Walking Lessons

Were you hearing the same thing I heard as we were reading this text? Does it sound to you as if the Apostle Paul has some concerns about quality control as he thinks about the church in Ephesus from the cramped quarters of his jail cell? As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received (4:1), he tells this congregation, reminding them in a single sentence both who he is and who they are to be. Paul is not doing time for jaywalking, after all; he is a prisoner for the Lord. And now he is asking these disciples in Ephesus to live up to the identity and vocation they have been given by the Father “from whom the whole family of believers in heaven and on earth derives its name” (3:15). Doesn’t that sound like a concern for holiness, a concern for high quality living?

It is an understandable concern. I’ve now been a pastor long enough to hear something other than scolding in the voice of Paul. He is not jabbing his finger into Ephesian chests, berating folks for falling short of some vague ideal. He is remembering where saints come from, remembering the quarry from which all of us are mined, reviewing for just a moment the old life that every Christian leaves behind to answer the call of Jesus. Paul has not for a moment forgotten his Amen. He still recalls that there are no litmus tests of character for admission to the Church, because God the Holy Spirit will take in anybody! Thank God for that! That is precisely where Paul’s concern takes rise. If we’re doing our job well in the Church, it should be absolutely no surprise to find that we collect a good number of sometimes shabby, immoral, theologically ignorant, and biblically illiterate people in the Church. That’s what success will look like if we achieve it in our outreach, our compassion, our service to the community. So Paul’s concern is quite understandable: I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you received!

You know how preacher types typically work on this sort of concern. You can probably imagine how that sermon will sound, a breathless series of urgent imperatives filling the sanctuary airspace, Ought, Must and Should all stacked up with no place to land in busy lives already crammed full of guilty discomfort. That’s not the sermon Paul is preaching. He’s not trying to launch another series of dos and don’ts, he’s engaging in Soulcraft. Because Paul is smart enough to know it can be demoralizing trying hard to be holy.

The interesting thing is that Paul does not even begin to give us yet another list of dos and don’ts. Instead of issuing another pulpit series of behavioral commands, the text we’re reading begins by describing a sort of soul style characteristic of the people God is re-creating as saints. Paul is talking first about how we are rather than what we are to do and I confess to you that with an approach to holiness spirituality offering that kind of grace, Paul had me at “Hello!” Listen to the subtle but crucial distinction that he is drawing between how holy people act and what they eventually do: Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace (4:2-3). Did you hear it? Not all the things holy people try to accomplish, but the essential Spirit by which they live. Humility, gentleness, patience, love, unity, peace. Holiness does not make us less than human, but more essentially and authentically human. We become the kind of people others can live with, the kind of people every one of us wants to have on our side.

It is obvious this is the kind of stuff we need. This kind of Soulcraft is exactly the type of spirituality that proves so vital to healthy community. If I were to put the question right now, “All in favor, say ‘Aye,’” is there any doubt the Ayes would have it by a landslide? But if this is so obvious to everyone, why is it in such short supply? Why is it that the Church of Jesus Christ has such an apparently well-deserved reputation for being cranky and hypercritical, morally arrogant, and mean-spirited? How on earth did the disciples of Jesus wind up being so easily caricatured by our culture as such cruel and viperish people bent on telling everyone else where they can go?

Do you think it could be that we suffer from some sort of unholy heart condition? Could it be the case that what we know to be necessary does not somehow reflect the deepest desire of our heart, that somehow we just never get around to being the saints God has called because there is something else we would prefer to be? Something more agreeable, perhaps better suited to our personal priorities? Something that would allow us to remain in control, stay in charge, to live a life less than worthy of the calling we have received? No matter what we might like to say about the things that are really important to us, the lives we are leading right now are perfectly arranged and suited for the results we are experiencing at present. Isn’t this who we are?

Well, who do you think we are? humble? gentle? patient? loving? united? peaceful? Are those the soul qualities you saw in the mirror this morning? Or do you suspect that we still harbor a secret desire to triumph, to reign victorious, to dominate others and be recognized for our superiority? Do you suppose this coarse, raw desire to impose our will on everybody else explains the sports we watch, the humor we enjoy, begins to explain us?

What we’re talking about here, is of course, ego sin, that desire to enthrone ourselves at the center of the known universe with the expectation that everyone else will bow down at the appropriate time to sing our praises. The desire to assert our own claims to preeminence in all things, not because we are so unbelievably narcissistic, but perhaps because we’ve grown weary of being wounded, too tired to stand any longer in line to allow someone else to go first. We’re just tired, and when you’re just tired you are not yourself!

Do you ever find yourself just too tired to be one of the saints Paul has been describing? Too tired to be humble, gentle, patient, loving, united, or peaceful? It does happen, you know, even among people we admire. I once heard a historian remembering the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in his prime, a dinner guest in the home of one of his political adversaries. After dinner, Churchill’s hostess, the wife of his opponent, was pouring a cup of tea for the Prime Minister. “Mr. Churchill,” she purred, “If I were your wife, I would poison your tea.” Without missing a beat, Churchill replied, “Madame, if you were my wife, I would drink it!” Perhaps he was just tired! Humble, gentle, patient, loving, united, peaceful? No, Paul, it’s been a long day, a long week, a long year, a long life. We’d rather just win!

But Paul already seems to know this about us. He seems to know we harbor that subtle preference for victory at the expense of others, this desire of ours to be endlessly admired and respected because at the end of the day we were the clear cut winners. Listen to the way Paul preaches to the Ephesians, the careful way he comes alongside to quote to them from one of the familiar victory-prayers of ancient Israel, Psalm 68: This is why it says, “When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men” (4:8). Doesn’t that sound like just the kind of thing any of us would choose if we could, a victory parade with banners fluttering in the breeze and giddy crowds cheering in unison? What a perfect prayer poem for people who have grown tired of waiting for rewards and recognition, weary of taking a backseat to anyone and everyone. The exalted Lord, victorious in battle, now ascending to heaven, leading captives in front of the adoring throng of believers who chant praise to his glorious name. You bet, Paul, that’s just the kind of thing we were looking for, because if we get in on that kind of victory parade, there is likely to be plenty of bling to go around! I’m not saying we’re just out for the party favors, Paul. We have better motives than that, we’re not just a greedy bunch of treasure hunters. But you have to admit that it is always great to get in on the goodies, to be part of the action, to travel with the winners. So who can blame us for wanting to be part of this parade? Here we are, says Paul, the risen and exalted Lord has been victorious and he is ascending to heaven, leading the defeated in his train.

I didn’t hear any problem with that, did you? It was exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for, but then one day I actually heard what Paul was doing when he pulled Psalm 68:18 out of his bag of pulpit texts: When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men (4:8). Sounds great. But unfortunately, Psalm 68:18 doesn’t actually say it that way. For some reason, Paul didn’t seem to get his quote down right.

Psalm 68:18 reads very differently, in fact, from what Paul just said to the Ephesians. Let me read you what Psalm 68 does say, and see if your ears pick up the difference: When you ascended on high, you led captives in your train; you received gifts from men, even from the rebellious (Psalm 68:18). Pretty close, right? The exalted Lord still ascending to heaven, still leading captives in his train, still recognized as victorious by everyone, even the rebellious. But instead of Psalm 68 telling us that the ascendant, exalted Lord was receiving gifts, Paul said that the risen and rising Lord was giving gifts away. If it were anyone other than the Apostle Paul quoting from Psalm 68, I’d chalk it up to a minor glitch in translation and leave it alone.

Maybe when Paul was writing his letter to the Ephesians there was no spell-check software loaded for his parchment quill. Maybe someone gave him a cut-rate translation of the prayer scroll of Psalms. Maybe Paul was just tired that day, writing another letter to another church from the squalor of a Roman jail cell. I don’t buy those explanations. This is the Apostle Paul, credentialed rabbinical student, careful reader of Scripture and leading scholar of the Early Church. He didn’t get his wires crossed quoting Psalm 68. He meant to say it the way he did: But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it says: “When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men” (4:7-8).

Maybe this is the point at which the Apostle Paul would find it helpful and necessary to step to the microphone to offer a few clarifying comments. “Yes, I know, my Jewish brothers and sisters, that is not the way we learned to recite Psalm 68 back in Sabbath School at Temple. I know that this is not what you were expecting, but we’re talking now about the Messiah Jesus, and this is how we have come to know Christ. This is what we have seen and learned from Him. He is not the kind of Messiah who defeats the world, the flesh and the devil by merely winning. He was crucified, as I’m sure all of you remember. You saw it with your own eyes, even though many of you had hoped to be on Messiah’s victorious side. Surprisingly, death could not be the end of Him for He was raised by the power of God, and now He has ascended to the right hand of the Father where He will reign and rule as the firstborn from the dead. Here’s the thing all of us have to comprehend, the mystery that only God could imagine, that only our God would think to try. The resurrection of Jesus did not reverse course on Messiah’s earthly life and ministry, it validated that life! Being raised from the dead doesn’t minimize, avoid, or negate the reality of the death Jesus experienced, instead it affirms that His is the one kind of life God the Father approves and blesses. Don’t you remember what our Lord himself told you, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). This is why the risen Jesus does not emerge from his tomb to say, “Look at me, none of that really hurt.” No, the risen Jesus says, “Come put your hand in my side, touch these nail holes in my hands and feet,” because the Easter Jesus has scars!”

Paul tells us, “This was and is Messiah’s way in our world, and because it remains His way forever I thought it right to help you see a new sense in which our Psalm prayer speaks of His victory. To each one of us grace has been given, not one of us has been left out because Christ saw to it personally that every one of us would be remembered in the apportioning of His gifts. That’s why I had to alter our familiar prayer just a little, to make sure everyone can see what it is that Jesus has done for us, the unimaginable gifting he has lavished upon us: This is why it says: ‘When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men’ (4:8).”

There. I know Paul said it wrong. I know it was not quite what many were expecting. I understand that much of the time we want to be on the winning side, to be the ones recognized and affirmed and rewarded by all of the rest. Because that is the kind of life we sometimes desire and perhaps anticipate, this misquotation of Paul’s turns out to be subversive. It might be a bit unsettling, because Paul is saying something that doesn’t quite rhyme with the reality we were seeking. He’s not telling us about a Messiah who succeeds by winning; he’s telling us about a Messiah who intends to serve even when losing. This is a Messiah who will voluntarily dynamite His own statue, who will give away power, position, prestige, and privilege. This self-emptying does not diminish Him in any way; it does not restrict or limit His authority and it will not cause Him to abandon His holy purpose. Paul is testifying that the risen Jesus who has ascended absolutely victorious into heaven has virtually looted the place, giving everything of value away to His followers. The very best of heaven is now available to us here on earth! When we say this, we can only be talking about the Holy Spirit of God.

Isn’t this such a contrast to the contemporary versions of spirituality we see all around us? How easily we get ourselves caught up in the trends that always seem to emphasize Big as best, Self as the center, the Distant or Exotic as most preferable. You know how it goes; we just keep scanning the horizon looking for the Next Big Thing, hoping to catch the wave when the latest incarnation of the DaVinci-Purpose-Driven-Prayer-of-Jabez comes our way. I’m not trying to be smug or pick a theological fistfight with anyone who has been helped by these things; I simply want to point out that the Apostle Paul has something very different in mind. Apparently he is convinced that true holiness is made of ordinary stuff and simple moments, perhaps confident because the Messiah Jesus has given each of us every gift necessary to live on the basis of His victory. So watch as Paul goes to work.

Watch for example, how carefully Paul pays attention to our vocation with words. Words are such fragile things, but because the risen Christ has given us grace, given each of us gifts, even frail words are now capable of bearing tremendous weight. Just listen to the incredible work Paul envisions for those who will pay close attention to words: It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining the full measure of perfection found in Christ (4:11-13).

Apostles. Prophets. Evangelists. Pastors and teachers. All of them using words, working with words, living in words, creating a brand new world with nothing more than words. Incredible! It’s not just a new elitism, a vocation for those who are called and skilled and commissioned to work with these Gospel-carrying words. No, this is something in which all of us have a stake. We are all connected by these life-giving words that we have been given to share, for the very work of all these apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers is aimed at preparing all of God’s saints for works of service until every last one of us attains “the full measure of perfection found in Christ!” It’s breathtakingly astounding if you think of it. Building up the Body of Christ, re-creating the entire cosmos itself with no more than these simple words entrusted to our care. Can you imagine that?

I read something similar in Leon Wieseltier’s remarkable memoir of the year following his father’s death in 1996. A non-observant Jew, Wieseltier was the literary editor of The New Republic, and the account of his year praying Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, three times daily in the shul, or synagogue taught me something about the power of these words of ours. Somewhere during that year of grief and remembrance, Wieseltier said he received a phone call of support from his sister. Before hanging up, she told her brother that her son, his 5 year-old-nephew, wished to recite for his uncle something the boy had learned in Hebrew school. On the other end of the line, Wieseltier said he listened to the very small, hesitant voice of a 5 year-old-boy carefully reciting the letters of the Hebrew alphabet: Alef, Beit, Gimel, Dalet, Hei, until his sister came back on the line. “What do you think?” she asked. And Wieseltier wrote that he replied to her, “I think Hitler lost.”1 Words count!

Isn’t this the same theme that Paul was addressing from the very beginning of our text? “Live a life worthy of the calling you have received,” Paul said in verse 1, drawing upon a word he uses repeatedly throughout his letter to the Ephesians. It is not a very glamorous word, if you ask me, nothing more than a verbal phrase we would translate, “to walk.” Peripateo is the basic form, the same word Paul uses in Ephesians 2:2, 2:10, 4:17, 5:2, 5:8, 5:15, and now here in our text at verse 1: As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life (walk) worthy of the calling you have received. First we were paying close attention to our words, and now we have Paul telling us to walk worthily, to walk right, to walk in a manner appropriate to the high calling we have received. Nothing big, exotic, not anything to exalt the self or affirm our importance from faraway, long distance. Just walking. Just learning how to walk. Paul is suggesting that we give attention to our walking lessons, making sure we don’t stumble, don’t trip either ourselves or the people around us, learning how to faithfully walk where Jesus walked, doing what Jesus did. How difficult could it be to walk? How significant could anything as simple as walking turn out to be? But that’s what the man said. Paul is urging us not to underestimate the significance of walking.

After receiving the Nobel Peace Prize recognizing his leadership in the South African struggle against the political racism of apartheid, Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu was asked to recall the most formative memory of his life. He told the interviewer there was one particular moment that had a profound impact on the development of his faith and, eventually his role as a leader for his country. He said, “One incident comes to mind immediately. When I was a young child I saw a white man tip his hat to a black woman. Please understand that such a gesture is completely unheard of in my country. The white man was an Episcopal bishop and the black woman was my mother.”2 What happened? Nothing much. Just one brother in Christ paying close attention to the way he was walking, but it transformed a nation. Don’t underestimate walking!

Somebody is sure to object that the holy life couldn’t be this ordinary, this simple, this, this . . . well, pedestrian. I’m not sure Paul would be convinced by the objection. Under normal circumstances, most of us don’t experience too much challenge when walking on our daily rounds. It is probably true that if we are experiencing some sort of pain or discomfort when we attempt to walk, it is because something has gone wrong and we have been injured. In other words, walking is the designed and intended use of the legs entrusted to our care. When they are functioning properly and we are in good health, we don’t even think about the steps we are taking. It is not that we are being careless or sloppy, but that we have learned to make the right actions automatic by practice. We find we can walk without the need to watch our legs to coordinate each step. When you know how to walk, you can give your undivided attention to where you will walk. So don’t tell Paul that he has chosen the wrong image. What could be more appropriate to a life of holiness than our capacity to walk so smooth and fluid that we draw and claim no unnecessary attention for ourselves?

Once several years ago while we were both guest instructors during summer term at the seminary, Barbara Brown Taylor told the story of a professor friend invited to speak at a military base during Christmas break. Arriving at the airport, the guest speaker was met by a young man at the gate who was responsible to escort him through the baggage claim area and onto a waiting vehicle ready to take him to the base. But to the surprise of the guest speaker, his airport escort kept disappearing unexpectedly as they journeyed through the concourse. Once the professor looked up to discover the young man assisting an older woman whose suitcase had broken open, spilling all its contents on the floor. A second time the young man slipped away to lift up two toddlers so they could see Santa Claus seated behind a crowd. A few minutes later he had moved away from his guest one more time to give directions to another traveler who had become disoriented in the terminal. After each diversion, the young man named Ralph returned to walk alongside the professor, resuming their conversation with a smile on his face. Barbara said her professor friend just couldn’t figure out Ralph.

“Where did you learn to do that?” he asked his young companion.

“Do what?” replied Ralph.

“Where did you learn to live like that?” asked the professor, wanting to know how Ralph became so attentive to others, able to see and respond to all these different needs around him.

“Oh,” said Ralph, “I suppose it was during the war,” and for the next hour or so the young man began to explain the lasting impact of his tour of duty as a combat engineer specializing in clearing the mine fields, finding and removing Claymores and Toe-poppers, and watching his friends blow up one after another before his eyes. “I guess I just learned to live between steps,” he said, “I never knew whether the next step would be my last, so I just determined to get everything I could out of every moment between the time I picked up my foot and when I put it down again. Every step I took, it was a whole new world, and I guess I’ve just been that way ever since.”3

Don’t you think that every step does open up a whole new world, and that there is a lot of living to do between steps? It sure makes sense to me, and I’m pretty sure Paul would agree, but I still think that we are talking about a life that is all gift rather than strenuous moral exertion on our part. Holiness is not the result of us paying even more attention to ourselves; it is the accomplishment of the Holy Spirit within us. This is great news, because it is abundantly clear that the world does not need more of us. The world needs more of Jesus Christ! Thankfully we are still talking about a victorious life shaped by the self-emptying of that Christ, the generosity of a risen and triumphant Lord who has seen to it to include absolutely everyone in his gracious gift giving. It’s just a matter of walking, but every step is a gift and nothing we will ever need will be left as a matter of chance by God.

A few years ago, I read about a young man seeking to change his life for the better when he made his way into a church sanctuary to think things over for awhile. He took out a piece of paper and a pencil and then began to write down a long list of things that he would do to transform his life, a page of things he promised to do for God before signing his name at the bottom and taking it forward to place it on the altar.

After sitting down again in one of the pews, the young man began to sense that the voice of God was speaking quietly in his own soul. The more he listened to that quiet voice, the more he seemed to hear the Lord saying to him, “You’ve done it all wrong. I want you to go back up there and get that piece of paper and tear it up. And then I’ll give you another instruction.”

The young man left his pew once more, and walking forward to the altar, he did just as the Lord had seemed to tell him. He went back to his place sitting down in the pew to await further instruction. It did not happen immediately, but finally a second message did come through. This time, the Lord seemed to say to him, very gently, “Now take a piece of paper and sign your name to it at the bottom . . . and let me fill in all the rest!”4

I guess you will never know where the journey may lead you until you are willing to take the next step. I also think that when everything in us is fully available to the Spirit of God, anything and anyone will prove useful to the Lord.Notes:

1. Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish, New York: Knopf, 1998.

2. This story was relayed by William Willimon, and no further publication information is known to me at this time.

3. A version of this story was originally told by Barbara Brown Taylor. No other publication information is known to me at present.

4. A version of this story was told by Barry P. Boulware, First United Methodist Church, Kansas City, Missouri. No publication information is known at present.

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