Total Pageviews

Monday, September 25, 2017

By Grace we have been Saved (Ephesians 2:5, 8)

            I have little tricks that I use when I am talking with people.  I use this in preaching too.  It’s not sinister or disingenuous, but it is intentional.  Whether in a one-on-one conversation, or in a sermon, I will say something to try to get you to like me, or at least trust me.  If I know I am about to give a message that will rile people up, raise someone’s hackles, maybe anger someone, then I at least want to gain credibility.
            I played high school football and rode the bench for a year in college.
            I was in the military, the National Guard.
            I am from the south; moved to Roanoke, VA in 1982.
            I am from the Midwest; lived in Michigan before moving to Roanoke at age 12 in 1982.
            I spent a summer working in a factory.
            I spent a summer working landscaping.
            I have traveled the world.
            I have a mixed-race family.
            I read Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn.

            None of that is much of a big deal to anyone really, but if I think it will help me gain credibility, I weave it into conversations or into my presentation.  I want you to hear my accomplishments and my experiences.  I want you to think it is worth your time and your mental energy to listen to what I have to say.  I am trying to relate to you.  I hope you’ll find me relatable.  And at a deeper level, I hope you’ll find me worthy. 
           
            I am not unique in this.  People want to be liked.  People want to be respected.  You do.  I do.  People want to be welcomed and to belong.  You may use different methods to achieve this than I do, but I suspect you do it.  And achieve is the word, especially in the American cultural landscape.    
The spirit of the American way of thinking, our cultural ethos, highly values the self-made person, the rugged individualist.  Stand on your own two feet.  If you’re going through tough times, pull yourself up by your bootstraps
In the movie Saving Private Ryan, Captain Miller lay dying, knowing he had given his life in combat to save Private Ryan.  His dying words to Ryan are “You earn it.”  In other words, you better darn well live a life that was worth the sacrifice that was made for you. 
Can we a take a second to acknowledge the absurdity of this?  How can John Ryan live well enough to account for the entire squad of army rangers who died trying to save him?  What measurement determines whether a life is well-lived or not? 
In my own life, how foolish is it for me to recite my life resume in hopes that I’ll be worthy of your attention, your respect, and maybe even your friendship.  Such futility.  I say I played football, the other guy was named to the all-state team.  I come with my National Guard experience, the other guy was regular army special forces.  I causally mention that I read War and Peace, the other guy read it and actually understood it.  There is always someone smarter, someone taller, someone with a better physique, someone with a better education, someone who did cooler things in life, someone who achieved more, or has more than you and me.  Always. 
Trying to earn respect and affection and friendship is futile.  It is a complete waste of time.  Furthermore, the harder we work to prove ourselves worthy and good, the further we move away from the foundation of the Gospel.  I do not condemn all competition.  My sons are both playing sports.  I want them to try to be the best, the fastest runner in Cross Country, the hardest hitter in football.  Maybe you work in a competitive industry and part of your success is being a leader in attracting new customers.    
That’s fine.  Be competitive.  Try your hardest in whatever you’re doing in work and in life.  But, as followers of Jesus, we have to listen to what the word of God says about our value.  Upon hearing the Gospel story, we have to adjust how we value other people in light of how Jesus values us. 

We’re going to spend the next couple of months thinking about our church family as a household. Beeson Divinity School professor Sydney Park writes, “The house of God is not a physical construction, but a living organism composed of people who are now members through Christ’s sacrifice.”[i]
When you think of us as “members,” imagine your fingers and your toes and how connected these digits are to your body.  When we imagine church as the household of God, we see ourselves connected to each other in that way.  Cut off my finger, and something is missing.  Cut me off from you and you from me, each one of us from each other, and we feel it.  That’s the kind of intimacy and interconnectedness we want in our church. 
For me to be the pastor of this kind of tight-knit family, the shepherd of this community of self-giving love, I have to move away from constantly trying to win you over by reciting my life resume.  I can share about football and the army and school and Michigan and Virginia.  But my sharing should not be an effort to impress.  It should come out of my willingness to share my story.  You give me the gift of showing interest in my story.  And you give me another gift: you share your story with me.  We share our lives with each other. 
We move away from attempts to be found worthy, and instead reach for grace and generosity.  It is essential that we are honest about our weaknesses, wounds, and vulnerability.  We all have scars.  I don’t need to bleed all over the stage every Sunday, but it would be dishonest for me to stand up and pretend I am perfect and have it all together.  For us to be Christ to each other in this household of God, we have to recognize each other as wounded healers.[ii]
When we do that then we’ll be ready to embrace what I am quite certain is God’s call on this church.  This church is called to be the household of God.  That means whenever we gather, we answer this question: what must we do to help people feel at home here, in the household of God?  What changes must we make to help feel like they are at home here?
We’re not dealing with those questions today.  Today, we face the futile search for worthiness.  Today we openly admit that we aren’t going to impress each other, that we can’t, and we shouldn’t try.  Instead, we love each other exactly as we are.  No matter how messy or broken, we give each other the love of Christ.  Change comes for each person because when one meets Christ, change is inevitable.  He makes us new creations, but that is at God’s initiative.  Our starting point is love.
In Ephesians 1 and 2, note what is said about Jesus. 
He is Lord (1:3) – master of everything, master everywhere.  He’s not a lord, he’s The Lord.
He is Christ (1:3), the anointed one of God, sent to save God’s people from sin, death and destruction.  When Jesus came, we discovered the wonder that he saved Israel, but not only Israel.  All who come in repentance to the Jewish Messiah are saved.
He is eternal.  Verse 4 – “[The Father God] chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.  “In Christ” is the key phrase.  God was at work in Christ before the foundation of the world.  Our lives only make sense when we understand them in Christ.
He is the means of our adoption as children of God, he is God’s means of grace, he is God’s beloved, and he is the vessel of redemption (1:4-7). 
Jesus is flush with grace; verse 7 God lavished grace upon us.  That means the best things in our lives, the realities that give us life are gifts we did not earn, but rather blessings God gives freely and extravagantly. 
He is the revealer of mysteries, the reconciler of all things, and the enabler of life (1:7, 9; 2:5).
Ephesians 2:6 says we are raised up with him.  Jesus rose from the grave, defeated death, and takes us with him.  Death is next after this life, but it’s not last.  Each one of us who is in Christ has resurrection ahead, after death. 
When Ephesians says in chapter 2, verse 9, that we are made for good works, that also happens as we are in Christ.

All the good we experience comes about because of who God is and we know who God is because we know God in Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the embodiment of God’s gift, giving us salvation, that which we do not deserve and have not earned.  In Christ, our sins are washed away, we are made new, given joy now, a meaningful life now, and promised eternal life with God after resurrection.
This is summed up in chapter 2 verse 5 – “by grace we have been saved.”  And then so we don’t miss the point, it is repeated in verse 8.  We are saved by grace through faith.  It is not our own doing.  It is the gift of God, not a result of our efforts.  Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are what he has made us.”
This is a core Christian confession, but we rarely stop to recognize just how hard this confession is to accept.  We Americans are individualistic in our thinking and merit-driven when we talk about value.  You assess another person’s worth based your evaluation of their worthiness.  I do it.  It’s an American thing and it is the antithesis, the opposite of how it works in the Kingdom of God.
For us to be the household of God, we must pray for release from this kind of individualistic, merit-based thinking.  We need to spend a long time asking God to free us from this and to guide us into grace.  We need to see the world and to see one another through the eyes of grace. 
Our default is to revert to assessing worthiness.  Do you deserve for me to give you respect?  Have I earned the right for you to give me your time and your attention?  That’s where we go automatically. 
The change comes when we are able to live in the grace God’s lavished on us and then that grace spills out from us onto those around us.  And we will begin existing as the true household of God when collectively we are characterized by grace.  When people come among us and they know they are welcomed and loved and they meet God here, then that will be the fruit, the evidence that we are a graced community. 
The reflection questions for this morning are “what do you have that you’ve earned,” and “what do you have that has come as a gift?”  Look over the attributes of Jesus mentioned in Ephesians 1 & 2.  Especially remember 2:5 & 8.  “By grace we have been saved.”  Imagine how life looks when it flows out of the gift of new life God has given.  We don’t see and interact with the world based on an achievement mindset.  Rather, we wake up every day basking the radiant light of the joy-filled grace God has poured into us.  And from there we step into the world.  When we do it that way, what does life look like?
AMEN



[i] M. Sydney Park (2012) in Honoring the Generations, M.Sydney Park, Soong-Chan Rah, and Al Tizon, editors, Judson Press (Valley Forge, PA), p.3.
[ii] Peter T. Cha and Greg J. Yee (2012), Honoring the Generation, p.89.

No comments:

Post a Comment