Hope Words and Why We Believe Them (Eph 1:15-23)

Subways: underground trains in big cities.  In places like Washington DC and New York the underground system is immense.  The subways in Moscow are ornately decorated and quite beautiful.  But a lot of subways are not so pretty.  The platform is grimy, trash strewn, without benefit of sunshine (obviously), and overall quite drab.  Subway riders are harried, tired; thousands of people rushing to and from work where they will, in a high-pressure environment, give 10-11 hours of their lives, 50-75 hours a week. 

            The work, the rush, the gray, depressed environment; the underground metro is not a place of spiritual inspiration. 

Except …

            There’s that young woman.  Look at her down in this cave, dancing!  All we hear is the shuffle of tired feet, the screech of the trains coming down the line.  In those earbuds, what does she hear?  What music induces such beautiful body movement?  Poetry in motion. 

All we see are heads down, glum eyes set straight ahead.  Must get to work.  Must do the work.  Must get home.  Must not go crazy.  Must not slug anyone as I slog through this commute.  The subway iPod dancer’s eyes are closed.  As we muddle along in the shadows, what light does she see, she with her closed eyes, her smiling face, her dancing body?[i]

            She is Christianity.  Wait.  What?

            Where the world sees death, a Christian, one who follows Christ, one whose life is lived in Christ sees laughter.  We don’t mock the pain death brings.  We are sympathetic.  But, we know death is an enemy that has been defeated, and in Christ we have eternal life.  God gives beauty for our ashes, strength for fear; God gives us deep laughter and takes our grief.  We will be called “oaks of righteousness” … to display God’s glory.[ii]  In the Spirit, God is with us now and always, comforting us, emboldening us, filling us, and empowering us.  As we live in awareness of God-in-us loving us, we hear music others cannot hear.  We smile at happiness others do now know, cannot know.  We can’t help it.  We must dance.

            Look at her, so frivolous as she sprinkles beauty and grace all about this bleak subterranean world.  Look at us, witnesses to eternal joy and indefatigable hope – hope that cannot be broken or made weary.

            Except …

            We know too many people cut off from this joy and this hope, cut off from God and caught up in pain. 

            Twitter is the ultimate safe space because you can create any name you want as your user name.  You can put any picture in as your ID.  You can exist in the Twitter totally anonymously.  You can also follow whomever else is on Twitter.

            My Twitter handle is ‘revtennant.’  The picture is a photo of my wife Candy and me.  On my profile page is a picture of me on one of our church trips to Ethiopia.  My bio tells exactly who I am. 

            Occasionally, I will tweet scripture verses or quotes from authors like Eugene Peterson.  My simple aim is to get positive words flowing into the raging torrent of social media.  Tweets and Facebook posts can be impossibly negative, divisive, and provocative.  I too try to provoke.  I try to take words from the Bible to provoke people to hope, or at least to consider that hope might be possible.

            Most of the people who see my Tweets are church members, friends, family.  But, remember; on Twitter anyone can follow you.  Someone called “Atheist C Cat.”  Has reacted to one of my Christ-proclaiming tweets.  Atheist C Cat could be anyone – maybe someone from this church or formally of this church.  A-Cat’s bio says, “Skeptic.  Atheist.  Ex-Christian.  Cat lover.”  That’s it.

            A-Cat’s initial response to me was a low grade jab at God.  I posted a quote – “Everything God does is woven into the plot for your salvation.”[iii]  “Maybe the all-powerful, all-knowing, perfect, loving deity should have created a perfect world where salvation isn’t needed.”

            I didn’t take the bait.  God doesn’t need me to defend God.  God’s reputation is intact.  Instead, I tried to pick up on A-Cat’s words and engage in a conversation.  I asked. “What would a perfect world look like?”

            “Different than the one we’re in.”

            “Couldn’t Christians and Atheists and Muslims and Jews” work together for good?

            And A-Cat responded and we went on this way.  I kept trying to guide the conversation toward a hopeful place and A-Cat kept going back to the inevitability of death and destruction.  I hope the conversation will continue, but where he or she last left it, was with this.  “I choose to live in reality as much as possible, even though it does appear bleak.  But the evidence leads the way.”

            Pay close attention to this anonymous atheist Tweeter who depicts him/herself as an ex-Christian and trolls Christian pastors with impotent barbs aimed at God.  She declares that reality is death and destruction.  Anything else – faith, hope, love – is fantasy.  Reality is humans will always be evil and malicious toward each other.  And evidence, the supreme standard for truth, leads to this fatalistic conclusion. 

            Two thought for A-Cat; first, I suspect many people feel just like her.  Many see the world and see death and try to make the best of a situation that inevitably leads to chaos and misery.  Second, in a world without God, A-Cat is right.  All people sin.  Sin is seen in real time in the way we hurt each other.  And sin up on sin, across the oceans across the span of centuries leads to a world that is spiraling to death.  A-Cat is correct.

            Except … subway iPod dancer seems oblivious, dancing, spilling color and light and music out all over A-Cat’s gray dying world. 

So the tension is clear.  Without God, without life in Christ, we exist as Darwinian animals whose only purpose is to survive and pass on our genes.  Eat, produce young, and then die, either a lonely death or a violent one.  Either way, there is no hope because this life is all there is and death is the end.  With God, living life in Christ, we stand in the midst of a decaying world bound for destruction.  Each one of us, each church, big or small, each individual Christian, stands amid the chaos and insists there is another story, a better story to be told and being told.  In Jesus Christ, God has come near.  In Jesus Christ, the Kingdom has come.  In Jesus Christ, we can have life, abundant, eternal life.  I’ll take that subway iPod dancer’s vision over A-Cat’s fatalism any day.  I want to dance like no one is watching.

Except … many people in the church, people who speak words of faith live lives that suggest they are find A-Cat’s argument more convincing.  A lot of Christians are beleaguered by doubt and or burdened by responsibility or immobilized by depression.  Some in the church live joyless lives that suggest whatever good we can hope for from God is coming much, much later.  We drag ourselves through our days with an aura of defeat.  Ignatius of Loyola defined sin as “refusing to believe that God wants my happiness and fulfillment.”[iv]

Questions; do we believe God wants us happy and fulfilled?  Do we believe God is able to help us be happy and be fulfilled?  Can God help with this?  If we say yes, God wants us happy, and if we say, yes, God can help with this, then here’s the biggie.  Is God willing to help?  But there’s even a bigger question than that.  Assuming God is willing to help, will we know it when God does help?  When God gives happiness and fulfillment, we recognize it? 

Or are we caught in smaller things?  God gives a good marriage, full of commitment and grace – a happiness that starts now and lasts to old age.  But, we miss the gift because we have misguided notion what a marriage should be and we spin our wheels trying to achieve something that will produce limited happiness that quickly runs out.  God gives honest work, but we miss the gift because we think we should be distinguished, accomplished, and respected.  We never stop to consider the burdens that come with prestige. 

I am not saying don’t strive for excellence.  I am saying don’t wait to be grateful.  See what God is doing in life right now and trust that God has good in store for you tomorrow.  If today, you carry pain, don’t let the pain define whether or not today is good.  Bring the pain into worship, into community of fellow Christ-followers.  Bring the hurt to the cross and see God standing with you in the pain and let God define what today is.

Philip Yancey references a survey in which Americans are asked what words they would like most to hear.  Three answers top the list.  You’ll guess the first one.  What is the number 1 answer to the question, ‘what words do you want to hear?’  It is “I love you.”  What’s number 2?  It is “I forgive you.”  Let’s see if you can guess number 2? 

“Supper is ready.”

Where do most people eat supper?  I think at home.  But some live alone, so supper is quiet unless the TV is on.  Others are in families, but the despair of the world had invaded the family.  So, with family around, the TV is still on.  No one is talking to each other.  Everyone sits zombie-like, letting the evening news or the 7 o’clock game show define reality.  Or the family is fragmented.  Some sit down to dinner, but others are at practice or at meetings.  Why is sister’s chair empty?  O she has soccer.  Why isn’t dad eating with us?  Had to work late.  Or the dinner table is the arena in which the family fights are battled out.  At least once a week, dinner ends with someone slamming down silverware and someone else leaving the table in tears.

            In the Kingdom of God, dinner is different.  It is with family no matter your age or marital status.  In the Kingdom, dinner is an affair where you are surrounded by people who love you and pay attention to you, and no one is in a hurry and no one is missing.  God, Ephesians 1:5 tells us, “destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ.”  The Kingdom is family.  Verse 11, “in Christ we have an inheritance.”  And that inheritance is eternal life.  We say this with certainty because we know Jesus lived, no one, atheists or otherwise deny that he was crucified, and we are positively certain he was resurrected on the third day.  Ephesians 2:20 – “God … raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.”

            We believe these hope words because the strongest historical evidence is that the resurrection happened.  But evidence is not the only standard by which we assess truth.  We also look at experience.  We have experienced the love of God.  Through our lived relationship with God, we know God is here and God is good.  What I pray I could show Atheist Cat but also show my brothers and sisters in Christ who are overcome with negativity and disappointment is that God, as we know God in Jesus Christ, is Lord.  Jesus is Lord now, here.  And Lord wants us to receive love and forgiveness.  And the Lord has a place set for us at His table. 

            Those of us who have received the forgiveness and eaten at the table of the Father who’s adopted us are so full of love, we are free to dance like no one is watching.  We have music to share in the monotonous drone of godless life.  We have good news. 

            If you have known this good news but the hardness of life has driven it deep into the recesses of your heart, this morning, pray.  Ask God open the ears of your soul so you can truly hear Him say, “I love you.”

            If all you can see are your own failures they threaten to overrun you, ask God to open your heart so you can hear Him say, “I forgive you.”  And when you hear it, believe it.  Receive it.  You are a new creation, a child of God.

            If you know you are loved and you are forgiven, then you also know people who haven’t walked with Jesus.  You have people like Atheist Cat in your life.  Go to one of them and with grace say, “Your place at the table is set and ready for you.  Please come home to father.  Supper is ready.  ”

AMEN

---

[i] Philip Yancey (2014).  Vanishing Grace, Zondervan (Grand Rapids).  In this message, I refer to several stories Yancey shares in this book including the iPod dancer, the references to Tim Keller and Ignatius of Loyola, the words people want to hear most.  These stories are found in chapter 4 (p.69-88).

[ii] Isaiah 61:3.

[iii] Eugene Peterson (

[iv] Yancey, p.79.  

Seek Wisdom and Revelation

Seek Wisdom and Revelation (Ephesians 1:15-23)

Sunday, October 11, 2015

        Are all churches the same?

        Or …

        Is each church unique?

        I believe the latter.  Each church has an identity. The church building factors in this identity, but it is the people who comprise the congregation that set a particular church’s culture and define an individual faith community’s character. Today we begin a 7-week project.  We will seek the specific call of God for HillSong.

        Our core identity is built on three principles.  We believe church is to be a safe place where people meet Jesus and are made new, and upon being made new are then sent into the world in Jesus’ name.  Remember those three words – Safe, New, Sent.

        We constantly strive for spiritual and emotional safety because Jesus was safe for the most vulnerable of people.  Those with diseases and disabilities were viewed as people under God’s curse.  They were called unclean.  They were pushed to the far margins of society, denied participation in the community.  Tax collectors, prostitutes, shepherds, and leather workers – these were all outsiders.  Shepherds and tanners were unclean because of the nature of their professions, even though both werere needed by society.

        Others were unclean and unacceptable because of their sins.  Everyone - the sick, the sinners and the outcasts – all were welcomed and loved by Jesus. 

If he was safe for people, then his body, his church should be a safe place.  We are to be a community where it is safe to explore Christianity.  It should be OK if someone doesn’t know the words to “Amazing Grace.”  This is a safe place to not know.  This is a safe place to cry. Emotional pain, can break a person.  This is a safe place to be broken.  This is a safe place to ask questions and acknowledge doubts.  Or to propose new ideas. 

        We are far from perfect in this.  Maybe you have had an experience where you felt this church was not safe for you.  Maybe you have felt I was not a safe person to approach or to speak with openly.  We have to constantly strive to be a safe place.

        The second word, New, is about meeting Jesus.  This is the part of our construct that is out of our control.  We cannot make anyone new.  We can set conditions so that people may meet the Holy Spirit in this place.  But actually being made new is something the Holy Spirit does in us.  This is God acting at God’s initiative, on God’s timetable.  Our worship, our groups, and the entire atmosphere is intended to help people meet God.  God will take care of the new birth, the transformation.  We try to foster the setting in which this can happen.

        Third, having found welcome and refuge in the family of God, and having met Jesus and become new creations as a result of the encounter, we are sent into the world to announce that Jesus is Lord and that all people can have life in His name.  We are sent each week to be witnesses in the communities of Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Durham, Raleigh, and Hillsboro.  Some are sent from here on trips to faraway places.  Some receive the commissioning prayer as they move out of our town.  In those cases, we say goodbye with our arms open in love, not knowing when we’ll see them again. 

We all need a safe place because sin dictates that there is brokenness in the lives of every one of us.  We all need to become new creations in Christ.  And everyone who is His is then sent to give testimony to His salvation.

The third portion of this vision for church – “Sent” – is a joy, but our enemies, Satan, sin, and death can use the greatest gifts of God against us.  Read Luke chapter 4.  The devil tried to tempt Jesus by quoting something beautiful, passages of scripture.  Look at Mark chapter 10.  Two of the inner of circle of disciples, James and John, let sin – their own lust for power – take their eyes off of Jesus and His mission.  Read the Gospel accounts of Peter’s denial of Jesus.  His fear of death led him down a path in which he not only abandoned the Lord.  He denied Jesus, his rabbi.  Satan, sin, and death; these enemies of God conspire to attack the Almighty by hurting us. 

Midway through 2014 up through this past summer, we did the “sending prayer,” a lot.  Well over a dozen people who were core HillSong members, people who made our ministries run, moved on.  Each time, we laid on hands and joyfully expressed our love and tearfully said our goodbyes.  And we held tightly to our vision of Safe-New-Sent.  However, by Easter of this year, a spiritual enemy was speaking loudly to my spirit.

“Hey Pastor Rob!  You’ve lost a lot of people.”

My response.  This is part of our vision.  We know will say goodbye.  We are in a place where people come, stay for a few years, get a degree and then move one.  We as a congregation embrace that.  We thank God we can walk with people for a few years, love them and be a home for them while they are here and then send them on with our blessing.  That is who we are.

My enemy’s response.  “Keep telling yourself that, Pastor Rob.  You can’t sustain a vision like that.  It won’t hold up.”

I said back, listen, this church has maintained this reality long before I came.  I just put words together to describe God’s work here.

My enemy: “Sure.  But now you’re here and you’re a hindrance.  Take a look around.  You’re not getting new people to fill in the void left by those who’ve moved away.  And, in case you haven’t been paying attention, not everyone who is leaving is a recent graduate.  You’re losing people hand over fist.  Churches all over America are in decline and you are no different.”

This tortured conversation kept arising no matter how many times I drove it down to the depths.  I share all my struggles with my wife.  She heard me and almost in passing dropped a wisdom bomb on me.  She said, “Well, I have been in a Bible study that prays the words of Ephesians 1.  Why don’t you have our elders pray that scripture.”  So, I did.  Imagine that.  A Christ-follower has anxieties, comes to understand those anxieties are possibly a form of spiritual attack, and so that Christ-follower prays and asks others to pray.

If you think I am overspiritualizing concerns that can be explained along sociological lines and if I am guilty of seeing devils behind every problem, it makes no difference.  We are a praying community.  No matter what the source of the threat is one of our responses is to pray with great expectation.  Praying demands that we wait, listen (in the spirit), and live expectantly.  We wait on God, listen to God, and expect God to respond. 

The Apostle Paul did this.  In Ephesians 1, he says, “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him.” God wants HillSong to come together and ask for wisdom and revelation in our lives as individuals and collectively as the body of Christ.  God is calling us to pray for these things. 

Paul had a profound sense that God would give these things.  In verse 18 he speaks of our hearts being enlightened so that we know the hope of the resurrected Lord and the inheritance he gives us and his power at work in us.  He believed God would give the wisdom and revelation he sought.

To close out chapter 1 he says,

²⁰ God^[f] put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, ²¹ far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. ²² And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church,²³ which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

That is us, the body of Christ.  When Paul writes the “fullness of him,” he means the Holy Spirit fills us – the church. 

So, our elders, and Heather, Nathan and I, prayed, listened, and expected in preparation for this season we now enter.  For the next 7 weeks, as a church family we will together pray for wisdom and revelation.

I conclude this morning by sharing a bit of wisdom God has given me and some specific things God has shown me.  Revelation is what God unveils, knowledge, truth, and reality that we cannot discover no matter how hard we try.  Divine wisdom and revelation are things God gives not things we earn.

I already mentioned one bit of wisdom.  When I was struggling spiritually, God, by way of my wife, led me to pray.  A second wisdom God has given is something that has helped me throughout my life at HillSong – the act of listening.  In more ways than I can count, God spoke to me when I chose to listen to people.  I pass that wisdom along.  If someone is talking with you or at you, take a moment to fully listen.  Listen and in your spirit, pray.  No matter type of interaction it is, I think God speaks in it, but most of the time we only hear what he has to say if we are listening.

So the wisdom is pray and listen.  What is the revelation?

What has God shown me?  Recall the national recession of 2008-2012.  In that time frame our church added an associate pastor and a youth pastor.  We also added a partnership with the Care Point for at risk kids in Kombolcha, Ethiopia.  Recall that from 2014 to 2015 nearly 30 people followed God’s call to other places.  HillSong lost that many people but we really didn’t lose anyone. 

We said goodbye knowing this is part of who we are as a church.  We had the privilege of loving each family and sending them with God’s blessing.  Moreover in that time, our church maintained the Ethiopia partnership, grew our Saturday tutoring ministry here in Chapel Hill, had one of our biggest Vacation Bible Schools yet, and explored partnerships in the Dominican Republic and in Quebec. 

The devil would love for us to focus on the losses – loss of money from 2008-2012; loss of people from 2014-2015.  When I heeded the wisdom to pray and when I listened, God showed me that God has been at work in our church family the entire time.  God has involved our church in God’s work around the world.  God does not depend on how much money we have or how many people are here. 

God expects us to know Him through the crucified and risen Christ.  God expects us to be responsive to the Holy Spirit.  And as we respond to the Spirit, God shows us Himself and leads us in the life God wants us to live.  And that life is where we experience the greatest happiness, deepest meaning, and lasting joy. 

We’re going to end with prayer.

As music plays, listen to the Holy Spirit.  After we’ve listened then pray for revelation.  Ask God to show you what God wants you to see and ask God to help you see it.  This can be revelation for your life or for our church.  First listen, then ask for revelation and wisdom. 

If you want to you can come and pray at the steps.  We will have people at the front and back ready to pray with you.  We enter into a time of prayer knowing that this is a season of seeking.  Over the next several weeks we will explore different scriptures constantly seeking God’s wisdom and revelation.

AMEN

Summer of Prayer

A Summer of  Prayer

            Here is prayer our church for the month of June, which I believe will be a wonderful time at HillSong.

This is an adaptation of Ephesians 1:15-23.  Pray this prayer for our church and for the way God is at work in us.  Imagine the Apostle Paul saying the following.

¹⁵ I have heard of HillSong’s faith in the Lord Jesus and your love^[a] toward all the saints, and for this reason ¹⁶ I do not cease to give thanks for HillSong Church as I remember you in my prayers. ¹⁷ I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you, HillSong Church,  a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, ¹⁸ so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, ¹⁹ and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. ²⁰ God^[b] put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, ²¹ far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. ²² And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, including HillSong Church²³ which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Pray for HillSong and then worship, serve and enter into relationships in the church and do all of it with the expectation that God is at work and we are joining in the work God has begun.

If you read my blog but do not attend our church, pray this scripture passage with your faith community in mind. 

Sometimes as human beings we get caught up in successes or failures.  If a lot of new families attend and our church gains new members and the number of people on Sunday mornings goes up and up, we think, “Wow!  We’re doing great.”  On the other hand, if people move away, and the number of Sunday morning attendees declines and we say less people, we are tempted to give in to discouragement.  “Uh-oh!  We are losing people.  What’s wrong?”

Instead of either response, I am calling on Christians to pray.  Whether at HillSong or elsewhere, look to the scriptures, look to the Holy Spirit, and pray.  Pray with great expectations.  We pray as if we actually believe God is real, is listening, and is going to do new and wonderful things in our midst.  We pray because we believe God is active and we really want to be in on what God is doing. 

I hope Summer 2015 will be a summer of prayer.  I believe if it is then we will have great joy and flourishing, fruitful ministry.  Does that mean more people on Sunday mornings?  I do not know.  I pray we as a church will seek the face of God as we proclaim the Lordship of Jesus in the world.  Let 2015 be a Summer of prayer.  We will see God at work and it will be amazing.  

What God Does - Ephesians 1:15-23

Back-to-school and a crisis for students; my summer is over!

            A closer than expected race in the American League Central division and a baseball crisis for Detroit Tiger fans; we might not make the playoffs!

            Mommy and Daddy keep fighting and it’s getting louder and louder; a child’s crisis is his family is falling apart.

            A shooting, some rioting, and a town – Ferguson – and a nation – the United States face a racial crisis; or more accurately, we turn our face back to a racial crisis that has not resolved.

            Terrorism, war, death, and humanitarian crises run through every Middle East nation.

            So much demands the attention of the church.  How do we bring it all together – the news, our individual lives, our specific community?  How can looking to God make sense of everything?

            For the next five weeks, we will search for the answer to this.  From the chaos, we seek order and peace by opening the Bible to Ephesians and looking for God.  We are not simply seeking information about God.  We seek God – a meeting with the almighty. 

            Ephesians is written as poetry.  The sentences are impossibly long.  In Greek, Ephesians 1:15-23 is one long sentence.  English translations do not usually depict this.  English translations of the Psalms do; most English renderings lay out the Psalm in verse, with stanzas.  Ephesians is cleaned up so that we English readers can digest it as prose – neat sentences arranged in tidy paragraphs.

            This morning, as we go through Ephesians, we pay special attention to the verbs.  In the spirit of back-to-school and in the search for God, we read with an eye toward God’s activity. 

I am reading the NRSV.  In other versions this will be worded differently and due to the nature of Ephesians, there is potential for a wide range of English readings.  If the Bible version you normally use is considerably different, don’t worry.  Rather, pray.   Ask God to help you hear His living word as you read the Bible.  Ask God to make the words of scripture come to life in your everyday life.

            Here is what God does.

            God the Father … has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places (v.3).  God has blessed us.  The online dictionary I used lists about 6 definitions of bless, blessing, and blessed.  The Greek, euloghsas, is the root of the English word eulogy.  In Ephesians 1:3 it specifically means benefits given by God.  Fine!  Blessing is benefit.  What exactly is the benefit? 

It is presence.  In Christ, we know we have God with us in personal relationship and we are with God.  It doesn’t mean life is always easy, but it does mean we have God with us in all times, including the hard times.  God blesses.  This is who God is – one who blesses by benefiting us with God’s presence.  God is for us.

          Ephesians 1:4-5: he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.  And he destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ.  God blesses – God also chooses and adopts.  God chooses to adopt you and me.  God does this by sending Jesus as the atonement for our sins and at the same time, God nudges us toward Jesus.  This is an adoption we can resist. God intends the death of Jesus to be the means of salvation for all people because God loves all people.  God loves the police officer who shot Michael Brown.  God loves Michael Brown. God hates that death happens, but God loves all people.  Therefore Jesus has come and through Jesus God the Father invites us to faith and in faith we become children of God. 

          God blesses.  God chooses.  God adopts.  What else does God do?

            “In Him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he has lavished upon us.  … He has made known to us the mystery of his will” (from 1:8-9).  Here Ephesians moves fluidly to the point that identifying the precise subject of each verb is a challenge.  It seems, reading in the NRSV, that Jesus, the Beloved Son, lavishes grace upon us.  Instead of a bucket of ice water, God pours grace over us and keeps pouring more and more grace.  But this is no challenge.  God does this out of love, not because we agreed or accepted or stepped up.  God’s grace is amazing because we don’t deserve it but God gives it anyway and in all-you-can-eat buffet sized portions.

            No matter how meanly you speak to others – Jesus has a basket of grace for you.  You are accepted and acceptable to God because he loves you.  No matter how many times I repeat the same mistakes – the same sins – forgiveness comes as an expression of grace.  Jesus douses me in grace.   Jesus covers every  sinner.

            Then in the very next clause, same sentence, God the Father makes known to us the mystery of his will.  If someone tells you they have unlocked the secret code in the Bible stop listening and walk away.  Well, that would be rude, so maybe that’s not the best response.  Instead point them to Ephesians 1:9.  God doesn’t keep secrets from us.  We don’t need to have advanced degrees in Greek, Latin, Hermeneutics, and Theology.  There is nothing to unlock.  In Christ, God the Father makes known to us the mystery of His will.

            I wonder at this point if you noticed something.  We are seeing God by what God does – God blesses, God chooses (us), God adopts (us), God makes known God’s will.  All this is God the Father.  God the Son, Jesus, the Incarnation, lavishes grace.  God is presented as Trinity – the Triune God – in Ephesians 1; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Don’t look for the word ‘trinity.’  It is not here nor is it anywhere in the New Testament.

            Rather, look to God.  See how God is revealed.  What the Father does, the Son does.  What the Son does, the Spirit does.  Each is a unique personality, but the unity is so perfect, the relationship of love within the Trinity so complete, we can accurately say God is three, God is one. 

            Verse 12 then says we live for the praise of God’s glory.  Our reason for existing is to worship God.  If we could draw all the world’s troubles into a worship service, the problems would dissolve as the holy glory of God forced all darkness to flee and all evil to evaporate to oblivion.  The day will come when exactly this will happen.  Until then we live to praise God amidst the chaos.  We declare in the face of defiant sin and death that the lasting story, the more real reality is eternal life with God.  And verse 13 says our guarantee of this is we are marked by the Holy Spirit.

            The Holy Spirit had to get in on this.  The Father is blessing, choosing, adopting and illuminating.  Jesus is lavishing grace.  The Spirit does things; we in Christ are marked with the Spirit’s seal.  This is the pledge of our inheritance.  We are God’s people (1:14).  We don’t worry about the future because are promised eternity.  We try to transform the world today by telling the story of the hope we have in Christ.  Even when we mess up – and Christians do mess up – we are marked by the Spirit. 

            The prayer in Ephesians is for God the Father to give us – we who have been marked by the Spirit, wisdom and revelation (1:17).  Already it has been stated that God has made known – past tense – the mystery of his will.  We are saved by faith in Christ.  With His Spirit dwelling in us and with the wisdom and revelation he gives, we then are God’s spokespersons. 

            In a country ravaged by racial strife, in a world damaged by the horrors of terrorism and war, and in a town in which so many are confused and hurt, by God’s grace we, God’s church, can and must point people to God.  We do this with words.  We do this with Vacation Bible silliness and warm coffee pot laughter.  We do this when we build ramps, hug those who weep, pray at the hospital bedside, open our doors with welcoming hearts, and draw all who enter into songs of praise.  By God-given wisdom, we share the revelation that hatred is not humanity’s only story.  There is another possibility – the gospel – and, it leads to eternal, joyful life. 

            Stepping out of the grammar boundaries we’ve set, I look at verse 19 which does not have a verb describing what God does.  Rather in the NRSV it speaks of “the immeasurable greatness of [God’s] power for us who believe.”  In this verse, God’s power works even if it does not exactly say, “God is working it.” 

            When we love beyond our ability to love, when our compassion is so great it seems like Jesus put it in us, when we serve in pure agape love with unquestioned regard for the other, these are indications that is God at work.  The word for power, dunamis, points to the Holy Spirit.  Ephesians 1 does not explicitly say the power mentioned repeatedly beginning in verse 19 emanates from the Spirit.  However, when we think of God’s constant presence in all places, we think of the ubiquitous Holy Spirit. 

            The chapter ends with verbs describing God’s work in and for Christ (vss 20-22).  The Father raised the Son from the dead, seated him at the right hand of the Father in Heavenly places, and made him head over all things.  What does God do?  In the case of Christ, God resurrects, God elevates, and God exalts so that we see that Jesus is human and at the same time divine.  Jesus is literally king over all kings.  He lived in a particular place at an exact time in history and died.  And he rose from death to reign in sovereignty and love. 

            Finally, the chapter ends with that elusive verb ‘to be.’  It is a different kind verb in that it describes not what something does but what something is.  In this chapter full of verbs that show an active God whose involvement in our lives is immediate and unavoidable, this final verse tells us about ourselves.  The church is the body of Christ.  Christ is God and we are the location of the presence of God in the world.

            In a world of shootings that shake up a community, we are here to say, “God is here and healing is possible.”  In a world where terrorists kill in genocidal proportions, we are here to say, “Death is not the only story; life is possible and we love our brothers and sisters who suffer.  We pray for them and with them and open our doors and hearts to them.”  In a community where many are in individual crises we stretch out our arms, God’s arms, and say, “Come in.  Don’t go through your trials alone.  We’ll walk with you.”

            How are we able to do this?  Ephesians says we are the body of Christ, but as we look around the room at each other we can plainly see we are a bunch people with weaknesses and limitations. We also have gifting and strength but are our attributes enough to heal Chapel Hill let alone the world?  No, of course we are not enough.  So how is it we can so calmly, confidently say, God is here?

            There’s one more verb and I almost forgot it. 

            The end of verse 23 says God fills all in all.  Now is this God the Father, God the Son, or God the Spirit?  In the English, it’s not clear.  It could be Father or Son.  But when we think of filling, we think of the Spirit.  I don’t know that the question can be answered.  I doubt that precise distinctions can be made in identifying the actions of the individual members of the Trinity.  I don’t think we need to pinpoint whether it was Father, Son or Spirit every time.

            We need to see God.  We need to feel the vibrations of the drumbeat of God actively working  in the world.  We are splashed with warm grace as God acts.  We know He is here and He loves us and will be involved in our lives.  This is true for all who come to Him in confession and in faith.

Blessed involvement to bring out hope and life: that is what God does.

AMEN