Sunday, July 12th, 2009
Ordinary 15B
Text: Ephesians 1:3-14
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. 5 He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace 8 that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight 9 he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. 11 In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, 12 so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. 13 In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; 14 this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.
“Thank you”
Leslie and I stopped and looked at each other and smiled.
“She’s saying ‘thank you!’
Well, to be exact, it was more like ‘dankoo’, and it was very softly spoken, but the timing and inflection were unmistakeable. Leslie ha just placed her plate in front of her. Hannah was maybe a year and a couple of months old at the time - just starting to speak intelligibly. We were sitting down to supper in the dining room in the house we were living in in Norfolk, the house for which Leslie’s grandfather, Claude Kenneth Maccubbin, had served as his own general contractor. The dining room was a later addition to the house, and as such, was small, maybe 8 feet deep by 14 feet long, with dark pine paneling.
From the very beginning of our relationship, Leslie and I have been mindful of the power of words; of how words can build up or tear down, how they can bond two people together or drive them apart. As part of that, we are pretty intentional about saying ‘please‘ and ‘thank you‘ when we ask something of each other.
As Hannah began to speak her first words, a lot of what she was doing, just as other children do, was imitating sounds - the TONE of our voices more than the specific sounds our lips and tongues were making. But that was one that she picked up early, and used often, and it is one that, I hope, we as members of this family of faith, learned early and use often.
In our doxology this morning, not simply the Gloria Patri we sang after the offering was taken up, but in our worship through the singing of hymns, you may have caught something of the general theme running through the hymns: Praising God for our salvation through Jesus Christ.
As we read today’s text, what strikes me is the tone of praise and thanksgiving that permeates nearly every part of it.
Whether Paul is blessing the Lord for what God has done, or for what God has given us, there is a relentless expression of thanks in all this first section of his letter to the church at Ephesus. After reading it I sat back and asked myself, how often do we stop and simply praise God -- and thank God for what he has done for us?
We spent this past week in Vacation Bible School focusing on one country, Malawi. and were made aware of the sometimes harsh conditions that exist there, especially as they relate to the gathering and use of water. I cannot tell you how proud it made us to step back at the end of the week and see that in the space of five days, about 40 children and 40 adults from two small country churches collected $1,400.00 to send to the organization called WateringMalawi, so that they can use that money to purchase and install 7 treadle pumps, which will help irrigate gardens and provide food year-round for the families of those villages!
These last few days have also helped to remind us of the part WE play in God’s action in the world. We are not simply here to receive God’s blessings, though we do. We’re not here to enjoy the benefits of living in a land that is blessed with and abundance of water, though we do that too. We are at the same time blessed and called to BE a blessing. Just as God’s covenant with Israel was to both receive and extend a blessing, we are likewise called to that same task.
As I’ve said before, we do that, and we do that well for a faith family of our size. Through our community involvement, participation in various programs and ministry opportunities on a local level we can humbly say that we are about the work of the kingdom. On a larger scale, through our participation in statewide and national and international efforts, we can lay claim to being a part of the greater outreach to the world on behalf of Virginia Baptists, but more importantly, on behalf of Jesus Christ.
But there is a downside to all that involvement, all that activity. Becoming so busy being about the work, we can sometimes pretty easily forget, as the saying goes, to stop and smell the roses. That is, to stop and appreciate, literally, what God has done for us. And I mean that as much in the universal sense -- what God has done for us as the whole world, as he has for how Paul puts it, for those who “were the first to set our hope on Christ.”
You may have also picked up on some particular phrasing in the text, phrases like “he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world”, or “He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ”, “he has made known to us the mystery of his will”, and “In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things” These are all terms that would be understood in the normal course of events to be terms having to do with election, separation, words that speak of a special place, a special relationship between ‘us‘ and God. I would ask us to consider for a few moments this morning, who is the ‘us‘ Paul is speaking of? In simple, concrete terms, insofar as Paul was probably thinking as the words went down, I feel pretty confident in saying that he was talking about the people he was writing TO and the people he may have been WITH when he was writing them. I’m not sure Paul was really thinking that those same words would still be around nearly two thousand years later, being studied and broken down, compared with his other writings and delved into by scholars across the world and across the ages, but on THAT scale, insofar as he was writing to that larger cloud of witnesses, Paul was including all of us as well.
But even in that, we can read the word ‘us‘ emphatically, as in,
“He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world” or “he destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ”, “he has made known to us the mystery of his will”, and “In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance.”
I would invite us to think a little differently about this subject in this way. We, the people in this room this morning, are for the most part, fairly certain of where we stand in our relationship with God. At least we have a handle on what comes next.
The theologian George W. Stroup offers five insights into this passage and the subject of election:
First, election is “a statement about the wonder of God’s grace in Jesus Christ…It is above all else an affirmation that the God Christians know in Jesus Christ is gracious beyond the wildest reaches of their imaginations.”
Second, election is about God’s sovereign will, not our actions—our text notes in verses 5, 9, and 11 that “God’s choosing or election is rooted in the good pleasure and mystery of God’s counsel and will.”
Third, Christ is to be the “looking glass” in which Christians should consider their election, as God’s election is always through Christ. Stroup points to Jean Calvin and Karl Barth, who claimed that by looking at the life of Christ and seeing the grace and mercy of God, we should be assured that we are included in God’s promises.
Fourth, election “reminds Christians that they are adopted children of God;” this adoption is a gift, not a right.
Finally, we must be mindful that God’s election “does not make Christians ‘special’ in relation to other people, but calls them to specific tasks of serving God and neighbor.”
It isn’t about ‘us’ and ‘them’ - about exclusion - it is about INclusion -- it is about being called to community - as adopted children - and we are ALL eligible for adoption! No matter our age, our history, our present status, or how we think of ourselves. God welcomes us all -- and calls us all.
And it is in that reference that we would find it in us to speak, sing or pray from the depths of our hearts in praise and thanksgiving to God for what he has made available – not JUST to us, but to all of humanity through Jesus Christ.
Let’s pray.
No comments:
Post a Comment