Reading Other People’s Mail: Part V

A sermon by Dr. Jim Somerville, Pastor
Richmond’s First Baptist Church
Richmond, Virginia
August 9, 2009

Ephesians 4:25 – 5:2 

         Beginning at five o’clock this afternoon (if everything goes according to plan) nearly twenty people will be dipped down under the cool, clear waters of the James River in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  It’s as close as we can get to the way people were baptized in New Testament times, and probably just about as close as we want to get.  According to church historians those early believers were usually baptized in the nude, stripping off their old, dirty clothes, and then, after they had been baptized, putting on clean white robes to symbolize their new life in Christ.  It wouldn’t be a very practical way for us to baptize, but maybe you can see how—for them—it was the perfect symbol of what happens when you become a Christian. 

         Think about the dirtiest you have ever been, maybe after working all day in the field, or camping out on a rainy weekend, or cleaning out your cobwebby basement, and then think about how good it would feel to run a tub full of hot, soapy water and sink into it up to your chin.  When you got out a half hour later you would be as clean as you have ever been—your skin like a newborn baby’s—and you certainly wouldn’t want to put on the filthy clothes you had taken off.  Instead you might wrap yourself up in a white terrycloth robe and take a look in the steamy mirror at a whole new you.

          At its best, that’s what baptism can symbolize: leaving behind the stink and filth of the old life, washing until you are clean as the day you were born, and then putting on a whole new life in Christ. It’s that kind of thing the writer of Ephesians has in mind when he says in the verses just before today’s reading, “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:22-24).  It’s that language of “putting off” the old self and “putting on” the new one that is illustrated by the ritual of baptism, and perhaps most clearly by the way they used to do it in the early church.  Listen to all the things this writer urges new Christians to “put off” in today’s reading from Ephesians 4:25—5:2, and imagine those things lying there like a pile of dirty clothes on the riverbank:

Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. "In your anger do not sin": Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold. He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need. Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (NIV). 

           There they are, laid down by the riverside: all the lies you have ever told, all the things you have done in anger, the petty crimes you have committed, the hurtful words you have said.  There’s all that bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.  Can you see them lying there on the ground?  Can you imagine how good it would feel to walk away from those things, to wade out into the river, to sink down into those cool, clear waters, and come up clean as the day you were born?  And then, says the writer, imagine this: imagine putting on kindness and compassion like a new white robe, becoming “imitators of God, as dearly loved children imitate their parents, and living a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” 

           You can almost smell the bath oil.

           I could spend the next few hours talking to you about those things we need to leave on the riverbank—anger, malice, and bitterness—or I could spend them talking about those things we need to put on—kindness, compassion, and love—but instead I want to spend the next few minutes talking to you about that word in verse 32, forgiveness, which requires us to not only put on a forgiving spirit, but to put off all those grudges, heartaches, and hurt feelings we’ve been carrying around, all that righteous indignation and justifiable offense, and that—my friends—can be a heavy load.

We all have our own stories.  Somewhere along the line, maybe in the first grade, or in your first job, or in your first marriage, someone did you wrong and to this day you remember.  And remembering for very long brings back all the anger and shame you felt when it happened so that you are filled with hatred again for a person who probably doesn’t even know who you are anymore.  If you called him this afternoon and told him you were still angry he would say, “Who is this and what are you talking about?” 

I know, because for more years than I care to admit I carried a grudge against Dana Keeney.  He was a boy in my ninth-grade homeroom class, and once, while we were waiting for the teacher to arrive, he held his fist up to my eye and said, “Do you think I’ve got the nerve?”  “To do what?” I asked.  “To punch you in the eye,” he said.  “Do you think I’ve got the nerve?”  I hesitated for a moment but then said, “No,” and without hesitating Dana Keeney punched me in the eye.  I didn’t punch him back.  Instead I closed my fist around all that hurt and held onto it for a long, long time.  It’s a good thing I had already been baptized because if someone had told me I had to forgive Dana Keeney before I got in the water I’m not sure I would have gotten in.  It felt too good to hold that grudge against him.  But using the image of baptism the writer of Ephesians says we have to forgive each other just as God, in Christ, has forgiven us; we have to stop carrying those grudges around and leave them on the riverbank; and that’s where we run into trouble.  I knew a man who never prayed that part of the Lord’s Prayer where it says, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” because he didn’t want God to forgive him like that, and if the truth be told neither do we. 

For every hurt or humiliation I have suffered in my life there is a memory, and usually the name of someone I have been reluctant to forgive:  Dana Keeney, Marty Rhodes, Richard Spears, Pat Crump . . . do you see how easily they come to the surface, the names, the hurts, the memories?  Maybe it takes us so long to forgive because it’s too much fun to think about getting even.  For years I nourished this little daydream that someday I would be checking out at Home Depot and find Dana Keeney standing at the register with his name tag on.  How sweet it would be to reach into one of those buckets they keep right there near the register, pull out a pair of pliers, grab Dana Keeney by the nose, pull him in close, and whisper in his ear, “Think I’ve got the nerve?” 

Thank God that God doesn’t forgive us like that.  Thank God for forgiving and forgetting all those times we have wronged him because that’s exactly what we want him to do.  Forget it.  Erase it.  Rip the page out of the book.  Don’t hold our sins against us on the Day of Judgment because that would be the end of us, forever.  In other words forgive us our trespasses in just the way we don’t forgive others, so that when we see you face to face we can stand there without any fear.  That’s the kind of forgiveness we want, and it’s easy enough to move from that truth to another: if that’s what we want, then it’s certainly what other people want as well.

They want to be forgiven not as we forgive, but as God forgives.  They want to be loved not as we love, but as Christ loves, and that’s why the writer of Ephesians calls on us to do just that.  What we don’t want from others is what this writer calls on us to stop giving: bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander.  We’ve received that in the past, but we’ve never wanted it, and so, this writer says, “If you don’t want it, don’t give it.  Instead give out kindness, tenderheartedness, forgiveness in the same way that God forgave you through Christ Jesus,” and there’s a twist on the Lord’s Prayer.  The writer of Ephesians is not asking God to forgive us as we forgive others, but asking us to forgive others as God has forgiven us.  Instead of holding God to our example, he holds us to God’s, suggesting that if that’s the kind of forgiveness we really want, then it’s the kind others really want, too.

“Put that on,” he says.  “Put on God’s kind of forgiveness.  And then put on love.”  And this is not love as a nice, warm feeling he is talking about, but love that lays down its life for the beloved, as Christ laid down his life for us.  How many people do we love like that?  If push ever really did come to shove would you let yourself be pushed and shoved toward the electric chair before your spouse or child?  Maybe so.  Probably so.  There are so many of you who really do know how to love, and maybe you know what it’s like to be loved in that same way—in that Christ-like, sacrificial, over-my-dead-body kind of way.  That’s the kind of love we want.  Not fickle, flash-in-the-pan love, here today and gone tomorrow, but enduring, eternal, everlasting love, and if that’s what we want, then surely it’s what others want too.

So, the writer of Ephesians tells us to love like that: “as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us,” he says, and what we may have to realize is that there are people we know who would love to hear a word of forgiveness, or a word of love from us today, but that’s not easy.  Singer Tracy Chapman says that words like “I’m sorry,” and, “I love you,” are among the hardest words to say, and I think she’s right about that.  Those words make us terribly vulnerable.  It might just be that when we get up the nerve to say, “I’m sorry,” someone replies, “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”  It may be that when we finally choke out the words, “I love you,” the one we love will laugh in our face.  But it seems to me also that that is exactly how God has forgiven us and loved us: with full knowledge of the risk, with a tragic understanding that we just might and probably will reject the best gift he can give.  And yet he still offers.  And so the writer of Ephesians calls us to do the same.

Even though those words of love and forgiveness are the hardest ones to say they are also the most important.  Of the thousands of words we use every day, those few words will mean more to the hearer than any others.  Part of understanding the love and forgiveness God has given us is understanding the enormous value of the gift, and then realizing that we have the power to give the same gift to others.  This writer holds up the generous example of Christ and encourages us to give out love and forgiveness in the same extravagant way.  It’s not an easy example to live up to.

Garrison Keillor tells a story about finding the name of a war hero on his desk in the fifth grade—“Sylvester Krueger (’31)”—and thinking what an honor it was to sit at that desk.  Sylvester Krueger’s name was also on a bronze plaque beside the library door along with the names of other former students who had died in World War II.  Above the names was that verse I quoted earlier: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.  John 15:13.”  Garrison Keillor made the mistake of telling his teacher, Mrs. Meiers, about the name on his desk and she immediately remembered what a good boy Sylvester Krueger had been; what a diligent student; what a thoughtful child.  And then she looked at Garrison and said, “You know, you have a lot to live up to,” and for the rest of the year she would remind him, whenever his behavior took a turn for the worse, of whose desk it was that he was sitting in, and sometimes she would threaten to move him to another desk.  When no one was looking he wrote his own name just below Sylvester Krueger’s, and sometimes, when he was quietly daydreaming, he could almost imagine Sylvester looking down on him from heaven.  It was in those moments that he was most determined to make him proud and vowed to practice a little heroism of his own.

His story is not so much different from our story.  The writer of Ephesians, like a stern school teacher, reminds us that we have a lot to live up to, and as we swallow hard we realize that we can never be what Christ was and is.  Still, in those daydreamy moments, we’d like to make him proud, and so we write our names below his with a kind of breathless hope that we might achieve some small measure of what he has achieved.  That we might learn to take chances with our love, and give it away without condition, that we might risk forgiveness, and pour it out as freely as it has been poured out upon us.  We have, after all, been baptized into Christ Jesus.  We have stripped off the old life and put on the new.  And all we have to do now, really…is live it. 

—Jim Somerville © 2009