Relationships
Ephesians 4:21-5:2[1]
Last week we saw that we demonstrate the quality of our
faith by the quality of our relationships. It doesn’t take a person with
greying hair to know that relationships can be complicated. They can be
wonderful, and they can be aggravating. They can fill our lives with meaning
and purpose, and they can leave us feeling empty and confused. They can be
joyful, and they can be painful. And sometimes they can be all of that at the
same time. I’m not talking about any specific kind of relationship, but rather
all of our relationships. All that makes us human means that we all approach
all of our relationships with all of our flaws. I think, given that reality,
“complicated” is the right word for relationships.
As we discussed last week, according to St. Paul, we take
our faith in Jesus “on the road,” so to speak, in our relationships. That’s
where we demonstrate the strength or weakness of our faith. That’s where we
discover that we still have much to learn in order to grow more like Christ in
our daily living. In our lesson for today, Paul gets specific about what our
faith means for our relationships. Perhaps uncomfortably so. He talks about
honesty, anger, and stealing! We might find that surprising. After all, these
days we tend to idealize the early church. We think that they were perfect “saints.”
And here’s Paul telling those first Christians to stop lying to one another, to
stop taking their anger out on one another, and to stop stealing from one
another. Apparently, the first believers were just as flawed in the way they
conducted their relationships as we are.
Paul starts off by telling them to “stop telling lies” (Eph
4:25)! That’s pretty blunt! It presupposes that they were lying to each other!
I would imagine that most of us would take offense if someone told us to “stop
telling lies.” We all tend to assume that we’re honest people. Or at least that
we’re “honest enough.” But we live in a world where the standard operating
procedure seems to be “say whatever it takes to get what you want without
having to give up anything to anybody.” In that world, we have all kinds of
subtle ways of “bending” the truth to suit ourselves.
The problem is that dishonesty in any form erodes the
fabric of our relationships. Instead, Paul quotes from the prophet Zechariah: “Let
us tell our neighbors the truth.” In a world where “truth” seems to be for sale
to the highest bidder, we might ask the question Pontius Pilate posed to Jesus:
“What is truth?” I don’t think Paul wants us to be brutally honest to the point
that we actually damage our relationships. There’s a time for speaking the
truth plainly and openly, and there is a time for not telling everyone everything
you know. Instead, Paul gives us direction about how to be truthful when he
says, “Do not use harmful words, but only helpful words” (Eph 4:29 GNT). I think that’s the bottom line for
Paul: because we’re connected to one another in relationships, we’re to speak
to one another in a way that will be helpful, in a way that will “do good.”
Paul’s instructions about our relationships continue in a
way that continues to be uncomfortable. He says, “When you are angry, do not
sin” (Eph 4:26, NIrV). I would say that for many of us, addressing our
anger is just as touchy as questioning our honesty. When it comes to anger,
it’s usually someone else who has a “problem” with anger, not us. Our anger is
entirely “appropriate” and “justified.” At least in our own minds. But the
problem is that anger is not only something we feel deeply, it’s also powerful.
The question is how will we use that powerful emotion. We can take anger as a
warning signal that we’re off track in some way. Perhaps we’ve misunderstood
someone, or we’re holding onto an unrealistic expectation, or we’re trying to
control something that we can’t control. Or we can simply take our anger out on
the people around us. When we do so, we use the power of our anger to harm
others. I would suggest that’s the “sin” Paul wanted us to avoid.
It’s said that it can take years to build up a
relationship, but only seconds to destroy it. That’s the power of anger. I’m
not talking about the fact that we all lose our temper from time to time. I’m
talking about letting anger control us to the extent that we say hurtful,
hateful things to others. But we can choose how to respond to our anger.
Psychologists tell us that anger is usually a response to either fear or hurt.
If we can pause when we’re angry, take a breath, and try to see what is driving
our anger, we have a chance to use our anger for good. And that means using our
anger to correct our faulty behavior in our relationships. And the key to
dealing with our anger in a healthy way is to “be kind to each other,
tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven
you” (Eph 4:32, NLT). Perhaps the first step toward doing that is to
realize that we can’t simply impose our expectations on others. Rather, the way
of forgiveness and kindness is to accept people for who they are.
Finally, Paul addresses the quality of relationships in the
body of Christ in a way that might seem shocking. He says literally, “Thieves
must no longer steal” (Eph 4:28). It’s uncomfortable to think that there were
thieves in the early church. Some Bible translations display this discomfort
with Paul’s words when they render this as “those who used to steal.” But that’s
not what Paul says! Paul simply says, “Thieves must no longer steal.” It would
seem that the early church contained people from all walks of life, including
people who made a practice of stealing.
Again, most of us assume that we’re good, upstanding,
honest people. We would probably insist that we’ve never stolen anything in our
lives. But there are all kinds of ways of stealing. In the Bible, the prophets
and apostles called not paying fair wages “stealing.” Of course, some ways of
stealing are more subtle than others. We can steal a person’s good name by
spreading gossip! We can steal a person’s trust by deceiving them or betraying
them. We can steal a person’s innocence by taking advantage of them. The basic
premise seems to be “I want what you have, and I’m going to use any means
necessary to get it, regardless of how it might hurt you or anyone else.” I
think Paul’s words about stealing here are not just about money or possessions.
He’s talking about a fundamental way of relating to one another that seeks not
to take advantage of anyone, but rather to do good to others.
Relationships are complicated. And it’s uncomfortable for
us to talk about dishonesty, anger, and stealing in church. We want to assume
that those are faults from which we’re inherently immune. But they’re part of
the human condition, and St. Paul rightly saw them as a threat to our
relationships. More than that, they undermine our ability to bear witness to
the new life God is creating in each of us through the Spirit based on our
faith in Jesus Christ. We can reassure ourselves that we would “never” do
anything like that. But the uncomfortable truth about all of us is that we are
all equally flawed and fallen. We may not all give in to our flaws to the same
extent. But we are all susceptible to dishonesty; we’re all susceptible to taking
out our anger on others; we’re all susceptible to stealing, particularly in
their more subtle forms. Paul’s call to us, however, is to strip off those
behaviors like a stained garment. He calls us to clothe ourselves with
kindness, forgiveness, and love. He calls us to seek to do good to others, and
not to harm. When we live like that, we will try to help others, not hurt them.
We will look for ways to give to them, rather than trying to take from them.
And as we do so, the quality of our relationships will demonstrate the
genuineness of our faith. And the more we demonstrate the genuineness of our
faith through the quality of our relationships, the more the quality of our
relationships will draw people around us into our community!
[1] ©
2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 8/11/2024 for
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
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