Lying at the Speed of Light

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. 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.

In today’s second lesson, the Apostle Paul writes to the Ephesians saying, “Putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.”  You see, back in Paul’s day, people would tell completely fabricated tales and pass them off to other people as the truth!  Can you imagine such a thing?  People back then called those stories, “LIES”.  I know!  Its almost too much to wrap our modern minds around that people would do such a thing, but they did!  

Sarcasm aside, its passages like this that remind us that the Bible isn’t actually filled with ancient, un-relatable situations at all!  There are many, many things in there that are just as much an issue today as they were all those thousands of years ago.  “There is nothing new under the sun” the Teacher would say.  Lies and their spreading were just as much an issue in the papyrus age as they are today in the internet age.  The speed they travel may be different today but at the headwaters of every lie, in every age, there is a human being.  Falsehoods, as Paul calls them, are not a technology problem, they are a human problem.  They are human brokenness, human sin.  

One of the compounding problems with living in our world, where the old, human, sin of falsehoods are uploaded at 100 Megabits per second, is that spreading those falsehoods becomes super easy and almost routine.  With each of us literally drinking from a firehose of falsehoods every day, we see it so often that, as Hannah Arendt says, “If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. ” Spreading falsehoods were indeed an Ephesians’ problem, but it turns out spreading falsehoods, is an “us” problem too.  Each of us, me included, do our fair share of passing on falsehoods.  Falsehoods about sofas are just VERY tempting!  So when it comes to telling falsehoods, we have met the Ephesians and the Ephesians is us!  

Fortunately though, we, like the Ephesians, have Paul’s advice for living in a world of falsehoods.  First, he tells us, when falsehoods fly… Be angry!  The bible is telling us it is okay to be angry!  It is understandable to be angry!  The inaccuracies, falsehoods and lies used to justify, endorse or cover up inhumanities done to our neighbors are all legitimate reasons for us to use that God given emotion… anger!   BUT, Paul advises, don’t let that anger rule your life.  Anger needs an expiration time and Paul suggests that anger should expire… at sundown.  In the New Zealand Prayer Book’s Night Prayer, there’s a prayer that goes in part: “Lord, it is night. The night is for stillness. Let us be still in the presence of God. It is night after a long day. What has been done has been done; what has not been done has not been done; let it be.”  Paul warns us that holding on to anger past sundown leaves room for the devil to muck about. I’m not so sure what that looked like back in the camel age, but in here in the computer age I think this is Paul’s warning to us not scroll, comment, or post after sundown. 

But Paul has more for us and our Ephesian counterparts here than just telling us how we should fight AGAINST falsehoods.  When we see and hear the injustices of our world we are often quick to be angry, and like I said, anger is a God given emotion and there is a time and a place for that sort of righteous anger. But all too often we end up living our lives perpetually AGAINST.  “Against” is important and anger can be useful, BUT… because the horrors of the world are so very horrible at times, we find ourselves wanting to stay perpetually angry until the world is finally healed.  But here’s the thing St. Paul knew back in the donkey age that still holds true in the digital age:  The world ALSO needs to be shown what the love of God in Christ looks like, JUST AS CLEARLY as the world needs to be shown our anger at the things that grieve the Holy Spirit!  

It most certainly IS our task to see injustice, to be angry at it, and fight against it… AND, it is ALSO most certainly our task to model what the world will look like when God’s will is finally done, “on earth as it is in heaven.”  Paul wanted both us, and our Ephesian friends to know that the world needs us flawed but faithful people, to BOTH… speak words that build up the world around us in grace and love AND to hear us flawed and faithful people name the sins of greed, cruelty, racism, and violence.  The world needs BOTH from us in equal measure.  The world needs to see us being forgiving, being tenderhearted, and being kind to one another JUST AS OFTEN as the world needs to see us stand up for those pushed to the margins and then over the edges to be forgotten.  The world needs us not only to be imitators of Christ in turning over tables and standing up to Empires, but the world ALSO needs us JUST AS MUCH to be imitators of Christ, living in love as Christ loved us, giving all of ourselves to God and our neighbor.  

This world of ours moves fast these days.  Lies travels on fiberoptic cables at the speed of light!  But remember, just like our Ephesian friends way back then… we too have been marked with the cross of Christ in the waters of Baptism and sealed for the day of redemption… and because the love of God travels even faster than the speed of light, we are well equipped to wield... in equal measure… righteous anger at injustices and flat out lies AS WELL AS unconditional love and unlimited grace.  May we do just that for the next few months particularly but also for the rest of our days.  Amen.