3/15/26 Sermon

This morning’s reading comes from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, one of the New Testament’s great letters about identity, grace, and the shape of the Christian life. Whether it was written directly by Paul or by someone writing in Paul’s tradition, the letter speaks to a church learning what it means to live as the body of Christ in the world. It is a letter written not just to individuals, but to a community—a people being formed by the gospel in the midst of an often fractured and shadowed world.

Up to this point in the letter, the author has been reminding the church who they are and whose they are. In the opening chapters, we hear that we have been blessed in Christ, redeemed by grace, and brought near to God—not by our own effort, but by God’s mercy. We’re told that Christ has broken down the dividing walls between people and made one new humanity. The church is described as the body of Christ, called to grow into maturity, unity, and love.

As the letter moves on, the focus shifts from what God has done for us to how we’re now called to live. Paul urges the church to walk in a manner worthy of their calling, to put away old ways of living, and to be renewed in mind and spirit. Just before today’s passage, he speaks about living in love, turning away from what’s false and destructive, and learning to imitate God.

And that brings us to this morning’s text, where the language becomes vivid and powerful: darkness and light, sleep and awakening, death and rising. This isn’t just about private morality. It’s about transformation. It’s about becoming a people whose lives reflect the light of Christ in a world that desperately needs it.

So listen now for God’s Word from Ephesians 5:8–14.

You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord, so live your life as children of light. Light produces fruit that consists of every sort of goodness, justice, and truth. Therefore, test everything to see what’s pleasing to the Lord, and don’t participate in the unfruitful actions of darkness. Instead, you should reveal the truth about them. It’s embarrassing to even talk about what certain persons do in secret. But everything exposed to the light is revealed by the light. Everything that is revealed by the light is light. Therefore, it says, Wake up, sleeper! Get up from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

WORD OF LORD

Life can be pretty ambiguous. Most of us know that just from living long enough. We try to do the right thing. We mean well. We make the best decision we can with the information we have, and sometimes things still go wrong. Sometimes badly wrong. There are moments in life when deciding what’s faithful, what’s loving, what’s right, isn’t nearly as easy as people want to pretend it is. And yet, for all the ambiguity of life, there are still some things that aren’t ambiguous at all. That’s where Paul goes in this passage. “For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light.” That’s strong language. Paul doesn't say you were in darkness. He says you were darkness. And he doesn’t say now you’ve found some helpful spiritual advice. He says now, in the Lord, you are light. That isn’t moral improvement. That’s transformation.

I have to admit, I struggle with Paul sometimes when he talks like this, because he can sound so clear-cut. Light and darkness. Good and evil. Visible and hidden. Expose this. Reject that. Wake up. Rise up. Live differently. Part of me wants to push back and say, “Yes, Paul, but life’s more complicated than that.” And it is. Life’s complicated. People are complicated. We are complicated. We do things with good intentions and somebody still gets hurt. We make choices that seem wise at the time and later find out they weren’t very wise at all. We don’t always know ourselves as well as we think we do. We don’t always know what the consequences of our actions will be. That’s part of being human. But Paul isn’t denying that life is complicated. He’s saying that even in the mess of human life, the call of Christ isn’t. The call of Christ is always toward the light.

And that means being children of light doesn’t mean pretending we always get everything right. And Thank God for that. Because if being children of light meant being morally flawless, spiritually polished, emotionally healthy, and always certain, none of us would qualify. We’re too human for that. Too fragile for that. Too unfinished for that. Being children of light doesn’t mean never making mistakes. It means refusing to live in hiding. Paul says, “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.”

Usually we hear that and imagine Paul pointing out there somewhere — at those people, at their sins, at the darkness beyond us. But before we expose anything out there, we have to let the light of Christ expose something in here. Because darkness loves secrecy. Darkness loves denial. Darkness loves whatever stays buried because naming it would force us to deal with it. That’s true of sin. That’s true of shame. That’s true of resentment. That’s true of addiction. That’s true of fear. That’s true of all the stories we tell ourselves so we don’t have to face what is actually going on in our hearts and in our lives.

Darkness doesn’t always look dramatic. Sometimes it just looks like avoidance. Sometimes it looks like pretending. Sometimes it looks like living disconnected from God, disconnected from each other, disconnected even from ourselves, and calling that normal. And Paul says: bring it into the light.

Not because God wants to shame us. Not because Christ shines a light on us to humiliate us. But because whatever stays hidden keeps its power. Whatever stays hidden keeps us bound. Whatever stays hidden keeps us asleep. That’s why the passage ends the way it does: “Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Wake up. That’s the gospel. Wake up from what has numbed you. Wake up from what has buried you. Wake up from what has trapped you, dulled your spirit, distorted your love, and dimmed your soul. Christ doesn’t come just to forgive you in theory. Christ comes to raise you. Christ comes to make you alive. Christ comes to shine on what you thought would always remain dark. And that’s why confession matters. Confession isn’t punishment. It’s freedom. It’s the refusal to let darkness keep the final word. It’s the refusal to keep dragging around what Christ is trying to heal. It’s how we step into the light.

But this isn’t only about our inner lives. It’s also about the world. Because there is plenty of darkness out there too. There are systems built on secrecy. Structures built on lies. Ways of organizing society that keep some people comfortable and other people crushed. There are truths that are easier not to mention. There are cruelties that thrive in silence. There are wounds in this world that stay hidden because it’s convenient for them to stay hidden. And children of light aren’t called to make peace with that.

Paul says, “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.” That means we don’t baptize cruelty as necessity. We don’t rename injustice as order. We don’t call exploitation wisdom. We don’t hide behind politeness when the truth needs to be told. Life is complicated. But some things are dark. And one of the ways we live as children of light is by learning to tell the difference. Not perfectly. Not self-righteously. Not as people who think we’re pure and everybody else is corrupt. We do it humbly, knowing that we too need grace, we too need forgiveness, we too need Christ to shine on us. But we do it. Because the light of Christ isn’t meant to be admired from a distance. It is meant to be lived.

And that’s where the cross and resurrection come in. The cross tells the truth about darkness. It tells the truth about the violence of this world, the cruelty of this world, the sin of this world. The cross is what darkness does when confronted by light. But the resurrection tells the truth about God. It tells us that darkness doesn’t win. It tells us that what’s buried can be raised. It tells us that what’s dead can live. It tells us that what seems finished may not be finished at all. That’s why Paul can say, “Now in the Lord you are light.” Not because we figured life out. Not because we solved the ambiguity. But because Christ has met us. Christ has called us. Christ has awakened us. Christ has shone on us.

So we go into this world not as people who have all the answers, but as people who know where the light comes from. And we don’t go easily, because we were told there is a cross to bear. And we don’t go quietly, because we are a Pentecost people. And we don't go thoughtlessly, because we know the way is narrow. But we go. We go with faith. We go with love in our hearts. We go with hope because the Kingdom of God is at hand. We go trusting that God can use even people like us—unfinished, imperfect, sometimes confused, sometimes wounded, but awake—to bring light into the darkness. So maybe that’s what it means to live as children of light. Not that we never stumble. Not that we are always certain. Not that we are always right. But that we belong to Christ, and so we refuse to make our home in the dark. Sleeper, awake. Rise from the dead. And Christ will shine on you.