11th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 14

11th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 14 August 12, 2012 [“Grant to us, Lord, we beseech thee, the spirit to think and do always such things as are right, that we, who cannot exist without thee, may by thee be enabled to live according to thy will”] “Grant to us, O Lord, we pray the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according o your will…” We prayed these words this morning in our collect for the day, and as is often the case in the prayers of the church, we see that it isn’t just enough to ask God for guidance in our thinking (knowing what is right), but we are also bravely asking God for the grace to act upon how God guides us into doing what is right. I had a troubling conversation with someone this week, and what was the most troubling to me, in retrospect was my own part in the conversation. Someone was sharing with me that there is a person in the church who is upset with the church because of gossip. The person relaying this to me, was the subject of the gossip, but was more concerned about the friend who is upset and has left. And the person talking to me said, “They’re upset because they think that there shouldn’t be any gossip in the church, but you and I both know that just isn’t realistic…” And I nodded sadly and I agreed, and we moved on to another topic. Later that day, I re-read the readings for this coming Sunday, and I read the Ephesians reading, and I was completely convicted: “Putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.…Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” I was disappointed in myself, and I was disappointed in all of us. I believe in my deepest heart that every single one of us is deeply hungry for the kind of Christian community that the writer of Ephesians writes about—speaking the truth in love, building up one another, acting in kindness, tenderheartedness, and above all forgiving one another as we have been forgiven. And it is true that sometimes we fail in this miserably. But that should not keep us from trying, from believing that we can truly be imitators of God, and it should inspire us to try even harder for our words and our actions to be more in accord with what we know to be right in the eyes of God! Sometimes we live into this gloriously, as was also evidenced this week in a lovely letter that we received from The Rev. Tom Slawson. Tom writes in his letter, “At a time of deep vocational discernment and uncertainty, Melanie and the good people of St. Peter’s allowed me to reconnect to, and reaffirm, my vocational identity. I was graciously invited into that community as a priest and pastor…” And that made me proud of us, joyful that in those many different moments, we have been able to live more fully into who God calls us to be as the body of Christ-- those who embody the love of God in a very real way for each other and for a needy and hungry world—which is the heart of this passage from Ephesians today. Scholars believe that the letter to the Ephesians most likely was not written by Paul, and it probably was not written to a specific Christian community but was actually a circular letter, written to be distributed to many different congregations throughout Asia Minor. It is a poetic testament to what it means to be true Christian community, members of the body of Jesus Christ, who is the head. I feel certain that we are no different than any of the original hearers of this letter: some days we are more faithful to the call of being the body of Christ than others. Interestingly enough, our modern science now has the understanding to scientifically support some of the teachings in this letter. Medical sociologists now understand that both good and bad traits are contagious in communities. So the bad news with that is that when we are false, when we are angry and un-reconciled, when we are thieves, when we speak evil, when we are bitter, wrathful, slandering, and malicious, those characteristics are contagious to others in our community, in our family, in our church. But the good news is that when we are lovingly truthful, when we are reconciled, when we share with the needy, when we build each other up, when we are kind, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, when we are imitators of God, when we are loving, then that also is contagious to all those around us, in our homes, in our church, in our lives.i And that is something good, and worthy, and holy to hope and to strive for. There is a picture that a friend had posted on Facebook this week that says, “Before you speak Think!” And then it has the letters THINK going down the side. It reads “T—is it true? H—is it helpful? I—is it inspiring? N—is it necessary? K—is it kind? May God give us the wisdom to know what is right and the grace and the hope to act on it, as imitators of God through the example of Jesus Christ. i. Thanks to The Rev. Dr. Jackie Cameron for writing about this notion of good contagion and bad contagion this week in her CREDO blog: http://credovitality.wordpress.com/