Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

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Sermons

August 2003 (click here to return to "August 2003 Sermons" page)

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time (August 10, 2003)

“Spirit in Community” Dr. Julie Adkins

Text: Ephesians 4:25-52

SERMON

We are members of one another, says Paul,

to the Ephesians, and to us as well.

Not just members of a church

which draws us together to worship and to serve …

Not just members of a community,

all living within a particular area …

We are members of one another.

Kind of a weird image, isn’t it?

Members of one another.

But it tells us something that I suspect

we would sometimes rather not hear.

It tells us how very closely connected

we are to one another.

We are not just neighbors,

we are not even just “family”;

we are members of one another.

Really, it’s a lot like the image of the body of Christ

that Paul describes in other places.

An image which we all love,

but sometimes find very hard to live with.

Culturally, we are taught to be isolationist and individualist.

We vote for people whom we believe

will best serve our interests;

never mind the impact on the whole community.

And since poor people generally don’t vote,

whose interests are the ones being represented?

Our collective individualism is the reason that

most people are so much happier with a state lottery

than with a state income tax.

We want to be allowed the personal, individual choice

of whether we will or will not buy a lottery ticket.

We don’t want to be reminded that we are members of a community,

and must bear responsibility for one another,

even when we don’t feel like it,

and even for those people we don’t much like.

Community is a lovely-sounding word

until it hits us where it hurts.

Once the sense of community

reaches our individual pocketbooks, just for example,

we don’t want to hear about it any longer.

We just don’t want to hear it.

And it isn’t just our civic life that is affected;

the church, unfortunately,

has also been infected with the individualism bug.

We would like to be the body of Christ,

and on our best days, we are …

Individually, it’s kind of exciting to think

that I, and you, and you, and you,

can be the ones taking action to do Christ’s work in the world.

But when it comes to thinking of ourselves

as members of one another,

as parts of the one body,

we often get caught up short.

Let me try out an analogy from nature on you.

It seems to me that often, we in the church act

more like a colony of organisms, than like one body.

Maybe … like a bunch of coral,

we’ve banded together to form a magnificent reef,

and it protects us well,

but we’re still each our own individual little coral critter,

there with others, but doing our own thing.

Maybe even more like a colony of ants,

who work actively together,

and have to communicate with one another in some way,

but each ant is still just an individual ant.

If one ant dies, the colony doesn’t care.

It doesn’t grieve.

It’s not like losing a part of the body;

it’s just one little colonist.

Being members of one another is something more.

Something closer.

Something more intimate

and, therefore, more scary.

Fortunately, Paul doesn’t just leave us

standing there, wondering.

He gives us some ideas to work with,

some instructions, we might call them,

for getting a handle on this “members of one another” stuff.

To help us understand it,

so that we can really begin to live it.

In the verse we began with, he says,

“So then, putting away falsehood,

let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors,

for we are members of one another.”

Now if you think about that for a minute,

it makes perfectly good sense.

Can one part of your body lie to another part,

and be believed?

Does your brain ever really persuade your feet

that those shoes aren’t too tight?

Can your hand feel velvet

where your eyes are seeing sandpaper?

Imagine what chaos our lives would be

if we could deceive ourselves in that way!

It’s the kind of chaos that certain kinds of mental illness,

or brain damage, can create.

But we cause that same kind of chaos in the body of Christ

when we speak falsehoods

about ourselves or about one another.

Paul also talks to us about anger:

He doesn’t say: “Don’t get angry;

nice Christian people shouldn’t get angry.”

And it’s important to realize that he didn’t say that,

because a lot of us did hear it

when we were growing up,

girls especially.

Paul says, “Be angry … but do not sin.”

How do you do that?

“do not let the sun go down on your anger.”

Don’t sleep on it and stew over it.

Be angry. Now. Have it out. Settle it … or, agree to disagree.

But do not sin. Reconcile. Restore. Forgive.

Imagine trying to walk

if your feet were mad at each other

and refusing to cooperate together!

Just so, Christ’s body is crippled

when we refuse to let go of animosity and resentment,

but store them up and let them fester.

Now, there’s some more good instructions in there,

but I’ll let you mull those over on your own.

We don’t really want to be here all day.

So let’s skip ahead a little to verse 30,

where Paul says,

“and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God,

with which you were marked with a seal

for the day of redemption.”

At first,

that doesn’t seem quite to fit with the rest of it.

Here are all these admonitions

about how we as members of one another

are supposed to relate to each other,

and in the middle of that he drops in,

“and do not grieve the Holy Spirit,”

who, after all, isn’t exactly one of us!

I puzzled about that for a while!

The connection, I think, is this:

The pattern and the quality of our relationships

are a matter of concern to God’s Holy Spirit.

If you and I are angry at one another and do sin;

that is, we do let our anger hang on and stew …

we know it will affect

the two of us and our relationship …

we know it likely will affect

our families, and how they relate to each other.

Because we are members of the body,

it’s likely that our feud

will affect the larger community, sooner or later.

But what Paul is telling us in verse 30

is that it also grieves the Holy Spirit.

We don’t just hurt ourselves and our community

when we tell untruths about one another …

We hurt God.

Our “evil talk,” whatever form that takes,

doesn’t just break our spirits …

it breaks God’s heart.

I think it’s hard for us to take that seriously,

because we think of God as being so big and powerful.

It’s hard to believe that God

would be so deeply affected

by us, and our relationships to one another,

and especially our failures in that department.

What most of expect is that

when we mess up,

God will be angry and thunder at us.

But what Paul says is that

when we mess up, God grieves.

What then should we do about it?

“Therefore,” Paul suggests,

“be imitators of God … and live in love.”

We don’t have time to unpack all of that,

and unfold its many meanings,

at least not today.

But for now,

we might just highlight those two images

and keep them in our minds

as we try to become

better members of one another.

We can simply ask ourselves,

when we have a choice to make,

“Will I be imitating God if I do this?” or

“Will this choice help me to live in love?”

If we can say yes,

then go for it.

If we can’t,

to go ahead might be to grieve the Spirit.

We are a community –

we are more than a community;

we are members of each other.

Let us live so as to

draw others to ourselves, to this body of which we are members,

and to rejoice God’s Holy Spirit.

Amen.