Sermon from August 16, 2009
"The Radical Nature of Christianity"
Ephesians 5:8

It is not easy to hear criticism of the Church's moral failures, and we hear it a lot. Television and blogs make sure that we hear it every time a clergyman abuses a child or has an extramarital affair or defrauds people of money or uses hate speech.

These failures embarrass us. They put us on the defensive. Worst of all they teach us with great subtlety a way of thinking that undermines our calling. Here’s how it goes: I do not and cannot measure up to the ideals of Christianity or Jesus, so why try?

You may as well cut the Achilles tendon of an athlete as to believe that. It hobbles you; it takes you out of the game. You no longer aspire to goodness. You accept the moral status quo; you take the path of least resistance in our self-indulgent culture.

God has called us to better things. We, imperfect though we are, are the flesh in which God dwells with the human family. The Church is the dark, carnal presence through which the redemption makes its way into the history of the Brandywine Valley. I urge you aspire to a life that is worthy of that calling. I have designed this sermon to show the radical nature of such a life.

Christians and Sex
Ephesians 5:1 sums up how radical it is. Be imitators of God (it doesn’t get any more radical than that!), 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. Ephesians gives many specific examples of how to imitate God and live a life of love.

I will focus on two of them in this sermon, sexuality and marriage, because they are under enormous pressure from secular culture. Secular culture has rejected Christian ideas of sexuality and marriage as the path for human flourishing and happiness.

I heard a speaker last winter, who expressed memorably what secular culture has put in place of Christian ideas. He described three values of our culture: “sex is recreational, marriage is optional, and children are a burden.” American entertainment glorifies those values so well that it is easy to forget how distinct are the values of our Christian faith: sex belongs in marriage between a man and a woman, marriage is for keeps, and children are a blessing.

Before going further, I want to pay tribute to people whom I admire and from whom I part company on the proper strategy for dealing with our intolerant, secular culture. Over the past 25 years I have watched James Dobson and Jerry Falwell and Concerned Women for America and the Catholic Church strive mightily to preserve Christian values in American law. I admire them, and I think we should continue to offer Christian values in the public square as the values most effective for human flourishing. But the task of the Church is not to reform the Republic but to preserve these values in the Church. After all, the Church is the community that for the past 2000 years has believed these values are rooted in divine revelation.

The Christian values I want to talk about are radical both in the behavior they call for and also, most distinctively, in the motives for such behavior. Look at Ephesians 5:3: But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.

Not be even a hint of sexual immorality! I believe that, and as a result I often feel uneasy in our sexually explicit culture. I don’t like the entertainment industry’s treatment of any sexual experience you want as a recreational choice. I find our culture’s glorification of homosexuality dishonest and offensive. I am often embarrassed by sexy images and innuendo on prime-time television.

So, why fight it? The sexual revolution has succeeded. Why resist the inevitable and be mocked as a prude and puritanical? “Why?” is the right question, because it is a question of motive; and motive is the most radical proposal our faith makes for sexual morality. You see an example at the end of verse three: But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality . . . because these are improper for God’s holy people. That motive may be a new idea to you, but it has power. Compare it to some of the other reasons why people have said that sex belongs only in marriage.

“I’m not going to have sex with you, because it’s bad,” or “because I would disappoint my parents,” “because I’m afraid of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases” or “I don’t want to become pregnant,” or “because I don’t want the reputation of being that kind of person.”

You don’t have to give up those reasons. They have merit. But Christ offers a more excellent way. It goes like this. I want my sexual experience to be with my spouse inside marriage, because I believe that is the way to honor Jesus Christ and His Church with my body.

The person asking you to hook up for the night or to live together may not understand. That’s okay. You will have introduced an unexpected vision for human flourishing into that person’s life and, very likely, into a wider circle of people.

And when you parents teach your children about sex, be sure to include this more excellent way in their mental habits. Let’s become that kind of Church. It’s a powerful way to imitate God and live a life of love.

Do you need to repent of sexual sins? Don’t show contempt for God’s kindness and patience with you by persisting or denying in those sins. His kindness and patience lead us to repentance. To imitate God and live a life of love means sexual restraint.

A New Kind of Marriage
If you think Christ offers a radical alternative to sex as recreation, wait till you hear what comes next. I’ll begin with three of the most inflammatory verses in the Bible, Ephesians 5:22-24. Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

If you’d like to walk across the room and start a lively discussion, just ask a woman what she thinks the Bible means when it says wives are to submit to their husbands. Them’s fightin’ words! The very idea of submitting evokes disdain, anger, and the promise of retaliatory action on Oprah. It absolutely does not help to point out to women who scoff at submitting to their husbands that they go off to work in an office where they take orders from men every day.

The word submit suggests to women an arrangement in which they can’t think for themselves and are subject to the arbitrary whims of their husbands. What comes next suggests strongly that we need to revise that idea. Verse 25: Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

The word submit does not occur here, but something else does occur that both men and women have passed over in their preoccupation with feminist issues during the past 50 years. The apostle tells Christian men to love their wives, and then he sets up the standard by which to measure that love: just as Christ loved the church. He then shows how Christ loved the Church. Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

And how did Christ give Himself up for the Church? He humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:8) He was God. He enjoyed the perks of being God. He didn’t let that stop Him from making the ultimate sacrifice for His Bride, the Church. That’s the spirit in which the Bible calls on a Christian husband to build a life together with his wife.

Don’t you think that’s also the spirit in which Christ calls a Christian wife to build a life together with her husband? Whatever it means for a husband to be the head of his wife, he and she are called by Christ to make it work by many acts of mutual sacrifice.

I participated last month in Rich and Erin Engles’ beautiful wedding ceremony. Father Joe DiMauro, Rich’s uncle, and I jointly officiated the ceremony. Father Joe gave the wedding meditation. He referenced a study of people who had been married 40, 50, and 60 years. What made their marriage good? Many of them said, “I am married to my best friend.”

I said to Carole the next night, “We’ve been married 45 years, and you are my best friend, and you say I am your best friend. What makes us best friends?” I’d sum up our answer like this: mutual interests, mutual help, and mutual comfort.

C. S. Lewis said one time that in romantic love lovers face each other. In friendship they are side by side looking at something of common interest. You have to be friends about something. Our common interests have been family and faith.

Carole has helped me by seeing potential in me that I didn’t see and encouraging me as I have grown into a person very different from what I thought I could ever be. I have helped her in the gargantuan task of caring for my mom and her parents, two of whom had memory issues, and managing her dad’s business affairs. I say to her now and again, “Are you getting the support you need from me?”

Our mutual comfort comes in two forms. Neither of us tries to win an argument at the other’s expense. And home feels like your favorite socks or pajamas. The magnet at 314 Spalding Road is powerful, because it’s home, and it’s cozy, and it’s safe.

That’s how Ephesians five looks in our relationship. And buried down inside the business of living, like a taproot, is the memory that I’m to love Carole like Christ loved the Church, and she is to submit to me like the Church is to submit to Christ. Let’s become that kind of Church. It’s a powerful way to imitate God and live a life of love.

Issues of the Heart
I have talked about two examples of how to imitate God and live a life of love. We do it by the way we live, and we do it by our motives for the way we live. Motives are heart issues. The real question this sermon raises is an old one: Do we honor God only with our lips, while our hearts are far from Him?

Jesus put His finger on that central heart issue when He said: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled – Matthew 5:4. How hungry and thirsty are you for God? Listen to the way Paul expressed His hunger for God in Philippians 1:20: I eagerly hope and expect that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.

Come with me, walk with me! Let’s be a community of Christ-followers, who are hungry and thirsty for Christ to be exalted in our bodies by life or by death. Let us be imitators of God . . . 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.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
I’d like to summarize the message of these five spring and summer sermons. They have developed one doctrinal idea – the doctrine of election and predestination. I have not spoken about the idea that before creation God elected some to be saved and some to be damned. I have not spoken about that, because I don’t believe the Bible teaches that.

What God did before creation was to elect Christ to be the Savior of the world and to elect Israel to be a blessing to all the nations of earth. Within history He chose Abraham to be the father of Israel, and then He delivered Israel from bondage in Egypt. In the fullness of time God sent His Son, Jesus, to be born of a Jewish girl within His covenant with Israel.

Christ in turn brought the promise to Abraham to fulfillment by including all who believe in Him within God’s covenant with Israel. In this way Israel and the Church become “the dark, carnal presence through which the redemption makes its way into history.” The flesh of Israel and the Church “is the abode of divine presence in the world. It is the carnal anchor that God has sunk into the soil of earth” (The Body of Faith, 46). That is our religious vocation, our calling.

In light of that calling Ephesians 4:1 becomes the connection between our calling and the kind of life we should live. As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling (the religious vocation) you have received.

So, first, the Church is called to be a sign of the coming unity of all things. A life worthy of that seeks good relations between Christians and Jews, unity of faith among all Christians, and within congregations to maintain the unity of the Spirit in a bond of peace.

Second, the Church is also a sign of God’s presence on earth. A life worthy of that acknowledges that the Church is God’s dwelling place on earth, which merits the loyalty of every believer and the effort of every believer to contribute to its maturity and stability.

Third, a life worthy of being God’s elect means that you will put off your old self (your old, ungodly habits) and put on the new self, which is modeled on Christ. This becomes possible as you are made new in the attitude of your mind.

That brings us to today. A new attitude of your mind doesn’t mean you stuff your head with knowledge; it means that you see life through new eyes. You see life through new eyes, when your motives change. Godly motives go down into the depths of your soul and renew your mind. At the heart of that renewal is a hunger and thirst for Christ to be exalted in our bodies by life or by death.

Has it ever hit you – like an unexpected door in a dark room or a rear-end collision – has it ever hit you that you exist? No one asked you if you wanted to exist. You couldn’t choose your parents or the neighborhood where you grew up. For a long time you have no memories of being alive. But here you are.

It is stunning how easily we take our existence for granted and never think to move heaven and earth to find out if there’s a purpose for it all. The gospel offers purpose. Our small lives have been caught up in God’s purposes that endure though all generations. Don’t just stumble through life. Embrace your calling in Christ.