6/7/15
Chris Breslin
Ephesians 1:1-2
Square Halo Testimony: Sabrina Bowyer
Sermon Quotations:
“Church is the textured context in which we grow up in Christ to maturity.” –Eugene Peterson
“In a profound sense this greeting therefore nicely represents Paul’s larger theological perspective. The sum total of God’s activity toward his human creatures is found in the word “grace”; God has given himself to his people bountifully and mercifully in Christ. Nothing is deserved, nothing can be achieved. The sum total of those benefits as they are experienced by the recipients of God’s grace is “peace,” God’s eschatological shalom, both now and to come. The latter (peace) flows out of the former (grace), and both together come from “God our Father” and are made effective in our human history through our “Lord Jesus Christ.” –Gordon Fee
“He has taken (our autonomy) to Himself; He has not taken away our existence from us. We have not ceased to be ourselves. We are still free. But in that existence He has left us without root or soil or country, “having transferred us to the Kingdom of the Son of his love” (Col. 1:13), having Himself become our root and soil and country.” -Karl Barth (CD 1/2
“In my beginning is my end.” -T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets, East Coker)
Ephesians Resources:
The Broken Wall by Markus Barth
Union with Christ by J. Todd Billings
Colossians, Philemon & Ephesians (NICNT Commentary) by F.F. Bruce
The Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller
Practice Resurrectionby Eugene Peterson
Ephesians (Belief Theological Commentary) by Allen Verhey & Joseph Harvard
[Audio unavailable, rough manuscript below]
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To God’s holy people in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Growth: summer is a time for growth, far be it from just a time of relaxation, it is a time when we can focus and be purposeful and set aside some time and effort. Our paces often actually slow a bit. School is out. Vacations are happening. There isn’t a lot of sports or tv on. What better of a time to dig in and set ourselves up as individuals and as a group for the next season of growth and harvest. As an exercise this summer, try to set aside an hour or so (probably less if you’re a fast reader) to sit without any distractions, no phone or emails to answer, no social media to compulsively check, no kids to feed or care for, nothing tugging at your attention. Take 1/168 of your week, to sit and read Ephesians straight through. To soak in the good news that God has grounded us in what Christ has done, has breathed life into us by his Spirit, and given us each other, the Church, as an environment to sink roots deep into the fertile soil of his love and grace. Imagine what this means for the rest of your week, write it down. Share it with someone else at potluck or tag it with #OakRooted. This could be the most fruitful investment of 13 hours of your summer you could make.
Rootedness: we’ll dig our roots down, so our branches can extend outward. Know that this isn’t the sort of thing that you can just press pause on one part and work on the other, no. Plants and trees don’t work that way, and neither do humans. But we can purposefully work on that underground, hidden, subterranean part of our faith and spirits, that’ll nourish us, that’ll help us withstand trauma or difficulty, that’ll help us live into what we’re supposed to be. We’ll re-root in the gospel of Christ, the good news that Jesus was born, died and rose for us and that he invites us to believe in him and follow him. To embark on an amazing adventure as his family and friends and to be a part of how God is remaking this hurting world by his Spirit.
Grounding what we’re learning in real life, real places & real people: If you notice our sermon art, you’ll notice that these hands and torsos look familiar. They belong to Josh & Kendra Neipp who run Sugarbean Farm in Hillsborough. Will Hammond snapped these photos on a harvest day before they went to market. I couldn’t think of a better way to visualize the kind of rootedness & groundedness I’m hoping for as we read this letter to the Ephesians. The kind of dirt-under-the-nails, nitty gritty. I hope that your reading and our study will invite you into that sort of work of cultivating. Cultivating relationships in the gospel: at work and home and in this church and surrounding community. Paying attention to the stories of people around you and listening for ways to impart grace and share in the peace of Christ. That’s a good place for us to dig in with the first two verses of Ephesians… [READING EPHESIANS 1:1-2]
“Paul’s”email to the “Ephesians”?
Some ground rules. There has been a lot of scholarship and questions around Ephesians, some of which is important to our study but most of which is far too complex and far too speculative to spend much time on.
1 Question is who wrote Ephesians? While our passage says, Paul, an apostle…the style of the letter has some different styles than a lot of what Paul wrote. He’s not writing to combat a specific conflict or difficulty, he doesn’t get super-specific naming people to say hello to, he writes in really long sentences… I’m going to work under the assumption that Paul or at least someone working with Paul wrote it. When you’re reading Ephesians it’s just too similar to letters like Colossians and Galatians to not sound like Paul. I wonder if both the sentence-length and the non-specificity had to do with an older pastor Paul, waxing philosophical, as we’ll see next week, switching into a mode of poetic prayer… His prompt, maybe even from prison, was to describe, in poetic detail what in the words of Wendell Berry, it meant to “Practice Resurrection.”After all, we’d all write a little differently if we were writing an extended meditation to our kids on what it means to grow up, what we’ve learned, than if we were trying to parent them in the moment. He pulls in all sorts of mixed metaphors about the body, agriculture, architecture, combat, marriage, he employs all sorts of devices to try to paint a picture of maturity in Christ.
Another question is whether or not this was to the Ephesians? Traditionally it was assumed to be, but most of the greek papers that our English Bible was taken from don’t have “in Ephesus” in them at all. Some have thought just based on some of the content that it could have been primarily aimed a few miles down the road to the good folks in Laodicea. The reasons for this is that in Colossians, that letter about the epic, cosmic nature of God’s salvation in Christ, Paul reminds them to check out another letter he wrote to the Laodiceans, that we don’t know what it says: Col 4:6 says “And when this letter has been read among you, have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans; and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea.” From what I can tell, this letter, and we’ll continue to call it “Ephesians,” made the rounds and was copied and re-copied (remember this is before Command-C/Command-V!). Each community probably made it their own, so when it was read in Laodicea, it was either written or read, “To God’s holy people in Laodicea, the faithful in Christ Jesus”and in Ephesus, to God’s holy people, the saints in Ephesus. When Colossians talks about “mystery” it talks about the mystery of God sending his Son to save the world. When Ephesians talks about “mystery” it talks about the mystery of the church, a group of people who once had nothing in common, but now have everything in common because of Jesus.
If this bothers or confuses you, forget it, pay no attention. I mention it because I don’t think it’s that big of a deal, not an embarrassment, and certainly not something that if you found out later should be a deal-breaker for whether or not it matters, makes sense, or is trust-worthy for us.
What we call “Paul’s letter to the Ephesians” is God’s word to us, and it’s contents reveal to us through the Holy Spirit, a God who loves us and wants us to grow up in Jesus our Lord. This letter, if it had been sent now, would have probably been an email (and would have had the kind of meta-data to dispel some of these questions!) and it would be important for our real lives. Would have authority because, Christ as Lord has the authority to tell us what it means to really live and be human and participate in eternity, because he really lives, is truly human, and his kingdom will last, oh and we’re IN HIM. We’re with him. We’re united to him. We’re his body. This is what Ephesians is all about.
These questions are also sort of blessings. They’re blessings because they make us remember what we’re reading. A letter. And a letter, whether a greeting from one ambassador to another, an eviction letter from a landlord to a tenant or a check-yes-or-no note passed across the aisle from one 5th grader to another has an author and a recipient.
The question of the author asks us to get to know Paul. To remember and replay his story. The story of the Pharisaic, fundamentalist Jew, named Saul, who was set about to eradicate these new “heretics” who said that Jesus was the Messiah, the savior of the world, the long awaited rescuer that would end God’s people’s misery, and occupation to both Caesar and to sin and death. To everything “not-God.” After Stephen got stoned to death in Acts, the first verse of Chapter 8 just says: “And Saul approved of their killing him.” This Saul then, get’s knocked off his horse and blinded: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”“Who are you, Lord?”Saul asked. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,”he replied. “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.” It’s at this point, according to my 3-year-old greek scholar, Noa, that God made him “nice” and changed his name to “Paul.”
Right then Jesus, his Lord, sent him and never stopped sending him. It was at that point that he went from being Saul to Paul. But not just Paul, but Paul the Apostle, –postal, a sent-one. And his greeting says, “by the will of God.” He had his whole identity his whole life, renamed, reframed as a sent-one of God. Where he once saw God’s will in violence and exclusion. In self-righteousness and persecution. In tearing down, now he’d been changed. Paul went from being a hitman for Yahweh to being a “postman”for Jesus.
Every time Paul addresses a letter, “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus”it should make us remember when we first met Christ. It should remind us of a change in priorities and a change in outlook. It should call us to relive the vigor and excitement that we felt when we first knew salvation. It should be a sign for us that no one is beyond the ability to change, no one too sinister or violent, or sinful or self-righteous, or ideologically driven, or beyond the pale. Not Paul, not us. For the Ephesians and for us, it should beckon us to “remember our first love.”
STORY: Me, Paul, & Erik Studying Ephesians as new Christians.
If the question of the author begs us to remember Paul’s story and our own, the question of the audience begs us to imagine the Ephesians and ourselves as saints, holy ones, the faithful in Christ. The gospel, the good news of God’s salvation for the world, the forgiveness of sins, the release of captives, new life and possibility, the coming kingdom of God, demands a location. In this case, in Ephesus, a real place at a real time to a real church. No idealized saints, no hagiography. Paul’s making the rounds to a church plant of his friend Apollos and writing to one or more of the fifteen real churches mentioned in the NT (only two didn’t have letters addressed to them in our bibles): Roman, Corinth, Thessolonica, Galatia, Philippi, Colossae, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea, Antioch, Jerusalem, Crete… In this case, real folks, IN Ephesus considered real holy because they are IN Christ.
Let’s remember that holy doesn’t mean boring, it doesn’t mean sitting isolated with that silly Don Draper smirk on a mountaintop, it doesn’t mean untouchable, it doesn’t mean the fancy parlor at your grandmother’s house with the white carpet that no one was allowed to sit in. Holy simply means, set apart for a purpose. Often times that purpose is embedded, active, engaged. Each tool in a tool box is set apart for a purpose, a wrench for tightening, a hammer for nailing, a phillips head screw driver for a putting in and taking out a specific type of fastener.
God went to great lengths in the Torah to help Abraham’s people figure out how to look and feel and act set apart for the world rescuing work God had for them, some of that worked and most didn’t. Rather than putting them in a position to have an itchy trigger finger on being a blessing people, the tangible community that hurting people might flock to because they seemed most likely to be in on what God was doing, they got enclosed, exclusive. But in Christ, God has opened up the chance for his people, the new Israel to be holy, to be a blessing, to be the light that hurting people are drawn to like moths to a flame.
1 Peter 2:9: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Now Christ’s fidelity to God and his will, his faithfulness, would be the source and object of their faith, what Barth called our root, soil and country. He’ll make us Holy. Set apart for redemption work. For resurrection living. As Eugene Peterson says: “Church is the textured context in which we grow up in Christ to maturity.” We work out our holiness, our sanctification, in a place, with other “holy ones.”
Our location in Christ can make us holy and make our location in the world holy too. In Christ & In Ephesus: holy. In Christ & In Durham: holy. Do you see the difference this makes. You and I, holy because of Christ’s holiness and call to be holy. With the potential to make our neighborhoods holy. Our homes, holy. Our places of work and study, holy. Whoa. Square halos: personal testimonies of ordinary saints.
Finally: what Paul greets them with: “Grace to you and peace.” Most of our bibles here are subtly deficient in how they translate this very familiar greeting. Nothing that is terribly inaccurate, just a shame that first, when we read this in the comfort and privacy of our own homes, silently in our own heads, in the wee hours of the morning, we lose the force of Paul’s 2nd person plural address. Who knew the Apostle Paul was a Southerner?! What he meant to say was “Grace to YA’LL and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!”This greeting is not singular. Sure it’s personal, but it is by no means private. It’s for you, but its more for ya’ll. This grace and peace is meant to be savored with others.
This faith meant to be worked out in fear and trembling in the company of friends and family. If you think this is a subtle difference, think about the difference in warming up a microwave tv dinner or unpacking a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to eat in the privacy of your cubicle and eating a family style meal at Thanksgiving or the buzz and din of lunch at Fosters or an evening at Fullsteam or Bull City Burgers with their common seating.
The other slight problem is the order of the words. This is not that big of a deal because Greek has a pretty fluid word order, but on occasion you can see little nuances, little emphases. Many of our bibles, including the NIV, say “grace and peace to you…” This is right, but not the best. Paul writes, and the NRSV & ESV get this good: “Grace to you and peace. Grace. Then Peace. because as Gordon Fee puts it, “In a profound sense this greeting therefore nicely represents Paul’s larger theological perspective. The sum total of God’s activity toward his human creatures is found in the word “grace”; God has given himself to his people bountifully and mercifully in Christ. Nothing is deserved, nothing can be achieved. The sum total of those benefits as they are experienced by the recipients of God’s grace is “peace,” God’s eschatological shalom, both now and to come. The latter (peace) flows out of the former (grace), and both together come from “God our Father” and are made effective in our human history through our “Lord Jesus Christ.”
Grace. Then Peace. Peace with God. Peace with ourselves. Peace with each other. Peace with creation. All flowing our of God’s grace that surrounds us like the air we breathe. That falls on us like rain. That gives gifts we not only don’t deserve, but can’t repay and will never exhaust. We’ll spend the rest of the summer learning about this grace, and the peace that breaks down dividing walls of hostility. Peace that creates family where there once were enemies. Peace based purely on grace.
At the end of August we’ll finish this Ephesian letter and find, in Eliot’s words, “In my beginning is my end.”For Paul closes the letter much how he started it, saying:Peace to the brothers and sisters, and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love. (6:23-24)
