Paul's Gospel (Ephesians 1)

In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

“He has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” From the epistle for today, Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, chapter 1, verses 9 and 10.

      This selection from the Letter to the Ephesians reads like a creedal statement, a presentation of the nature and work of Jesus Christ, in language full, almost grandiloquent, which leaves no doubt about who Jesus is and what he is doing. The Nicene Creed, which we sing in our liturgy, is a very bare summary, compared to this chapter in Ephesians, and, indeed, about half the entire letter. The first three chapters of Ephesians summarize Paul’s Gospel, Paul’s Creed, and the remainder of the letter works out the consequences of his Creed. But, let’s get back to today’s reading from chapter 1.
      Paul begins, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” These words alone could be the outline of an entire sermon, but I choose just one, Christ. I think that for a lot of people today, ‘Christ’ sounds like a name, a surname almost, rather than what it actually is, an adjective or title. As we know, it comes from the Greek ‘Christos,’ meaning ‘Anointed,’ and is a translation of the Hebrew ‘mashiakh,’ (I hope that I have pronounced it correctly!) also meaning ‘anointed.’ We have all heard that it refers to the expected king and deliverer of the Jews, a deliverer from foreign rule. It can mean at least that, but it has another, older and deeper meaning. We remember that the Letter to the Hebrews refers to Jesus as the Melchizedek high priest, Melchizedek meaning ‘righteous king,’ an anointed priest-king of a very early Hebrew kingdom and its temple. Paul has this association in mind when he titles Jesus the ‘Christ.’ Jesus the priest-king in his temple is blessing us “with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.” In various places in the Letter to the Ephesians, Paul mentions what the spiritual blessings are, beginning, in fact, with the very next phrase: “he chose us…to be holy and blameless before him in love.” In other words, the first blessing he confers on us is to be present before him in his temple, “in love;” his love for “us” makes it possible for us to be present in his temple in heaven. So Paul is spelling out what ‘Christ’ means in action, and the first action is the Christ’s inclusion of “us” in his temple. Paul goes on to say that Jesus “destined us for adoption as his children.” Not only are we present in the temple, we are adopted children. The anointed priest-king is including “us,” not only in his people, but in his family. We are becoming, in other words, members of the royal priestly family itself, anointed ones ourselves. We remember that that is what ‘Christian’ means: anointed, included in the body of Christ. The First Letter of Peter makes the same point: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” The ‘marvelous light’ here is the light of the temple, actually the light of the Holy of Holies; Peter and Paul are making the same point about the Christ and his work, bringing “us” into his family and people, to be present before him in his temple.
       In verse 7, Paul writes, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.” It seems to me that this concept, redemption through blood, makes many people uneasy these days. The animal sacrifices may appear to us as uncivilized, barbaric, remote from any idea we have of ourselves and our relationship with God. We tend to think of God in a way removed from the harsher aspects of ancient and modern life. In any case, very likely we could not tolerate anything like ancient temple worship. But we remember that, according to the Letter to the Hebrews, Christians think of Jesus as the Melchizedek high priest. One of the duties of the high priest was the annual atonement, that is, the cleansing and re-consecration of the people and the creation to God, by the sprinkling of blood in the Holy of Holies. Blood, the symbol of life, reestablished the right relationship of God and creation, in the annual rites of atonement, in which the people acknowledged their sin before God. Sin damaged the people and the creation. People today are becoming more aware of this damage, as our recklessness does more and more harm to the creation. Unfortunately these days, not everyone is ready to reestablish a right relationship to creation; not everyone is ready to atone, not everyone is ready to redeem himself or herself, to bring themselves before God in repentance for the damage done, to avail themselves of the “riches of his grace” that Jesus has made available.
      Jesus makes this grace available, so to speak, when he puts before us the offering of the bread and wine, the same bread and wine which Melchizedek, king and high priest of Salem, put before Abraham, in the 14th chapter of Genesis. By identifying himself and his sacrifice with the ancient priesthood, and by including us in it, Jesus is making it clear that a right relationship with God and creation is possible, and that we can avail ourselves of it. Every time we present ourselves at the altar for communion, we are availing ourselves of it, and we are indicating our willingness to each other and to God to be in a right relationship with God and creation. This is one meaning of Paul’s phrase “redemption through his blood.” There is realism here, an ancient realism, which we can bring into our reality, by accepting the grace, which really means the ability, to live rightly in creation, as the ancients did each year in the atonement rites.
      Paul writes in verse 9, “He has made known to us the mystery of his will.” We have already heard some elements of that mystery, that will: inclusion of the people before him in the heavenly places, inclusion in the royal priesthood, re-establishment of right relations among God, humans, and creation. There is more, as we hear: “to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth;” “obtaining an inheritance.” ‘Gathering up all things in heaven and earth’ reminds us of the ‘new heaven and the new earth’ which we hear about in the Revelation to John. There will be a transformation of heaven and earth into something new. We see the beginning of it before us, in the community which Jesus has brought into being, the Church, and in the means of grace he has put before us, which enable the transformation.
      “Obtaining an inheritance.” We have heard already that we are adopted children of Christ; that is what makes us heirs. We are not outside the family, and so we are not outside the estate, so to speak. Later on in the letter, in chapter 3, Paul spells out what this means. It means that Gentiles, non-Jews, are included in the adoptive family of Jesus. Paul writes, “Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel.” There is, in other words, no longer any distinction between chosen people and not chosen, natural and adopted heirs. That is the mystery of Christ that Paul reveals in the Letter to the Ephesians, that Gentiles have become fellow heirs. This idea may not sound remarkable to us now, since it has been circulating in our civilization for centuries, but at the time it was a shocking notion. We recall that the apostle Peter had to struggle to accept it, and even now many people would exclude others from the love of Jesus Christ. But we have the word of Paul the apostle that Christ chose all “before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him.” May we pray with Paul that we “set our hope on Christ,” and “live for the praise of his glory.” Amen.