I preached this sermon at St. Lydia's on Sunday, November 13, a week after our community's first baptism. The text is Paul's letter to the Ephesians, chapter 4, verses 1-7. Read it here.
So here we are, still dripping with the waters of baptism.
And a question hangs in the air:
What
Just
Happened?
What was that?
As it turns out, we are not the only ones who have asked these questions. The folks in Ephesus were asking them too, which is why they received this letter, its writer instructing them in all the ways of this mysterious, post baptismal, “new life.” This new body that we are now somehow incorporated into. But what does that mean? And how do we live into it?
As Rachel put it last week,
How do we live on the other side of the door?
This passage throws out all kinds of phrases that make my ears prick up, because they are so, so lovely, and present such an enchanting vision for who we might be as Christians, and as a Church.
At they same time, they are daunting. The standards seem really high, and they make me feel destined to fail. Are we really expected to be able to live up to these lofty goals for our new life?
No. I don’t think we are.
I think that, rather than living up to them,
we are asked to live into them.
In fact, the writer of this letter uses just slightly different language. He instructs us to “grow into” them. In verse 15 he writes, “we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.”
We must grow up into him.
It’s a strange image – the church, the body of Christ, growing in maturity and in stature to meet the head, which is already mature.
Just like a child, we’re growing into our new role,
growing into our new lives.
In the letter to the Galatians, Paul talks about those who have been baptized as “putting on Christ,” as if Christ is a new set of baptismal garments. In this letter, it seems as if those baptismal garments are just a bit too big for us: clothes that we’ve been given to grow into.
Still wet from the water, we put them on, and they drag a bit on the floor behind us. But this new life is a life of growth, one that we’re constantly maturing into.
How do we live on the other side of the door?
It’s not about performance and not about perfection.
But it sure is about growth.
It’s also about hope.
There is one body and one Spirit,
the letter-writer inscribes,
just as you were called to the one hope of your calling.
It turns out that God has hopes.
Hopes for each of us,
that manifest themselves in a call on our lives.
But unlike the hopes of those around us,
this is not a hope that we can let down,
but a hope that will only continue to blossom.
A hope that will live and breathe and grow
just as surely as we do,
as we continue to grow up
into this new life.
So, we’re standing here dripping.
What just happened?
I invite you to reflect for a moment in silence on the text we read, the words I shared, and the experience of the last few weeks. If they spark a story, share it, briefly.
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