Grace to you and peace...
This is the first Sunday that we’ll be in the book of Ephesians...until the end of August. We’ve been in Acts, in Romans and in II Corinthians since Easter. It’s like we’re touring around the Mediterranean, and now we land in Ephesus, on the western tip of modern-day Turkey.
Paul had founded a congregation there, and this letter was composed as a way of edifying and building up their community and their faith.
They were were a people who had been though difficult times. People who had lost children, buried loved ones, been traumatized by war, and felt the lures of the culture all around them.
Just to draw a little contrast to Corinth, which I talked about a couple weeks ago was a more wild town: Gamblers and sailors, brothels and bars -- a place where people passed through and consumed, often in destructive and reckless ways. I think I described Corinth as a “Las Vegas by the sea”.
Ephesus was not without those omnipresent activities, but Ephesus was more of an artsy town, I’m gathering -- famous for its amphitheater, its schools and governmental seats. Temples too. I imagine Ephesus as more of a college town, Eugene, OR, Chapel Hill, NC, College Station, TX. Cultural arts, technology, philosophy, science and theatre.
Which means, there were all kinds of ideas, all kinds of schools of thought.
Paul’s not dealing as much with a congregation ripped apart by controversy (as in Corinthians). In Ephesus, he’s dealing with building a congregation at all, as there are so many other interesting things going on there.
This is a caricature I’m drawing: Ephesus as a college town. But I hope it’s helpful to cast Ephesus in a different light than Corinth, because I want to emphasize and reflect on the ministry of the Apostle Paul -- “being all things to all people”.
Paul and the apostles were so versatile. And that’s important as a follower of Jesus. He could mix in with the good ol‘ boys down in Texas and the Harvard Law students in Massachusetts, the farmers in the Midwest and the Marines in San Diego. The actors on Broadway and the senior citizens in Seattle.
He wasn’t a chameleon, unmoored and willing to drift and let the wind take him whatever culturally and religiously. Ever known anyone who is unmoored and changing churches all the time, willing to go with whatever? It’s good to search, and explore religions, and think for yourself. But Paul was rooted and centered, despite all the exposure he had. Paul was led out into the wo
rld by one thing -- Christ’s love. Christ was at his center, and Christ was the reason Paul could be so versatile. He never lost that center, no matter who he associated with. [pause]
You can run and hide all you want...but your father will still be your father, your mother will still be your mother. This letter to the Ephesians talks about, once again, being adopted. We’ve heard this before in Romans. Children of God we are chosen and adopted, taken home by God in Christ to grow-up, (I think of my friend that bring their newly adopted children home for the first time to grow up in their house). We are taken home as children by God to grow up in God’s house, “according to the good pleasure of God’s will, to the praise of this glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.”
This was language that worked for the artists, scholars, travelers, seekers, philosophers of college-town Ephesus.
Maybe it’s language that works for you too.
Paul is trying to get through, and connect to everyone, including you. Not for his own sake, not for his own status or success, building churches in all these strange places like diplomas on his office wall. No Paul did everything to God’s greater glory.
What is the best way for them/you to understand and hear grace? I wonder that all the time. Do you know that you are truly forgiven? Do you know that you are indeed blessed -- with earthly riches, but with heavenly grace? Do you know that you’ve been adopted, because of Christ, to be God’s beloved child?
What’s the best way to get that message across? Through a hand-written letter, a text, a tv show or movie, by a friend, a play on stage, by a quilt? We’re all different, and receive messages in different ways.
Paul got that, and was so committed and passionate about sharing this message God’s grace -- that he’d cross seas, brave storms, endure prisons and beatings, meet strange people all, stay in their homes, eat their food, hold their children, take those and so many other risks -- in order to get that message of God’s love and adoption to a people that needed to hear it.
Academic communities, cultural centers are complex too, just like other communities -- lots of voices and pressures and lures in all kinds of directions.
For Paul to stop those busy people and try to communicate in their accent: you are chosen by God, to be a recipient of God’s grace through Jesus Christ, not because of what you do, not because you’ve earned it, but because God has chosen you for it. For scholars and artists and writers and poets, whose minds and hands are racing all the time, who are caught up in the fury of competition and promotion, Paul’s message falls fresh on their ears, the poetry and prose of Paul’s flowing style here must have been like a cool glass of water or a refreshing swim on a dry, hot summer day.
That message is for us too. In Christ Jesus, we have also obtained an inheritance. In Christ Jesus, we live and move and have our being. In Christ Jesus, we are forgiven.
And having encountered that promise, we are led out now. Christ is our light, Christ’s points the way, Christ calls us to share this good news with all kinds of people, in all kinds of places.
And so we go, as Paul did, in Christ’s name to love and serve the Lord. Thanks be to God. AMEN.
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