a part of His Church.

Transcription

1 Ephesians 2:1-10 Ephesians The Grateful Dead 1 Rev. Brian North March 6 th, 2016 As most of you know, I enjoy good music, which I define as most anything except country music particularly old school country. A lot of the newer stuff is like rock music with a smidgen of a country twang. I can handle that. Rap and screamo death-metal probably aren t real high on my list either. One band that I ve never really paid much attention to but has had maybe the most dedicated following of any band in the last several decades is the Grateful Dead. Now, their music and the culture that surrounded them was fairly set against Jesus and the Good News that Jesus brings. If you read the lyrics to their songs, you ll seee that they actually have a pretty large number of songs with Biblical themes and references in them. But the band certainly was not promoting Jesus and the Christian faith. In spite of that, the name of the band itself connotes some pretty good theology. Now, that s not what they intended. The band got it s name when Jerry Garcia saw a dictionary lying open and the phrase Grateful Dead was the entry his eyes landed on. They simply thought it sounded cool. And yet, Grateful Dead is an apt description of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ and a part of His Church. And we see that in today s passage from Ephesians. Last week we explored the second half of the first chapter of Ephesians and saw what it means to be the body of Christ, and the power that Jesus has that fuels the church to live courageously. This morning, we see Paul sort of taking a step back and helping the church to see how they came to this place. What were they like before knowing Christ? What happened that drew them into a relationship with Jesus and becoming a part of the body, the church, that he spoke of in last week s passage? What has changed? This is the essence of what he writes about in today s passage.ephesians 2:1-10 here. So Paul writes in verse one that they were dead in their transgressions and sins. These two words are key. Paraptoma is the Greek word for transgressions and means fall or slip. So if you re on a road, or trail, walking along, and you slip off the edge, or fall off the edge, this word would apply. Sins is the Greek word hamartia, which we ve talked about before,

2 and I m sure you remember everything about it, so I won t go into it here. Just kidding. I know we ve talked about it, but probably most of us need a refresher. Hamartia means failing to hit the mark...an error. It has some ancient connection to missing the mark in archery. And the idea of slipping or falling and missing the mark that these two words convey is important and I think can radically impact how we understand who we are and our need for Jesus. Here s why: Too often we hear these words, especially the word sin and we think of people who murder, rape, embezzle money, rig the stock market in their favor, recruit kids into slave labor, and those kinds of things. And to be sure, those are trespasses and sins. By no means am I excusing them. The problem, though, is that too often we think that those kinds of things pretty much encompass sin, and most of us in the room are not like that. Most of us are decent, upstanding citizens who pay our taxes, put in an honest day s work, like to eat apple pie, and of course, vote for the right candidates. These two words seem to describe other people people who are in the headlines of the papers because of their immoral, illegal, and unethical conduct. And by-and-large, that just isn t us. But when we realize that these words simply mean to slip or stumble and to miss the mark well, that s something that we all do. For instance: How many of us who are husbands have missed the mark in how we love our wives? How many of you women who are married have missed the mark in how you love your husband? How many of us who are parents and grandparents have slipped or missed the mark in our parenting and grandparenting? How many of us have missed the mark in loving our neighbors as ourselves? Have we strayed off target? Have we slipped off the narrow path? The point is these are four facets of life and there are others, too where God has shown us a path to walk on, and a target to hit. There s a calling to live in a certain manner, to love the people in our lives, to be in relationship with them, and to help them in discipleship to Jesus. How many of us have stayed on that path, and hit the target? Look none of us have. As a result, those are areas where we have trespasses and sin. Trespasses and 2

3 sins is not just headline making stuff that bad people do. You and I do them, too. And trespasses and sins impact our relationships with the people in our lives, and our relationship with our Creator, our heavenly Father. So things such as secrets, lies even little ones, greed, covetousness, a hot temper, lust, laziness, and so forth, are examples of non-headline grabbing things that we all allow to get us off target. Because they re not attention-getting, these kinds of things don t often bring a quick death to us. It s slow. Rather than death by sword, it s death by wet noodle. One tragic example of this was the career and life of Oscar Wilde. He was a 19 th Century Irish playwright, novelist, and poet, and was one of the best-known personalities of his day. Yet he fell to temptation, went to prison and ended his life in disgrace. When he was suffering from his fall, he wrote his book De Profundis, (which is a Latin word meaning a heartfelt cry or anguish ) and in it he said: The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease...i forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber, one has some day to cry aloud from the house-top I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace. i So, even when everything looked great, when he had fame and fortune, things were going on in his life that took a long time years, maybe for the consequences to really be known, and before he realized how he was living in a dead way. Paul says that kind of life is a life of death. It s not really living. And to the degree that it is living, it s living life in a way that slips off course that misses the mark, that follows the ways of the world and the spirit of disobedience. But it need not be that way. Rather than ending in disgrace, we can end in grace. In fact, in the next instant, in verse 4, Paul writes, But We have to pause there. Something is coming in the next verses that will be radically different a complete change a contrast so beautiful, vivid, strong, captivating, and Jesus-centered that we ought to pause and prepare ourselves for it so as to let it fully sink in. Are you ready? But because of his great 3

4 love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions it is by grace you have been saved (Ephesians 2:4-5). That is breathtaking! It s a synopsis of the meaning of Jesus life, death, and resurrection. And yet, this is almost unfathomable. Even though we miss the mark, God still reaches out to us, while were still dead in our transgressions while we re still slipping off the side of the path and he makes us alive in Christ. And this is all grace and because of his love. And it takes this kind of unfathomable love, this unfathomable mercy, to heal the brokenness, because: Missing the mark and slipping off of the path is more than just breaking a rule or a law. When we miss the mark in relationships with our spouse or kids or co-workers or neighbor or church member or with God, the ramifications are bigger than just breaking a rule or breaking a law. It s breaking a heart. It s breaking a relationship. When we lash out in anger, when we get defensive, when we go on the offensive, when we ignore people, when we hurt others, we are doing something much more profound than breaking a rule or a law; we are breaking a heart and a relationship. We only need to look at real life to see this. For instance, how many of you have ever gotten a speeding ticket or a parking ticket? I got a parking ticket last spring. I accidentally parked in a handicap parking space. I was in the car with two other adults I backed into a parallel parking place, it was raining, we got out of the car quickly to go to a restaurant, and none of us noticed that I had parked in a place I shouldn t have. Do you know how much a ticket is here in Kirkland for parking illegally in one of those spaces? About $450! That was the most expensive Chicken salad I ve ever had. So I went to court over it to plead my case and proclaim the guilt of the two who were with me because they should have seen the sign and told me not to park there! Just kidding I didn t say that. I simply said I goofed. Completely missed it. An honest mistake. And the judge was gracious and reduced it as far as the law would allow, which was half price. I was so grateful, I wanted to hug him. I decided he might not appreciate that, though, and simply thanked him. So I paid my fine for breaking the law and everything was taken care of. 4

5 Let s say, however, that while driving my car I had hit a pedestrian and killed them. Let s say a life was lost maybe the son or daughter of someone, a husband or wife, a friend to others. Paying a monetary fee for negligent driving doing a few years of jail time for manslaughter or whatever that penalty would be would never, ever, ever repair the hearts that would be broken. That is much deeper than simply breaking a law. In Galatians, Paul writes of the fruit of the spirit love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. And the very next words after he lists them, he writes, Against such things there is no law (Galatians 5:23). These kinds of relational things aren t governed by laws; hearts aren t governed by laws. They re bigger than that. They re deeper than that. And when hearts are broken, when relationship is broken, the wound is deeper than when a law simply broken, and it can t be repaired in the same way as when a law is broken. That s why marriage is so hard. That s why being a part of a church can be hard. That s why friendship can be hard. It s why community can be hard: These things involve the hearts and relationships of people who sometimes commit transgressions and sins that hurt one another. And the restitution for breaking a law is not sufficient for mending a broken heart and a broken relationship. The only sufficient way to mend a heart or relationship that s been broken is to forgive. Paul doesn t use that exact word here, but it s what he describes. While we were dead in our transgressions, God took the initiative, reached forth his hand from heaven in Jesus and his cross, and mended the broken relationship He extended forgiveness for missing the mark. Paul goes on to say that this is an expression of God s kindness, and is all grace. There s no fee we can pay there s nothing we can do to fix the brokenness. It only happens though God s grace, his mercy his forgiveness and through his initiative. Our response then is to admit we ve missed the mark, receive the forgiveness, and live lives that seek to stay on that path, and aim for the target that God gives. This is seen in the good works that we do. We do good works not to earn God s grace, but because He s extended it. With hearts filled with gratitude, we seek to live in the manner that he calls us to: loving our spouses, our neighbors, our kids, our grandkids living as a servant to 5

6 the people in our lives living with generosity living in a way that reflects the transformative work of God s grace and His Spirit that dwells in us. In fact, in Galatians, right after Paul writes that statement about there being no law against the fruit of the Spirit, he writes, Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires (Galatians 5:24). In other words, as Paul writes in today s passage: the dead way in which we once lived the way that is full of transgression and sin that slips off course and misses the target that dead way of living is put to death, and instead we live according to the will and the spirit of Jesus Christ, full of gratitude that God has mended the broken heart. We put to death our old selves and live on target with gratitude which is expressed in our good works. The church really is the collection of the Grateful Dead: We re alive in Christ, but we re alive in Him only because God has made a way for our old selves to be put to death. We still slip and miss the mark more often than we d like to admit, but our whole attitude for why we try and get back on target gets changed, when we live life with gratitude for God s continued forgiving of us. Trying to live on target is no longer a drudgery or something we do because we have to or because someone tells us to; we do it because we re so grateful for what God has done in Christ Jesus. And so this ties in with what Paul wrote throughout chapter one, because the body of Christ, the Church which we looked at last week is the collection of the Grateful Dead who seek to live faithfully to God s calling, to do good works in the world so that others would know this saving grace that God extends. Today s passage is intimately connected to last week s. It used to be that the good works we did could take a certain approach and people in the community around us would resonate with what we did and understand what we did, and get on board and even join in. Today, the community doesn t join in because they don t understand this grace and the love of God Jesus is just a name to yell out in times of anger and frustration. God is just a word that follows oh my. And so our good works is to and for the world around us. It s not with them as it once was it s ministering to them, loving them, 6

7 blessing them, overwhelming them with generosity and kindness and so forth, so they would become a part of the Grateful Dead. 7 In short: You and I live in a mission field. Our church, where we live, is in the middle of a mission field. Not only do we need missionaries overseas in places like Papua New Guinnea as we heard about earlier in the service we need missionaries right here. That is God s calling upon us. And I pray that more and more each of us would live into that calling that we d be aiming for that target and staying on that path shining the light of Christ in our community.making disciples of Jesus Christ doing whatever it is that God calls us to do not because we seek to earn God s grace and favor, but because by God s grace, we are the Grateful Dead, fully alive in Christ. Let s Pray Amen. i From a combination of Wikipedia and William Barclay s commentary on Ephesians.