Billboards

 Billboards

Ephesians 4:1-16[1]

I’m not a fan of billboards personally. I know they serve a purpose in our advertising-driven world. But I’ve been in places where people can’t just put up a billboard wherever they want, and I like the ability to appreciate the scenery without all the clutter. Many of us have experienced the evolution of billboards. These days we have LED screens for billboards. But some billboards are still simple hand-painted signs. For a long time, the sight of workers pasting up the printed strips of a billboard was a common one. In those days, it was also fairly common, at least where I lived, to see a billboard that had some of the strips peeled off. Apparently the contract ran out! The funny thing was that you could still make out the gist of the original ad. And sometimes you could also make out the one underneath it!

In a very real sense, we are all living and breathing billboards for faith in Jesus Christ. Whether we like it or not, and for better or for worse, our lives are all constantly “on display” for Christ. In the time when we were supposedly a “Christian” nation, everyone was assumed to be a person of faith, and perhaps it didn’t matter as much. To be quite honest, I’m not sure any nation can ever truly claim to be “Christian.” But now we live in a time when more people in our society explicitly reject any and every religion. In my mind, that makes it all the more important that we are aware that our lives are constantly “on display” for Christ. The language of the New Testament is that we are “witnesses” to what Christ has done for us and for all people. And one way in which we bear that “witness” is by the way we live.

This is an important part of our lesson from St. Paul in Ephesians for today. As in the case in some of his other letters, after laying out the message of the Gospel and what that means for our “hope of salvation,” he turns to the practical implications for how we live our lives. Here, he urges those who know Jesus Christ to “lead a life worthy of your calling” (Eph 4:1, NLT). If you asked ten people what it means to live in a manner “worthy” of the salvation we have been given through Jesus Christ, I think you might get ten different answers. Some would point to particular religious or spiritual practices you should do on a daily basis. Some would say that it’s about choosing a special “vocation” like devoting your entire life to Christ. Others would insist that you have to agree with certain very specific beliefs.

But St. Paul takes a very different direction in answering this question. To him, “leading a life worthy of your calling” means to “Always be humble and gentle.” It means being “patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love.” It means making “every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace” (Eph 4:2-3, NLT). In other words, we demonstrate the quality of our faith in Jesus Christ by the way we treat one another. I would add that this applies to how we treat all people, whether or not they are one of “us”!

One of the things I have always found to be a bit surprising about this passage is that St. Paul says that we display the quality of our faith by the quality of our relationships! And the quality he was looking for is the ability to remain “united in the Spirit, binding ourselves together with peace.” He said we display the quality of our faith when we practice patience with one another, when we bear with one another, or “make allowance for each other’s faults” as the New Living Translation puts it. And we do so because of the love we have for one another. It reminds me of Jesus’ statement to those who followed him that “Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples” (Jn 13:35, NLT).[2]  

There was a time when church “unity” was based on denominational structures—Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Methodist, or Baptist. There was a time when church unity was based on shared doctrinal convictions. Although many would have denied it, it was also based on being on the same side when it came to politics. That was the case for many centuries. But the kind of unity that makes the church truly live does not come from human institutions, or shared doctrinal convictions, or even from political agreement. It’s the unity that God creates.[3]

That’s why Paul adds the statement that “There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, in all, and living through all” (Eph 4:5-6, NLT).[4] True unity in the church is the unity that God creates—the church is the one people of the one God. It’s the unity that Jesus Christ creates—the church is the one people of the one Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It’s the unity that the Spirit of God creates—the church is the one people of the one Holy Spirit. Here Paul places special emphasis on the unity created by the presence and powerful work of God’s Spirit in all our lives. That’s what makes the church really live. At least according to St. Paul!

So, how do we develop this unity in order to help our church thrive? For one thing, it’s something we have to “grow up” into. St. Paul sees the Christian life as a process by which we are all constantly “growing in every way more and more like Christ” until we “measure up” to “to the full and complete standard of Christ” (Eph 4:13, 15, NLT)! If you’re like me, and you’re aware of how often you fall short of that standard, you may be thinking that’s impossible. How can anyone every live up “to the full and complete standard of Christ”? That’s a natural response, I think. But St. Paul insists that this whole process is not something we do on our own. It’s the “new life” that the Spirit of God creates in us. It’s what God is doing in all of our lives through Jesus Christ.

If we’re all “billboards” meant to display this astounding work that God is doing in all of our lives, we may struggle with feeling like we can never live up to that kind of scrutiny. We may feel like those old billboards that have part of the “new” message, but there are some strips missing and some of the old underlying truth still visible. That’s an uncomfortable truth for us, but it may be reassuring to remember that it’s true for all of us. We all have a mixture of the new life and the old truths that make up who we are as real-life followers of Jesus Christ. That’s why we “grow up” into the “full stature of Christ” precisely by practicing gentleness, humility, patience, forbearance, and love in our relationships with one another and with all people. Those qualities don’t always come naturally to us, but the more we put them into practice, the more we will be able to practice them in our relationships. As we do so, even our flawed lives can be billboards bearing witness to the new life that God gives us all through Jesus Christ!

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[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 8/4/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 345, where he insists that the church “is not ‘one’ for itself; it is one for the peace of divided [hu]mankind in the coming kingdom of God.”

[3] Cf. Moltmann, Church in the Power, 347: “Can political enemies ‘remain one under the gospel’? How long can they do this? And what does it mean for their conflict itself? Does this not make ‘the gospel’ an abstract and ineffective power?” His answer is that what counts in the midst of these conflicts is the “fellowship of Christ.” In other words, it is our mutual faith, and the presence of the living Christ among us through the Spirit, that creates unity in the real conflicts of human life.

[4] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.1:668: “In all the riches of His divine being the God who reconciled the world with Himself in Jesus Christ is One. Jesus Christ, elected the Head of all men and as such their Representative who includes them all in Himself in His risen and crucified body is One. The Holy Spirit in the fulness and diversity of His gifts is One. In the same way His community as the gathering of the men who know and confess Him can only be one.”