Ephesians 4:25-5:2
My first high school was a pretty
diverse school, which was a wonderful experience because it meant that I was
friends with a lot of different kinds of people. Most of my friends were not Christian. There was a Christian group at the school,
but I did not feel as though I fit in with that group, partly because they met
before school started, which seemed like an ungodly hour to me. There was one girl in that group who just
baffled me. She was always cheerful. She
smiled all the time. I never heard her say
anything rude or inconsiderate. For a while,
I thought this had to be a front. She
could not be sincere. However, I soon
began to admire her as a wonderful example of a Christian. But then I got
worried because I was nothing like her.
As some of you may have noticed, I frown when I am thinking, and I am
thinking most of the time. It’s
hereditary. Everyone in my family does
it. At the time I remember thinking if
being Christian means I have to smile all the time, I am in serious trouble.
As I matured in my life as a Christian,
I realized that Christians look a lot different and even act differently than
one another. As Christians we are called
to emulate not other Christians, but Jesus Christ. This realization makes me feel slightly
better, but also frustrated at times.
First of all, emulating someone you have never seen is pretty
tricky. And emulating someone you have
never seen who is also perfect, is that much harder.
One of the reasons that we read the
Bible is to get a picture of Jesus, to get to know Jesus. Paul’s letters can be especially helpful
because he was trying to help people be Christian. The portion of Ephesians we heard today
contains some of that practical advice.
Don’t say mean things. Only say
things that will build other people up.
Don’t steal; instead share with the needy. Put away all bitterness and wrath and anger
and wrangling and slander together with all malice, and be kind to one another,
tender hearted, forgiving one another…
While these things are not necessarily easy to achieve, they make sense.
They are really nothing new, not even
at the time this was written. Being kind
to one another was not a new Christian concept. However, there are a couple
things in this portion of the letter that are more nuanced. They are not just advice on how to be a good
person.
One of the first things Paul says is,
“Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger...” Later he adds, “Put away from you all
bitterness and wrath and anger…” Well
which is it, are we supposed to be angry, or not? I would say that generally, people think
Christians should not be angry. That has
led to a lot of guilt on the part of people who experience anger. That means they ignore it and don’t deal with
it. Then it festers until it either
weighs them down, or explodes and creates even more problems.
Human emotion is not a sin. It is what we do with that emotion that leads
to sin. Paul says it is ok to be
angry. It is even good to be angry
sometimes. Jesus got angry several times
in the scriptures. The prophets of the
Old Testament were often angry. Yet
there are different kinds of anger and different ways of handling that
anger. There was a period in my life
where I was really angry. And my dear
husband listened as I ranted and raved about this and that. I was sure that my anger was justified. It was even righteous. It wasn’t just anger, it was righteous
indignation. But it didn’t go away. It lasted for months and I didn’t feel any
better. I didn’t do anything positive
with the anger. It just consumed
me. At some point, probably while
contemplating a sermon, I realized that there was nothing righteous about my anger. It was just anger and the righteous thing was
to release it.
How do you know whether or not your
anger is justified, whether it is righteous?
It’s actually pretty simple. When
Jesus was angry, it came from a place of love.
He was angry because people did not want him to heal people on the
Sabbath. He was angry when the poor were
ignored. He was angry when people willfully
misunderstood his father’s words. He was
angry when people took his words and twisted them to fit their own needs. Those are the kinds of things that we should
be angry about.
Yet I would guess that normally we
are angered because we feel slighted, because our pride is wounded, or when people
hurt us. And I am not saying that
getting angry about those things is wrong, because it is a natural
reaction. But that is the kind of anger
that we need to let go of as soon as possible.
Paul even provides a timeline.
Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.
So you’ve got about day, and no more than that. If you hold on to it longer, it will hurt you
and it will make it difficult to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. We should also keep in mind that love comes
before anger. If the origin of our anger is something other than love, then it
is not righteous. Love comes first.
Now you might think, well what about
righteous anger? Can I be angry about
that for long periods of time? If you
want to hold on to righteous anger, you must first sure that you are right,
that you know exactly how Jesus feels about the thing you are angry about. Not only that, you need to examine the rest
of your life pretty carefully and make sure that you are following Christ in
every way that you can. Personally, I
am going to try to be like Jesus. But I am not confident that I know the mind
of God. In fact, I am pretty sure that I
don’t. So I will follow Jesus to the
best of my ability and pray that I can see myself and others as he sees us. But I am going to try not to claim righteous
anger, at least not until I am sure that I have mastered the necessary
precursor to righteous anger, which is loving God and loving my neighbor. Love comes first.
Being Christian is not always about
being cheerful and smiling a lot.
Horrible things are happening in this world every day and we should be
angry about those things. But the answer
is not bitterness or visions of revenge, but instead focusing on what we can do
to be agents of change in this world. But before we change the world, we need
to allow God to change us. I have often
said that, “God loves you just the way you are.” I believe that with my whole heart. But recently I heard someone say, “God loves
you just the way you are, but he refuses to leave you that way. He wants you to be like Jesus.” I know that sounds like a tall order, but
God is not as worried about the end product as he is about the process of
becoming like Jesus. Paul wrote, “Be
imitators of God…” Another translation of
that is, “Keep on becoming imitators of God…”
That is not grammatically correct, but I think it makes the point a
little more clear. As Christians, we do
not claim perfection. We are not
finished products. We are in the process
of becoming godly and the moment when we think our transformation is complete
is the moment when we know it’s time to start over. The process of becoming like Jesus is never
over. Just remember, love comes
first.
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