Let's Get Our Story Straight

Text: Ephesians 1:3-14
Audio Recording

My Grandmother on my father’s side had some family stories to tell.  One of them was that we were descended from Mad King Ludwig, the last king of some kingdom somewhere in Germany.  His castle was the one that the Disney castle was fashioned after.  This story was passed down from Grandma’s mother’s side of the family as their name was Ludwig.  The story went that Mad King Ludwig was such a crazy king that his people deposed him.  He had seven sons who fled the country and one of them settled in Rockbridge County, Virginia near the little town of Fairfield and is buried in an unmarked grave in the Ludwig family cemetery on a plot of land that was at one time the Ludwig family farm.  This Ludwig would have been Grandma’s great or great-great-grandfather.  This would have been in the early to mid-1800’s. 

I had no reason to doubt this family story.  After all, I have actually been to the little cemetery and seen the grave of one Charles Ludwig who was her great-uncle after whom my great-uncle, Uncle Charlie, was named.  As far as family folklore goes, that’s enough evidence to prove even the existence of Bigfoot.  But, about ten years ago I shared this story in a public setting to an audience of a couple of hundred people.  Afterwards, a man came up and told me I might want to check my details because it was entirely likely that Mad King Ludwig didn’t have any children and gave me a knowing look to assure me that the details of the true story were going to be interesting.

Well, that was the first time that it had ever occurred to me that I could go online and research this bit of family trivia.  The Disney castle is indeed patterned after Castle Neuschwanstein which was built by King Ludwig II, the last king of Bavaria also known as “Mad King Ludwig”.  He was reclusive and quite eccentric, an extravagant lover of architectural projects and the theater.  He was the patron of Richard Wagner.  In 1870 after the Franco-Prussian War he signed away Bavaria helping to solidify the German Empire to be ruled by Wilhelm I.  In 1864 at age eighteen he took the throne, but he did not care for being king.  He blew through the family wealth by building some remarkable castles and theatres, and through patronage of artists and playwrights, and by giving extravagant gifts to people of the countryside who were hospitable to him.  He almost got married, but called it off and according to his diaries Ludwig II was gay; so no children.  As far as being “mad” goes, on June 10^th of 1886 the Bavarian government had him declared insane and deposed him largely because of his spending and unwillingness to be involved in government.  Three days later he was found dead; likely murdered at age forty.  Those closest to him said he was indeed eccentric but not insane.  The Bavarian people loved him and did not seek to oust him.  The insanity charges and deposition were a total government fabrication. 

So as far as my grandmother’s family story goes, Ludwig II had no children and he was not “Mad”…so much for claims to royal decent.  I guess I’ll just have to accept that Grandma’s Ludwig background wasn’t a royal soap opera after all, but rather just the product of normal immigration from Germany to the US of people fleeing the Prussian wars in the 1860-70’s.  Humbling indeed.  I guess I won’t be darting off to Germany claiming rights to the “real” Disney Castle.  Well, I may not be a great-great-great-great-great-or maybe one more great grandson of the last king of Bavaria.  But, Paul can offer me/us some consolation: forget claims to royalty we are adopted children of God and he’s apportioned to us an inheritance in the Kingdom of God.  Let’s check that story out.

Here in Ephesians Paul wants to reveal a secret about those who are in Christ, a mystery he wants to make known to us, a revelation of a plan that God has had since way back before Creation.  The skeleton in our closet is God’s pre-Creation purpose for us in Christ.  It’s a true story and it may be a bit different than the story you’ve heard.  It’s the story of how God because of his good and pleasing nature has poured his good pleasure, his grace, his favour upon his Creation just so everything in it can come together and say, “Ah, this is really good. You have blessed us in Jesus, your Beloved, with every spiritual blessing in and under heaven.  Praise you God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Admittedly Paul’s language is a bit lofty as he tells our story.  So, how does the story go?

It was God’s plan from before Creation that in the fullness of time God the Son would become a human, Jesus of Nazareth, and in him God would gather all things, unify all things, all things in heaven and all things on earth.  Before he laid the foundation of the world he chose us, each of us who are in Christ to be holy and blameless before him.  Paul continues that it has been God’s plan since before Creation to adopt us as his very own children with all the rights of sonship (which was the highest status children could have in the Roman world.  Even you children of God in Christ who are daughters, you have all the rights of sonship).

We in Christ are holy and blameless before God because Jesus has delivered us from slavery to darkness, liberated us from it, bought us with the price of his own blood.  According to God’s good will and pleasure, it is by God’s gracious favour through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ that we have been saved.  By means of his death on the cross Jesus like the scapegoat on the Old Testament Day of Atonement has born our sin off into the wilderness of death where it is utterly destroyed.  We need no longer bear guilt and shame for past sins.  We in Christ have been saved by Jesus faithfulness.   Now, it is our turn to be faithful.   We who are in Christ must become faithful in him or to him by fulfilling our purpose to be the praise of God’s glorious grace.

Paul goes on to say that according to God’s glorious and gracious plan, the plan he made before Creation, he has also allotted us in Christ an inheritance that we will receive at the fullness of time when we are raised as Jesus was raised.  Until then, we in Christ have been sealed with the royal seal of the Holy Spirit.  God has given us an allotment of his very self from our inheritance as a downpayment.  The Holy Spirit works in us transforming us to be holy and blameless.  He equips us for our share in Jesus ministry, which is his rule as the Lord of the Kingdom of God and over all Creation.

This story is the truth about us in Christ.  In Christ means that we are organically united to Jesus so that we participate in his new resurrected and ascended humanity.  It’s like saying we share his DNA.  For now we are being transformed little by little, yet more and more as we go about living as a faithful community of faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.  Prayerfully and with the Scriptures in hand we together strive to be faithful with the result that our lives become the praise of God’s glorious grace.  The Holy Spirit is the proof to us that the story of our adoption and inheritance in Christ is true and the transformation he works in us as we go about being faithful (and even when we are unfaithful) is the proof to the world that this story of God’s gracious plan for his creation is the truth.  We are not children of wrath.  We are children of adoption in Christ, the recipients of God’s good will and pleasure and he’s had that plan since forever.  That’s the straight story of us.  So, get on with it.  Amen.

The Spiritual Blessing

Text: Ephesians 1:3-14

There once was a high school science teacher who wanted to teach her class the difference between apples and oranges.  So, she divided the class into two groups and gave each group a bag of apples and a bag of oranges and told them to take some time and figure out the difference between them.  Group One took their “specimens” and measured and weighed them noting differences in the colours and textures and especially that the orange had a strikingly stronger fragrance particularly if you scratched the skin.  They even sliced one of each open to observe the innards.  They wrote it all down having thoroughly observed everything they could possibly know about the differences between apples and oranges.  Group Two, well, with it being nearly lunchtime simply ate their apples and oranges.  So, at the end of the class the teacher called them back together and asked them to tell her the difference between apples and oranges.  Group One dutifully reported the details of their most scientific investigation.  Group two, well, not seeing anything wrong with what they had done in a collaborative effort said, “Some of us liked the oranges.  Some of us liked the apples.  But, they both were quite good.  Thank you.”

So, which of these two groups would you give the higher mark and why?  I presume Group One and here's why.  Years ago when I was coming through school I was taught the scientific method given to us by the scientists of Modernity who believed that reality and meaning exist outside of oneself so that through proper investigative techniques we can know everything about anything.  Truth, therefore, was the sum total of what could be determined by investigation and it must to be repeatable; so you don't eat the specimens.

Things are different now.  We live in the post-Modern world in which we have come to realize that we all have preconceived ideas of the truth that we bring to our investigations of reality and which bias our methods and interpretations of the data so that the truth which we determine is nothing more than the truth according to me and you may see it differently.  Therefore, we need to be aware of our biases.   

This change in world-views is having a profound effect on matters of faith.  No longer is it enough simply to say that we believe something because it is "the Truth".  We can only claim something as true for me realizing that it may not be true for you.  Oddly and based on conversations that I have had (and this is truth according to me so take it for what its worth), people outside the church are having valid religious experiences.  Yet, instead of coming to church to sort it out and find the truth they are ploughing through the beliefs of the religions out there to build their own belief systems and thus shielding themselves from the Truth as it is in Jesus Christ and attested to in the church.  Similarly and this is to the church's bad, I've conversed with people who said they came to church seeking answers for their experiences, "did their time", and moved on to something else more “spiritual”.  The churches they went to were dealing in the religion of how to keep a culture Christian rather than the living faith and faithfulness of Jesus Christ, who was crucified and raised from the dead that we may live in him. 

So, here is some truth that we the church need to hear about our truth.  God the Holy Spirit is at work out there in the world.  People out there are having experiences of our living God.  We, the church, are then the ones whom the Triune God of grace has chosen and called to go into the world to disciple them, to teach them what is true about their experiences.  Yet, to do this credibly we must ourselves be living not just faithful lives which entails simple duty, but more so faith-filled lives before them so that by our lifestyles we teach the cruciform way of Jesus the risen one.  His living Truth can only be found in following him in the way of the cross, the way of unconditional, self-giving, and so often self-wasting love that brings forth healing in the world.  it is at the cross of Christ that any religious experience must bow if it is indeed of the truth.  Therefore, it is important we not be those dealing in religion other than the living faith of Jesus Christ. 

So, to communicate the faith of Jesus Christ in this post-Modern world we must be able to say it in a post-Modern way.  When the opportunity presents, and it will, we must be able to say “this is how I have experienced the living Lord Jesus Christ and therefore have come to faith in him as my Lord and Saviour” all the while respecting that others may and will see it differently.  This entails that we Christians have to know our Lord, not just have opinions about him.  We must know him and we must live authentically in his image.  The role of authenticity in lifestyle cannot be emphasized enough in communicating the faith of Jesus Christ to the post-Modern world.  So having said all that, allow me to take a moment and try to say who we Christians believe God to be and reflect a bit about our experience of God using Paul's expressions of it in Ephesians 1. 

We Christians know something unique about God.  First, we say that God is Trinity, the loving communion of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.  Next, we say that as Jesus, a first century Jew of Nazareth, whom we call the Christ, God the Son became human, lived, died, was raised, ascended, and will return to put his world to rights.  In the early days of the church this belief was blasphemy to the Jews and ridiculous to most everybody else.  The only proof they had was that the Holy Spirit was making people able to hear and actually believe the proclamation of the Gospel that as Jesus Christ the Trinity is reconciling the world to himself. 

This reconciliation entails that in, with, through, and as Jesus the Trinity has given humans access to his very self.  Since as Jesus God the Son became human, humanity can now be partakers of the life of the Trinity, no conditions to be met, no contracts to keep, no bargains to be made.  That's that way things are now.  In union with Jesus by the gift of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit God has chosen us to experience the loving communion of God the Father and God the Son and this relationship transforms everything about us.  This blessing or inheritance is the love of God the Father for the Son and the love of God the Son for the Father extended to us through the Holy Spirit so as to include us in their relationship, their communion of love, which is the very life of God.  Saying this less abstractly, because of the gift of the Holy Spirit we indeed do experience in the actual events of our lives the same steadfast love and unyielding faithfulness that God the Father has for Jesus the Son.  We are God's children now, brothers and sisters with Jesus.  Moreover, we share with Jesus his own adoration and desire to be faithful to His Father.  God the Father’s pleasure in and good will towards Jesus his Son, which is his blessing/inheritance, is our blessing, our inheritance with Jesus in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit.  The indwelling gift of the Holy Spirit confirms that we are adopted into the relationship of the God the Father and Jesus the Son.  Adoption into the family life of the Trinity is at the core of Christian experience.

Add to this now a sense of chosenness.  We feel uniquely chosen by the Trinity to be part of something he’s had planned since before anything existed.  Over 13.7 billion years ago the Trinity chose us each to come into his presence to receive his favour, which is the blessing of the inheritance of the Holy Spirit.  We also have a sense of being in the Trinity's will for history, a part in his plan to unite everything in Jesus.  To play our part, the Holy Spirit renews us in the very deepest parts of ourselves making us to want to and be able to live so that others see God's grace flowing forth from us and want to experience what we have.

Moving on, the Holy Spirit is the personable presence of the relationship building love of the Trinity.  He is the power of God's self by which the Father in love raised Jesus his Son from the dead and he is the same power at work in us now changing us, making real the saving, healing change that God has wrought in all humanity simply by becoming human as Jesus of Nazareth.  Thus, as Paul says we experience redemption.  Redemption is a word from the slave trade.  It means bought back from some form of slavery.  Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit to the glory of his Father by the giving of his life over to death by which death is defeated sets us free from everything that oppresses us, everything that enslaves us.  Follow him and see if this does indeed become your truth. 

Boiling it all down.  This means that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit really loves us each from since forever ago.  For no reason of anything we have done or could ever do to gain it, the Trinity simply loves us all and acts accordingly towards us.  He watches over our lives working his good pleasure in us to free us and to heal us.  It may feel like Hell sometimes but when the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has done saving work in us we find we’ve been healed of pains that have been with us all our lives and set free to be a part of his ministry of healing to others.  Through this working of the Holy Spirit we learn to trust that love of the Father for the Son is what we have and are also enabled to live accordingly and that is the truth of the faith of Jesus Christ.  Follow him and see if this does indeed become your truth.  Amen.

Born to Die...for Us

Text: Ephesians 1:3-14; Hebrews 2:10-18
          In the book of Ephesians Paul often speaks of the mystery of the Gospel or the mystery of the ages or the mystery of Christ or the mystery of God’s will.  A mystery to Paul would be something hidden that is being made known, revealed.  The mystery is that before God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit created anything, it was his will to unite humanity to himself that we might be a praise to his glory which means to live worshipfully in and from his communion of love.  From the Book of Genesis we know that God, the Trinity created humanity in his image, which means that the nature of our life is our being bound together with relational bonds.  To be human is to be persons in community…the foundation of the image of God.  God’s will was, is, and always will be for human community to reflect the community of self-emptying love who is the life of the Trinity.   This reflection is the praise of God’s glory.
          Another way of thinking about this is to say that the Trinity set out to make humanity his corona in creation.  A corona is the crown of light that occurs around the moon during a solar eclipse.  When the moon moves directly between the sun and the earth, everything goes dark except for this crown of light encircling what looks like a big black hole.  The Trinity is unknowable like the blackness of that hole because he is not of this creation, but the Trinity wants humanity to be his shinning forth like that circle of light which coronates the moon during a total solar eclipse.  It is the Trinity's will from before all time to unite humanity to himself that we being in the image of God might truly be the visible corona of his glory.  Now here's the kicker, the heart of this mystery.  This means that it was God’s will from before all time for God the Son to incarnate himself as Jesus of Nazareth in order for humanity to share in the communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit by grace, as a blessed gift.
          To sum up so far, the Trinity for the sake of sharing himself brought this universe into existence to love it.  He created humans in his image in the hope of coronating his creation with the praise of his glory.  He would do this by God the Son becoming human himself and passing that glorified humanity onto us by giving us the Holy Spirit.  This is going to sound radical, but God the Son becoming human in Jesus Christ was not something the Trinity decided to do because humanity has sinned and fallen short of his glory.  The Trinity was going to include humanity in his communion anyway and that, my dear friends, is what Paul calls the mystery of the ages in Ephesians and to the praise of God the forgiveness of our sins, the healing of our brokenness, and the destruction of death in the end is the inevitable result of God the Son becoming human in Christ Jesus and uniting humanity to himself by the gift of the Holy Spirit.   In the inner life of the Trinity sin cannot be, brokenness cannot be, and death cannot be.  When those things come into contact with the life of the Trinity, they cease to be.  The Trinity's will to unite us to himself has always been.  What has changed is that because of our sin which brought death and its futility, God the Son incarnate would have to suffer death and all it’s futility in order to destroy it and the fear of it –the devil’s favorite tool.
          The Trinity's version of reality is that he, the communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will shine forth his glory be making humanity his corona.  Therefore, what humanity would have been and we still will be, the reflection of the personal, communion of self-emptying love that the Trinity is.  Our version of reality is a bit different.  We live in a very troubled world.  The image of the Trinity in us is very broken.  Our created intent was for us to live in perfect harmony.  Yet, it is at the level of relationships that we are most greatly marred and broken.  Sin has utterly corrupted our capacity to be the image of the Trinity and thus, this creation now has for a crown something that more resembles a virus or a cancer; a humanity that brokers death.  The Bible’s claim for why there is death is that it is the result of our sin.  Paul describes human existence as slavery, slavery to the fear of death, a quite apt description.  Death ends our existence.  Knowing that this life won’t last forever provokes a small handful to make peace and the rest to indulgence.  It is no lie that the most grotesque and indeed evil atrocities done by humans have in one way or another been as a result of our fear of death.
          Our reality of sin and death is a slavery in which every one of us is both victim and perpetrator and it is futility and we have no innate means to escape it.  Nevertheless, this reality of futility and our inability to free ourselves from it is not why God the Son became human as Jesus Christ.  But, praise be to God it is by Jesus Christ that we are freed from it.  God the Son has become human as jesus of Nazareth, has taken on our flesh and blood that sins and dies, and by his death and resurrection the Trinity put death to death and destroyed Satan’s power to make us fear it.  Jesus Christ is the corona.  He has sanctified humanity, which means he’s made humanity holy in himself, which means we are now capable of living in our created purpose of being the corona provided we live in union with Christ by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to the glory of the Father.
          Christ Jesus has set the entire human race free from its slavery to sin.  Therefore, we need not live as those who fear death anymore.   That is the hope that we have to proclaim.  We, like Christ Jesus, shall be raised from the dead because he lives in us.  Paul says we share the same blood and flesh with Jesus Christ just like families share the same flesh and blood.  If you pardon the analogy we have the same DNA, the Holy Spirit.  He is not ashamed to call us his brothers and sisters no matter who we are or what we have done or left undone.  So great and incomprehensible is the love of the Triune God of grace.
          The Trinity in his will to bring us to glory, to make us his corona, has made Jesus who is the author of our salvation perfect through suffering.  Jesus was made perfect through his sufferings…not just his last few hours, truly he was like us in every way and thus suffered just as we do in every way.  He knows our every weakness.  He knows what it is like to fear death.  His perfection is in that he did not renounce the Father's purpose for his life by succumbing to Satan’s tempting him to use his power to preserve his own life in avoidance of death.  That is the same temptation we face as we live in him.  We know him who is our purpose.  We are the children of God because he dwells in us we share the same flesh and blood with God the Son.  It is his glorified flesh and blood that we will receive when we too die.  We need not fear death. We’ve a glorious future, as we too shall be resurrected.  The Lord’s Supper is a ready analogy for this.  By partaking of the bread and the wine we share in his flesh and blood.  You may not think so highly of the meal as I do, but I would readily admit that when we partake of that meal together we are participating in Jesus Christ’s own worship of his father and that, my friends, that is the corona.  When we share the Lord’s Supper we are letting God’s glory shine forth.  We most certainly are becoming his corona.  Worship in heart, service, and voice in Christ as the result of being filled with the Spirit is the shinning forth of God’s glory and a small taste of our future.
          God’s creating purpose for us was, is, and always shall be to make us the praise of his glory, the coronation of creation.  The Son of God becoming human as Jesus Christ, his death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven has accomplished this.  He shares it with us now by pouring his Spirit upon us, indeed he is with us sharing our flesh and blood and we his.  When Paul says that Jesus helps us to face temptation he means that Christ Jesus is in us covering us with his faithfulness and bringing us to worship.  With him in us we pass through death and have no reason to let ourselves be manipulated with the fear of death to act according to it.
          To say something practical here briefly, to live in the help of the Lord is as Isaiah wrote: “I will recount (remember) the gracious deeds of the LORD, the praiseworthy acts of the LORD, because of all that the LORD has done for us, and the great favour to the house of Israel that he has shown them according to his mercy, according to the abundance of his steadfast love.  For he said, "Surely they are my people, children who will not deal falsely"; and he became their saviour in all their distress. It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old (63:7-9).”  To remember isn’t just to remember; it is to live in the memory.  Worship always living in the sure knowledge of the love, kindness, and blessing that the Lord has poured upon you in making you his children through Jesus Christ.  He was born to die for us.  He has set us free.  Worship and live in that freedom.  Amen.