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Printer Friendly VersionIt was probably the worst and best day of my marriage.
Debbie and I had only been married about a year. We were still
in that stage where it is beginning to dawn on both of you that so much of
your life as an individual was now caught up in this new union. In other words,
we were still trying to figure out how to make everything that was “mine”
now “ours.”
Before we got married I had started a small on-the-side baseball
card collecting business. One Saturday a month, or so, I would set up a table
at a collector’s show and buy, sell, and trade baseball and football
trading cards. Debbie and I both came into the marriage with our own bank
accounts and credit cards, so I simply used one of “my” visa cards
to buy new cards for my collecting and selling. I did not however tell Debbie
about it.
I especially did not tell her about it when I found an opportunity
to buy an entire collection from another card dealer for around $1500. I believed
that I could turn around and sell many of the cards in that collection for
a profit and she would never know that I had placed our new marriage in that
kind of credit debt so quickly without asking her about it. To maintain my
secret I hid the visa receipts.
She found them!
It was one of the worst feelings I have ever experienced. I
got home from work to find the receipts out on the dining room table awaiting
my explanation. Needless to say, the conversation that ensued was both heated
and conciliatory, passionate and confessional. By the grace of God –
and the grace of Debbie – a potentially disastrous night of being discovered
became instead an important moment of connection for our marriage.
I had been caught. No excuse I could come up with would be able
to undo or explain away what I had done. I certainly could feel her frustration,
her hurt, and her disappointment in me. But I also received her grace, her
love, and ultimately her understanding in a way that allowed me to stop feeling
the need to keep certain aspects of our relationship “mine” and
hide from her things for which I was ashamed.
Truth and grace allowed us to move to new levels of trust in our new life together.
Paul, in Ephesians 5:1-14 emphasizes two distinct ways of living
– darkness and light. It is interesting that the gospel text in the lectionary
for this Sunday is the story of the blind man who was healed by Jesus in John
chapter 9. In typical Johannine ways, this healing narrative contrasts darkness
and light. The newly enlightened blind man becomes the unexpected foil to
the Pharisees and teachers of the law surrounding Jesus who have healthy eyes
but are spiritually blind.
Paul in this letter to the Ephesians is urging the believers
to walk in the light of Christ. Those who are shaped by the love and life
of Jesus have no need to hide in the darkness of sin, but are free to walk
open and honest before God and each other in the light of divine love.
Walking in the light, however, is not easy. It is painful.
In the garden narratives of Genesis we see rich symbolism describing
the way God wanted things to be. Adam and Eve were created in such a way that
they walked in openness with God and with each other. Each day God came and
walked with them in the cool of the garden. The man and the woman were naked
before each other and unashamed. Because they had nothing to hide from God
or each other they were free to live in vulnerability and complete honesty.
When sin entered in however, everything changed. They immediately
hid from God. In fact, the creation narratives seem to imply that God even
had to seek out his people as they cowered from him in shame. When he did
find them they immediately began to place blame elsewhere. Adam blamed both
God and Eve. “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit
from the tree…” (Genesis 3:12). Eve in turn blamed the enticing
creation for her fall. Beyond shame and blame, Adam and Eve recognized their
nakedness and covered themselves in order to hide their secret selves from
one another.
This is the problem that Paul understands humankind to have
inherited and passed on, we do not want to walk in ways that allow the truth
of our lives to be revealed. We are continually covering the impurity of our
lives so that it cannot be seen by God, by others, and most tragically even
by ourselves. Our deeds are done in utter darkness. To borrow a phrase from
M. Scott Peck, humans are “people of the lie.”
But what God has done in Christ has exposed our deeds done in
darkness. The life of Jesus is filled with dramatic moments in which he saw
into the hearts and actions of the people he encountered.
- When he encountered the woman at the well, he knew how many
“husbands” she had known.
- When Pharisees and teachers of the law came to trick him,
he immediately perceived their true motives.
- Even when one of his own disciples betrayed him or forsook
him, their ardent denials could not hide the reality of their sin from Jesus.
In the presence of Jesus our hearts of darkness are exposed.
Even more so, in the shadow of the cross the dark violence of
humankind stands exposed. The words of goodness and forgiveness that continue
to come from the mouth of Jesus, even while facing agonizing death, do nothing
but shed a penetrating light on the lies and deceit upon which the principalities
and powers are established.
God’s answer to our sin is to shed his light upon our hearts
so that no dark deed remains unseen or unknown.
Yet it is in the loving light of Jesus Christ (the lamb who
is the light of the Holy City) that we also experience the overwhelming grace
from the one who knows us intimately yet loves us so thoroughly. Our response
ought to be to run into the light and allow the depth of our hearts to be
seen by the penetrating Spirit of God. Paul believes that those who are not
children of light want to remain in darkness. But those who not only know
the love of God, but want to be imitators of that love, will walk together
in the light.
It is interesting in Ephesians that Paul speaks about walking
in the light not as individuals but as a community. Our response is not only
to give ourselves as individuals over to eyes of God, but we are called in
this passage to be a community that walks in the light together. God’s
desire is to bring us back to Eden, if you will. The vulnerability and transparency
of Adam and Eve that was lost through sin can be restored in Christian community
by the power of the Spirit. If God’s love is at work in us together we
can learn to trust not only his gaze upon us but we can speak and live the
truth in love with one another.
In dealing with the subject of confession Dietrich Bonhoeffer
in his book Life Together, asks,
Why is it that it is often easier for us to confess our sins
to God than to a brother? God is holy and sinless, He is a just judge of evil
and the enemy of all disobedience. But a brother is sinful as we are. He knows
from his own experience the dark night of secret sin. Why should we not find
it easier to go to a brother than to the holy God?
He goes on to say that when we do not confess to one another
perhaps we are simply confessing our sins to ourselves and not to God. Perhaps,
he remarks, this is the reason for our many relapses, because we keep practicing
self-forgiveness rather than allowing a brother or sister to not only be an
instrument of God’s grace to us but also a source of spiritual accountability.
Traditionally Lent has been oriented around the practice of
confession. Unfortunately many of us in the Protestant tradition under the
guise of the “priesthood of all believers” left confession behind.
The idea of the priesthood of all believers does not, however, mean that we
do not need a priest, what it means is that we need not just one priest but
the entire Body of Christ to act as priests to one another. When John Wesley
started small groups for his Methodist followers he made sure that the first
moment of every “band” meeting was oriented toward the confession
of sin to one another.
We live in an age of darkness. The individualism and seductiveness
of our culture lures us into believing that we can participate in deeds of
darkness that is “nobody’s business” but our own. We however
live differently as Christ’s Body. We have been awakened to the life
upon which the light of Christ shines. It may take time and the power of the
Spirit to help us believe that we can trust a brother or sister in Christ
to love us unconditionally. But we believe that we can live in openness and
vulnerability with one another believing that we can be instruments of the
transforming grace of Jesus Christ to one another.
Let us walk together in the light, as he is in the light – and let us have fellowship – true fellowship – with one another.