In the name of the holy and blessed Trinity ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
I don’t watch much television, but the bit that I do see happens to be the worst kind. When I’m running on a treadmill at the gym, there’s a row of televisions in front of me, and most are tuned to a few cable news networks. Even though I’m not really watching them, I do notice. And what I notice is nearly always appalling – the partisan weaponization of journalism, intentional misleading of the public, and prioritization of ratings over content are all disturbing. Sadly, this sort of manipulation isn’t only present on cable news networks. Our economy, legal system, and even churches have all succumb to the idea of a zero-sum world – a world in which there are winners and losers, and we’ll pay nearly any price to be on the winning side. The influence of money and our insatiable appetite for power have corrupted the institutions on which our society is built. We’ll tell and believe half-truths if they serve our needs and desires. We’ll overlook facts when they don’t. Being inconsistent in our morals is a daily practice, as we can hear the phrase “Well, the situation is different” on a nearly daily basis. In short, our culture is rigged, unstable, and turbulent.
Just as they were to the Ephesians, these words are much needed today: “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.” In this sense, children is meant to convey a sense of immaturity, unregulated emotions, and ignorance. Children haven’t learned the lessons of life, they are prone to tantrums, and their brains aren’t yet developed to make logical connections. This example isn’t meant to insult or demean children, but it’s to contrast an immature faith with a mature one. The reason why it’s so easy for us to be misled is that we so often practice an immature faith – one that has not been developed.
And because we are not tethered to a strong foundation, we are tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine and trickery. Now when we think of heresy, we tend to think of bishops who lived thousands of years ago arguing about things like the Nicene Creed. And certainly, that period of Church history had its heretics. But many of those heresies are alive and well today. And even if we don’t believe them, these heresies shape the religious and political air that we breathe.
One such heresy is called Marcionism, which actually began in the 2nd century, but is still common today. If you’ve ever heard someone say “The God of the Old Testament is mean and vengeful and the God of the New Testament is loving,” well, then you’ve heard the basics of this heresy. Sadly, this false doctrine laid the groundwork for the atrocity of the Holocaust, because in addition to being wrong, it’s also anti-Semitic. Or perhaps you’ve encountered Arianism, which also is an ancient heresy that you can still find today. Have you ever heard someone say “Jesus was a great moral teacher, but he wasn’t God”? If you have, then you’ve heard that heresy articulated in modern terms.
Or maybe you’ve encountered Donatism, a heresy that said that only valid clergy, and they got to define who was valid, could preside over the Sacraments. When you hear people today dismissing the qualifications of others for no good reason, whether they be conservative, liberal, non-denominational, or Roman Catholic then you’ve heard the heresy of Donatism. Pelagianism is popular in progressive circles and oversells the ability of humans to live Godly lives. If you’ve heard someone say “You can do anything you put your mind to” or have heard someone argue that the concept of Sin is just an old-fashioned form of moralism, then you know what the Pelagian heresy is all about. It’s a heresy that denies the grace of God and says that we can accomplish holy living without God. A lot of what might be labeled as “social justice” is actually a form of this heresy which is synonymous with the myth of human progress.
There are plenty more heresies out there, but I’ll just mention one more – it finds its roots in Pentecostalism and is known as the Prosperity Gospel. It is one of the most pervasive and pernicious heresies alive today and has been made popular by people like Joel O’Steen, Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, and Paula White. Sometimes this heresy is described as “health and wealth,” saying that if you are a good person, which is typically code for giving money to fund large houses and private jets for the pastor, then God will bless you. This heresy says that you can buy God’s favor and blessings with good behavior or donations. It also professes the inverse – hurricanes are God’s wrath for human sinfulness being one of the more atrocious examples.
Having a sense of these heresies is important so that we can recognize those winds of false doctrine that blow us to and fro, as Ephesians puts it. The translation of the next part of the concern obscures the original meaning – we heard “by their craftiness in deceitful scheming,” when what the original Greek actually is talking about are people who play gambling games with loaded dice. They’ve rigged the system to get the outcome they want. Whether it’s our political system or conspicuous capitalism, so often we are participating in rigged systems that are designed to lead us blindly into a desired outcome. We all have learned how social media can be used to covertly influence the way we think about certain issues for political gain. And the Church participates in this as well, as shame, guilt, and obligation are used by church leadership to control people. But this isn’t the faith of Jesus, it’s just a behavior modification tool to maintain power.
These issues of being immature, being blown around by heresy, or being misled by tricksters only occur because we have not been rooted and grounded in the love of Christ. In the portion of Ephesians that we read last week, that image of being rooted and grounded in Christ was central, and that logic continues here. Paul is arguing for Christian unity, but unity is impossible when people are so easily straying away from faith in God as it has been revealed in the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
But what is unity? When we say that the goal is Christian unity, what exactly are we talking about? Do we all have to have the same favorite hymns? Do we all have to read Scripture in the same way? Do we have to understand Sacraments in only one way? Can we disagree about what sort of vestments clergy should wear? Those are issues of uniformity, not unity. The end of Christian unity is not to be the same, but rather to be together.
So Paul begins this passage with what scholars believe may have been the earliest known Baptismal Creed, and it’s one that we still use today when we baptize someone – There is one Body and one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all. This is the foundation of Christian unity.
As we heard in this morning’s Gospel text from John, Jesus responds to the question “What must we do to perform the works of God?” by saying that we are to “believe in him who he has sent.” The one that God has sent is, of course, Jesus. But it is absolutely crucial to understand what it meant by “believing in Jesus,” lest we fall into another heresy. Belief is not about which sets of hypotheses you think are correct, that’s the heresy of Gnosticism, which is about having secret knowledge that provides salvation. Belief is better translated as “trusting” or “having confidence in” or “giving allegiance to.” Belief is about being in a relationship of fidelity to God.
Unity is found in our allegiance to Jesus Christ. It’s when we, in the language of the Rite I Eucharistic prayer, “offer and present unto God our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto God.” When we confess that there is one Body, we ground ourselves in the truth that the Body of Christ is one – there is but one savior, one giver of grace. And there is one Spirit which guides and sustains us. As Presiding Bishop Curry has said, “If it isn’t about love, it isn’t about God.” Things that blow us around that aren’t about love aren’t the Spirit, they are false doctrines which blows us to and fro.
And in this faith, we have one hope, one destination into the fullness of the one Lord who is the source and culmination of all things. Baptism is the entrance into this relationship of trust and allegiance to the one God of all who is sovereign in all things, a part of all things, and in the midst of all things. What this litany of “ones” demonstrates is that unity is about our common trust in God to provide for us, to heal us, to nurture us in love. It is our common dependence on God that unites us.
In thinking about this unity, it’s important to remember that Ephesians notes that we are to “make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit.” Notice that we do not create this unity, it is given to us. The assumption is that unity is the default position, but we often are tossed about by things that divide us. So we have to make every effort to maintain unity. And we do this with humility, gentleness, and patience. We bear with one another in love. And that’s an honest assessment of life, sometimes all we can do is bear is each other. We are not told that we have to enjoy each other’s company, or that we have to talk the same way, or vote the same way, or pray the same way, or dress the same way. But we remember that there is one body, one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one Baptism, one God of all.
When we aren’t grounded in our dependence on God, when we root ourselves in our desire to be correct instead of aligned to God, when we do not strive to have a mature faith, we will find disunity as we are blown about by all sorts of false doctrines and will be led astray. Our society is full of division, confusion, and uncertainty. It is so easy to be blown about by this or that news. And so it is all the more important to have the stability of faith which is found in the unity of Christ.
Those heresies that I mentioned earlier all draw us away from the love of God and make unity with each other so much more difficult because they lead us away from growing into the full stature of Christ. If we do not ground ourselves in Jesus Christ, we will be easily swept away by false doctrine, by selfish ambitions, by doubts and fears, by those who have motivations other than the love of God.
As Paul is working to instill a sense of unity in faith, we find an exhortation to seek a mature faith that allows us to grow up into Christ. Let this passage from Ephesians be an encouragement to seek deeper roots in your faith. Resolve to ground yourself in prayer and Scripture reading. Examine your beliefs about how you vote, how you handle finances, how you treat other people. None of us are perfect and none of us are immune from the effects of those winds of false doctrines or those rigged systems of the world. Consider where you may have been led astray or blown off course, and repent and return the loving way of Christ. “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming, but… we must grow up in every way into the love of Christ.”
