Sermon 29-10-14 - Living Dangerously

Ephesians 6:1-9

¹ Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ² ‘Honour your father and mother’—this is the first commandment with a promise: ³ ‘so that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.’ ⁴ And, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. ⁵ Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ; ⁶ not only while being watched, and in order to please them, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. ⁷ Render service with enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not to men and women, ⁸ knowing that whatever good we do, we will receive the same again from the Lord, whether we are slaves or free. ⁹ And, masters, do the same to them. Stop threatening them, for you know that both of you have the same Master in heaven, and with him there is no partiality.

Luke 13:30  ‘Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.’

It is a dangerous thing, to read the Bible. Something that I believe should not be attempted alone. Look at the writings attributed to Paul. Paul was a revolutionary, a visionary, and a true man of God. He was also human, and a Jew, and an educated man in an age where to be a man was to be at the top of the privileged heap. Paul’s words have been used to prolong and justify the suppression of women, to deny acceptance, support and love for our Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender brothers and sisters and, as in this passage we heard today, to keep fellow humans in slavery. How do we, as part of a movement trying to eradicate the evil of slavery, inequality and violence, find our truth in such words?

For all of his radical and innovative ideas about the true nature of God as revealed in Christ, Paul as a proponent of the new Christian Church movement had no interest in stirring up an already hostile society to the point where this new fledged religion became a problem that had to be dealt with. Admittedly, Paul didn’t have the advantage of having the Bible in front of him for his perusal and guidance, and we don’t have the advantage of knowing the exact context in which Paul was writing his letters. We are people of the Word, and we have to take the Word of God as revealed in our Scriptures very seriously. Having said that, what do we worship – our bible or our God?

To understand how Jesus can be found in this passage we have to have a critical understanding of the context in which this matter was being addressed. In Ephesians 6:1-9, following his words to husbands and wives, Paul continues to give practical advice to those living under the one roof. Often a family home included three generations and slaves. Men were the masters of their households, and although some men and women undoubtedly loved each other, society required that the man exercised total control over his affairs and his family. This included the decision on whether infants of any kind, slave or free, were to be kept or discarded. As long as a child’s father lived, the child was under the father’s absolute power. The son or daughter could be a grown person and still be beaten, and or at the father’s whim have their very lives taken from them.

This is where Paul’s words become Christ like. Not only are children called to obey their parents, but fathers in particular are called to treat their children with love and respect. Once again we have a rule built on relationship, giving guidelines for how to treat each other with mutual love and respect. The promise of living in this way is that we will live long on this earth – which taken at face value belies our experience of even the most God honouring families who meet with turmoil and strife. Keeping in mind that the Jewish understanding of a long and prosperous life was based on male descendants, Paul’s reason for quoting this ‘promise’ was to draw attention to the ideal that as people grew older, parents and children would not go their separate ways, but care for each other in love.  Such a message was as important for the first century as it is for today.

Trickier than this is the next few verses dealing with slavery. These words, and those like it, were used to justify the practice of slavery for centuries. Indeed, slavery in accepted within the scriptures as a constant part of life and it is never explicitly condemned. American slaveholders in the 19th century felt vindicated by Old Testament passages regulating slavery and New Testament passages urging slaves to serve their masters faithfully. At the same time, American slaves drew strength from the Exodus story of the liberation of God’s people. Abolitionists founded their cause on the biblical calls for justice and the simple dictum to “do to others as you would have them do to you” (Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31).

Whether we like it or not, there are many instances in our Bible where the actions of God and God’s people seem to call into question our own understanding of right or wrong. How do we reconcile a God of love and liberation with one that could seemingly endorse such practices as genocide, violence towards women and slavery? There are many ways to do this. Some simply accept that God has reasons for things that are beyond our knowing, and that includes situations that we now see as intolerable. Others use these passages as a reason to rail against the Bible and all it stands for, or go to the opposite extreme and use the word of God to wound our brothers and sisters to the point where reconciliation can be impossible. In my research for this topic, many commentators used this passage to refer to the relationship between employee and employer, as if this we can just ‘update’ the language to make it more palatable to our modern ears.

For me, this is intolerable.

If we are to be authentic and faithful children of God, we have to acknowledge and accept that sometimes, even the best of us get it wrong. Sometimes, times change for the better – and we have to change with them. At the time this letter was written, most of the Roman Empire were either slaves or slave owners. It was a common, indeed, essential part of the Roman economy. It was a radical, almost unthinkable idea that masters should treat their slaves with any kind of empathy and compassion, let alone what we see as basic human rights. To assert that slaves and masters were somehow answerable to the same God, that indeed God shows no partiality to our earthly roles and distinctions, was to walk on dangerous grounds.

Are we really so different today? Certainly the Church as a whole has a long way to go before we are truly showing no partiality in our acknowledgment in the basic humanity of all people. Thinking of the ‘clobber texts’, as they are known, to justify the exclusion of people based on their race or sexual orientation, are we really that much better than those who saw slavery as not only a right but God given? How often do we allow the still small voice of God to be heard as we race to improve and retain our own status within society and the Church? What relationship dividers do we cling to because we are too frightened to change?

It is a dangerous thing, to read the bible. But it also contains the Good News. In God, there is no partiality. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for we are all one in Christ Jesus. The last will be first, and the first will be last. No matter how we read the bible, this is clear. We are loved. And we are saved.