The Mystery of God’s Will, Jeff Wright, 1/5/14
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https://heartoftherockies.org/wp-content/uploads/_file_mp3/3367-079e0f13.mp3The Mystery of God’s Will
A sermon preached at
Heart of the Rockies Christian Church
(Disciples of Christ)
Fort Collins, Colorado
January 5, 2014
It is not over,
this birthing.
There are always newer skies
into which
God can throw stars.
When we begin to think
that we can predict the Advent of God,
that we can box the Christ
in a stable in Bethlehem,
that’s just the time
that God will be born
in a place we can’t imagine and won’t believe.
Those who wait for God
watch with their hearts and not their eyes,
listening
always listening
for angel words.
Ann Weems, Kneeling in Bethlehem
Texts: John 1:1-5, 10-14 & Ephesians 1:1-14
In his Letter to the Ephesians, Paul writes to a discouraged church. Christians in Ephesus have reason to despair. Some have been abandoned by their families. The Romans have begun to persecute them. The story they have embraced – the story of Jesus and the possibility of transformation in a person’s life and in the ways human life is ordered – has put them in conflict with the predominant narrative of the culture in which they live. Every culture has a meta-narrative, an overarching account of “the way it is” in the world.
The Ephesians believe that life is shaped by fate and necessity. That there are forces at work in the world beyond human understanding, beyond the power of a person to resist. The Romans believe that these forces – the stars, the gods – determine a person’s destiny apart from any contribution of a person’s character or the choices one makes. It’s likely that, at some point in the life of each – before they embraced the story of Jesus – Christians in Ephesus would have worshiped in the Temple of Diana, where in response to the question, “What is my destiny?”, priestesses would have worked themselves into a spiritual tizzy and spoken in a gibberish which one of the priests translated into a prophecy that would shape a human life. “This,” the priest would announce, “this is your fate.”1
It seems so naïve and remote. As children of the Enlightenment, we’ve been disabused of myth and superstition. So we’re told. Truth is, we have a lot in common with those first-century Ephesians. We don’t consult the stars. We’re past believing that the gods of Roman and Greek mythology determine the events of everyday life. But we moderns have embraced our own theories of fate and necessity. Consider the caste system in India, the belief that a person’s fate is determined by the conditions of one’s birth. Many Christians, Jews and Muslims insist that God manages every turn in life, from the finding of a parking place to the death of a loved one and the devastating consequences of a hurricane. Janet and I heard from a Muslim friend that his child was prematurely still-born. When I expressed our sorrow, he said, “Whatever God wills.” You’ve heard Christians say it, too: “It’s God’s will.” I understand how the belief can bring comfort and assurance in an uncertain world, in a moment of disorientation and grief, but the result is that God gets blamed for horrendous things that are so far from his loving desire.
It’s not just religious folks. Many who reject a spiritual explanation of life embrace more secular expressions of fate and necessity – theories like social Darwinism and economic determinism.2 The ongoing debate about whether a person’s life is shaped primarily by nature or nurture – one’s genes or one’s experiences – can mask a form of fatalism that dismisses the transforming power of personal choice and God’s intervention.
There’s not much support in our culture for embracing the Good News. Like the Christians in Ephesus, we may wonder, How are we to live a life of integrity and hope, of joy and confidence – how do we embrace Jesus’ story – in a culture of resignation and indifference, where even in the church we may hear, “Well, it must be the way God wants it”, “In God’s good time”? Paul has heard of the church’s discouragement and fear, their feeling adrift in the world, their temptation to consult Diana or the stock market, not the Scriptures, to see what’s in store for them.
He sets out to pen a letter of encouragement. He ends up writing what has been described as the Queen of the Epistles – an eloquent description of God’s work through the course of history, in the whole of creation. Paul reminds the church of our God-shaped destiny. Before the foundation of the world was laid, God chose us in love to be his children, whole and holy before him. Long before we were born, God destined us to share in the lavish generosity of his grace; to be a part of his long-range plan to gather all things up in Christ Jesus, everything in heaven and everything on earth (Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase, The Message). Everything – the Greek word Paul uses means “totality”, the sum of all of life’s parts – reconciled, healed, made whole and one again!
Paul writes that no matter how hopeless life may seem, our lives are rooted in something eternal, of enormous value and consequence. Something that God thought up long before we came along, something which, in the fullness of time, God will bring to pass. Forgiveness for a rebellious, broken people. Redemption for a broken, suffering creation. Paul assures the church – the church in Ephesus, the church in Fort Collins – that the End turns out to be a glorious New Beginning, just as God predestined.
When we turn this amazing Story – that we’ve come from God and that we’re going to God3 – into a doctrine, we call it predestination. This is the word that Paul uses in his letter. But Paul doesn’t think of predestination as a doctrine. Paul thinks of God’s plan as the best news ever to hit Planet Earth. When he started to describe this magnificent plan of God, Paul couldn’t stop. In the original Greek, verses 3-14 are a single run-on sentence.
A few years ago, at the Benedictine monastery in Snowmass, we sang this passage as the canticle during evening vespers. I thought, ”Who sings about predestination?” Many of us are more likely to make fun of the doctrine. You heard about the man who, starting down the steps to his basement, tripped and fell the entire way. When he reached the bottom, bruised and aching, he got up, brushed himself off and said, “Well, I’m glad I got that out of the way.” Most of us have thought of predestination – if we’ve thought of it at all – as a depressing assessment of life. Talk about fate and necessity: some predestined to live forever in joy and fullness with God; the rest predestined to eternal punishment. But when they were shaping doctrine from the Bible’s teachings about God’s plan for creation – first Augustine, then Calvin – neither embraced it as a dark and foreboding teaching. They were saying, as Fred Craddock describes the doctrine, that “God is God and he has determined that his will shall succeed.” In some quarters, however, the church has turned Paul’s affirmation of God’s gracious plan into the discouraging news that, in the end, we don’t really have any say in our destiny, that it’s already been determined by God.
But Paul writes of God’s dream – and God’s power to accomplish it – “in doxology and praise (Craddock).” Chosen and blessed in Christ, he writes. Forgiveness of our trespasses. Freely bestowed, lavished upon us, according to God’s good pleasure. Redemption, the gathering up of all things, to the praise of his glorious grace. This is a wide screen vision of life’s unfolding. It couldn’t possibly be any more inclusive. Picture a stunning, priceless vase, created by a master potter, shattered into a thousand shards, some so small you can’t see them; and there in the middle of the mess God down on holy hands and knees, gathering up every little piece, putting it all back together again.
How? Not by a power that bullies and threatens – but by a love so deep and a Spirit, God’s Spirit, gentle and patient yet determined, unrelenting, ultimately transforming. At work in the universe, at work in us, inviting our participation. This is how the world leans into, lives into, its God-given destiny. Together and each in our own way, we accept God’s invitation and join him in the world’s re-creation. Paul’s message to the Ephesians? The kingdom of God is coming and God’s will is being done on earth – not just by our praying for it but in our partnering with God to make it happen. Our freedom, our faith, our choices, matter.
This is what the second half of Paul’s letter is about. In the first three chapters, Paul describes God’s enormous and grace-filled project. In the last three chapters, Paul describes our share in the transformation, the life we’re called to live. Because Paul’s isn’t the kind of predestination in which we all sit around, pray a little and hope a lot for God to make things happen. Paul insists we have a share in bringing God’s dream to fulfillment. Chapters 1-3: the big picture of God’s plan. Chapters 4-6: the details of how we’re to live into it.
There’s nothing surprising in the last half of his letter, not for those of us who’ve been tagging along with Jesus. Paul describes a life of humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love. Telling the truth. Getting angry – we all get angry – but not holding on to our anger, not letting our anger permanently damage relationships. Paul writes, put away bitterness, let go of your argumentative spirit. Quit talking about each other behind one another’s back. Fornication, impurity of any kind, greed and vulgar talk – all that, Paul says, is a part of the old order, the old way of doing business that leads to broken and hopeless lives. Live into the new order, a world of beauty and blessing, wonder and generosity. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven us. Husbands, love your wives. Wives, love your husbands. Kids, honor your parents. Parents, don’t provoke your kids. Paul quotes Gandhi here: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Or maybe it was Gandhi who paraphrased Paul.
The life we’re called to live – nothing extraordinary. Except Paul understands that the living of such a life is extraordinary in itself. Every gesture of generosity and forgiveness, every act of patience, hope and integrity – no matter how small or seemingly insignificant – is not lost to the trash bin of history. Every act of faithfulness is of enormous worth and eternal consequence.
It’s so big: God’s plan, our destiny. I won’t blame you if you find it hard to believe, if you’re tempted to reduce the Christian account of the way it is in the world, the way it’s one day going to be, to a comforting doctrine, a list of rules, or a pleasant-sounding vision statement, something like, “Loving God. Serving others. Changing lives.”
But so we’re straight on this: Paul reminds us that our lives are destined for something big, something holy; that in our every act of loving God and serving others and changing lives we take up our share in God’s plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. To the praise of his glorious grace!
Jeff Wright
1 Thanks to Fred Craddock for the image, shared in a cassette tape series, Ephesians, distributed by Net Press (Lubbock, Texas). Craddock explains the ancient notions of fate and necessity and their affect upon the people in New Testament times.
2 See Walt Brueggemann’s description of modern competitors to the prophetic understanding of how God acts in history, “The Prophetic Word of God and History” in Texts that Linger Words That Explode (Fortress).
3 The Evangelist John shares Paul’s understanding. In John’s Gospel, chapter thirteen, he writes that Jesus, on the night of his betrayal and arrest, “knowing that he had come from God and was going to God”, got up, wrapped a towel around his waste, took a bowel of water and began to wash his disciples’ feet. This is what Paul is saying to the Christians in Ephesus: Life itself has come from God and is going to God.