The Path to Wholeness

We all know the story of the Titanic. The opulent, 900-foot cruise ship sank in 1912 on its first voyage, from England to New York. Fifteen hundred people died in one of the worst maritime disasters of all time.

 

How did it happen? The most widely held theory, for some time, was that the ship hit an iceberg that opened a huge gash in the side of the liner. But an international team of divers and scientists later probed through the wreckage and found that the damage from the iceberg was surprisingly small. Instead of a huge gash, they found six relatively narrow slits across the six watertight holds.

 

It just goes to show that small damage, below the water line and invisible to most can sink a huge ship. In the same way, seemingly small things can sink our lives.

 

To avoid sinking we need to be whole vessels. In a word, we need to have integrity. Webster defines integrity as: (1) an unimpaired condition: soundness, (2) firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values: incorruptibility, (3) the quality or state of being complete or undivided: completeness. 

 

Personally, I don’t think anyone in this life exists in unimpaired condition. Nor is anyone incorruptible. But with God’s help we can aim at wholeness. That’s what I think of, when I hear the word “integrity”. I think of that journey toward wholeness that we all are on. 

 

The Titanic is never going to be raised again from its resting place on the ocean floor. The Titanic will never be made whole again. But Jesus can make our lives whole. He can give us integrity.

 

And that is what this next section of Paul’s letter to the Church at Ephesus is all about: the journey toward wholeness. Listen for God’s word to you from Ephesians 4:17-32…

 

So, I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. ¹⁸ They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. ¹⁹ Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.

²⁰ That, however, is not the way of life you learned ²¹ when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus.²² You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; ²³ to be made new in the attitude of your minds; ²⁴ and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

²⁵ Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body. ²⁶ “In your anger do not sin”^[d]:Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, ²⁷ and do not give the devil a foothold. ²⁸ Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need.

²⁹ Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. ³⁰ And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. ³¹ Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. ³² Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

 

Paul suggests three things we need to do if we are going to be on the journey to wholeness, the journey to integration in our lives. 

 

First, we need to come to know Christ. 

 

Paul spends the first few verses in this section outlining what life is like apart from Christ. He uses words like futility, darkness, separated, ignorance, hardening, loss of sensitivity, given over to sensuality, indulging in impurity, full of greed. But then Paul says to the Ephesians, “You did not come to know Christ that way.” The implication is that coming to know Christ puts us on the path to wholeness and integrity. Coming to know Christ replaces the negatives of our past life with plusses.

 

A second thing Paul suggests we must do if we are going to be on the pathway to wholeness, what I like to call “wholiness” with a “w”, is that we need to be made new in the attitude of our minds. 

 

Paul says something similar in Romans 12:2… 

 

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

 

After we come to faith in Christ, renewing our minds is the first step to a changed life. Proverbs 23:7 suggests that as a person thinks in his heart, so is he. The way we think determines the way we live. What we believe with our minds determines the way we act in our lives. I think it was Emerson who said, “Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”

 

So, how do we renew our minds? This is where Scripture comes in handy. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says that “All Scripture is inspired and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the person of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” Filling our minds with Scripture helps us renew our minds on the pathway to wholiness.

A third thing Paul says we need to do if we are going to be on the pathway to wholiness and integrity is that we need to put off our old self and put on our new self. In other words, we need to take off unchristian habits just like we would take off dirty clothes and put on the robe of Christ’s righteousness, put on new habits consistent with Jesus’ way of life.

 

Do you know about cuckoo birds? I have read that cuckoos don’t build nests. Instead, they look for a nest with eggs that are temporarily unattended while the mother bird searches for food. A cuckoo lays its egg in the other bird’s nest, then flies away.

 

The little thrush comes back and not being very good at arithmetic, she settles down to hatch her eggs. In time, four little thrushes and one big cuckoo hatch.

 

When Mrs. Thrush brings home a juicy worm, she finds four little thrush mouths alongside one cavernous cuckoo mouth. Guess who gets the worm? The mother thrush ends up feeding a baby cuckoo that is three times her size.

 

Over time, the cuckoo grows bigger while the thrushes get smaller. Here’s how you can always find a baby cuckoo’s nest: walk along a hedgerow until you find some tiny thrushes which the cuckoo has thrown out of the nest one at a time.

 

What is going to grow in your life? Whatever habits you are feeding are what’s going to grow. Whatever habits you don’t feed are going to wither and die and eventually be thrown out of the nest.

 

In this passage, Paul tells us about five habits to feed, and five not to feed, five habits to “put on” and five to “put off”.

 

First, Paul tells us to put off lying and to put on truth-telling.

 

Lying has become so common in our day, even expected among some professions (like politicians), and so it is important to remember why lying is harmful. Paul gives us at least one big reason in this passage why we should not lie. He says we need to tell the truth because we are all members of the same body, namely the body of Christ, the church.

 

Think about it. The body can only live in safety if the nerves pass true messages to the brain. Suppose you have the burner on your stove turned on high and your hand is near the burner. What if the nerves in your hand sent the message to your brain that the burner was cool when it was blazing hot? Then the brain might allow your hand to touch the burner and—voila—you would get burned.

 

If we trust people who are lying to us, we end up getting burned somewhere along the way. Then the lie leads to the destruction of trust. Then when trust is destroyed, relationships are destroyed, and we end up living in isolation. 

 

God designed human beings to live in community. So, lying destroys one of the goals for which we were created. Lying doesn’t just hurt people to whom we lie, it hurts us when we lie, because we are all members of one body.

 

Secondly, Paul tells us to put off uncontrolled anger and put on self-control. 

 

How does God want us to handle anger? First, we need to recognize that there is nothing wrong with anger in and of itself. There are no emotions that are right or wrong. What can be right or wrong is what we do with our emotions, or what we allow our emotions to do to us. The problem with anger is its motive and expression. Paul says, “In your anger do not sin.” This makes it clear that not all anger is sinful, but anger can lead to sin.

 

Anger is like the temperature gauge on the dashboard of your car. When the gauge goes into the red zone you know something is wrong under the hood. God doesn’t want us to become preoccupied with the gauge, with anger in and of itself. God can use our anger to make us aware of problems under the hood, problems in ourselves and in our relationships. God wants us to look under the hood and deal with the real problem that has resulted in our angry feelings.

 

Paul makes it clear that we should deal with our angry feelings quickly. We should not let anger carry over from one day to the next. We should not let the sun go down while we are still angry. When we put off dealing with anger it gives the devil an opportunity to come in and sow seeds of bitterness in our hearts.

 

There are two different types of anger that Paul speaks against in this passage. He talks about rage and anger. Rage is the type of anger that is like a flame burning straw, that quickly burns out. The Greek word for “anger” means an anger that has become habitual. Neither kind of anger is good if left unattended.

 

Paul also speaks against brawling and slander, literally—loud talking and insulting language. How do you put off brawling and slander? The key is to learn how to talk through your anger in a calm voice. When you feel anger starting to boil up inside of you, take time to pause and pray for God’s help to deal with anger appropriately. Things always go better in relationships when you wait to cool down before talking through your feelings. I know it is easier said than done. Learning and practicing such self-control takes time, sometimes a lifetime.

 

Thirdly, Paul says we need to put off stealing and put on useful labor.

 

In the ancient world thieving was rampant on the docks and in the public baths. Perhaps that is one reason why Paul addresses this sin so specifically.

 

But Paul’s reason for this put off/put on command is interesting. He doesn’t say we should work to support ourselves or our families, though of course we should do that. Paul says we should work so that we have something to give away to those in need. Paul wants us to keep looking outward to the needs of others rather than inward to ourselves.

 

Fourth, Paul says we need to put off harmful speech and put on helpful speech. 

 

“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”

 

We probably all know the saying… “Before you speak you should ask yourself: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? Is it helpful?”

 

It is hard to stop ourselves and ask such questions, but it is so important. And even more important is developing the habit of only saying those things which are true, kind, necessary, and helpful. It takes work. We need to work at speaking life words, not death words to others.

 

Finally, Paul says we need to put off bitterness and put on forgiveness. 

 

The Greek word for “bitterness” means a long-standing resentment. Bitterness results from anger not being handled in the right way. And Paul makes it clear, the antidote to bitterness is forgiveness. We become bitter when we fail to forgive others for something they have said or done that hurt us. But why let bitterness eat up your life?

 

I have a friend who experienced one of the most horrendous things I think any human being can experience. Her daughter-in-law was murdered. I don’t know how anyone lives through an experience like that without becoming bitter. But my friend has done it. She has often said to me, “Unforgiveness is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” In other words, unforgiveness doesn’t simply hurt the other person. It hurts us.

 

I would like to close with one more story…

The picture haunted him. Like many Americans, Rev. John Plummer, minister of Bethany United Methodist Church in Purcellville, Virginia, was moved by the Vietnam-era Pulitzer Prize winning photo by AP photographer, Nick Ut, of 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc, naked and horribly burned, running from a napalm attack.

 

But for Plummer, that picture had special significance. In 1972 he was responsible for setting up the air strike on the village of Trang Bang—a strike approved after he was twice assured there were no civilians in the area.

 

Plummer said that even though he knew he had done everything possible to make sure the area was clear of civilians, he experienced new pain each time he saw the picture. He wanted to tell Kim Phuc how sorry he was.

 

After becoming a Christian in 1990, Plummer felt called to the ministry and attended seminary. In June 1996 he learned that Kim Phuc was still alive and living in Toronto. The next month he attended a military reunion and met someone who knew both Kim Phuc and the photographer, Nick Ut. Plummer learned that on that fateful day in 1972, Kim Phuc and her family were hiding in a pagoda in Trang Bang when a bomb hit the building. Kim Phuc and others ran into the street, where they were hit by napalm being dropped from another plane. Kim tore off her burning clothing as she fled. Two of her cousins were killed. 

 

The photographer and other journalists poured water from canteens on Kim’s burns. She collapsed moments after the famous photo and was rushed by car to a hospital. Kim spent fourteen months in hospitals and was operated on by a San Francisco plastic surgeon.

 

In 1996, Plummer learned that Kim Phuc was speaking at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. He went and heard Kim say that if she ever met the pilot of the plane, she would tell him she forgives him and that they cannot change the past, but she hoped they could work together in the future. Plummer was able to get word to Kim that the man she wanted to meet was there at the Vietnam Memorial.

 

“She saw my grief, my pain, my sorrow,” Plummer wrote in an article in the Virginia Advocate. “She held out her arms to me and embraced me. All I could say was, ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry; I’m sorry’ over and over again. At the same time, she was saying, ‘It’s all right; it’s all right; I forgive; I forgive.”

 

Plummer learned that although she was raised a Buddhist, Kim Phuc had become a Christian in 1982.

That story illustrates for me, once again, that Jesus is the one who makes us whole. You may feel today like God could never forgive you for something you have done wrong. But I’m here today to assure you that God can forgive you because Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty for all our sins. Jesus prayed as he hung on that cross, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” Jesus can not only forgive us, but he can also help us to forgive others just as Kim Phuc did. 

 

If you want to start on the path to wholeness, Jesus can help you on to that path today. And for those of us who have been on the path for some time, Jesus can help us to keep going until that day we stand before him and we are made whole in his presence for we shall see him as he is…