“Training Days”[1]

Ephesians 6:10-20

Testing Day. In the 2001 film “Training Day,” Ethan Hawke plays Jake, a young, idealistic LA cop who is eager to work his way up the ladder to detective. He particularly wants to be a narcotics officer so he can clean up the streets and make them safer for kids. His dream turns into a nightmare, however, when he’s paired with Detective Alonso Harris, head of an elite undercover narcotics squad. Alonso is played by Denzel Washington—he’s handsome, All-American, and very charismatic. The problem is that he’s also so dirty that there’s no apparent difference between him and the drug dealers he’s supposedly trying to bust.

In order to make the narcotics squad, Jake has to spend the day with Alonso and prove he’s got what it takes. But Jake’s head starts spinning from the very beginning, because it’s hard to tell whether Alonso is for real. Alonso plays a constant mind game with Jake—bullying and then buddying up with his big smile. We finally learn that Alonso’s true objective is to score a million dollars to pay off the Russian mob for having “accidentally” killed one of them. His plan is to murder a former partner who has turned drug dealer and steal his stash. And it looks like he’s going to pin it on Jake! As it turns out, Alonso is more of a drug king-pin than he is an LA police detective.

But Jake doesn’t know that. From the very beginning, Jake has to fight to hold onto his sanity in this world-turned-upside-down. It becomes apparent that it’s almost impossible to know when Alonso is being straight with Jake, and when he’s setting him up. As it turns out, Jake’s “training day” is really a “testing day” that will require not only all his police training, but also every shred of integrity and every ounce of perseverance he can muster if he’s going to make it out alive, let alone with his career and his life intact.

Masquerade. There’s a lot about this film that is very distasteful. But I like the way it portrays evil as something that’s hard to recognize. That’s the nature of evil in our world. If it were clearly recognizable, it would be easy to avoid. But the reality is that the evil in this world masquerades itself under many guises that appear to be good. Nobody’s going to say, “We’re trying to take over this or that Christian denomination because they won’t let us have control.” They’re going to say, “We’re calling the church back to the word of God.” Evil parades through our world like wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing!

How do we prepare for life in a world like that? How do we maintain our integrity, our commitment to following Christ, and our love for others when it’s not even apparent whom you can trust? I submit to you that it takes training. Not the kind of training Jake endured—that was testing. We have to train ourselves for the battle. And it is a battle—make no mistake about it!

Training Days. Paul gives us some ideas about how to prepare ourselves. The first thing is that we have to recognize that our battle is not against other people! Too often we personalize these matters and attack the person. I don’t pretend to be an expert on the “spiritual” realm. And I don’t pretend to understand the existence of evil in this world. And I don’t believe much of the talk about angels and demons that gets batted around. But the reality is that there is a power at work in the world that seems to be beyond simple human selfishness or cruelty. There are forces at work in our world that are evil to a degree that surpasses our human ability to conjure. And they are almost always deceptive and manipulative and hard to recognize. I think our training for the fight against evil begins with this recognition.

Paul’s words suggest some disciplines we have to adopt in order to train ourselves for the testing day.

One is to make the settled determination that you are going to obey God’s will as you understand it. Along with that is the commitment to practicing integrity in every facet of your life, in every relationship, in every conceivable situation. Again—in so far as it is possible. I think this is what Paul means when he says, “Let the truth be like a belt around your waist, and let God’s justice protect you like armor (Eph. 6:14, CEV).

A second discipline is study. The gospel of salvation by grace and the coming kingdom of God is not easy to understand. And yet, as the Confession of 1967 says, “our strength is in the confidence that God’s purpose rather than human schemes will prevail.”[2] But it takes disciplined study to understand this good news.

One element in this is Bible study. Yes, this is a very traditional practice, but there is no substitute for reading the Bible through over and over again.[3] It is the only way you can really understand what is important and what is peripheral to the Gospel. That kind of study is what Jesus was talking about when he called people to eat the bread of life. He was talking about ingesting his words, meditating on them, internalizing them, and remaining attentive to God’s voice.[4] This also involves studying the works of authors who communicate the gospel in ways that make it more understandable[5]—some of my favorites include Henri Nouwen, Frederick Buechner, and Richard Foster. This also includes theologians like Emil Brunner, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Paul Tillich.

A third discipline is prayer.[6] Prayer keeps us related to God. It is a source of strength and wisdom. Prayer opens us to the resources that God provides in the battle against evil. Prayer restores our faith and our determination to practice integrity. As Gene Peterson renders it in the Message, “pray hard and long” (Eph 6:18).

Living the Christian Life is not easy in the face of evil that masquerades itself in many disguises. It takes training. And for training to be successful, you have to make it a discipline. Come up with a plan. Schedule it into your day. Do it repeatedly. Then, when you find yourself in a situation where the world seems to have turned upside down and it’s hard to tell who’s a sheep and who’s a wolf, you can rely on the instincts and wisdom you’ve built up over time.

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[1] A sermon preached 8/27/06 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX.

[2] The Book of Confessions, 9.25.

[3] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 50-51, 53.

[4] Henri Nouwen, Here and Now, 72; Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline, 19; Bonhoeffer, 56, 81-82; Frederick Buechner, Now and Then, 3.

[5] Nouwen, 71; Foster, 54.

[6] Nouwen, 68; Foster, 34.

“The Spiritual Life”[1]

Ephesians 5:15-21

What does it look like to be “spiritual”? It depends on the time and the place you live in. In the Medieval age, for example, the sign of spirituality was a halo-like “aura.” Just look at medieval paintings that depict “spiritual” people. For much of church history, the “spiritual look” has involved wearing a certain kind of clothing and perhaps even a certain hairdo. In the days when monasteries were the places where truly spiritual people lived, the look was made of a robe of rough cloth and a very short haircut. In some places today, the look means dressing like a Jewish rabbi from 17^th century Poland. In other places, it means that women don’t cut their hair and men always wear white shirts and ties.

The Spiritual Look. But the reality is that true spirituality has very little to do with looks. In fact, there have been many charlatans and con-men and -women who fooled a lot of people into following them because they looked “spiritual”—whether that meant wearing fine robes or having a “prophet’s” hairdo (bouffant hair combed straight back with a white streak down the middle).

It’s funny how these con-men and con-women—the very ones who give so much attention to looks—are always devoted to power, prestige, or just plain cash! I’ve known a lot of people over the last 25 or so years of ministry, and it still amazes me how true that statement is today. They’ll use any means to get what they want; they don’t hesitate to destroy anyone or anything that they can’t control; their mode of operation is ruthless, heartless, cutthroat, vicious—and all with a “holier than thou” smile! If that’s what it means to be spiritual, you can count me out!

The Look of the Spirit. Like Jesus and the rest of the NT apostles, Paul does not define spirituality that way. Paul defines true spirituality in terms of how you live, not how you look. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul describes the spiritual life as “being filled with the Spirit.” Then he goes on to tell us what that looks like—not in terms of hairdos or clothes, but in terms of how you act. Paul says that true spirituality looks like heartfelt joy that is expressed in worship and genuine fellowship with others. It looks like thankfulness for the love that we have encountered, no matter what the circumstances. It looks like submission to others out of respect for and in obedience to Christ’s example!

Wait a minute, what’s “submission” doing there? What does submitting to others have to do with being spiritual? Isn’t that something people do when they’re too weak to stand up for themselves? These days I think there’s a lot of confusion about what it means to “submit” in the sense that Paul was talking about. Some have tried to define the Greek word he used as it was in classical Greek literature, in terms of accepting one’s place in a military chain of command. But Paul isn’t talking about the military here—when he illustrates what he’s trying to say, he points to Jesus on the cross!

I think “submission” also gets too wrapped up in the debate over how husbands and wives relate to each other. You know, that tired, worn-out debate about what role a man should fulfill, what role a woman should fulfill, etc., etc. Again, if you read what Paul has to say about how “submission” works itself out in the home, he’s clearly not creating any hierarchies.

When Paul says that “submission” is a mark of true spirituality, he’s talking about respect for the dignity of other human beings as God’s beautiful creation and beloved children.[2] He’s talking about yielding to others rather than insisting on one’s own agenda.[3] He’s talking about serving one another through love rather than seeking our own selfish ambition.[4]

Following Jesus. And we do all that not because we are too weak to do anything else but “out of reverence for Christ.” True spirituality looks like—the life of Jesus the Christ! At the end of the day, “The imitation of Christ in his life of service and suffering … is not an optional version of the Christian identity. It is the very essence of Christian identity. It is the pattern by which every other claim about the spiritual life must be measured if it is to be considered Christian.” [5]

The kind of spirituality that Paul is talking about looks a lot more like Mother Teresa giving her life away in service to the poor and downtrodden than like some high-powered TV preacher in a silk suit! It looks a lot more like Henri Nouwen leaving a prestigious academic career behind to accept a rather obscure position in a home for the mentally handicapped than like some slick activist clamoring for media attention to promote some divisive agenda or another! It looks like the “fruit of the Spirit”: love, joy, and peace; it looks like the Kingdom of God, which is “justice, peace, and joy inspired by the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17 REB).

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[1]A sermon preached 8/20/06 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX.

[2] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life, 255, where he says Christian fellowship “combines respect for the other person’s freedom with deep affection for him or her as a person.” See also ibid., 258, where he says, “the basic law of the community of Christ is acceptance of others in their difference, for it is this experience of our neighbours, and only this, which is in line with Christian experience of God.”

[3] See Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline, 111, defines submission as freedom “to lay down the terrible burden of always needing to get our own way.”

[4] Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 283-84. Cf. ibid., 289, where he calls the church “the messianic fellowship of service for the kingdom of God in the world.” See also Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines, 190.

[5] Luke T. Johnson, Living Jesus: Learning the Heart of the Gospel, 201; Moltmann, Church in the Power, 278, calls this “a life in accordance with the gospel of Christ.” Cf. Foster, 117, “We are commanded to live a life of submission because Jesus lived a life of submission.”

“New Life”[1]

Ephesians 4:22-5:2

Most of us know someone who struggles with an addiction. It is one of the defining features of our society. Substance addiction can be a kind of hell on earth from which it seems that there is no release. In our culture it truly is an epidemic of tragic proportions. Not surprisingly, in typical American fashion, the crisis of addiction has spawned a huge self-help industry in this county as millions of people set out on the Herculean task of “fixing” their own lives. For all the dollars spent and all the hours invested, however, addiction seems to maintain its vise-grip on our lives.

Some view the Christian life as a self-help project like this. “Being a good Christian” is something you have to constantly work on because you have to change yourself. This perspective makes the Christian faith no different from any other religion—it’s an obligation that we have to fulfill on our own.[2] But make no mistake—the good news of the gospel is not one of self-help, but one of transformation by the God of love, by the Christ who died for us and rose again, and by the Spirit of life. It is not something we do, it is something done to us.

In Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, he looks back on his effort to live a life of holiness on his own, and all he found was failure and shame.[3] Paul was profoundly aware that it was only the love of God in the crucified Christ that could set him free from the chains that bound him. It was only the power of Jesus’ resurrection that could give him new life. It was only the presence of the Spirit of life that could make him like Christ.

Of course, it is true that our life experiences often play a role in spiritual transformation. The crises we face force us to acknowledge the skeletons in our family closets, or to recognize that the face that we want to hide from is our own. Brokenness is the catalyst that can affect significant change. “Hitting bottom” becomes the best thing that ever happened because it turned your life around.

But the kind of change Paul is talking about is a long way from “fixing” yourself through a self-help program! He’s talking about the good news of being born from above! In Jesus the Christ we are restored and renewed. We are reconciled and reunited.

What this means is that the grace of God that claims us is already working in us to accomplish God’s purpose—to make us like God in all that we are and do.[4] It means that already in this life, amidst the brokenness and violence and death, we experience at least a taste of the new creation that God is working toward.[5] What this means is that we are already living our lives in the presence and under the influence of the Spirit, who is in the process of transforming all things—including us!

One of the features of this new life is that it is very specific! Paul gives us some concrete examples of what the new life looks like:

Speech: we should use our words to convey grace and love, not simply for our own selfish interests.

Anger: we can accept anger is a normal part of life, but we must not be naïve about its incredible power to destroy the human soul.

Work: Our work should contribute to the welfare of others, not just provide us with all the toys we want!

Forgiveness: This should be the general foundation of all our relationships, since God in Christ forgave us.

These are just a few examples of what new life in Christ looks like in “street clothes.”[6] But the new life is not a whole new set of commandments to follow. It is a life that is truly human, truly joyful, truly loving.[7] Paul calls it “the true life that is upright and holy” (Eph 4:24, TEV) and the “life filled with love for others” (Eph 5:2, NLT).

What are we supposed to do about all this? Paul’s language can be confusing. He says that we are to “be renewed in the spirit of your minds” (Eph 4:24). As the CEV renders it, we are to “Let the Spirit change your way of thinking and make you into a new person.” How do we “let” the Spirit change us? It starts with openness[8]—we have to admit our faults and to see the need for change. It involves trust[9]—that God has our best interests at heart and is intimately concerned with our well-being. Humility plays a part—surrendering all that we are to God’s gracious providence.[10] And it calls for patience, because it’s a process that takes place over the course of years, or even decades.

The new life in Christ is a life that is truly human, truly joyful, truly loving, one that reflects the image of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

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[1] A sermon preached 8/13/06 at FPC Dickinson, TX.

[2] Cf. Paul Tillich, “The New Being,” in The New Being, 16-17.

[3] Cf. Paul Tillich, “The Good that I Will, I Do Not,” in The Eternal Now, 55-57.

[4] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 2.2, 566-68; 4.3, 510.

[5] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 279.

[6] For further examples, including economics, ecology, politics, and culture, see Moltmann, Church in the Power, 163-189; 282-288 and Hans Küng, The Christian Challenge: A Shortened Version of On Being A Christian, 297-311.

[7] Küng, Christian Challenge, 146, 285-86, 312

[8] Cf. Paul Tillich, “The New Being,” 22, where he argues that openness to God’s transforming presence is the only thing we can do! Cf. also Moltmann, Church in the Power, 280.

[9] Cf. Moltmann, Church in the Power, 280.

[10] Cf. Moltmann, Church in the Power, 280.

“Ties That Bind”[1]

Ephesians 4:1-16

My Grandpa was a die-hard Methodist. He had been an Elder and a Trustee of the First Methodist Church in McAllen, TX. When I announced to the family that I was going to become a Baptist minister, he was definitely undecided about it! On the one hand, he was proud that I was going to become a minister. As he explained it to me one day, the three top professions from his point of view were Doctor, Lawyer, and Minister! But I’m sure he would have been happier if I had become a Methodist minister.

Grandpa used to razz me at times about how divisive Baptists were. He used to say that fighting and splitting were the only ways that Baptists knew how to plant new churches! By contrast, he was clearly proud of the fact that he was a member of the United Methodist church. Even with his somewhat limited theological training, I think my grandpa had something there. From the earliest days Christians confessed that they believed in one holy catholic and apostolic church.

One of the hallmarks of our Presbyterian version of the Christian faith is that we believe there is one church. It’s not just that, as our General Presbyter Mike Cole says, there is one Presbyterian Church (USA) in Southeast Texas—the Presbytery of the New Covenant. It means that there is one Church in Southeast Texas—even though we do not relate to one another in any kind of formal organization.

It has been one of the fundamental beliefs about the church for almost all of Christian history—there is one church. This faith not only unites all Protestants—it also unites Protestants with Catholics and Catholics with Orthodox. There is one church. It is the product of God’s saving work in this world.

Unfortunately, that kind of unity is often not very apparent in our churches—we’re such a competitive culture. If there are two or more PC (USA) churches in the same location, the chances are they will view each other as competitors rather than companions. When you throw the different denominations and branches of the Christian faith into the mix, it becomes one big mess. Not much unity there—at least as far as appearances go.

What we have to grasp, however, is that the kind of unity that the Apostle Paul was talking about, and that the church has historically confessed, does not come from institutional structures or personalities or organizational systems. It’s not constituted by doctrinal agreement or shared political or theological convictions. It’s not the product of any special church growth seminar. No amount of organizational transformation can create the kind of unity Paul had in mind.

Paul was talking about the unity that God creates—the church is the one people of the one God.[2] He was talking about the unity that Jesus Christ creates—the church is the one people of the one Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He was talking about the unity that the Spirit of God creates—the church is the one people of the one Holy Spirit.[3] In particular, Paul attributes this kind of unity to the presence and powerful work of God’s Spirit in all our lives. It’s what makes the church live.[4]

Paul also calls the unity that the Spirit creates the “bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3; cf. “the peace that binds you together,” NJB). Paul is not just talking about the absence of conflict here, but the presence of genuine acceptance.[5] One of the signs of the health of any human community is that it has significant differences. The bond created among us by the presence of the love of God in Christ through the Spirit doesn’t eliminate differences. It means that the differences don’t divide us, they make us stronger.[6]

But the “unity of the Spirit” is something that has to be preserved. How do we do that? By practicing gentleness, humility, patience, and love—these are ties that bind us together. These qualities in our relationships with each other promote the unity that the Spirit creates.

So instead of reacting angrily or harshly next time one of your flawed and fallible fellow church members does something really thoughtless and rude, we respond gently, with patience, and in love. We bear with one another—we are slow to condemn, slow to anger, even if it’s not just the seventy-seventh time, but the “seventy times seven”-th time! We “grow up” into the “full stature of Christ” by building one another up.

As we practice the spiritual discipline of relating to each other with this kind of mutual acceptance, we are preserving the “unity of the Spirit.” We are realizing the unity of the Body of Christ in our congregation. We are taking one small step toward the ideal of a church that is one.[7]

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[1] A sermon preached 8/6/06 at FPC Dickinson, TX.

[2] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4.1, 668; Hans Küng, The Church, 273.

[3] Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 294, 337-38

[4] Moltmann, Church in the Power, 291.

[5] Moltmann, Church in the Power, 342.

[6] Cf. Moltmann, Church in the Power, 347

[7] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4.1, 654.