Pentecost +14 – Transforming All Creation

Sermons – St. Brendan's Anglican Church

Jesus Pantocrator

Pentecost +14 2024
Rev. Doug Floyd
Ephesians 5:15-6:9

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.^[1]

N.T. Wright has suggested that Romans 8 draws upon the image of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness.[2] The Holy Spirit comes to dwell among the people. He also suggests that Romans 6 draws upon the image of the Hebrews slaves being rescued from Egypt. Just as they are rescued from the house of Pharoah, a slave master, we have been rescued from sin, which has kept us enslaved. Romans 7 draws upon the image of the giving of Torah, the law. The giving of the law at Sinai was seen as a great gift among the people.

In 7:12, Paul says that “the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.”^[3] Yet it became death for the people because their hearts were sinful. The law was a gift to raise up Israel as a kingdom of priests and kings, but instead the people turned against the law and fell under the curse of the law. Jesus comes to bear that curse and rescue His people (and all peoples) from death.

Then in 8:2 we read, “For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” We are free from the law of sin and death and the Spirit has been poured out upon us to lead us into the fullness of the sons of God. “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.”^[4] Men and women alike we are sons of God, and by His grace we are being led by the Spirit of God.

All creation has been waiting for this. In 8:19-21 we read, “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.^[5] The restoration of the sons of God is leading to the restoration of all things in Christ.

If you’ll remember, this is mentioned in Ephesians 1:7-10. “In [Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”^[6] And we are discovering together, “what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great mightthat he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places,far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.”^[7]

I say all this to remind us that when Paul gives instruction, it is Torah, which means instruction. But this Torah is not under the curse of sin and death, but rather, it is the law of the Spirit of life. In each of his letters, Paul draws from the deep well of Israel’s history to point to Christ, to teach the way of faith, to offer instructions for living as the sons of God. This wisdom for living has not changed but we are changed by the Spirit. We have been redeemed in and through Christ. We are being raised up by the Spirit of life. And we read these instructions as a people who are free in Christ and do not stand under the curse of the law.

In our lesson for today, Paul begins with a series of aphorisms that sound like the book of Proverbs. He writes, “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.”^[8] Dallas Willard once said that if you have a retreat on knowing the will of God, you will almost always get a crowd. People want to know the will of God for their lives, and it often seems elusive. But the will of God comes by instruction and the fear of the Lord.

Listen to the call to wisdom in Proverbs 2.

My son, if you receive my words
and treasure up my commandments with you,
² making your ear attentive to wisdom
and inclining your heart to understanding;
³ yes, if you call out for insight
and raise your voice for understanding,
⁴ if you seek it like silver
and search for it as for hidden treasures,
⁵ then you will understand the fear of the Lord
and find the knowledge of God.^[9]

The son of the king, or the son of God listens to his Father. Seeks wisdom from his father’s guidance and instruction. He prays for wisdom. He seeks it like great treasure. And low and behold, he discovers the fear of the Lord and the knowledge of God. The writer of Proverbs goes on to say that wisdom and understanding and discretion teaches us the way of righteousness and justice. It protects us from those who would seek to seduce away from the path of life and from those who become disillusioned and leave the path of life because they walk through difficult seasons.

We learn and know the will of God not through a mystical experience or through some type of esoteric knowledge. We grow in wisdom and knowledge of the truth by the Spirit, and we walk in the way of the Lord. If we come to a situation where we are not sure what to do, we offer it to God, trusting that the Lord can correct our path. Sometimes I have strongly sensed His guidance. Other times I’ve drawn from the wisdom of walking in His way to make a decision. There have been times, when I ignored warnings, thinking I could make a difference when I couldn’t. I hope and pray those times are few, but each time I’ve learned in those situations as well.

Paul continues this aphoristic wisdom of pairing one thing to do and one thing to avoid. Don’t get drunk but be filled with the Spirit. Beneath this piece of wisdom may be the wisdom that in your struggles don’t rely on drunkenness to bring you joy but turn to the Spirit and to the Spirit-filled community for encouragement and joy. In the community of faith, we encourage one another through especially through music in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. There is a distinct joy in singing together.

Now Paul turns to instruction about husbands and wives, parents and children, bondservants and masters. But first, he says that we give thanks to God in all things, and we submit to one another in reverence. Before he ever speaks of wives submitting, he says that we all submit to one another.

We honor and serve one another in reverence. In Philippians 2, he spells out this reverence more fully. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus…”^[10] Then he proceeds to describe Christ humbling himself to become a human, a servant and eventually a cursed one upon the cross. All this was in service to us that we might be raised up with him.

We humble ourselves before one another even husbands before wives. We know this clearly because Paul will suggest that husbands love their wives as Christ loved the church, and we just saw in Philippians what this love entailed: a great humbling in the service of love. There is a beautiful mutuality in the love between a man and a woman. Submission does not look like enslavement but love. It takes shape in different ways between a husband and wife and even in different ways at different seasons of life. This passage deserves more attention but for now we will move on to parents and children.

Now Paul draws upon the fifth commandment, and the fifth commandment in some ways draws upon the first commandment. In Deuteronomy 5:16 we read, “Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” ^[11]

This command speaks to the unique relationship of parent and child, while also drawing upon the ultimate parent-child relationship between God the Father and his children. It can also point forward to the nature of authority relationships in culture.

In the home, the parent is a caretaker, a teacher, a friend, an authority, and more. The child learns the nature of relationships and how to live in this world from the parent. The child’s initial understanding of God comes from the parent. What a tragedy when parents turn from God and lead their children away from God as Father. We all will have authorities in our lives. If we fail to learn who the true God and Father is, we will be subject to slave masters just as the children of Israel were subject to Pharoah. They lost their identity and became slaves. I would suggest there are many slave masters in our world: in government, in business, in relationships. Eugen Rosenstock Huessy suggested that though Germany had some of the most intelligent people in the world, their lack of faith in God made them vulnerable to a slave master, and Hitler stepped in and filled that role.

We see Israel becoming subject to alien powers again and again because they fail to trust God as Father. The first commandment is given to protect them from the heartache and destruction that inevitably comes by turning from the Father. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. ‘You shall have no other gods before me.”^[12]

The parent (father and mother) is an early model of God the Father. The true place of catechesis, of training in the way of the Lord and the way of wisdom is the home. To forsake this call is a cruel curse upon the child. The parent teaches the child many things about living from cooking to forming friends to dressing to speaking and more. Most of this instruction is not spoken but modelled. Some of it is spoken. Children begin to mimic the parent.

Even in adulthood, we realize habits and language patterns that we picked up from our parents. This mimicking or mimesis is a form of memory. Memory takes shape in life experience. Sometimes we are doing something like cooking or eating or engaging in an activity that we did with our parents and the memory of them floods our minds. The past becomes present.

In the Eucharist, we participate in the memory of Christ’s life given for us. By His Sprit, this memory becomes present and active in our lives by the power of the Spirit. The Eucharist become true food, sustaining us and strengthening our faith, and changing us in the way of Christ.

Now back to the parent-child relation. Paul flips the command and says parents don’t provoke your children to anger. The parents must learn to honor the glorious person the child is becoming and lay down their lives to help develop and serve that person. Now Paul extends the command outward to the world when he speaks of bondservants and masters. The bondservant would be someone who owes a debt and pays it off by serving a master.

The rules for bondservants are far gentler than or credit system. So, we should always be careful about judging Paul and this ancient practice. We go out and work and part of that money pays for debts. We enter into a kind of parental/master authority relationship with our bosses or if we work on our own, with our clients. Many people complain of bad managers. In fact, there are TED talks that discuss the inordinate number of narcissists running companies.

If we follow the model Paul offers, we discuss a different way of thinking about authority figures. The employee or bondservants submits as unto the Lord, trusting the Lord to watch over them. There have been some managers and management science thinkers who realized their role was really to help employees develop into the people they were meant to be because in the end, the employee will serve the company better when they are helped to develop. In fact, some managers and companies have realized they sometimes help develop their employees to eventually move on to the next challenge in life. One of the great thinkers in this field was Peter Drucker. Later in life, he lamented that his theories had been used to reduce workers to resources instead of persons.

In these various relationships today, we’ve been considering how the Spirit of God gives us wisdom in the home, the church, and the world. By the Spirit of life, we, the sons of God, obey the will of God by serving one another and our world. Of course, we fall short and need God’s mercy even as we need to extend mercy to one another. We are growing up as sons of God who are being used through these often-small ways to transform our communities and our world for God’s glory.

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^[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 8:1–2.

[2] In Romans 8, Paul explains that what Torah could not do, God has done in the Messiah’s death and the gift of the spirit. The spirit now dwells within Jesus’ people, as in the wilderness Tabernacle, to give them the life the law had promised. N. T. Wright, Into the Heart of Romans: A Deep Dive into Paul’s Greatest Letter (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2023), 24.

^[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 7:12.

^[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 8:14.

^[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 8:19–21.

^[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 1:7–10.

^[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 1:19–23.

^[8] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 5:15–17.

^[9] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Pr 2:1–5.

^[10] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Php 2:3–5.

^[11] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Dt 5:16.

^[12] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Dt 5:6–7.