St Thomas'Burwood |
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Sermon of the Week |
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5/10/08 |
Audio (3MB MP3 file) |
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From Darkness to Light |
Eph 5:3-20 |
1 LIGHT OR DARKNESS? (Let no one deceive you!) |
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Light or darkness? It couldn't be more appropriate to today's reading from Ephesians that overnight we've begun "daylight saving". Have you ever thought about how much light and darkness still influence our lives even in the age of electricity, with sources of light being available 24-hours a day? One writer (Craig Koester) has this to say about it: |
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One of the things that I find helpful when I'm reading the Bible, and especially when I'm reading Paul's letters, is to ask myself: What picture is the author painting here? That is, what are the most important images they are using here and why are they being used? In today's reading I see three pictures Paul paints for the Ephesians three different but related pictures; three of images of things that are opposed to each other opposing paths, opposing choices. |
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But before we look more and Paul's pictures I want to tell you about my friend Ken. When I was growing up Ken was my doctor. Ken was not known for his bedside manner. Ken could come across as a bit of a gruff sort of man, and he was a bit abrupt sometimes. These days we would call him a "task oriented" person. But Ken is a man of great faith. As well as being an elder in his church he is a member of the Gideons organisation which provides the Bibles you find in schools and hotel rooms. It was because of Ken that I was given this copy of the New Testament in my first year at high school. It's still written in the front: "Presented to Bill Stewart, 9/3/81". When I left home to go to university Ken gave me some gifts to encourage me in my Christian faith. One of them was a laminated copy of these words of these words by the writer Robert Fulghum (from his book It was on fire when I lay down on it). I have always found them to be words of wisdom and exactly opposite to what most of the world is telling me most of the time: |
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Later in my life when the shoe was on the other foot and I was working in ministry with teenagers beginning university, I would often share those words with them. The great thing about that was that this often led to conversations about the questions which obviously follow from it: |
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I think that what Paul is saying here to the Ephesians in today's reading is the same as what Robert Fulghum is saying with one crucial difference (as I'm sure Ken would agree), and I want to come back to that difference near the end of the sermon. |
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Paul says to the church at Ephesus: |
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The contrasts are strong aren't they? Couldn't be stronger! On the one hand we have the fruit of the light found in all that is good and right and true. And on the other the unfruitful works of darkness things people do secretly which it is shameful even to mention. Paul has already painted a picture of such shameful things: "fornication [sleeping around, in our language] and impurity of any kind, or greed ... obscene, silly, and vulgar talk" (v. 3-4). History tells us that the city of Ephesus had a reputation as a place where if it felt "good" people did it. Society encouraged people to follow lust after whatever or whoever they desired. It doesn't sound at all like our world does it? That was the lifestyle that the Ephesians had been converted away from. And Paul's message to them is "no compromise". You can't go back to those ways of speaking and acting: |
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I think Paul's next words in v. 6 are especially important: "Let no one deceive you with empty words." You may have seen the recent episode of 60 Minutes where they surprised everyone by discovering a high rate of excessive alcohol consumption among young people and the self-destructive behaviour related to it. Paul could have told them this sort of thing has been going on for thousands of years. But it is true that it seems to be an especially widespread and destructive problem today. Is it a problem because people young and old are desperate to have a good life and on every side voices are saying "live the good and you'll have a good life"? "Empty words"! |
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Instead, Paul says: "live an alternative lifestyle" a real alternative lifestyle! Verse 11 says: "Take no part in the unfruitful works of DARKNESS, but instead expose them." I have found J.B. Philips' translation of this verse in the Living Bible helpful: |
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I thank God that my Christian friends at university showed me how dreary and futile these things are, even if they seemed attractive at the beginning. |
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2 WISE OR FOOLISH? (Be careful how you live!) |
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Light or darkness? Wise or foolish? One of the things I think we see very clearly in Paul's letters is that he is anything but an ivory tower theologian. He is very well aware, isn't he, of the pressures there are on the Christian lives of the Ephesians? He doesn't pretend that there is any easy escape from these difficulties. What he does say is that there are two possible responses that the Ephesians can make. |
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There is no choice to avoid the world. We will hear the "empty words", again and again and again. But there is a choice to live wisely or to live foolishly. And for Paul to live wisely means to listen to words that are not empty: |
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The voices won't go away but we can choose to listen to another voice: a voice that will help us to make wise decisions, or what we might call "sober" judgements. |
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3 DRUNK OR SOBER? (Be filled with the Spirit!) |
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This leads us to Paul's third pair of opposing images: Light or darkness? Wise or foolish? Drunk or sober? |
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I was tempted to say that Paul's point here is that "If you drink and pray you're a xxxx xxxx." But after hearing last week's sermon and reading the first verses of today's reading I thought better of it. In any case, Paul is not talking about drinking alcohol here is he? He is contrasting being drunk with being sober. It's another powerful contrast isn't it? We know, don't we, that if people drink alcohol often enough in large enough quantities it will become their pattern of life and the thing that drives the other things that they do. In time it will affect relationships, work, maybe even lead to a life of crime. Paul is suggesting, isn't he, that what is repeated takes control of people's will. Excessive use of alcohol repeated constantly will master a person's life but repeatedly seeking to understand what the will of God is, and being "filled with the Spirit" (v. 18), will help us to become wise, to make sober judgments, to have a good life and make a life that's worthwhile. |
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Did you notice the way at the end of the passage Paul went back to the beginning and tied all this together with two contrasting uses of language? In verses 3-4 he says: |
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Then in the last verses the picture is entirely different as different as darkness and light (pun intended): |
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4 CHRIST WILL "SHINE" ON YOU |
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Choose light not darkness. Choose wisdom not foolishness. Choose sobriety not drunkenness. But Paul's painting has one final detail. In the Old Testament God's glory or light was often pictured as appearing over Israel and bringing life-giving power. In the prophecy of Isaiah, for instance: |
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Now in Paul's picture of the light overcoming the darkness, Jesus is pictured as being like the rays of the rising sun. Did you notice verse 14? |
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Christ will "shine" on you. It is in the light of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, that people become light. In fact, the change ought to be so profound, Paul tells the Ephesians, it's like being raised from the dead! |
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The crucial difference between what Robert Fulghum says about having a good life what Paul says about living as children of light is Christ. In his Gospel the apostle John says: |
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And elsewhere in his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul says: |
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Perhaps the apostles used the image of light so regularly because Jesus used the image of light to painted pictures of his message. I found it interesting when I put two of them side by side; one from the Gospel of John and the other from the Gospel of Matthew: |
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