

o Pray

o Enjoy one another

o Praise God

                            As Christians, we are called to live differently.  We are called to live and love as Christ loved.  We know that, right?  But sometimes, we need a reminder, don’t we?  There are some habits that we have justified for ourselves, and some old practices that we keep holding onto. 

                            In our studies this week, we were asked, “When in your day would you least like to have Jesus walk through the door?” (Repeat for emphasis) Ask yourself.  When? 

·         Would you be caught in a lie?

·         Or caught in anger?

·         Or caught in gossip?

·         Or caught lusting after porn?

·         Or caught in addiction?

·         Or caught in laziness?

·         Or caught in pride?

If Jesus walked in in that moment, what would be see? 

                            These are the areas of our life that need reformation—they need to be changed by grace and made holy. These are our hold outs. These are the spots we’ve been unwilling or unable to work on.  And Ephesians 5 comes in and says, “Hey, hey, hey, what are you doing?!  You know better than this!” 

                            It has language of wrath and rejectionand some of us may need that to jump start us to action. Fear may be our best motivator.  If it’s yours, here it is.  However, I don’t think fear is the heart of this message.  I think we’re supposed to hear something more like this:

                            “You’re better than this. You’re not this person anymore.  These bad habits should be left in the past—they are not worthy of your identity as a child of God.  So get rid of them.”   

                            But we fight that affirmation, don’t we?  We argue and say things like,

·         I’m not really that good.

·         I’m not smart enough, kind enough, or strong enough to be that much like Christ.

                            We stay stuck in the past or hold onto old habits because we are held by the LIE that we aren’t worthy—for whatever reason.  But you ARE worthy.  You are worthy of becoming and being all that God created you to be.  There is no reason to hold back.  There is a beautiful poem by Marianne Williamson called “Our Deepest Fear”. She says it this way:

Our Deepest Fear

By Marianne Williamson

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves,

 Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine, as children do.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It is not just in some of us;

it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine,

we unconsciously give others permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

                The gift and possibility that we have is to be great as Christ was great.  This poem and the passage from Ephesians remind us that our future doesn’t lie in our weakness or our failings or our sins.  Our future lies in a promise of greatness.  We are called to be awesome and inspiring because of and through Christ.  It’s wholly appropriate that we are reminded of what we are pulled from and called to so that we might embrace all that Christ offers.  Advent reminds us to have hope.  We are to have hope in Christ, that we can find redemption and forgiveness and possibility.  But beyond that, we are called not just to rely on Christ but to become like Christ so that we might rely on one another as the embodiment of Christ.  In our hope, in our drive to be like Christ, we need to avoid the old sinful things that hold us back from greatness and instead cling to the things of God.  We should cling to compassion, cling to generosity, cling to forgiveness, cling to peace, and cling to joy.  We should cling to hope.  And so this Advent season, we hope, with expectancy and anticipation AND preparation for becoming like Christ so that we might encounter him in tangible and concrete ways. 

                Today’s “sense” is that of smell.  We are called to embrace the scents of Christmas and to breathe in hope.  So today you will receive a small satchel of potpourri as your reminder to breathe in and smell hope. In our time of prayer, you are invited to come forward to pray and repent and seek after Christ.  Satchels will be here at the altar rail and others will be passed through the pews.  Let us breathe deeply and smell hope.  Amen. 

Genesis 3:1-10

Advent 1:

Sermon notes

much credit should be given to J Elsworth Kalas and his book Christmas From the Backside

Normally Christmas is bathed in “loveliness”

• ·         Baby
• ·         Star
• ·         Angels singing
• ·         Men on a quest

So why start here? Why begin Advent with the story of "the Fall"? 

We need to understand the scandal in order to grasp the full magnitude of the impact of Christmas

It wouldn’t be Christmas, there wouldn’t even be a need for Christmas if not for OUR scandal.

Adam and Eve represent all of us.  They had everything going for them. They lived in the garden of exquisite beauty and perfection and then they made decisions that turned their life to shambles.  With that sin enters the scene and the human race becomes a race of sinners. 

The word “sin” often makes us think of only a certain type of action—pornography, addiction, murder, adultery.  All of these qualify but they also distract us from “the larger more compelling facts”

Fact: Sin affects all of us.  Our most basic sin is disobeying God.  Whether our sins are crude or sophisticated, naïve or knowing, the issue is still the same:  us being too consumed by us and not consumed enough by God. 

                We often like to sugar coat our sins—we justify them giving all kinds of *good* reasons for doing what we already new was wrong or hurtful or offensive.  And our excuses and explanations only make it clear how problematic our actions really were.

                Now, we may not feel all that scandalous in this moment, but I bet we could easily take a moment to recall moments we’d rather leave hidden and forgotten.  But it’s not just the moments that make us want to run and hide that are the problem. It’s the simple moments in between where we knew better but we did it anyway. 

                Author and theologian, J Elsworth Kalas, says it this way, “When we live below our best potential, when we’re mediocre when we out to be fine, cheap when we ought to be noble, shoddy when we should be upright—this is sin.” “When we are anything less than godly, it is because we’re involved in sin.”

                Now, back to Adam and Eve, they knew what they were not supposed to do and they did it anyway, together, both complicit and active in that sin (let’s not get carried away blaming things on Eve and leaving Adam blameless, both participated in full knowledge of what was right and what was wrong).  And then when God appeared on the scene, instead of asking for forgiveness, instead of trying to fix their relationship, they hid.  And then they tried to justify their actions….”well, we did it because we were naked.”  God created them naked, didn’t have any issue with their nakedness.  It was their sin and their shame that needed hiding, not their nakedness.  

                And we then follow suit and do the same thing, over and over again.  We know what is wrong, but we choose to do it anyway.  And whether you start it or I start it, it doesn’t really matter if we both participate in it.  And like Adam and Eve, when we get caught, our first reaction is not to apologize and set things right, instead our first course of action is to justify why we had to do what we did and why we shouldn’t be punished for it.  And when that fails, we point at something else, we blame all the other stuff in our life avoiding the heart of the matter, which is our disobedience. 

                And there you have the problem with the human condition: we are a scandalously sinful bunch and when we get caught, we are rarely the model of humility and repentance.  

                But that’s not really what we want to hear now is it?  You probably didn’t come to worship hoping to hear about what a compulsive sinner you are, we are.  But that’s our truth.  The fact is we are sinful, not beyond-redemption-evil (though I’m not sure such a thing actually exists), but scandalously disobedient and defiant running form God and hiding behind self-justification and excuses. 

                And that’s why we need Christmas.  Not the holiday, but the incarnation.  We need to meet Emmanuel.  We need to receive God’s abundant gift of redemption, forgiveness, and new life through Christ.  Those are all desperately needed in our world.  Not just because of Adam and Eve but because of us. Not just for “those people” in prison but for “these people” here in these pews. 

                Our deviance provokes God’s action…an action we see most clearly through the person of Christ. 

                J. Elsworth Kalas points  out something interesting.  He says that secular stories often say it better than some of the Christian merriment.  Think of “A Christmas Carol”, the story of Scrooge.  Charles Dickens wrote that “[Scrooge] was a tight fisted hand at the grind stone…a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!”  Did you catch that?  A sinner.  Scrooge was a sinner.  And at the end of the story, he was converted (not Dickens term, but relevant nonetheless).  He became a generous, compassionate and benevolent man—that was as much a conversion as any.  

                Or we could take the story of the Grinch Who Stole Christmas by Dr Seuss.  Again we encounter a curmudgeon who embodies the greed and meanness that epitomizes all that is wrong in the world.  And at the end of the story, again we see a conversion.  (Not Dr Seuss’ term either, but again it’s relevant).  At the end Grinch works to insure a merry and happy Christmas for everyone. 

                In a way, the secular stories say what the original Christmas stories always have. We have a problem—Scrouge, Grinch, Adam, Eve, Bob, or Sally—all need to be converted, all need their hearts transformed from selfishness and disobedience, to holy humility. 

                And so God offers that opportunity.  God gave us Christmas, not for the sake of the holiday, but for the Holy-day—so that we might be changed and moved out of our sinfulness and into God’s wholeness, away from our disobedience and into awesome relationships with God and with others. 

                It really is no wonder we look forward to Christmas and anticipate it for months.  Sure, some of our focus has been co-opted by consumption and materialism—but the heart of it is, we look forward to the conversion—the good news that we don’t have to be stuck in the sins of our past or forever labeled a Grinch or a scrooge.  Instead, we can be the bearers of joy and hope.  But that doesn’t happen without the gift of the Christ-child.  We need to meet Emmanuel, God with us, to be transformed.  We must encounter real love in order to share it with others.  And God offers that to us through Jesus.