Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
March 26, 2006

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Something struck me as very odd about this morning’s reading from the Letter to the Ephesians, the Christians of the Greek city of Ephesus in modern-day Turkey. Well, actually several things about it struck me as odd, but maybe the oddest of them is the way the passage begins: "You were dead...." Now, the letter is addressed to people who presumably were very much alive when the letter was written; and as we all know, once you’re physically dead you stay dead--unless maybe you’re Jesus or the beneficiary of one of the handful of resuscitation stories in Scripture. So the phrase "you were dead" on its face doesn’t make any sense. How can people have been dead? That construction means they aren’t dead any more, and as far as we know that’s not possible for us or for the first century Christians of Ephesus.

Of course, it pretty quickly dawned on me that physical death can’t be what this letter is talking about. The learning for us in this striking turn of phrase must be that there is more than one kind of death. Physical death is of course a reality for all of us. If it weren’t for God, physical death would be our ultimate reality. But our passage from Ephesians teaches us that there is another kind of death as well. Our author--I won’t call him Paul, because while this letter is attributed to Paul, Paul almost certainly didn’t write it--doesn’t use the term, but we can call this other kind of death spiritual death. Spiritual death is something that happens to us in this life. We can be physically alive but spiritually dead. Indeed, much of the time it seems to me that most people in this culture, or at least most of its leaders in every sphere of life from politics to culture to religion, are indeed physically alive but spiritually dead. We could even say perhaps that our culture is spiritually dead. It sure seems that way to me most of the time. In any event, if we’re going to learn what our passage this morning has to teach us, we have to try to figure out what this spiritual death that the letter talks about actually is.

The passage begins with a discussion of this spiritual death, albeit a rather obscure one. The author says:

You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.

The first of these main points says that spiritual death involves or comes from "following the course of this world." Our author is saying that the way of the world leads to spiritual death. What, we must ask, does he mean by the way of the world? Well, the world in which he wrote was the Greek-speaking eastern part of the Roman Empire in the first century CE. That world was characterized by the Pax Romana, the Roman Peace. In his most recent work, the Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan teaches us what the moral nature of the Pax Romana was. The Roman Empire operated according to the principle peace through war, through military force, and only then a semblance of justice. The moral principle of the Roman Empire was force. Following the way of the world meant relying on violence for peace and security rather than establishing a world of peace and security by doing justice for all people and especially for the poor, which of course is Jesus’ alternative vision. In that world, and in ours, the violent way of the world is the way of spiritual death. The way of spirit is the way of life. Following the world’s way of violence is one way of spiritual death.

The first century Greco-Roman world was also, like ours, fixated on material wealth and social prestige and power. That culture, like ours, valued and honored most those who were "successful" according to the worldly values of money, prestige, and power. Most of the people living at that time were slaves or otherwise existed only to serve the wealthy and the powerful. We don’t have slaves any more--although we still live with the racism that is the legacy of slavery. Nonetheless, our society and our public policies exist to serve the wealthy and the powerful, and they come to do so more and more all the time. That is the way of spiritual death because it does not value all people as people, as spiritual beings. It makes some people nothing but means to the ends of other wealthier, more powerful people. When we do that, our spirit dies. In our author’s world and in ours, following the ways of the world is indeed the way of spiritual death.

The other major thrust of our passage on spiritual death has to do with "the passions of the flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses...." When I first read these words I was a bit upset. You see, what we’re encountering here is a hostility toward the physical that was common in first century Hellenistic culture. It comes from Platonic philosophy, which taught that the material is evil and the spiritual is good. In this way of thinking, the needs and desires of the flesh are inherently and necessarily evil. They are to be suppressed and rejected. Now, I just don’t believe that. God created us as inspirited bodies, and our physicality is part of God’s good creation. It is not inherently evil. Our author this morning, and indeed St. Paul himself, simply got that wrong. Still, I think there is some learning we can take from these lines about following the desires and passions of the flesh.

Like all good things, our physicality has a shadow side, a danger we must watch out for. The danger that lurks in our physicality is selfishness. We all observe and relate to the world from our position as centered, physical selves. Because we do, the danger of selfishness is never far from us. When we give in to that danger we are on the road to spiritual death. Spirit is about relationship, about connectedness with God and with each other. Spiritual life means healthy, life-giving relationships. Selfishness destroys relationships. That’s how following the passions and desires of the flesh can lead to spiritual death. I know I’m reading a good deal into the few, obscure lines that we have from Ephesians, but that’s what I take spiritual death to be--following the violent, misdirected ways of the world and its disordered priorities and giving in to the temptation of selfishness that inheres in the way we are created.

After his brief and obscure discourse on spiritual death, our author gives us the alternative. He says: "But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loves us...made us alive together with Christ...." The author’s discussion of what that means is unfortunately again obscure at best. He says God has raised us up with Christ "and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus...." I frankly have no idea what that means. After all, I’ve never experienced being seated in a heavenly place in any literal sense, and doubt that the letter’s original recipients had either. So let’s pass over that particularity obscurity and turn to of the other things the passage says that are, I think, more helpful. Our passage ends: "For we are what he [God] has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life." Again this verse may be a bit obscure. The author of Ephesians had a real gift for obscuring things. Still, I think there’s an important point here, namely, that when we live together with Christ, as our author has just said that we do, we are freed to be who we really are, that is, who God intends us to be. Clearly a contrast is intended here between that way of being and the world’s way of being that the passage has previously condemned. God intends for our lives to be committed to what are here called "good works." It is in Christ Jesus that this intended creation becomes reality. When we live in Christ, we live the true human life devoted to living the way God intends.

But just what is that way of living? Our passage doesn’t give many more details, but we can get a glimpse of that life if we look again at what life following the way of the world looks like and consider that God calls us to a different, better way. We saw that the way of the world is the way of violence. In Christ, we are freed to live lives of nonviolence and of peace. In Christ we find the courage to take the risks that peace always requires. We saw that the way of the world is the way of wealth, power, and prestige. In Christ we are free to be satisfied with enough material wealth to meet our basic needs and to let the rest go. We are free to reject the world’s idea of power and to look instead to the power of God in the weakness of Christ on the cross, as we discussed last week. In Christ we are free to be concerned with how God thinks of us and not how the world thinks of us. The true life in Christ is a life of spiritual wealth, power in weakness, and true piety which cares not what the world thinks but strives only to be pleasing to God.

We saw that the way of the world is the way of captivity to our passions and our senses. It is a captivity that distorts the gift of physicality by turning it entirely inward rather than outward in service to others. In Christ we are free to transcend our selfishness and to find our true lives in the act of giving for others. We saw that our selfishness damages our relationships with other people and with God. It even damages our relationship with ourselves. In Christ we are free to cultivate free, healthy, unselfish, life-giving relationships with our families, our friends, with all people, with God, and even with ourselves. In Christ we can enter into relationships not selfishly but in a spirit of true cooperation and commitment to the common good. We can, in short, be truly spiritual beings. All of which adds up to only one thing, really. In Christ we are free to live and not to die, not spiritually at least. We are free to live as God intends and not as the world distorts and corrupts God’s intention. It is with Christ that we can be truly alive.

So let us live, really live, live together with Christ. The letter to the Ephesians got one thing right. The ways of the world are not the ways of Christ. The ways of the world do indeed lead to spiritual death. So let us choose life. Let us choose a life of peace and freedom, a life of selflessness and giving. Let us choose to be not dead in the spirit but alive together with Christ. Amen.