Ephesians 4:25-5:2 (MSG)
What this adds up to, then, is this: no more lies, no more pretense. Tell your neighbor the truth. In Christ’s body we’re all connected to each other, after all. When you lie to others, you end up lying to yourself. Go ahead and be angry. You do well to be angry—but don’t use your anger as fuel for revenge. And don’t stay angry. Don’t go to bed angry. Don’t give the Devil that kind of foothold in your life. For instance, did you use to make ends meet by stealing? Well, no more! Get an honest job so that you can help others who can’t work.
Watch the way you talk. Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your mouth. Say only what helps, each word a gift. Don’t grieve God. Don’t break his heart. His Holy Spirit, moving and breathing in you, is the most intimate part of your life, making you fit for himself. Don’t take such a gift for granted.
Make a clean break with all cutting, backbiting, profane talk. Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you.
5:1-2 Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.
In the human kingdom and in the animal kingdom – at least among warm-blooded mammals – young creatures begin learning how to survive life by deep observation of the adults around them. Animals in the wild have to learn very quickly simply in order to stay alive. Parents teach the young to climb, to hide in plain sight, to stalk prey and to take down a kill very early on because a helpless childhood in the wild has to be short in order for the species to survive.
In human animals this childhood period is longer and in most cases human young have the luxury of of a prolonged baby- and toddler-hood extending, in most cases, at least into middle childhood. But even with this extended care period, one of the earliest actions taken by the newborn – as soon as their eyes gain the capability to track on a moving object – is to begin their lifelong observation of those around them.
Long before children become verbal or mobile they are watching and learning so as to one day model their own actions and reactions on those of their caregivers. As children we learn speech from listening and putting together the sounds we hear with the actions we observe – but we also do much more complicated things like learning social interactions, like reading people’s moods by their tone of voice or recognizing that we will be more successful at getting what we want from someone by offering our cutest giggle and kisses rather than throwing things and screaming. Later we learn how to negotiate the school playground, and much later – hopefully – we observe others in order to figure out dating and dealing with the objects of sexual desire.
In all these things from infancy onward we learn by observation – by paying attention to what is going on around us.
It seems to me this is what the writer of the Letter to the Ephesians is saying that if we want to call ourselves followers of Jesus, then there are certain things we have to do in order for others to recognize us as Jesus people. People will be observing us – what will they learn about God by observing us?
We shouldn’t be angry just for anger’s sake. We should do our best to have an honest job. We shouldn’t be coarse or foul, we shouldn’t lie about each other. We must be gentle and forgiving – these actions will help others to see God by observing us.
Reading this, I was reminded of Robert Fulghum’s All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, that everyone was quoting 25 or 30 years ago. It offered such simple rules as:
1. Share everything.
2. Play fair.
3. Don't hit people.
4. Put things back where you found them.
5. Clean up your own mess.
My favorite has always been #13: When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together (although there is one about taking naps that appeals to me more and more as I grow older).
In other words, be nice, be kind, think of others, not just yourself. Be like God – because, stripped to the most basic level, this is how God is – these are the things God does. If we wish to be God’s children, God’s beloved ones, then it behooves us, like infants, to watch and observe this universal caring parent very closely.
And, as we have been discussing for the past few weeks, God even makes this super easy for us by giving us God’s own Spirit to be and to act inside of each one of us – to help us observe truly in order to truly care about each other. The Spirit in us can help to strip away our out-sized assurances about our own “rightness” – help us to see without prejudice – help us to look at those who are not like us and still see them as God’s children.
Our letter writer puts this so simply in the last 2 verses of our reading. (I was sorely tempted to just read these two verses and say something like "do that" and count that as the entire message for this week):
In human animals this childhood period is longer and in most cases human young have the luxury of of a prolonged baby- and toddler-hood extending, in most cases, at least into middle childhood. But even with this extended care period, one of the earliest actions taken by the newborn – as soon as their eyes gain the capability to track on a moving object – is to begin their lifelong observation of those around them.
Long before children become verbal or mobile they are watching and learning so as to one day model their own actions and reactions on those of their caregivers. As children we learn speech from listening and putting together the sounds we hear with the actions we observe – but we also do much more complicated things like learning social interactions, like reading people’s moods by their tone of voice or recognizing that we will be more successful at getting what we want from someone by offering our cutest giggle and kisses rather than throwing things and screaming. Later we learn how to negotiate the school playground, and much later – hopefully – we observe others in order to figure out dating and dealing with the objects of sexual desire.
In all these things from infancy onward we learn by observation – by paying attention to what is going on around us.
It seems to me this is what the writer of the Letter to the Ephesians is saying that if we want to call ourselves followers of Jesus, then there are certain things we have to do in order for others to recognize us as Jesus people. People will be observing us – what will they learn about God by observing us?
We shouldn’t be angry just for anger’s sake. We should do our best to have an honest job. We shouldn’t be coarse or foul, we shouldn’t lie about each other. We must be gentle and forgiving – these actions will help others to see God by observing us.
Reading this, I was reminded of Robert Fulghum’s All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, that everyone was quoting 25 or 30 years ago. It offered such simple rules as:
1. Share everything.
2. Play fair.
3. Don't hit people.
4. Put things back where you found them.
5. Clean up your own mess.
My favorite has always been #13: When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together (although there is one about taking naps that appeals to me more and more as I grow older).
In other words, be nice, be kind, think of others, not just yourself. Be like God – because, stripped to the most basic level, this is how God is – these are the things God does. If we wish to be God’s children, God’s beloved ones, then it behooves us, like infants, to watch and observe this universal caring parent very closely.
And, as we have been discussing for the past few weeks, God even makes this super easy for us by giving us God’s own Spirit to be and to act inside of each one of us – to help us observe truly in order to truly care about each other. The Spirit in us can help to strip away our out-sized assurances about our own “rightness” – help us to see without prejudice – help us to look at those who are not like us and still see them as God’s children.
Our letter writer puts this so simply in the last 2 verses of our reading. (I was sorely tempted to just read these two verses and say something like "do that" and count that as the entire message for this week):
Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.
See God. Love like that.
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