Humility, gentleness, patience
Humility, gentleness, patience
Sermon by Kenneth Padley from Ephesians 4.1-16
Sunday 19th January 2025
The letter of St Paul to the Ephesians, from which our second lesson was taken, is not the easiest book of the Bible to get a handle on. In part this is because it might not be a letter, nor written by St Paul, nor posted to Ephesus.
The challenge of reading Ephesians flows from it being a highly generic document.
- It is not obviously responding to a specific problem in a local church as we get elsewhere in the New Testament. There are no words of comfort for a community facing persecution, no theological polemic to correct a dodgy preacher.
- Secondly, not all early manuscripts of this document list Ephesus as its intended destination. With this omission, the opening verse simply addresses ‘saints who are faithful in Christ Jesus’. Such Christians could have lived anywhere.
- Next, while the document begins and ends like a letter, these sections are brief compared to other epistles. Are they purely stylistic? In addition, the meat of the document reads more like a theological tract than an epistle.
- Finally, although Ephesians contains some concepts which are redolent of the teaching of St Paul, because the contents are so generic, there is no knock-dead argument to prove it was written by the great missionary apostle.
Putting all this together, some New Testament scholars are rather snooty about Ephesians. They say that it is derivative and pseudonymous, attributed to St Paul but more likely the output of a follower. To us in the twenty-first century, this looks like wicked plagiarism. But back in the ancient world, claiming the authority of a big name like Paul would have been commonplace and acceptable. Pseudonymous writing was considered a style of respect from a student to a master, an acknowledgment of the teacher’s spiritual and intellectual inspiration.
Whatever the circumstances of this document – and I will continue to call it Ephesians – I cannot dismiss it as bland because we don’t know who wrote it or where it was headed. For the flipside of the accusation that Ephesians is rootless is that it might have widespread relevance – including to you and me. It clearly ranks alongside the rest of the New Testament as a Christian document from the first century, and it was evidently valued by the earliest believers – presumably because they appreciated its message. Might we do the same?
Tonight’s verses from chapter 4 pick up just after the middle of Ephesians. Chapters 1 to 3 are about theology: God’s blessing humanity through Jesus, the salvation which he brings, and the calling of all nations to put their trust in him. The second half of Ephesians, in chapters 4 to 6 tilts towards the practical consequences of such theology, in particular the implications of salvation for how Christians should treat one another.
Thus, the second half of Ephesians is not about how Christians should live in the world but their attitude towards those in their own community of faith. In summary this means unity in diversity. As we heard in verse 5, there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism – within which Christ has poured down diverse gifts on all (verse 7). The writer goes on to talk about the different ministries which are given by God to the Church (verse 11). And in verses 15 and 16 he likens the result to Paul’s metaphor of the human corpus – the complementarity of many organs within a single organisation, the Church being a body of which Christ is the head.
It is this complexity of the Church which leads the author in Ephesians 4.1-2 to exhort his audience to pursue three particular qualities. ‘I … beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.’ Humility, gentleness and patience: three fundamentals for ongoing unity.
Humility is a word which won’t have landed well with the mainly Gentile audience of Ephesians. Humility to Greeks carried a derogatory sense of servility. But the emphasis in tonight’s reading is more that we should not be domineering, that we should not seek to impose our presence or opinions on others. This sort of humility is about avoiding the envy which can corrupt our shared life. This does not mean that we should put ourselves down or make ourselves vulnerable to abuse and manipulation. Rather, humility in this passage is about Christians recognising the existence of other Christians and that, despite our differences, we share a common inheritance.
Ephesians next proceeds to commend gentleness (prauths). Elsewhere in the New Testament, this word and its cognates carry connotations of meekness – as in ‘Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth’ (Mathew 5.5). But in Ephesians 4, the intention is less passive: gentleness in this passage is a positive quality which Christians are called to inhabit and exercise. Such gentleness is a virtue which does not seek to avoid conflict by turning a blind eye to that which is wrong. Such gentleness is elsewhere listed in Galatians chapter 5 among the fruits of God’s Spirit.
Thirdly, humility and gentleness are accompanied by patience. Here is a word which is used in the Old Testament to describe God’s mercy towards wayward humanity: God is patient because She is not easily angered. Such a quality is necessary within any community; those who possess and display patience do not increase bitterness, and its exercise should dissipate tensions. Paul includes patience as an aspect of love in the famous thirteenth chapter of his letter to the Corinthians. Elsewhere he lists it as another of those fruits of the Spirit.
Yesterday was the Feast of the Confession of St Peter. Next Saturday, January 25th, is the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul. These two festivals bookend the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, days when churches are called to remember what we share with other denominations, in this country and abroad, all part of a single rich tapestry.
As the writer to the Ephesians knew, unity does not mean uniformity or unambiguity. Rather, unity is a quality which characterises people of difference who occupy a shared locality or organisation – both congregations and wider collectives. Such unity is not just for Ephesus (or wherever tonight’s lesson was first read) but for us all. Humility, gentleness and patience are virtues for which we should pray and exercise as we seek to maintain unity in diversity within the bond of peace.