Rick Olson, November 4, 2007
In Greco-Roman letters like Ephesians it was common to include a section thanking God for the recipients of the letter. With one glaring exception, Paul included thanksgiving sections in all of the undisputed letters we have from him . . . that glaring exception was the letter to Galatians, where he seemed to be so angry with them that he just couldn’t bring himself to thank God for them, not after the bone-headed things they’d been up to . . . but here in Ephesians that’s not a problem, and Paul—or one of his disciples writing in his name—is in the middle of his thanksgiving as our passage opens, and he makes a bold claim about the nature of the Christian life . . . he says those of us in Christ have obtained an inheritance, having been destined—Paul was, after all, a good Presbyterian—having been destined according to God’s purposes, and so right off the bat he makes claims about the relationship among believers, that our common inheritance allows us to live for the praise of glory, that allows us to worship God rightly and intelligently.
So it’s that shared inheritance that even makes it possible for us to worship together here at Covenant, but what that inheritance consists of is at once certain and yet difficult to imagine, because on one hand we know that Paul uses the inheritance metaphor to talk about inclusion into God’s family, where we become the justified children of God, and on the other hand he’s talking eschatology here, about the coming kingdom of God, and who knows what wonders await God’s children at that time . . . and he speaks of all of us who share in that inheritance, all who have been baptized and thus marked with God’s seal of the promised Holy Spirit . . .
And he speaks of us here, today, as much as he does of those ancient Ephesians . . . we here at Covenant have been marked and sealed by God through the Holy Spirit . . . we share together in that inheritance . . . every time we baptize someone—as we will in just two weeks—every time we baptize someone in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, we mark her or his forehead with the seal of the Holy Spirit, and with that mark, God seals his promised inheritance to us . . . and that’s what binds us together as a common community, and it’s bound us together for fifty-eight years, right here at the corner of Hargrove and Prince. It’s through that common inheritance, given by God’s good grace, sealed by God’s good sacrament of baptism, that we gather here this morning.
And Paul thanks God for our love, and we have loved one another over the years . . . there has been a lot of love for one another and—indeed—for all of the saints—because that’s what we are, all of us, the communion of saints, the fellowship of believers, we’re just a part of that mighty cloud of witnesses, past, present and future . . . and a mark of that communion is our love of all the saints, all the holy, all those God has set aside as God’s children, and we’ve amply demonstrated that love, here within these four walls and out in our community . . . we’ve always shown that love by thought, word and deed, providing community organizations with start-up space and funds, groups like Habitat and Caring Days . . . we’ve sent mission trips to Mexico and started kindergartens here at home . . . and today we have two programs—Arts n’ Autism and Chance to Dance—that are models of their kind. And they’re connected to our history as a church by a golden thread of love and compassion, that points to who we are and have been and will be as a communion of saints.
Very shortly we will honor the members of Covenant who have passed away this year, we’ll read their names and light a candle to their memories, and as we do, I invite you to remember all the saints who have gone before, all who have been members of this congregation and have passed to their final reward, who finally know the secret of that inheritance we all share . . . if you haven’t been around since the beginning, not to worry—populate this church in your mind's eye . . . imagine the hard work and sacrifice and love that’s gone into this congregation over the years, imagine what it must have been like, and what it took to—by the grace of God—carry out our mission for all those years. And while you’re at it, envision the future of Covenant for the next fifty years, dream of the possibilities, try to imagine what it could be like. Imagine us strong and vibrant, responding to a changing world and changing needs with confidence and compassion and love. Because as our ancestors in the faith discovered, those saints who have gone before, in the imagining, in the dreaming, in the envisioning, God will make it so. Amen.
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