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There’s just something about a good mystery novel. They play into our pride, I guess. We like to think we can solve the mystery before the author ties everything together in the end and thus, outsmart her. A really good mystery writer will play you to the very end making you think you’ve got it all figured out only to kibosh your arrogance time and again until at the very last she finally reveals who did it. Mysteries, we love to try to figure them out, but we cannot escape the fact that we are at the mercy of the writer for the final who dun it.
Since we love mysteries so much, it goes without saying that no one likes a spoiler. That’s somebody who tells you how the mystery ends before you get to it. Well, Paul here in Ephesians is a spoiler. His main concern with the letter is to be the spoiler of God’s great mystery novel, the mystery of what God is up to in history. In fact, Paul is such a good spoiler he is able to say that God is the one who has actually spoiled his own plot - through Jesus Christ God has manifested the Truth that is hidden behind the world we live in…behind history, behind space and time. Jesus and what God is doing in, through, and as him is God’s revelation of how history comes to its completion and what it will be like. Amazingly, with the plot spoiled we keep reading the book.
So, what’s being spoiled, what’s now being revealed, as Paul says, is God’s will, the manifold wisdom of God, indeed the mystery of Christ. Paul says it is being specifically revealed to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms by means of the reality of the church’s existence in this earthly realm.
This means, and this is huge, that Christian Fellowship, Christian Community…us…we’re the spoil. To us and through us God is spoiling his own mystery by the living grace that he is making evident in us and the church in all times and places by the presence and working of the Holy Spirit in us who compels us to live according to the New Creation that God has wrought in Jesus Christ and will bring to light in the end.
That’s pretty deep. Our Christian community reveals where history is going. The fellowship that forms as we live according to the Holy Spirit’s compelling us to love God, love each other, and love our neighbour the way God loves us – unconditionally, unselfishly, and sacrificially – is God’s revealing where history is going. The Christian fellowship that we share is the plot spoiler of God’s great mystery of history and of his Creation.
So, what is this mystery that God has kept hidden from the beginning? According to Paul back in Ephesians chapter 1 verse 10, it has been God’s plan all along to gather up all things in heaven and earth in Christ (Eph. 1:10); to bring all things together, to bring all things to their created fulfillment under the Lordship of God the Son, Jesus Christ. Simply put, it has been God’s purpose all along to unite his creation, all things in heaven and earth and indeed heaven and earth themselves in God’s own self with his Son as the head and the Holy Spirit as the uniting bond. It was God the Father’s plan all along for God the Son to become human and in him by the presence and working of the Holy Spirit all things would share in God, in the loving communion of the Father Son and Holy Spirit. Indeed, as the prophet Isaiah said, “The earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea (11:9).”
That is the “what” of the mystery, now comes the “how”. Through the Incarnation and Resurrection of God the Son as Jesus Christ God infused himself to creation and healed it. Now, God is applying this infusion and healing to each of us and all creation by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on us and in us each. The Holy Spirit’s presence in us creates a bond, an organic union between us and God and us and us. The Holy Spirit’s presence in us and his work upon and among us is what we call redemption.
Redemption or “to redeem” in NT Greek is slave trade language. It’s the word for buying slaves back from slavery and setting them free. What that means for us is that we who once were slaves to sin and death now have been set free to live in the New Creation, in the plot spoiler where heaven and earth are one, where all things are united to God in Christ, and where God is making himself known to all things. Jesus Christ/God the Son, by his birth, life, death, and resurrection, has set us free to enter the end times New Creation now, indeed, to enter unimpeded into God’s presence and this freedom is really applied to us by the presence and working of the Holy Spirit in and among us enabling us to love as God has loved us.
As proof of the mystery Paul presents here in verse six that the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus”. This was a huge deal for Paul. You see, Paul was a devout Jew who believed that only the Jewish people, the descendants of Abraham, had access to God and this was at the Jerusalem Temple. The Temple in Jerusalem was the only place in their beliefs where heaven and earth coincided and God could be approached. For Paul to see with his own eyes that Gentiles were receiving the Holy Spirit, the presence of God who was supposed to be only at the Jerusalem Temple, the same Holy Spirit that he had received in his own personal encounter with Jesus resurrected on the road to Damascus, for Paul to see the Gentiles included by God himself into the people of God by the presence of God’s very self meant that the end time New Creation that God had promised through prophets such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel had begun. It began when God raised Jesus the Messiah from the dead.
For Paul, the supreme plot spoiler appears to have been that Jew and Gentile are now brought together indeed bonded together under the one Lord Jesus Christ through union with him in the Holy Spirit and more so that the fellowship in this new humanity is the place on earth where God actually now dwells. It is the New Temple of God, the New Jerusalem. The early Christians called this bit of New Creation in the midst of old humanity the Gathering. That’s a better translation of the Greek word and less historically/politically loaded than the word Church. In the Gathering those who had once been enemies were now worshipping and praying together and enjoying a communion in fellowship, a love that surpassed anything known before in history. God has made the fellowship of the Gathering, instead of the Jerusalem Temple, to be the place on earth where his Holy Spirit will publicly dwell.
This is the ending to the mystery of history, our history, well, I bet you never saw coming. In each of you and in us together heaven and earth are united and we are in the presence of God because God the Father almighty, Maker of heaven and earth decided from the very beginning to unite his creation to himself by sending God the Son to become human and that union is being extended to us and all the creation by the presence and working of the Holy Spirit until the end when he makes all things to be New Creation. The proof that this is the Truth is each of us. Once we were strangers who probably never would have met or become friends. But since God has called us each to the fellowship of this gathering we have become family in Christ, beloved children of the Father and brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus sharing the “DNA” of the Holy Spirit.
So, when you look at the news and all the war, and all the troubles and concerns and fears and brokenness and hurt and violence and you wonder where this world is going. Well, have a look at your Christian fellowship and the love we have here. That’s where it’s going. In the midst of all this world’s sick, twisted, hurting brokenness there is Christian fellowship of which this congregation is a part. The Christian love that is evident among you is the proof that there is reason to hope, that God does care and is involved and will heal his creation. So, go forth and be plot spoilers. On the foundation of the hope embodied here go forth faithfully and live as New Creation in the midst of the old. You are God’s evidence that there is reason to hope. Amen.
