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

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[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.

Truly Human and Truly Alive (Ephesians 2:1-10)

Sunday, September 7, 2014

            Certain passages from scripture need no introduction.

            “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).

            “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the father except through me”(John 14:6).

            “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1).

            And this one:

            ²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make humankind^[c] in our image, according to our likeness; … .”

²⁷ So God created humankind^[e] in his image,
    in the image of God he created them;^[f]
    male and female he created them.

³¹ God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good (Genesis 1:26a, 27, 29).

            God created with a plan in mind: the pinnacle of creation would not be the breathtaking sites of nature, the peaks of the Himalayas, the Northern lights, the endless blue of the ocean at the equator, or any other natural wonder.  Nor would the ultimate of all God made be any cosmological phenomenon.  God’s plan reached God’s purpose with the forming of you and me - humans. 

            The crucial point in God’s scheme was the creation of free agents – beings who could actually choose to go God’s away or to go against God.  In a sense, God created sin because God made beings – humans – who had the capacity to choose sin.  And with that choice available, we took it.  From Adam and Eve to Hitler to most of what is seen at the movies to you and me and everyone in between and everyone hereafter, humans sin.  Every one.  Jesus is the exception, the only person to be a human being and not at some point rebel against God.

            In Romans, Paul indicates the cumulative effect of thousands of years of human rejection of God’s authority (Romans 8). 

            ¹⁸ I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. ¹⁹ For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; ²⁰ for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. ²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; ²³ and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

            Something was lost when the first humans sinned.  We have continued to be more and more lost ever since.  Some authors suggest, we today are not even like the original humans. We are weaker, live shorter lives, and have more limitations on us in all aspects of living.  Sin has brought about degradation so that God’s good creation is now something less than it was at the start. 

N.T. Wright imagines humans who have rejected God.  Here is how he says it.  “Hell is what happens when human beings say to the God in whose image they were made, ‘we don’t want to worship you.  We don’t want our human life to be shaped by worshiping you.  We don’t want who we are as humans transformed by the love of Jesus, dying and rising for us.  We don’t want any of that.  We want to stay as we are and do our own thing.’  And if you do that, you’re saying you want to stop being an image-bearing human being within this good world God has made.  You’re colluding with your own progressive dehumanization. … The reality is … sober and sad. …  [It is a] progressive shrinking of human life that happens during this life.  If someone resolutely says to God, ‘I am not going to worship you,’” and, “deep down [in the heart] there is rejection of the good creator God.”  That is a choice we can make and God will honor that choice.  And then, stuck in sin with no hope of regeneration or redemption, we degrade so much we become no longer human but something grotesque and unrecognizable. 

            Biology and other sciences that study the ancient earth’s origin and the beginnings of humanity offer explanation for how we got here.  Theology, simply put, is a word about God.  Can there be comprehensive understanding of the world that accounts for science and theology?   The assertion that sin has effected a de-evolution of creation does not make sense from the view of Darwin’s theory of evolution, which is amoral.  I generally accept the explanations today’s biologists, physicists, and geologists give for the origins of the universe and of life on earth.  But I don’t think those explanations are perfect and I do not think they account for everything that exists.  Those disciplines are not able to anticipate the future in the way Christian faith can, informed by God’s plan as we are.

            Well, so what? 

Last week, we looked at what we know of God in Christ by looking at the activity of God described in Ephesians 1.  In Christ, we know God.  This week, we see in Ephesians 2 that in Christ we are alive. 

            “Alive” can mean breathing, heart beating, and maybe there are other conditions that need to be present for a technical definition of “alive.”  In Ephesians 2 “alive” means more than that.  When the first humans were truly alive, God could see His own image in each – in male and in female.  The world was so right, completely absent of sin, death, or corruption, that God declared it “very good.”  When Ephesians 2:5 says we are “made alive together with Christ,” it is declaring we are again in a state that is “very good.”

            I don’t think this means a return to Genesis as if the Fall never happened and the forbidden fruit was never eaten.  Salvation is not an eraser that eliminates history.  Salvation happens within history, redeeming the story.  In Jesus, God took on the particularities of gender, time, nationality, and socio-economic class.  Jesus was not just a person, he was a man, the son of Joseph and Mary.  He was not just a man.  He was a first century, Jewish man.  He was of the tradesmen, son of a carpenter. 

God, in Christ, stepped into the gradually decaying world, the world undone by sin.  “Made alive together with Christ” is the insistence that in spite of the undeniable corruption of earth it will be “very good” again.  It is not a harkening back to Eden.  It is an act of Christ that has future consequences and that determines the eternal reality – the coming together of Heaven and Earth.  Salvation also says a lot about our present reality.

We are loved (v.4).  The reason God brings life to us – to we who are fallen in sin – is God loves us.  Ephesians 1:5 states plainly that sin (trespasses in the NRSV) leads to death.  Progressive dehumanization, N.T. Wright called it.  Our sins are not just acts.  They are acts that accumulate and also indicate our condition.  Without ceasing, we slip away from what we were created to be – God’s image bearers.  But God will not just watch us go.  God loves us too much.  So, he comes as Jesus. 

Then the cross, then the resurrection, and then as we respond t0 the Holy Spirit’s prompting by receiving grace and putting our faith in God, we are raised.  Ephesians 2:6, God “raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus.”  There is no death there.

Imagine it, if you can.  I confess, I cannot.  My entire paradigm involves beginnings and endings.  I lack the capacity to conceive of an existence in which death has no role, is not.  Perhaps this is a failure of my own imagination.  I try to see it in my mind, but all that comes is bright, brilliant white clouds with blinding rays of sun shooting from all sides.  I see mountains and maybe imagine myself flying. Most of these images have been put in my mind by popular artists’ visions of what Heaven might be like. 

The Biblical picture stands as something more real.  There will be trees, fruit trees.  There will be a city with a river running down the middle.  There will be music.  All these images come from the metaphors of the book of Revelation.  The most important is the coming together of Heaven and Earth.  Biblically speaking, we don’t go to Heaven when we die.  Heaven and Earth come together.  The most important piece in the “raised up with him … in heavenly places” promise is the phrase “with him.”

When Jesus was resurrected, he had defeated death.  He will not die again.  His love for us means he takes us with him.  When we join him in resurrection, we will not die again either.  So to say we are made alive together with Christ is to say the corruption of the fall has been cleansed off us.  We will not die.  We are living into life – eternal life.  That redemption which, as we saw in Romans 8, the creation groans for comes in Christ. 

There is more.  We are raised by God’s love.  We are also created by God’s purpose.  Ephesians 2:10 – “We are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works.”  God created all that is in 6 days and rested on the 7^th.  Creativity was and continues to be an attribute of God as God creates us anew.  Read Genesis 1-2.  In the beginning the earth was a formless void and God’s creation was careful, precise.  God made order out of chaos.  In Christ, God continues His creativity, bringing order to the chaos sin has imposed in our lives.

Our church stands on three pillars.  This is our philosophy for life in Christ.  First, all are welcome.  Come as you are.  The body of Christ is a safe place.  Second, come ready to meet Christ.  When we encounter Him, we meet the living God.  No one can stay as they are after a true experience with God.  We will become a new creations; we are made new.  Third, having been born again, made for good works, we are sent out into the world in Jesus’ name to share the truth that He is Lord and that all people can have life in Him.

Ephesians 2:10 is one of the core verses for the second pillar in this philosophy, “made new in Christ.”  Raised, we know that death is longer part of our story.  Made new, we see that while we are not of this earth, as long as we live prior to the Second Coming and the dawning of the New Age, we have not just been created but created for something.  One alive in Christ cannot be indifferent in the world or toward the world.  It is not possible.

We try.  The Fall and all the corruption sin produces tries to lure us into ignoring God and living for ourselves.  One of sin’s deepest realities is that the self becomes our object of worship.  All sin, at its core is idolatry, the worship of something other than God, something not worthy of worship.  Andy Crouch says an idol is something that in the beginning promises us everything while asking nothing of us; but, over time, the idol asks more and more of us while giving less and less.  In the end, the idol ask us to give it everything while it gives us nothing in return.[i]  Whatever variety of sin tempts you or tempts me, down at the heart of it is an idol that will consume and obliterate our humanity.  To step toward an idol is a rejection of God and prioritizing my fleshly desires over God’s place in my life.   Even after we turn to Jesus, sin, Satan, and death will use idols to try to draw us away from Him.

But the Holy Spirit is persistent.  We have been created for good – good that is seen in our actions in the world.  To be alive in Christ is to point the world to the future time when Heaven and Earth come together.  Ephesians 2:10 is direct – we are what he has made us, “created in Christ Jesus for good works.”  The Spirit leads us to God, and after we put our trust in Jesus, the Spirit continues to be at work in our lives.  We can turn away even after having seen God, but we do so with the Spirit pulling on us, constantly trying to draw us back to God.  God could simply force us to worship and faith, but then we would lose our identity as image-bearers. 

We have been created as God’s image bearers.  Sin shattered each of us, but in Christ we are made new; we are re-created for life in Christ and with the mission of sharing his love and the Gospel with everyone who does not know him so they too can receive the salvation he offers. 

I began this morning identifying passages from scripture that are familiar even to people who don’t realize these things are in the Bible.

I close with a final look at one of those passages, Genesis 1, where we see that to be human is to be in God’s image.  If we are not bearing God’s image, we are something less than human.  Sin makes it impossible to bear God’s image.  But the testimony of Ephesians 2 is that Christ has come and our sins are forgiven.  Once again we are created, made anew, you and I, made to be image bearers who live in and guides other into the Kingdom of God.

AMEN 

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[i] A. Crouch (2013).  Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power.  InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL, p.56.

Jesus v. Me (a brief comparison)

Jesus v. Me

            I don’t know how healthy it is for my self-esteem to compare myself to others.  I can hit free throws much of the time but it would not be very smart to compare my basketball skills to LeBron James’.  I usually sing the right notes in a song, but I am not singer Josh Groban is.  I should be happy with who I am.  Everyone should have a healthy amount of self-love.  The second great commandment is ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ (Luke 10:27).  If all I have is self-loathing, my neighbor is in trouble.  I don’t need to compare myself to others.

            Still, sometimes a benchmark helps me see how I am doing (whatever it is that I may be doing).  Overall, what kind of human being am I?  As I pondered this I thought, why not aim high?  So, I am setting myself alongside Jesus as I read Ephesians 1 & 2.  Jesus need not be nervous.  I am a humble winner.  I know Moses is supposedly the most humble man ever, but that was written before I was born. 

            So, it’s Rob v. Jesus.  Good luck, son of Mary.

            Let’s see as I scan over Ephesians I come to chapter 2, verse 1.  “You were dead through trespasses and sins.”  Oh, that doesn’t sound so good.  I know this doesn’t stick to Jesus because, well, he has never sinned.  I have read enough that I can verify that.  I on the other hand have – a lot.  This is not the place for specific confessions, but anyone interested in my checkered record can interview the saint otherwise known as my wife.  The whole death through sins bit sticks to me like honey on a linoleum floor; hate stepping in that in my bare feet.  Yeah, I am dead in sin.

            What about him?  OK, Jesus hasn’t sinned.  Let’s not throw that party yet.  Maybe Ephesians can knock Mr. Sinless down a peg.  Let’s see … ah … here it is; chapter 1, verse 20.  God raised him from the dead.  I see.  Well, I can’t sugar coat it.  The check goes in Jesus’ column.  That’s one for him.  But I am still in this game. 

            Ephesian, help me out. 

            Or not.  Chapter 2, verse 2:  it says I (A) followed the course of the world, (B) follow the rule of the power of the air, and (C) it says he is the spirit that is at work among those who are disobedient.  Does it take a Bible scholar to see that Ephesians 2:2 is referring to Satan?  And I follow him?  I did not mean to.  I didn’t know.  No, that’s a load of something not fit to say or type.  When I follow the world down a path that leads away from God, I know it.  I acknowledged as much when I said I have sinned.  That’s not humility.  That is honesty.  But now here Ephesians is telling me exactly where I stand – in the footsteps of the devil.  Maybe we should just cut this whole comparison thing, just shut it down.  No?

            Ohhhkayyyy – how does Jesus fare?  Ephesians 1:22 says God has put all things under his feet and made him the head over all things.  He is not following the course of this world.  He’s determining it.  He is the head, the boss, the big fella, the top muckidy muck. 

            For those scoring at home, it is Jesus 2, Rob 0. 

            I won’t lie.  My confidence is not soaring right now.  What’s that?  You want more.  Alright, you sadist.  Let’s go to Ephesians 2:3.  It says all of us were by nature, children of wrath.  All of us follow the desires of the flesh (which we know is opposite of the fruit of the Spirit – see Galatians 5).  So, I hear you, smacking on Rob for his fleshly nature, his tumble into the fire of God’s wrath.  Go ahead, pile on me.  It doesn’t say Rob has messed this up.  Ephesians 2:3 says all of us.   That’s you too, baby.  You want to dump on me, well; you’re in the pit with me, my friend.

            Huh?  You’re saying I started all this as a comparison between me and Jesus not me and you?  Oh come on!  What fool would, for a second, try to compare himself to Jesus.  Comparisons are not really a good idea.  That’d be as daft as trying to play a game of one-on-one against LeBron James.  I … I… oh.  Oh, yeah.  I started this.  Didn’t I?

            I am, consumed by the flesh as I am, in the path of God’s wrath.  We already know Jesus is elevated as the King and Lord of all.  No comparisons remain.  Should feel like pond scum right now.  But I don’t know.  When I consider who I am – death-bound sinner that I am – why don’t I crumble in a pile of self-hate?  Why do I feel so good?

Ephesians 2:4-10

⁴ But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us ⁵ even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ^[a]—by grace you have been saved— ⁶ and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, ⁷ so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— ⁹ not the result of works, so that no one may boast. ¹⁰ For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

            You see, it is not Jesus v. me.  It is Jesus for me, creating me as His own, alive in Him, living for the purposes He sets before me.  The story is not me at all.  It is Christ.  I am grateful for all He gives. 

            What does Jesus have for you? 

Ask him.