Virtual Worship @ 9:30am, August 8th
- Rev. Rebecca Migliore , preaching
- Lectionary is (Ephesians 4:25—5:2)
Ephesians 4:25—5:2 asserts that Christians are called to behave differently from the status quo, old ways of being in the world are to be put away. The people have a new life and called to imitate God and live in love. What a thing – to think one could imitate God would have, in the past, been considered the height of arrogance. However, Christ changed all this; he embodied the way of God and revealed what God and the love of God look like.
The specific reference to the topic of anger is worth noting – anger is not seen as a sin, rather as a legitimate response to certain circumstances. Pain and injustice exist, and people live with and are caught up in these things. Sometimes, the right response to a situation may well be anger that motivates acts of justice and reconciliation, but anger should not be motivation for further injustice.
We might look at the list given here as a list of rules, but through Christ, the whole notion of rules is done away with. What is offered is a process of transformation. The people of God are changed because of a relationship with God, a relationship sealed in Baptism. It is, therefore, God’s love and reconciliation brought about through Christ that becomes the formative building block of Christian life.
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