Ephesians 4:17-32

“Tender Hearted”

Rev. Tom Harris

August 9, 2009

          The passage this morning is full of little gems on wisdom and insight and I want to reflect on some of those in just a moment. Before that, there is one hang up I have with the passage that I want to explain.  It is that the author seems to feel it is necessary to demonize a group of people in order to articulate the way Christians should live.

          The author points to the Gentiles, which is interesting in itself because in other places in the bible and other places in Ephesians, “Gentiles” are defined as people who are not Jewish. There are the Jews and then there are the Gentiles. Much of Paul’s mission was as a Jew preaching about Jesus to the Gentiles, that is the Non-Jews. But, in this passage Gentiles are people who are not Christian. A shift has happened in which the insiders who were Jewish people sharing the good news of Jesus with non-Jewish people have now become the outsiders, people who do not believe in Jesus. At this point, according to the author, Christians, not Jews are now God’s chosen people and all non-Christians are Gentiles.

          But, that’s not the hang up. The hang up is what the author says about these non-Christian people, “They are darkened in their understandings, alientated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart. They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.”  That’s pretty harsh judgment.  Do we really need to tear down another group of people in order to build ourselves up?  I don’t think we do. We should be able to articulate certain practices or behaviors that we feel are harmful and other practices or behaviors that we believe are life-giving without pointing fingers and saying that all those people over there have just got it all wrong. They are just terrible. Let’s at least not be like them.  In other words it should be possible to separate the sin from the sinner. To talk about the sin without condemning the sinner.

          For example, in verse 18 we have the idea of hard-heartedness. We should be able to talk about hard-heartedness without pointing to all those people out there who are hard hearted and how terrible they are. We can simply say, as Christians we want to avoid hardness of heart. William Barclay says the Greek word here actually could mean a petrified heart. So that yes we acknowledge that over time, its part of our human nature to lose our compassion or our capacity to love all people. Its part of our nature for our hearts to go from a living ,vibrant part of us to a hard, immovable thing. As Christians we want to avoid that hardening. We want instead a softer heart as we mature. We want to nurture a capacity to love others as we grow. We want to feel compassion deeply for the rest of our lives. We want to be tender hearted as it says at the end of this passage. And now we are past the hang up and into the advice.

          So moving on from there, verse 20 is a wonderful short sentence. Speaking of the list of sins that has just been mentioned it says “That is not the way you learned Christ.” What I like about it is that it highlights the idea that we do learn Christ. We don’t just know how to have faith. We don’t just know how to live a good life. It may not even come naturally. We must learn. And more importantly, we really have to learn as adults. It’s important to teach children the faith, but our learning and growing as people of faith does not stop we turn 18. Through bible study, adult Sunday School, listening to sermons, personal study, reading and devotion we must continue to learn Christ and study our faith and grow as Christians until the day we die. We grow until we die.

          Verse 22-24 talks about an idea that is found in other places in the New Testament. It is the idea that we have an old self and a new self. For the early Christians or even some Christians today this old self and new self is a powerful idea. But, for many people in the church there may not be such a clear line between the two. They may not have lived a spectacularly immoral life before they came to church. Besides that, many people today have been in the church their whole lives so where is the old self/new self line for them. But, on the other hand, if we are trying to grow spiritually, to grow morally, to grow as people then regardless of where we are we should be able to identify some things that are new about the way we live and some things that we have decided to leave behind. For example, for some people that could be the behavior heavy drinking when we were younger that has been left behind for more moderate consumption now. We’ve done the lamp shade on the head, compromising pictures, not remembering the night before, deadly hangover thing and we don’t want to do it again. We’ve left that behind.  It could be going from an abusive relationship to a relationship filled with mutual respect and caring. We’ve left the old abused victimized self behind. It could going from a desire for great wealth, success and prestige when we were younger to being satisfied with what we have and seeking to grow not in our accumulation of wealth but in our generosity.  If we are growing as Christians there are some old ways that we have left behind and there are some new ways in which we now live and there some things we do today that we will leave behind in the future as we continue to grow. We all have an old self and a new self. None of us are there yet. We all have room to grow.

          Skipping a few verses, verses 26 and 27 are about anger. Another great phrase from the passage is, “be angry but do not sin,” which  indicates that anger itself is not a sin. On the other hand the book of James says, “your anger does not produce God’s righteousness” So its not a sin but it doesn’t produce God’s righteousness. Really, anger is an emotion that has its place in our lives like other emotions. But like any emotion, we can have too much anger. We can even become dependent on our anger. But, Ephesians says, “do not let the sun go down on your anger.”  Sometimes we think that anger is good because it will motivate us and we should nurture it so that we can make change. Not according to this passage. Anger should alert us that something is not right. It may be that we are being stepped on or that some else is being stepped on or that we perceive we are being stepped on but we are not, our egos have just placed themselves under someone else’s feet and it really should not have been there, but, when we feel ourselves getting angry we should acknowledge the feeling, then start trying to rationally identify why we are angry, let go of the anger and start working to resolve the problem with our heart and mind instead of our anger. I didn’t say this was easy. But there it is.

          Verses 31 and 32 wrap it all up, telling us to put away certain things. This is not like we putting away the dishes where we will get them back out easily, but like we putting things in the attic at least or perhaps in the land fill. Put away bitterness it says. You are not going to be needing bitterness in this Christian life. Put away “wrath and anger”. There again a warning about excessive anger. Put away “wrangling and slander”. We might have to turn off C-span. Put away malice. That’s should be pretty obvious. And then to sum it all up and to sum up how to live the Christian life: Be kind to one another. Be tenderhearted as opposed remember to being hard hearted. And forgive one another. Now if you think about it anger may have a place in the forgiveness equation. Maybe our anger is there to alert us that we have been wronged, therefore we have someone we need to forgive.  Forgive one another as Christ has forgiven you.  God forgives everything we have ever done, so we should forgive our brothers and sisters when they fall short of our expectations.

          If we follow all these instructions Christianity is a pretty radical lifestyle. We don’t need to talk about the Gentiles or the pagans or the sinners and how badly they live. Most of us don’t need to look beyond our own selves to find room for improvement in these areas.

          Now, I want to close by showing you and exercise related to being tender hearted. I read this recently in a book about the Hindu/yoga philosophy of chakras which according to that tradition are energy centers up and down our bodies. One of the seven chakras in the human body is the heart chakra and there is a way to locate it.

          (how to locate Heart Chakra. Soften heart. Deep breathes. Relax heart. Quote verse 32)