Proper 14B, 2024

Text: Ephesians 4:17 – 5:2

Title: Strange

+ INI +

You are strange.  You are different.  You are not like the other people around you. 

And that’s a good thing.

In baptism you put on Christ, you were clothed with Christ as a garment.

As a child of God, you are an imitator of Christ. 

If you’ve spent any time around young children, you learn quickly to watch what you say and to watch what you do, because they will imitate you, they will copy everything you say and everything you do.

When Zachary was younger, whenever I had a funeral, he would invariably come home and have a funeral for one of his beanie babies.  He would get dressed up, using a scarf for a stole.  He would set up the living room and light his pretend candles.  He would put the stuffed animal in a rolling suitcase and cover it with a blanket for the pall.  He would sing hymns and read from his Bible and do his best to recreate the funeral service.

I didn’t teach him to do this.  I didn’t encourage him to do this.  He just imitated what he had seen and heard.

No matter how old you get, you are called to imitate Christ.  Watch Christ. Listen to Him.  Do what He does and say what He says.

Will you get it perfectly right?  Of course not.  But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. 

And as you do, your life should look different from the lives of the non-Christians around you.

You aren’t called to blend in, to camouflage yourself, to be some sort of undercover Christian.  But to live and act and speak differently than the people around you.

It’s always been this way.  Christians have always stood out.

It’s fascinating to read what other people were saying about Christians all the way back in the beginning, all the differences that they noted.

Here’s what one pagan wrote to another about 100 years after St. Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians.  Here what he says about Christians and what makes them different.

“Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them.  They share their meals, but not their wives.  They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh…. Christians love all, but all persecute them…  They live in poverty, but enrich many…  A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult.  For the good they do they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they rejoice, as though receiving the gift of life.” 

Notice what stood out. In those days, if you had a child that you didn’t want, you would just leave them outside the town.  Sometimes the child was picked up by others to raise or use as a slave.  More often than not, the child would die.  They called this exposing their children.  Christians didn’t do this.

This was also a very sexually permissive culture.  Adultery and prostitution were common, along with many other perversions.  Christians didn’t do this.

Christians were known for their generosity towards the poor, and their willingness to suffer without complaining.

Those around them noticed that Christians were different. 

What does that mean here and now?  How are Christians noticeably different than others in our culture today?  How should you be different?

Here’s just a few possible examples:

Your speech is pure, you aren’t constantly swearing and using vulgar language.

You aren’t angry all the time.

You aren’t going out and partying and getting drunk every weekend.

You aren’t hooking up or sleeping with or living with people you’re not married to.

You don’t abort your unborn babies.

You don’t celebrate pride month

You don’t sleep in or take your kids to soccer games on Sunday morning, but you’re in here God’s house receiving His gifts.

That’s just a sampling.  There’s more, of course, but these are some ways that your neighbors will notice that you’re strange, that you’re different.

And the main difference is this- you don’t automatically satisfy every desire you have. You don’t indulge every urge you have.

You sin because it feels good.  And you like that feeling.

And the people around you, more and more, tell you to go ahead, to do what makes you feel good.

Paul says, “No, that’s your old life.  That’s the way that you used to be.  You’re not like that anymore.”

Now Paul was writing to adult converts.  They remembered the way that they used to live, and they felt the draw to go back to the Gentile way of life.

Now, I realize that I’m talking to a bunch of Lutherans, and most of you have been Christians your whole life.  You were probably baptized at a very young age, you were probably taught the faith at home or at church.  Maybe you had a few rebellious years as a teenager or a young adult, but you never really lost your faith.

And yet, these words still apply to you.  The temptation is real for you to give in to the ways of the world, to decide that it’s not worth it, that it’s too hard, that you don’t want to be different anymore, that you just want to fit in with everyone else.

More and more people are making that choice to fit in, particularly among our young people. Some of you know the pain of watching your kids or grandkids abandon the faith.

So, why keep going?

Two reasons.

First, you will never be satisfied, you will never find true joy and happiness in this life apart from Christ.  The more you live in sin, the deeper and deeper you go, and you will never be able to be satisfied.

Second, you need to consider what comes after this life.  If all you have is the here and now, then sure, indulge yourself, get as much as you can out of life.  But there’s more.  Jesus’ resurrection is proof of this.  There will be a resurrection of the dead on the last day.  And you will be judged. 

Now, I want to make this perfectly clear.  You will not be judged based on how well you lived your life, and if you were able to avoid sin.  If that were the case, no one would receive eternal life.

You will be judged on the basis of what Jesus has done for you.

You are given the gift of eternal life because Jesus lived, died, and rose again for you.  It all starts with Him.

All the good that you do is a response to what Jesus has first done for you.

“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”  Christ’s forgiveness comes first.  And because you have been forgiven, you forgive one another.

“[W]alk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”  Christ loved you.  Christ gave His life for you.  And because you have been loved in such a way, you walk in that love, you live out that love in how you treat others in your life.  

And when you live in such a way, people will notice.  You will stand out as strange and different.  But that’s a good thing.

Jesus stood out, too.  So much so that they killed Him for it.  But God raised Jesus from the dead.  He’ll raise you, too.

So, don’t be afraid.  Be different.  Just like Jesus.