A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, July 15, 2012.
“GOD’S
GREAT, BIG PLAN … AND OUR PLACE IN IT”
(Homily text: Ephesians 1:3-14)
How
important are you?(Homily text: Ephesians 1:3-14)
We live
in an age in which many people sense that they seem to have no importance to
anyone, and that they have absolutely no importance to God. The pervasive attitude of many in our
contemporary society may be summed up thusly:
I was born, I will live my life (not very well, perhaps), I will die,
and no one will remember that I ever lived.
What a
sad commentary!
The
attitude I’ve just articulated was probably a widespread attitude in the
Greco-Roman world of the first century as well, the world that Paul was writing
to….Their attitude might have been much the same: You live, you die, and no one remembers or
cares.
But our
epistle reading for today, which is from St. Paul’s letter to the church at
Ephesus, has a lot to say about this sort of helpless, aimless attitude.
Essentially,
we might say that Paul is telling those early Christians in Ephesus that they
matter to God.
What we
are dealing with here is what theologians call “High Christology.” High Christology focuses on Christ Jesus’
divinity, without ignoring His humanity.
Here, in Ephesians, Chapter One, we have High Christology in abundance! High Christology reminds us that the Christ,
the second person of the Holy Trinity, existed before the foundation of the
world, before the creation of anything that was made. He is part of the process of creating all
that is, He is the eternal Word which was spoken at creation when God said, “Let
there be…,” and his coming to us in the person of Jesus shows the depth and the
completeness of God’s love for us.So, let’s dig into this wonderful, deep and rich passage.
We begin
with “beginnings”….In verse 4, Paul says that we were chosen “before the foundation
of the world.” This is awesome stuff: That God would choose each of us to be a part
of His chosen people, before all things were created….from the very beginning!
Put
another way, the truth of this may be stated by inserting your name and mine
into a blank in a sentence that goes like this:
In essence, God says, “At the very beginning, before anything was made
that was made, I knew that you, ___________ (insert your name), would be a
child of mine.” Moreover, God says, “I
chose you specifically to be my child, at the very beginning of all things.”You and I are known by name, to God. We were known by God from the very beginning, eons and eons ago, and we are a specific, intentional part of God’s plan.
Notice
that the action and the initiative are God’s, not ours. God chose us, we did not choose Him.
Now, let’s
turn to the second reality that Paul affirms:
Love.
In verse
5, Paul tells us that God “destined us in love to be His sons and daughters
through Jesus Christ.”
The
truth expressed here is that God’s destiny for us is that we should become sons
and daughters through Jesus Christ. In
other words, we become sons and daughters, inheritors of God’s Kingdom. Paul will state this reality elsewhere in
scripture, saying, “… through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a
son, then and heir.” (Galatians 4:6)
The
third aspect of our reading from Ephesians this morning has to do with holiness.
In verse
four of today’s reading, Paul tells us that we are chosen by God in order that
we might be “holy and blameless before God.”
We are
called to show, by the way we live and by the things we say and do, that we are
in relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
Addressing
the matter of the work God gives us to do, Bishop Martins recently stated that the
idea that we are “God’s hands, to do God’s work, is pure theological claptrap.” (These are his words.) I agree….we are not called to do God’s work
so much as we are called to be holy and blameless before God, showing by our
lives that we are in an intimate, ongoing relationship with God through Jesus
Christ.
Then,
and only then, can we show to the unbelieving world around us – that world that
flounders in the restlessness of an attitude that there is not value to life,
and no purpose worth living for – that God’s love lives within us, changing our
sense of our own worthlessness into an attitude of extreme value and worth….Put
another way, you and I matter to God…we matter a whole lot. We matter so much that God gave His
only-begotten Son, in order to offer a new relationship with God to each one of
us (see John 3:16).
Coming
into a deep, enduring and intimate relationship with God, we can show to the
world that we matter to God, and so does everyone whom God has created.
Our task
is, therefore, two-fold:
- To accept our place as God’s chosen people,
receiving God’s gift of new life in Christ with humility and thankfulness,
- To show the effects of that new relationship,
which gives ultimate and complete worth and value, to everyone.
