Sunday, August 9, 2015 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Wet Words

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 130
Ephesians 4:25–5:2

This life, therefore, is not godliness but the process of becoming godly, not health but getting well, not being but becoming. We are not now what we shall be, but we are on the way. The process is not yet finished, but it is actively going on. This is not the goal, but it is the right road. At present, everything does not gleam and sparkle, but everything is being cleansed.

Martin Luther

“God loves you, so trust.” That theological focal point grounded our worship last Sunday. In that service of Word and Table, we paused to wrap our minds around the truth that God’s nourishment, God’s grace, God’s claiming of us, is not something we do for ourselves. It does not come as a result of our work, our efforts, or our accomplishments. Rather, instead of being the manufacturers of this grace and claim, we are called to be the receivers of God’s grace and claim. The classic Reformed theological way to put it is “justification by grace through faith.”

Already today we have seen that theological claim demonstrated in the baptism of children. The moment of baptism announces God’s claim on their lives, God’s love for them, a love that wraps them up in grace and mercy even before they know their own names. As our Book of Order so beautifully states, the baptism of children witnesses to the truth that God’s love claims people before they are able to respond in faith. Again, God loves you, so trust.

But in addition to making those theological claims last week, somewhere in the middle of the sermon I also remarked off the cuff that our response to God’s claim does matter. Our response matters not because it changes God’s opinion of us, but because it changes us. And wouldn’t you know it, several of you picked up on that. “OK, Shannon,” a few of you said, either in face-to-face conversation or in email, “what does that look like? How does our response matter? What is the responsibility we have as receivers of God’s grace?”

The members of Paul’s early churches must have asked similar questions. And if they didn’t, Paul tried to prompt them to ask those kinds of questions. In this letter called Ephesians, Paul specifically writes about our response to God’s grace. In particular, in the section we just read, Paul offers examples as to how they, as a congregation, were to live out their new life in Christ. Throughout this letter, Paul challenges them to evaluate if they are effectively taking off the garment of their old lives, lives lived before the knowledge of God’s gracious claiming of them, lives lived before they knew God loved them and so they were free to trust.

Immediately before our text for today, Paul asks them if they are taking off those old ways of being and doing in order to put on the new garments of baptismal identity. As receivers of such immense grace, how were they, Paul asks them, responding with their lives? Another way to phrase it would be to use the words that the Reverend Dr. Otis Moss used this week on an MSNBC television panel: “Are you practicing a faith where Jesus is a good luck charm or an ATM, or are you practicing a faith that leads to real transformation?” Though Paul uses different words, he is asking similar questions of the Ephesians.

Paul took seriously the responsibility and transformation of the baptized. So in these verses, he provides his congregation some details about what their new life is to look like. It is to look like people who share. It is to look like people who act in kind ways to one another. It is to look like people who are honest about their anger but who are also honest about God’s call to forgive and be reconciled. Paul offers his churches these visual reflections, these peculiar habits, these ways of life, that the Christian community is called to inhabit.

But Paul seemed to be not only concerned with how the new life in Christ looked; he also wanted to help the church hear how the new life in Christ sounded. Listen again: “Let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors for we are members of one another. . . . Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.”

Paul claimed the Ephesians’ new life in Christ, their new baptismal garb, did not just affect their actions and what they did with their bodies. Their new life in Christ, their new baptismal garb, also affected their very words and the way they spoke with one another as members of the same family, Christ’s family. According to this letter, not only did their bodies and their actions get wet in the waters of baptism, but so did their speech.

The very words they used with each other needed to be dipped into the baptismal font before being spoken out loud. After all, Paul knew what you and I know: words have power. And as part of Christ’s body, the Ephesians were called to use that power for good and not for evil. Paul challenged them by saying that whenever they spoke with one another, they were called to only use words of grace and to resist using words of malice or division; to only make comments that built up the body and to refrain from making comments whose purpose was primarily to harm or tear down.

I was thinking about Paul’s challenge as I watched the debates on Thursday. Now this is not meant to be a partisan comment, because I am sure I will see similar behavior when I watch the Democrats debate, too. But with this scripture in my mind, I found myself struck anew by the caustic tone that permeated just about everything. Because Paul’s words were working on me, I felt saddened by the rhetoric adopted by so many. I was struck by how much of our public life seems absolutely steeped in cynicism and just plain meanness.

So with Paul’s challenge sitting in my imagination, I began to wonder how we, as church, could fight against that, could bear a different kind of witness. I wondered what could happen in us as a community if we wrote “We are members of one another. Only use words that give grace. Only make comments that build up” at the top of every bulletin, every committee meeting agenda, every Sunday School lesson, every assignment page used in Chicago Lights Tutoring. And I wondered what could happen in you if you made those words the screensaver on your laptop or your primary status on Facebook? What might happen in us if we put “We are members of one another. Only use words that give grace. Only make comments that build up” at the top of our household or work calendars or had it come up as a daily reminder on our smartphones?

Can you imagine keeping those peculiar instructions in the front of our minds at all times? Do you think anything would change? Do you think we might be changed? What could happen even here if we took on Paul’s challenge to remember that our words have power and to pay closer attention to the ways in which we speak with one another as church and with folks in the world?

This kind of intentionality is already being lived out in some churches. A seminary friend of mine, Dr. Todd Greene, a white Presbyterian preacher, once asked an African American preacher friend of his how he got away with a worship service that was always at least two hours long. “I get in trouble if I go five minutes past the hour,” my friend complained. “How do you manage it?” “Well,” the other preacher began, “we spend so much of our week being beat down by the words spoken about us, being wrongly told who we are and what we are worth. @e hear that kind of poison all week long, so we figure it takes at least a few hours on a Sunday to let God’s Word build us back up again, to hear the words of claim and belovedness that truly define us and remind us what we are actually worth. The words we hear and use in church have the power to restore our lives, week in and week out. So we give whatever time it takes for that to happen.” That community was determined to live out Paul’s words as part of their response to God’s claim on their lives. “We are members of one another. Only use words that give grace. Only make comments that build up.”

What might happen if we kept those challenges in our minds whenever we stepped onto this property? Or whenever we left it and walked down the street? It is intriguing to consider, isn’t it. A whole large community of people committed both in here and out there to only speaking in ways that offered grace, determined to only use words that built up. A whole large community of people always aware of the power of the words they used—the power their words held to either wound or to heal. A whole large community of people who did not let themselves forget they were members of one another. It sounds both beautiful and odd. We would certainly be seen as peculiar and out of step with the rest of the world.

And yet if you want to know what one response to God’s grace looks like, sounds like—this is an example. These peculiar ways of speaking to and being with one another are reflections of the new life we have been given in our risen Lord. They are responses to our baptism. Using the power of our words to extend grace, to enflesh forgiveness, to build one another up is exactly one of the things we are to be about as the living body of Christ on earth. We are called to be that kind of unique, that kind of peculiar, that graciously mindful.

Now, let’s stop for just a moment and make sure we are also clear about what this letter does not say to us. This letter does not claim we cannot ever be angry with one another or disagree with each other. We are still free to debate theology, ethics, politics. Remember William Sloane Coffin’s maxim: As long as our hearts are one in Christ, our minds don’t have to be. Paul is not telling us to speak in false niceties or to pathologically deny the complexities of our communal life together. We are still invited to be honest about those places in our congregational life and in our personal lives where we need God’s direction or God’s healing or simply God’s tangible presence. We do not need to deny where we are broken.

Yet these words from Ephesians do remind us that even when we are angry, we shall not speak to wound. And even when we disagree, we shall not speak to demean. And when we acknowledge our messiness, we shall not slander or be divisive or break away. Rather, as a part of Christ’s living body in this world, we are called to be clear about the power of the words we use and how we use them with one another. We are called to remember that we are members of one another. And one response to God’s claim on our lives is to only use words that give grace and to only make comments that build up.

These words from Ephesians offer us, as parts of Christ’s living body, a way of living and being with one another that is starkly different than what we experience living in a culture steeped too much in cynicism and just plain meanness. These words from Ephesians challenge us to not only think about our discipleship—our response to God’s immense grace—in terms of what we do or don’t do, but also in terms of what we say and how we say it. “We are members of one another. Only use words that give grace. Only make comments that build up. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven you.”

In this day and time, can you imagine a church that actively practiced living out those words? A large, urban, diverse congregation whose life together was distinctively marked by peculiar, grace-giving hasbits of speech? Can you imagine that? I can. May it be so with you and with me.