Gracious and loving God, may only your Truth
be spoken and only your Truth be heard ☩ in the name of the Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Paying off the mortgage, making sure the kids can go to college without debt, giving to charity, and no longer driving a minivan – those are the first things I’d do if I won the lottery. I’m not sure that I’ve ever bought a lottery ticket in my life, and yet, when I see that billboard on 85 between exits 75 and 76 with the estimated winnings, I engage in “lottery fantasy.” And now that there’s a million-dollar lottery for getting a COVID vaccine, all of us who have done the right thing and had our vaccine are now enticed to think about how we’d spend that million.
What’s at the heart of these lottery
fantasies? Well, it’s the opportunity to think about what it would be like to
live a life unburdened of the restrictions, shackles, and anxieties that weigh
us down. If we don’t have to worry about paying bills or saving for retirement,
we can fantasize about being liberated from financial stress. We can wonder
what it might be like to not worry about unexpected repairs or ailments. We can
dream of being able to say “yes” to supporting the church and non-profits in
bigger ways. We imagine what it would be like to have a life of luxury. In
short, we fantasize about being rich.
For the people who received the
letter known as Ephesians, this was a fantasy they also engaged in. No, they
didn’t think about how they’d spend their millions if they won the lottery
because there was no lottery back then. Instead, the fantasy they engaged in
was an adoption fantasy. Most people were stuck in the lower class with no real
prospects for upward mobility, and their only hope to escape the limits of
their situation was if a wealthy Roman citizen chose to adopt them. And this
would happen from time to time. Sometimes the wealthy didn’t like the heir
apparent and didn’t want their wealth to go to them, so they’d disown their son
and adopt someone else to receive their inheritance and legacy. And lest this
sound like some arcane practice that we can’t fathom, it’s really not all that
different today from when we write people out of our wills.
So instead of giving your estate to
a child that you perhaps thought was incompetent and incapable of doing
anything good with your money, if someone else in society caught your eye as
being industrious, capable, and worthy, you could adopt them and know that your
wealth would continue to be used well. And for the person adopted? It was an
absolute transformation of status, wealth, and power. This sort of salvation
through winning an adoption lottery is what we need to have in mind to read
this opening section of Ephesians.
For seven Sundays, the New Testament
readings will all be coming from Ephesians and the sermons will focus on
reading this sacred text written to an ancient church in a modern context. And
today we begin with what is the longest sentence in the entire New Testament.
Verses three through fourteen of Ephesians 1 is all one sentence in Greek and
scholars believe it was a hymn of the earliest Church. And it’s absolute gem of
a passage. It speaks about how God has blessed us, destined us for adoption by
bestowing upon us the grace of the Beloved who has redeemed and forgiven us
according to the rich mercy of God who has sealed us in this promised salvation
as an inheritance by the Holy Spirit. This passage is something like a diamond
– as we look at it from different angles and see its many faces, we see how the
light of grace is reflected back to us in many beautiful ways. I can’t cover it
all in a sermon, so I would commend rereading this passage each day this week.
It’ll take you just a few minutes – read this opening section of Ephesians
throughout the week and notice one of the glimmering facets of grace that it
speaks of.
Broadly speaking there are three
movements within this passage. The first is praising God for the fact that we
have been chosen by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We heard that
we were chosen before the foundation of the world. Unlike the Roman model of
adoption where someone would gain the attention and favor of the wealthy, God
chose us before we were born, even before Big Bang, even if we didn’t buy the
lotto ticket. Through and through, this is grace. Before God said, “let there
be light,” God chose us. Any attempt to self-justify is to deny the sovereignty
of God who has chosen us before the foundation of the world and destined us for
adoption.
And this of winning the adoption
lottery has become a reality in Jesus Christ. This takes us into the second
movement of the hymn: through Jesus Christ we have been adopted and redeemed. In
the same way that our lives can be transformed by winning millions essentially
by luck or having a wealthy person make us a part of their family and the
inheritor of their wealth, we have been adopted by God and given every gift
that we need. But this blessing comes not through dumb luck, not by chance, not
by our efforts, not by our worthiness, but rather by a grace-driven by love.
Just as winning the lottery would change our lives and our priorities, being
adopted by God is a gift that is intended to do the same.
The currency of this salvation is
described as being redeemed and forgiven. Redemption is a way of saying that
God has a claim on us. There is no amount of brokenness, no amount of sin, no
amount of death that can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.
Today, there are many things that have claims on us – credit card companies and
banks that hold debt over us, our employers who have claims on our time,
society and corporations that have claims on our values and priorities, and
even ourselves, who place claims on ourselves in the form of oughts and
shoulds. Just as winning the lottery would allow us to break free from many of
those constraints and claims on us, God has bestowed upon us the riches of his
grace to liberate us from all that holds us captive.
What I am saying is that the only
person who has a claim on you is God. No one else gets to decide whether or not
you are worthy of forgiveness, no one else gets to decide if you are loveable,
no one else gets to say that you belong to them. Now, this doesn’t mean that we
don’t have responsibilities to others, it just means that your life belongs to
God – and God has chosen you and redeemed you from all those forces that make
claims against us.
The final movement of the hymn comes through
the power of the Holy Spirit, who seals us in this promise and makes it secure.
We may not receive the fullness of this inheritance of grace until we come to
see God face to face, but even now, we are given a down payment on this grace.
We are freed in order to live a life of love here and now. Being sealed means
that this redemption and forgiveness is not something we have to worry about
losing or being taken away. And if you think about a wax seal that a king would
have used to seal a document, not only does it make the document, which was
often a treaty or a promise, secure and unable to be tampered with, but it also
bears the name of the king.
You and I are sealed by the Holy
Spirit – we are held secure in God’s love and we bear the name of love within
us. We have been stamped by grace so that there can be no question as to whose
we are. The world may make accusations against us. Our enemies, sometimes even
our friends, will call us by names other than “beloved” or “redeemed.” We may
doubt whether or not we are enough – good enough, smart enough, attractive
enough, wealthy enough, productive enough, popular enough, right enough. To all
of that, God says “You are marked with the seal of the Holy Spirit.” And who
are we to question what the Holy Spirit has sealed?
This powerful hymn tells us that we
are chosen, we are redeemed, and we are sealed. In other words, we’ve won the
lottery. God the Father of all things has chosen us in grace, God the Son has
redeemed us from all that tries to claim us away from God, God the Spirit has
sealed us forever in this grace. Certainly, this is a wonderful message to
share, but why is this how Ephesians begins?
When you sit down and read the
entire book of Ephesians, two major themes emerge. The first three chapters
continue on this trajectory of immersing us in the story of grace. Grace is the
canvas on which our lives exist – and this truly does change everything. It’s
better than winning the lottery, because wealth can get used up or lost. Grace
makes us even richer than money could ever hope to. Grace gives us a meaning, a
purpose, an identity, a mission, a calling. This is what Ephesians lays out in
the first several chapters.
And then the second half of the book
gets into the specifics of how this grace impacts our lives. When we read that
God chose us, we have to remember that we are chosen for a purpose. We are not
knick-knacks in the house of God. It’s more like when kids are going to play a
game and they’re choosing teams. The first ones chosen are the ones that the
captain expects to contribute to the team. Well, God has chosen us from before
the foundation of the world. And what God has chosen us for is abundant life in
Jesus.
One of the most well-known catechisms
in Church history answers the question “What is the primary purpose of
humanity?” with “To glorify God and enjoy God forever.” This is why we have
been chosen – to praise and enjoy God. Praise is about orienting ourselves
towards Truth – the love that is truest about the world, the grace that is
truest thing about who we are, the story of redemption that is truest thing about
our lives. Praising God is about participating in that which truly matters –
not just for an hour on Sundays, but with the entirety of our lives. Through
generosity, we praise God with our finances. Through service, we praise God
with our lives. Through forgiveness, we praise God with our vulnerability.
Through prayer and study, we praise God with our minds. Through church attendance,
we praise God with our schedules. Through seeking beloved community, we praise
God with our priorities. With every breath, we praise God. And we do this not
to earn something or be better people, rather we praise because that is the
most joyful and natural thing in the world, and when we do that, we encounter
the abundant life that God intends of us all.
The life that God desires for us all
is one where we are freed from the burdens that weigh us down. Jesus said,
“Come to me, all you who are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”
God wants us to know that everything that we truly need has been provided in
abundance. We are given a peace that passes all understanding, we are given the
grace that makes all things new, we are loved with a love that makes all things
well. In other words, we are the richest people on earth. We’ve won the
lottery. We’ve been chosen, adopted, redeemed, and sealed by God Almighty and
so it is ours to praise and enjoy God with our whole being for ever and ever.
