Ephesians 2:1-10
Lent 4
March 15, 2015
William G. Carter
You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the
course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit
that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the
passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were
by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of
the great love with which he loved us even
when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by
grace you have been saved— and
raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ
Jesus, so that in the ages to
come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us
in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is
not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not
the result of works, so that no one may boast. 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.
One Sunday morning in her house in South
Dakota, Kathleen Norris cooked breakfast for a house guest. Her husband David
had brought him home from the bar he tended. He was in no condition to drive,
and spent the night on their living room couch. Now the bacon and eggs were
sizzling, and their guest Willie was in a talkative mood.
He was between jobs, he said, having
done a number of jobs on the oil fields. He made a lot of money, blown most of
it, and schemed about making some more. Somewhere in Wyoming, he met up with
some drug dealers. The possibility of making some really big money emerged, and
Willie found himself hanging around some colorful new acquaintances. One of his
colleagues had disappeared, he said, only to be found tied up and full of
bullet holes on the Gulf of Mexico. Kathleen poked the bacon and turned down
the burner.
He and his main partner were doing
pretty well, he said. They had a lot of contacts, the network was building, and
Willie felt good to connect with somebody who had a lot of experience. Then one
day, as they were riding down the road in a small city, his partner pulled off
onto the shoulder and came to a stop. He had just passed somebody driving in
the opposite direction and thought about turning around to follow him.
Reaching under the seat to pull out a
gun Willie did not know was there, the man said matter-of-factly, “I need to
kill him, but he’s with someone, and I don’t know who. So it will have to wait.”
Kathleen listened to this, and flipped the eggs with a spatula.
Willie said, “It was right then I
decided to get out. It was over my head.” Kathleen said she looked out the
window, saw the neighbors walking to church, and said, “Well, Willie, I think
you did the right thing.”[1]
It’s a wild story, but maybe not so wild
for people in church, because it’s a story of salvation. Christian people, like
the Jewish people before them, have plenty of stories about being saved, about
getting rescued from danger or delivered from a terrifying threat. That’s what
the word “salvation” is all about. Life is full of situations that are over our
heads. We might have been wiped out or lost, but God came to help at the
appropriate time.
In the Jewish scriptures, the verb “to
save” (yasha) occurs in military
battles, as God or someone God appoints intervenes to rescue the people. Moses
raises his arms or God sends a great wind, and the people are saved.
The New Testament word is “sozo,” which
has connotations for health. Remember what Jesus says to countless people? “Your
faith has made you well” – which can also be translated, “Your faith has saved
you.”[2]
Saving is a kind of healing. It is a restoration of the whole person, a
setting-right of what has been damaged and broken.
God comes to save. That’s the theme
announced in our scripture texts. From Psalm 107, “Let the redeemed of the Lord
say so, those he redeemed from trouble” (107:2). And the Psalm remembers all kinds
of trouble: wandering in the desert, stumbling in the dark, at risk at sea, and
sick to the stomach from the effects of sin. God saves one person after
another, so “let the redeemed say so.”
From the third chapter of John: God sent
the Son into the world to turn on the lights, and the world shouted back, “Turn
out the lights!” We can understand that. I remember checking into a hotel room,
unlocking the door, and turning on the lights. There was a lot of motion along
the floor. If I had not turned on the lights, I would not have seen the
cockroaches. That’s what happens when Jesus comes as the light of the world:
you see all the disgusting stuff that has been flourishing in the dark. Jesus
comes, not to condemn, but to save us from it.
And then, the second chapter of
Ephesians, one of those passages that ignited the Protestant Reformation: “You
have been saved by grace through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is
the gift of God.” It is one of the clearest statements of truth in the entire
Bible. God is the One who does the saving. God is the One who is gracious to
those who really don’t deserve it. Out of the richness of God’s mercy, out of
the great love with which God loves us, even in the midst of the great
disasters we create for ourselves and others, God shows us “grace in kindness
towards us in Christ Jesus.”
Somebody paraphrased those words at the
church door last Sunday. Those of us who were here heard Paul’s description of
the cross in First Corinthians, as “God’s weakness, stronger than human
strength,” and “God’s foolishness, greater than human wisdom.” And one of you
said to me, “I suppose if we could have saved the world through human strength
and human wisdom, it would have already gotten done. So God had to save the
world through Jesus.” Bingo, that’s right.
Here in the second chapter of Ephesians,
it’s pretty clear the world is a mess. You think that’s a new diagnosis? No, it’s
the same old mess it always was, except now we have cable TV, video games, and
other complications from technology. It’s pretty much the same old mess. In our
text, the early church preacher describes it a number of ways:
Following
the course of the world,
Following
the ruler of the power of the air,
Living
in the passions of our flesh,
Following
the desires of flesh and senses,
We
are by nature children of wrath, like everyone else
I wanted to say, “Wait, that’s pretty
cruel,” but then I drove downtown after yesterday’s parade. There were still a
few glimpses of human wreckage on Lackawanna Avenue. Some bare-chested kid was
covered in green paint. A blond co-ed was weaving on her feet, propped up by a
couple of friends. A bar bouncer was escorting a guy with a black eye. I
suppose they all went there to have a good time. I saw it as evidence of what
the New Testament calls “the desires of the flesh.” That’s code language of
doing whatever you want, whether it’s tossing down a gallon of Guinness or riding
in the front seat with a murderous drug dealer.
Once again, I return to the insight of
last week’s back door theologian. If the world could get saved by our strength
or wisdom, it would have been done. If only we could save the world by
educating everybody, or organizing everybody, or spreading the wealth around,
or spreading democracy around, or getting the money out of politics, or
reducing carbon emissions, or whatever else is going to be proposed . . . if
only, if only…
The letter to the Ephesians knows we are
pretty much helpless to improve our lot. Oh, there are things we can do: “give
up malice,” “tell the truth,” “work a honest day’s work,” “share what you have
with the needy,” “use words to build up and not tear down,” “honor your
parents,” “love your loved ones,” and “be kind to one another.”[3]
All of this is good advice from Ephesians.
But the world’s struggle is a cosmic
struggle. We are not merely contending with human frailty but with evil that
has turned loose in the cosmos, with the powers and principalities (6:12). So
the God of heaven has had to deal with this through the death and resurrection
of Jesus. In a supreme act of rebellion, the world put the Son of God on a
cross, but God used that event to kill off the final power of all that is evil.
Evil still sputters, but in heaven it has been defeated.
And in the raising of Jesus from the
dead, God has shown us where everything is headed. Here is how Ephesians puts
it: “We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses,
according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us” (1:7-8). Faith is trusting this is true.
I have never made breakfast for a former
drug dealer in my kitchen. At least, I don’t think so. But I had a moment in
high school where a friend asked me to do him a favor. He was a basketball
player, a really great guy. I admired him. He was good looking, friendly, as
athletic as I wanted to be.
One day, I was visiting at his house and
he said, “Can you take this shoebox and keep it for me?” It was a size 13
Converse box, wrapped tightly in masking tape. I said, “What is it?” He
replied, “I’m not going to tell you, because it’s better if you don’t know.” He
was secretive about it, and lowered his voice: “My parents have gotten nosy and
I don’t want them to find out about this. Keep it for a while.”
So I did. I put it on the top shelf of
my bedroom closet, way in the back, right next to my box of Boy Scout merit
badge pamphlets. That night, I didn’t sleep a wink. Every creak in the hallway,
I was sure my parents were going to bust in and bust me – and whatever was in
that shoebox wasn’t even mine. Next night, I slept a little better, and then
the week went on and I didn’t think about it.
A couple days later, I got home from
school, went up to my bedroom, and my mom is poking around in the closet. I just
about died. It was all I could do to keep from looking suspicious, which meant,
of course, that I looked guilty as hell. Mom looked up at me and said, “What
did you do?” I stammered out, “Nothing…” She replied, “I’m getting rid of your some
old shoes.” She stood with an armful, and I helped her out the door.
When I recovered from my near-heart
attack, and when the coast was clear, I took the shoebox back to my friend and
said, “I can’t have this in my house.” He looked at me, somewhat sorrowful, and
said, “I don’t want it either. It was a really big mistake.” So we walked down
his street, saw a garbage can outside somebody’s garage, and dropped the box inside.
I never learned what was inside it, although I have a few ideas.
I tell you the story because of three
particular emotions that touched my soul that afternoon. The first was relief, profound relief. I could
have been caught, I could have been found out,
I could have been grounded until I was thirty-five – but I got off
without so much as an accusation. The second emotion was guilt, dark, heavy
guilt. I was sure I was doing something wrong, that my friend had been wrong, that
we were part of some nasty business that had to be covered up.
But here is the third emotion, the one
that counts the most: I was feeling freedom. By some heavenly protection, I was
steered away from a situation that could have turned out badly. I could have
been punished – perhaps my guilt was my punishment – but the guilt was now
lifted, the bad business was cancelled, the evil shoebox was gone, and I was
free. Completely free. That’s the first time I can remember what the grace of
God is all about. And I knew that grace so strongly that I decided, then and
there, to never get tangled up in a mess like that ever again. Instead I have
gotten tangled up in hundreds, thousands, of other messes, many of my own
making.
Here’s the thing: God saves us an act of
grace. Not because we are good, but because God is good. “Rich in mercy” is how
our scripture text says it. Spend a little Sabbath time this afternoon
remembering all the moments in your life that could have gone a lot worse than
they did. Breathe a sigh of relief, let go of the guilt, and take the freedom
to start anew.
This is what it’s like to let go of our
sins and become alive in Christ. We drop the crazy lie that we have done
everything right. We turn away from the things that are killing us and killing
other people. We ask for forgiveness and
make whatever amends we can. And then we give it up to God - we give all of it
up - and say, “Lord, you are so rich in mercy; let’s begin again.”
“Now to him who by the power at work
within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or
imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus
to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians
3:20-21)
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