Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

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Sermons

July 2003 (click here to return to "July 2003 Sermons" page)

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time (July 13, 2003)

“Chosen, Destined, Redeemed” Dr. Julie Adkins

Text: Ephesians 1:3-14

SERMON

For the next few weeks,

we’re going to look at the letter to the Ephesians,

and some of the good stuff tucked away in it.

So let’s take care of a few preliminary things first,

and then we won’t have to come back to them over and over,

and anyone who wasn’t here this week,

well, you can fill them in and impress

them with how much you know about Ephesians!

In the first place,

we don’t know for sure who wrote Ephesians.

Now of course, it claims to have been written by Paul,

and it might have been …

But the style of writing is very different from others of Paul’s letters,

and some of the vocabulary isn’t found in his other letters, either.

Maybe he gave the outline to a scribe,

and the scribe did the actual writing.

Or maybe someone wrote it shortly after Paul’s death,

and honored Paul by putting his name on it …

I know today we would think of that as being deceptive,

but in the first century it was not only acceptable but even encouraged.

Or perhaps Paul did write it,

but was deliberately trying to sound different;

maybe he was imitating a popular style of writing.

Anyway, when I talk about the author of Ephesians,

for the sake of simplicity I will call that person “Paul,”

but we will know that I mean

“Paul, or whoever wrote the thing.”

The other thing to make a mental note of

is that this letter to the Ephesians

is most likely one copy

of a “circular letter” which was sent

to a number of different churches.

The reason we suspect that is,

that at the beginning of the letter,

it’s not specific about who the recipients are.

In every other letter, Paul writes something like,

“To the churches of Galatia,” or

“To the church of God which is at Corinth,” or

“To the church of the Thessalonians.”

Here, nothing specific, just,

“To the saints who are also faithful in Christ Jesus.”

In addition, the letter contains no personal references

to anyone at Ephesus or elsewhere.

No reminiscences about “when I was among you”;

no list of names at the end

of people to be sure and greet on Paul’s behalf.

This letter appears to have been designed

for a number of different churches

in a number of different settings.

Sort of like the Xeroxed Christmas letters that many of us send out:

intended for everyone to read,

not just someone specific.

(And don’t you know,

Paul would have benefited from a Xerox!)

Anyway, all that it means is that

we can’t be real clear about

what specific kinds of situations Paul might have been addressing.

In letter like Galatians and Corinthians,

it’s pretty clear what problems have arisen in those communities,.

and what Paul is arguing against.

Ephesians, on the other hand,

seems to have been more general,

designed for a wider audience.

But, enough background.

How do you exegete just the first few verses of a letter?

It seems a little like

trying to guess the whole contents of a letter from a friend

by reading only the first paragraph:

“Dear Friend, Hello. How are you? I am fine.”

Not very much to go on there!

Even the subject line for an e-mail message gives you a better clue than that!

But in the first verses of this letter,

Paul sets the stage.

He lays the groundwork for what is to come.

Here are all the basic presuppositions,

laid out for everyone to see.

The rest of the letter

assumes these first few verses as framework.

Because they tell us where Paul is coming from.

And where Paul begins is with a very lofty description

of what it means to be a believer.

In verse 4, he tells us that those who follow Christ

were chosen by God before the foundation of the world.

Then, that we were

destined to be God’s children.

And, that through Christ we are redeemed

so that we can be a part of God’s purpose,

God’s plan for the fullness of time.

Can we even imagine what that means,

to be chosen by God before the foundation of the world?

Can we imagine God’s purpose for us

in the divine plan for all time and space?

Hoe exciting!

How overwhelming!

God connects us to the past and to the future

on a scale most of us rarely, if ever, contemplate.

We may know our own family

a few generations forward and back …

We may know a few hundred years of history …

We may have studied enough science

to connect back a few million years every now and then …

But before the foundation of the world?

Before the dinosaurs?

Before the planet cooled off and life began?

God chose us when?

Now, it’s possible to get a little weird about all this,

and that’s not my intent.

I don’t imagine for one instant

that God already had me specifically in mind

in the days when the seas were swarming with trilobites.

In fact, that really isn’t even what the text suggests.

What’s important is the connection:

that we, here and now,

are somehow a part of the plan

God had in mind when the world was created.

That we have all along played a part

in the vision, the dream,

that God has had since day one.

Our roots go back that far.

Yet we also go forward,

as part of God’s plan for the fullness of time.

Whenever that time is to come,

whatever that transformation is going to look like –

and we don’t know,

so don’t believe anyone who tells you that they do –

Whatever the fullness of time looks like,

we are a part of it.

Whether that’s “we” first-century Ephesians,

or “we” twenty-first century Trinitarians … Trinitonians … whatever !

God’s future is, at least in part,

entrusted into our hands.

The thing that we perhaps need most to pay attention to

in our own day and time,

and especially in our own culture,

in that everything in this passage is plural.

It’s “us” and “we”;

it is not about “you” or “me.”

When we finally get to “you,” in verse 13,

it’s always plural, “y’all.”

It’s about us as a Christian community,

it is not about us as individual believers.

Some of us are not more chosen than others.

A few of us are not “more redeemed” than the rest of us.

It is as a community

that we live out our calling,

or fail to do so.

And this is probably an even more important emphasis for us

than it would have been for the Ephesians,

because we are living in a time when the Christian faith

is often turned into an individualistic,

me-and-Jesus kind of proposition.

Paul could scarcely have imagined such a thing.

While we are of course unique individuals,

God’s call comes to us within the community.

It is Christians together, as the body of Christ,

who are chosen, destined, and redeemed …

not any one individual, separate, isolated Christian.

In fact, in any New Testament understanding,

an individual, separate, isolated Christian

is in fact not a Christian at all.

So on the one hand, hallelujah!

We have been chosen by God since before the foundation of the world.

On the other hand … eek!

Others have also been chosen by God before the foundations of the world …

some of them, people we wouldn’t have chosen.

The call comes from God,

and we can say yes or no …

But that “yes” or that “no” also implies

a “yes” or a “no” to the community of others whom God has called.

We are fooling ourselves

if we think that there is some way to say yes to God

without also saying yes to the people

with whom God has placed us in community.

Because God chose them, too,

and God put us together for some reason that we often can’t see very clearly,

and together we have redemption

and a destiny that is part of God’s eternal plan.

Robert Fulghum, known best for his essay

“All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,”

tells a story about how he learned this to be true.

He describes his summer vacation of a certain year,

and says that the highlight was a week in Weiser, Idaho:

Maybe that’s hard to believe (says Fulghum).

Because if you’ve ever looked at an Idaho map,

you know Weiser is nowhere.

But if you play the fiddle,

Weiser, Idaho, is the center of the universe.

The Grand National Old Time Fiddlers’ Contest

is there the last week in June.

And since I’ve fiddled around some in my time, I went.

Four thousand people live there in normal times.

Five thousand more come out of the bushes and trees and hills

for the contest.

The town stays open around the clock,

with fiddling in the streets, dancing at the VFW hall,

fried chicken in the Elks Lodge, and free camping at the rodeo grounds.

People from all over show up –

fiddlers from Pottsboro, Texas; Sapulpa, Oklahoma;

Thief River Falls, Minnesota; Caldwell, Kansas;

Three Forks, Montana, and just about every other

little crossroads town you care to mention.

And even Japan!

It used to be that the festival was populated by country folks –

pretty straight types –

short hair, church on Sunday, women in their place, and all that.

Then the long-haired hippie freaks began to show up.

The trouble was that the freaks could fiddle to beat hell.

And that’s all there was to it.

So, the town turned over the junior high school and its grounds

to the freaks.

The contest judges were put in an isolated room

where they could only hear the music.

Couldn’t see what people looked like or what their names were –

just the fiddling.

As one old gentleman put it,

“Son, I don’t care if you’re stark nekkid and wear a bone in your nose.

If you kin fiddle, you’re all right with me.

It’s the music we make that counts.”

So I was standing there is the middle of the night

in the moonlight in Weiser, Idaho,

with about a thousand other people who were

picking and singing and fiddling together –

some with bald heads, some with hair to their knees,

some with a joint, some with a long-necked bottle of Budweiser,

some with beads, some with Archie Bunker T-shirts,

some eighteen and some eighty,

some with corsets and some with no bras,

and the music rising like incense into the night

toward whatever gods of peace and goodwill there may be.

I was standing there, and this policeman –

a real honest-to-God Weiser policeman

who is standing next to me and picking a banjo (really, I swear it)\

says to me,

“Sometimes the world seems like a fine place, don’t it?”

(from All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, pp. 154-156.)

“If you kin fiddle, you’re all right with me.”

How hard it is for us to say to each other,

“If you’re a follower of Jesus Christ, you’re all right with me.”

Which is not to say that there aren’t some people out there who aren’t followers,

but are still quite all right! … that’s another sermon for another time.

Christians aren’t even very good yet at being “all right” with each other,

when our differences are noticeable.

Could we say to a visitor, and mean it,

“I don’t care if you’re nekkid and have a bone in your nose,

if you’re a Christian, you’re all right with me”?

Paul’s congregations had difficulty with saying,

“I don’t care if you’re a Jew or a Gentile,

if you follow Jesus, you’re all right with us.”

That’s hardly our issue these days,

but we have our own.

Can we say it to those who are young and impulsive,

and those who are old and settled,

and mean it both times?

Can we say it to those who are straight, and those who are gay,

and those who are confused?

Can we say it to the rich, and the poor, and the in-between?

Can we say it, even if we have to repeat it more slowly,

to those who don’t understand English very well?

Paul insists that it is we who are chosen,

not himself, not you, not I, but we.

It is we who are destined for adoption as children through Jesus Christ.

It is we who are redeemed by Christ,

into an inheritance as God’s children.

Either we are chosen together,

or we are not chosen.

We are redeemed together,

or we are not redeemed.

We welcome everyone to share our common destiny and calling …

or it is we who get left out,

not the ones we tried to exclude.

Sometimes the world is a pretty fine place.

The kingdom of God is an incredible place.

And it is our destiny,

if we make the journey together.

Sounds to me like the adventure of a lifetime.

And even an after-lifetime!

Amen.