Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart. They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. That is not the way you learned Christ! For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. 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. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you 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, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Ephesians 4:17-42 We don’t like to make decisions. That may come as a surprise in a culture that celebrates choice, but there is a wealth of research that shows that human beings are better off when the choices are few and the routines many. To have to constantly decide, constantly make choices, can be stressful and anxiety producing. It can raise our tempers, it can make us act out in absurd ways. When choice breaks down it is our character that comes through. I’ve been thinking about this lately in the midst of the pandemic. It was helpful, in the beginning to have clear public guidance. Our options were made for us and they were few. But now in this time of “re-opening” we are each burdened with more and more choices and lacking any coherent guidance most of us are left to our own discernments. Stress can increase, tempers can flare. In its most juvenile expressions people act out in a restaurant because they refuse to wear a mask. But behind that acting out is, I think, an anxiety and fear that just wants to reassert the normal rather than face the decisions of the present. In the end, as I said, character comes through. That is why it is so important that we pay attention to our formation. When the moment of decision comes, its usually too late to deal with character; when the stress arrives, our path is often already determined by the habits we formed long before. Its for these reasons that the Pauline author of Ephesians calls for the development of what we might call holy habits--speaking truth, understanding our connection in a common body, working honestly, giving charity, using our language to be life giving. Notice how the author says “This is not the way you learned Christ.” The sense seems almost like saying, “That is not how you learned to play the piano” or “this is not the way you learned woodworking.” Christ here seems to be as much a practice and way of living as it is a person. To live into Christ is, as the author says, to be “clothed with a new self,” to be re-created into the image of God whose likeness we were supposed to bear all along. I see no end to our need to be wise in our living, to have to discern each day how we will act in this moment. The potential for stress and anxiety will most likely only rise as the issues of public health are further politicized in this election year and the economic realities born of our fragile systems begin to show themselves even more. We people of faith should heed the call of Ephesians, we should watch ourselves and ask, “is this the way we learned Christ?” Now is the time to pay attention to our formation, to deepen our practices of prayer, study of scripture, worship, charity, fasting, simplicity, and the other historic ways that Christians have worked to welcome the habits of holiness into their lives. Prayer for Today God of peace you called us to live free from fear and worry. Help us to live the habits of a holy life so that we can live in your liberty, loving our neighbors as ourselves. Amen. Spiritual Practice for Today Reflecting on the passage from Ephesians today, spend some time either reviewing or creating your rule of life. This “Rule” is a guide for your practices and therefore the way that your habits are being formed. For guidance on how to create a rule of life see this guide from Society of Saint John the Evangelist: https://www.ssje.org/pdf/GrowRule_Workbook.pdf Comments are closed.
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About this series
COVID19 created an unprecedented situation for all of us. These reflections, originally written for the people of Christ Episcopal Church, were meant to help people of faith learn how to navigate this time and find the threads of God's goodness in the midst of the pandemic. The series has ended but the Pandemic has not. I hope they continue to offer help and hope to all that read them. |