“Imitators”

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

August 9, 2009

Today Jesus is still talking about bread. It’s a big subject, so three weeks of readings are necessary to fill all the bread pans and the ovens. There are some new things being said today, but for once it would be good to hear a different angle on matters from Paul in Ephesians. That is, if it is Paul writing in Ephesians.

It seems like a petty issue, this authorship controversy, nowhere as bad as a quarterback controversy, though for a number of Christians it is all important. Scholars have for a long time questioned whether Paul wrote several of the letters attributed to him, and Ephesians has been on the bubble for generations. Many now say that Paul did not write it, but it was penned by people who admired Paul and adopted something of his style and vocabulary.

Others vehemently insist that it was Paul who wrote Ephesians and often their concern is that if he was not the author at the earliest possible date, then the validity of all the New Testament starts to crumble. We have to believe that when the New Testament says that Paul did such and such at when, it has to be true. If Ephesians were written by someone else that we do not know, then is it all made up? They know that the Bible is too important to dismiss, so when it does not seem to fit their notion of the way it has to work, they insist that it has to be true, the Bible is inerrant, end of argument. Too bad, I have never felt the Bible was as fragile as many believe it is. It does not have to be protected from detractors, but sometimes we have to be protected from its supporters.

Ephesians is one of the prison letters, reputedly written while Paul was held captive in Rome. Paul did and wrote a lot of things, but maybe the most important statement he made was the fact that he wrote of Good News and New Life sitting in a grim prison cell. The Christian faith is strongest when it is weakest. Ours is not a fair weather faith - it ripens when the weather threatens to break us down, whether it be anger or conflict, injustice, illness, war, death or defeat. Love may not be genuine if you feel that you are loved - even thieves love one another - but when you love from a prison cell, there’s nothing that can resist that love.

When Martin Luther King, Jr., was jailed in 1963, his Letter from Birmingham Jail castigating the local clergy who had criticized King’s movement as unwise and untimely, an instance of outsiders coming in, a common complaint of the parochial mind, Paul had acquired a literary disciple. Listen carefully to what someone says out of a prison - one of the earliest Christian lessons.

It may not be Paul’s handwriting, but it is his mind and soul in this letter as he summons all to live differently. “You must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds” (Ephesians 4:17). Let’s keep in mind that while Paul was targeting the weakness of a particular group of “thems” - the Gentiles or indeed the entire world that was not Jewish, he had in mind a very different segment of humanity. As far as I know everyone here is a Gentile, so Jesus is not talking precisely about you and me.

Eugene Peterson translates it more bluntly, “I insist that there be no going along with the crowd, the empty-headed, mindless crowd” (The Message). So we could qualify as Gentiles if we are acting like everybody else, if we are imitating all the fads and fancies of our contemporary society that is supposed to bring happiness and fulfillment and prestige. Don’t be one of the crowd, he advises, as we continue to queue up. You weren’t taught this way as Christians.

Just how were we taught? Despite the fact that we usually say we were meant to be different, to be non-conformists, the truth is that there has to be a real content to our differentness. It’s easy to always be contrary and against the grain, but that’s just as fickle as the fads of the madding crowd. No, the Letter to the Ephesians declares something elusively particular, “Be imitators of God.”

That is a pretty tall order, and perhaps not humanly possible. Some of the issues are with the language itself and its connotations. While the translation is legitimate I am not that comfortable with the idea that we can imitate God. Too many people are busy acting like God, attempting to control others and wielding incredible and obscene power in making decisions about people’s lives they have no real right to make - the cheap imitations of God. Imitate carries that sense of looking like someone, sounding like someone, but not really pretending to be the same. We can imitate someone’s voice and mannerisms, but that doesn’t mean we are imitating their behaviour.

Eugene Peterson again paraphrases this charge in a way that is more easily grasped. “Watch what God does and then you do it, like children who learn proper behaviour from their parents.” I don’t know about you, but I find it easier to see what God has done than what God is doing. I am not in tune with God as much as I would like and I am frankly suspicious of those who boldly declare that God is doing something now in their community.

The guy who gets closest to being right is Clarence Jordan, the translator of the Cotton Patch Version into Southern English. What strikes one first reading his folksy translations is that he has transposed Galilee and the ancient world into the geography of the Southern States - Jerusalem is Atlanta, Rome is Washington, DC, and most appropriately, the Letter to the Ephesians is “The Letter to the Christians in Birmingham.” Jordan says here, “Become God’s mimics,” which is precisely the word the original Greek used. When you mimic something, you are trying to capture its essence, copy its patterns, act as closest as possible to it. There’s no pretension to becoming God, just in our very human way, mimicking God.

That’s still not easy. But Ephesians has a bunch of suggestions on just how to go about mimicking. Perfection is never mentioned and never required. Speak the truth with your neighbour because we are all in this together. You can be angry - anger is not a sin - but it’s when you nurture that anger, keep it burning and focused on someone and something, that anger controls us. Do not let the sun go down on your anger, for if you do not resolve the issues around your anger, the sun will also rise on your anger.

Instead of cursing and bad-mouthing people, find a way to compliment them sincerely. If there is a way to live differently, a way to stop living like a Gentile, tell somebody about the wonderful and positive impact he or she has had upon your life. The world will not be the same, either for you or for the one who has made such an impact on you. It’s hard to be callous and greedy as Ephesians warns once you realize how good people can make you.

Paul in his Ephesian identity concludes by calling us to be kind and tenderhearted towards one another, and forgiving one another. To forgive is to mimic God. And we’ve all seen it happen, that when you mimic another personality enough you end up thinking and acting and behaving like him or her.

Preached by Robert Kitchen

Knox-Metropolitan United Church

Regina, Saskatchewan