Explorig Ephesians: Chapter 1

Exploring Ephesians: Lavishing Grace Eph 1: 3-14

I love to write letters. To send cards with encouraging notes. During most of college and seminary I would try to send at least three letters or encouraging cards per week and I would sign them with one of two things “You are Loved” or “You are worthy.”

If I had to describe the letter to the Ephesians I would use the same phrases - worthy and loved. For the next several weeks, until we arrive at the season of Advent, we are going to be exploring this letter together. Some in the parish have been studying this letter as part of a Bible study, but there are different things that we pick up on when we are combing through the word of God together than when we hear the Word preached on Sunday morning. Both are vitally important and remind us that scripture speaks to our hearts over and over again.

Our scripture this morning is found right after the greeting issued by the letter’s author to the church. The author didn’t waste any time jumping right in and boldly proclaiming the word of God, that Christ and God are to be blessed and worshipped. While we worship God for who God is and not just what God has done for us, the church in Ephesus is reminded of all the love that God has lavished on us through Christ. We know that we are loved by God because we have been adopted into the family of God - not because of anything that we have done or we have earned on our own merit, but because of Christ freely giving himself for us on the cross. It is because of that gift that we have life and have it abundantly. We are forgiven and redeemed and given new chances because of God’s lavish love for us. 

The problem church is that too many people still haven’t heard about this love. They think that God could never love them, that they would never be welcomed into the family of God because of things that they have done in their past. The truth is we all have done things that we regret. We have all sinned. And God doesn’t view one sin as worse than another. That tends to make church folks a little bit nervous - that a lie or gossip is the same in the eyes of God as stealing. But that’s the way it is. Sin is anything that separates us from the love of God and it all pains the heart of God. We also cannot fix our sin issue on our own - we cannot will ourselves to stop - instead we need a Savior that breaks the power that sin holds in our lives. Enter Jesus. 

God knew that a plan was needed to cancel the power of sin and death in our lives, so God fashioned Jesus, completely God but in human form to walk on the earth and teach us how to live. And when the time was right, Jesus gave his life for us, shedding his own blood as the price for our sin. This is the greatest gift we could have ever been given and because of it we are welcomed into the family of God and called the Beloved.

I graduated from a Christian college. To be accepted you had to write a statement of faith and covenant to grow in your faith while you attended. I transferred from a large liberal arts school with these ideal notions of how much easier it would be to live out my faith surrounded by other Christians, especially these ones who had to write out a statement of what their faith in Christ means to them to even be accepted. I was shocked the first year there, when I found that so many people were struggling with their faith. Shocked that so many people understood in their head that Christ had died for them, but couldn’t quite let it sink into their hearts. 

During the summer session after my first year I found a book that radically changed by life, Henri Nouwen Life of the Beloved. The book was written by Nouwen, a priest, to one of his non-christian friends about how much God loves them. Friends, Christian or non-Christian, we all need to be reminded about the lavish love of God. So I started to hand that book out to everyone I met who was struggling with the question if God could really love them, really forgive them. I wanted people to know that they were the Beloved of God, not just in their heads, but in their hearts as well.

Too many Christians are walking around with an unneeded since of shame and feeling like their life is worthless today. If anyone should be singing a song of hope and God’s love, it should be us! But when our faith is all in our head, it makes it really hard to accept with the author of Ephesians is talking about - a God who loved us enough to make a way through the cross. A God who loves us enough to adopt us into the family of God, no matter what we have done in our past. That brothers and sisters is the grace and mercy of God. That is why we are in awe and sing songs of wonder and praise.

But this love, this Belovedness, is not something that we are to keep to ourselves. Instead we are called to the specific task to serve God and neighbor out of gratitude for what Christ has done for us. Church, will we be remembered as people who shared the lavish love of God? Will we be the people who tell others about the God who has made a way to be set free from the power of sin? Will we be a people who remind people that they are worthy, not because of what they have done, but instead they are worthy because of what Christ has done?

Can I be honest with you brothers and sisters, nothing breaks my heart more than when we don’t put first things first as the church? When we argue over things that have little if any meaning for people’s salvation - what songs we sing, what color the carpet is, who will bring what dish to the next fellowship event. We are called to be better than that. We are called to act like the Beloved of God - who is set out to proclaim the salvation that can be found in Christ alone. 

Further, because of that salvation we should be people who proclaim the hope of God. Friends, the second thing that breaks my heart is when Christians bemoan all the reasons the church of God is failing and how we are going down like a sinking ship. We are the body of Christ and we will not fail. We may not have the same numbers in terms of worship and money that we once may have had, but that just means that we have more people who are waiting to hear the good news of Jesus, if only we are willing to go out and tell them! It is not our job to despair about the future, its our job to share Christ’s love in the present. Let’s go forth and share the hope that can only be found in Jesus, folks. Let’s focus on the amazing things God is doing in and through us. Let’s remember that we are the Beloved of God and act like it - in what we say and in what we do.

Sometimes it can be so hard to rest in the fact that we are the beloved of God. We live in a world that tells us that we need to earn our accomplishments and accolades. But the truth is, we could have absolutely everything that it is possible to earn or that we would want, but still not have the peace of God in our hearts because we haven’t fully accepted the love God is trying to offer us in Christ. Being the Beloved of God isn’t something you can earn, its a gift freely offered by God.

At camp this summer, one of the student’s favorite songs to sing was “How He Loves” by the David Crowder Band. Hear these words, “I don’t have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way Oh, how He loves us, Oh How he loves us. How he loves all.” Have you accepted that love in your life, yet friends? If so, may you find peace today in the assurance in your heart that you are the Beloved of God and may you go forth and live a life that proclaims to others that God is waiting on them with the best gift ever given. If you haven’t yet accepted that love, may you consider doing so this day, praying to God to accept Christ in your life, finding forgiveness for your sins,  and beginning to that voice of love that is saying to you that you are the Beloved of God. Amen.