March 6, 2005

Living as Children of Light

Text: Ephesians 5:1-14

It 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.

I. Shame and Blame

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.”

II. Exposed by the Light

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.

III. If We Confess Our Sins

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.