Click for a printable version of this post.
Scripture for Sunday, November 19: Ephesians 1:3-14
Heidelberg Catechism Q & A 54-55
Last week in our Words on the Wall series, Rev. Jonker preached from Acts 2. We saw how the gift of the Holy Spirit floods into the lives of believers, fills us with God's grace, and prepares us to pour that grace out to those we meet.
This week, we turn our attention to the one holy universal church--a community that has been called and set apart by God to grow in grace and reflect him to the world. Yet the church is a complicated body. We'll look to the Apostle Paul's teaching in Ephesians as we think about motivating "church people" to live into their calling.
We're approaching our second-to-last sermon in the Words on the Wall Series, and that means weekly blogs are coming to an end (for now) too. During Advent and Epiphany, I will not be blogging so that I can focus more attention on other areas of ministry. I have loved the opportunity to deepen my own engagement in our series this way, and I am looking forward to blogging again in the later winter or spring. --Rev. Manion
Effervescent
Ephesians 1:3-14 reads like a shaken two-liter bottle: the overflow just keeps coming. Paul can hardly stop writing to re-ink his pen as he tries to capture the glorious, other-worldly reality of who we are in Christ.
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ," Paul exults--and then goes on in one long sentence with phrase after phrase unpacking exactly what that means.
Foundational for Paul is that we are chosen--called into the family of God even before creation itself was a twinkle in the eye of our endlessly creative Father.
God's boundless creativity started not with light and darkness, Paul says, but with his people in mind. People made in God's image, designed to belong to God's family, chosen even before he made a home suitable for us.
For us, that's amazing. It means God has invested great worth in us. And for God, it is joyful. Paul says it was God's "good pleasure" to adopt us (v. 5); and it was God's "good pleasure" to let us in on his plan to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ (v. 10).
God calls us to belong to his family, and then shares the great and good plan that he will carry out at just the right time.
As our eight-year-old would say, that's epic.
Our challenge is to live with one another in our homes and churches with these realities in mind, as if these cosmic realities were all true. Because of course, they are.
But much conspires to keep us from seeing the church this way.
In C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters, Screwtape (the senior devil) writes to Wormwood (the junior devil, who is working to keep his assigned "patient" from growing in Christian faith), about aspects of church life that most effectively dampen the flame of faith:
"One of our [the demons'] great allies at present is the Church itself.... I do not mean the Church as we see her spread throughout time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners...All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate....When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbors whom he has hitherto avoided....Provided that any of those neighbors sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous." (Lewis, 12).
The church community chosen and called into being before the creation of the world faces any number of human flaws and obstacles. It's telling that Screwtape's characterization of the church can ring so true for us.
But Paul's vision for what God is doing, what God will continue to do until the end, unifying things in heaven and on earth under one head--Christ--is astonishingly beautiful and deeply true. And it's the vision we nurture as well.
Questions for Reflection or Discussion:
1) From the Sermon: Do you find "bulletin board" pep talks motivational? Or are you more motivated by positive encouragement or inspiration? Which one is your go-to strategy when you are working with a difficult situation or person?
2) What would you say are the greatest barriers to faith or church membership for people who do not belong to a church? How (on a human level) can we address some of those obstacles?
3) For personal reflection and/or conversation: Read through Ephesians 1:3-14. Try to identify all the gifts of our being chosen to belong to Christ and list them. Then consider a situation or a relationship where you feel inadequate or underequipped. Pray through this list of blessings that are yours through Jesus (holiness, adoption as valued children because it pleased God to do so, recipients of grace, people who are forgiven, etc.).
Look for ways the Spirit presses the truths about you into the places of self-reliance or helps you in weakness as you hear these truths about who you are.
4) Now identify a brother or a sister in Christ who is difficult for you to get along with. Pray through the list of blessings in Christ for them, and that you would be able to regard them through the eyes of Christ. (This isn't a bad practice to make before family gatherings for Thanksgiving or Christmas.)
5) If you are open to a musical venture into the realm of Christian contemporary music, listen to the song "Flawless," by MercyMe, about who we are in Christ. Discuss.
