Ephesians 5:1-14
“Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them” (Ephesians 5:11)
Near the end of Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus, he does what Paul almost always does – he gives a quick series of ethical injunctions. I suspect that these quick reminders are of greater importance than we tend to think. In fact, I suspect these are the topics that Paul wanted to talk about with the churches except that every church was having their own issues and Paul had to take time to address those topics instead. And so, as a sort of consolation, he makes quick note of them near the end of the letter as a way of saying “we’re going to circle back to these things later.” If that’s the case – if this hunch has any validity – then that means we can faithfully speculate about what Paul might have said about each of these topics. This is, at any rate, how I plan to unpack the quote above.
“Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.”
The first half of this ethical exhortation makes complete sense. It’s a fanciful way of saying “don’t do bad things.” Therefore, it’s the second clause – the dependent clause – that I’m intrigued by. “…but instead expose them.”
Expose them to whom? The government? The police (which is really just the government with a badge)? The church? The media? Paul isn’t clear, though I think given his own conflictual relationship with the political order of his day (remember, Paul spends A LOT of time on house arrest awaiting trial), we can safely assume that he doesn’t necessarily mean the police or politicians. Most likely, Paul means the church and, to a lesser degree, the broader society.
Paul is saying that when and where we spot “unfruitful works of darkness” not only are we to avoid it personally, we are also supposed to discourage others – in the church and beyond it – from engaging in such behaviors. And I’m willing to bet that ethical exhortation is going to chaff against most of our instincts. After all, aren’t we taught from a young age not to be tattletales? Or, as we get older, don’t we learn that “snitches get stitches”? We are. Our society is centered around the individual and not the community and so we’ve been taught again and again – in thousands of different ways – that we are only responsible for ourselves and no one else. But here’s Paul, telling us that we need to go around expose “unfruitful works of darkness.”
Now, I am going to work from the assumption that Paul isn’t telling us to run around being a bunch of busybodies who focus on the minutiae of one another’s lives. We’re not supposed to stand up in church and be like, “I was at Jean’s for coffee the other day and she puts three spoonfuls of sugar in her coffee, which is just too much. She’ll give herself the diabetes and become a drain on our medical infrastructure.” Now, to be fair, Jean should probably try to cut back on the sugar, but that’s not what Paul has in mind.
No, I think Paul has in mind those with the power to impact many, many people – politicians, business owners, police, leaders. It is when leaders become corrupted that the ill effects of their corruption reach far and wide. It is not, therefore, good enough for Christians to just ignore bad leaders or even to vow not to participate in their bad leadership. Instead, we are called to proclaim loudly and boldly that something is amiss and isn’t glorifying God. We are called to the holy act of protest, of consciousness raising, of advocacy for the victims of this “unfruitful works of darkness.” We can’t just feed the poor; we have to expose why they’re poor (and – warning! – most people aren’t poor because of their own failures, but rather of the failures of the systems that create wealth and poverty in unequal measure).
So, stay vigilant friends. Be aware and be prepared. Amen.
