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Foundry United Rev. |
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Created…for Good Works Sunday, October 30,
2005 |
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Ephesians 2: 8-10 |
Fresh
out of seminary 30-some years ago, pastoring and living in northeast I had
just completed three years of intensely studied systematic theology. My mind
immediately began to race and I began to write a term paper in my head. Am I saved?
Well, in principle, yes. In
principle, all creation, all humanity is saved; but, on the other hand, we
are saved in an anticipatory way. As
long as there is still war and injustice and poverty, we are not fully
saved. So, yes, I am saved, but not
quite yet. All
this raced through my head as he stood there waiting for me to give an
answer. He stood there impatiently and
finally I said, “Yes, I am saved constantly.”
He looked at me and said, “I can tell by your answer you’re not.” He stuck a tract in my hand and went on to
confront someone else. But I give him credit for this. I remember very little about what happened
in my life thirty years ago, but I still remember his question. Are you saved? Am I saved?
Are we saved? This
brings us to the book of Ephesians.
I’ve been studying and preaching on the book of Ephesians this fall
because I think it is one of the most Christ-filled books of the New
Testament. I want to go deeper. I want us to go deeper in our understanding
of Jesus Christ and the significance of Christ for our lives today. I
believe that the book of Ephesians includes some of the writings and
teachings of the Apostle Paul, a summary of the Apostle Paul’s teaching. But
I believe it was written by his followers, people who were part of his
ministry. I believe it was written and composed after the Apostle Paul’s
death and that it goes further and deeper than the Apostle Paul had
gone. It answers some of the questions
it addresses in a way that is not inconsistent with the teachings of the Apostle
Paul but which are applicable to a new situation and place. One of
the questions that the book of Ephesians tries to answer is the question about
what it means to be saved. It goes
beyond Paul’s teachings. The Apostle
Paul emphasized an understanding of salvation as being rescued, that we were
saved because God would rescue us from this life, that God would rescue us
from the conditions and circumstances of life, that God would even rescue us
from our bodies. “Who will rescue me
from this body of death?” To be saved
meant to know that we would be rescued.
Well,
Ephesians goes beyond this. Ephesians
believes that God is saving us in this life, in this condition, in this
circumstance, in these bodies. Ephesians believes that we are not only saved
one day when God rescues us, but that Jesus Christ’s salvation is at work in
the cosmos, in the universe, in our very hearts here and now, in this
condition, in this circumstance, in this body in which we dwell. There
is one sentence in the lesson from Ephesians this morning that I would like
us to just sit with a few minutes.
Ephesians repeats a basic concept that the Apostle Paul taught that we
are saved by grace through faith, that it is not a result of our own works. Then
Ephesians, in the second chapter, in the tenth verse, goes on to say this,
which I think is Ephesians’ understanding of what it means to be saved. Ephesians 2:10 says this: “For we are what
[God] has made us. We are what God has
made us. Created in Christ Jesus for
good works, we are what God has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good
works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” There
are three parts to this description of salvation. “We are what [God] has made us.” This translation, however, does not do
justice to the Greek text. In the
Greek text, the action is incomplete; it is done but not finished. So, if it weren’t so cumbersome it would be
better to translate it by saying: We are what God has made us and what God
continues to make us, or we are becoming what God has already made us. To be saved means to become what God has
already made us. We are still being
created. Creation and salvation are the same thing. The God-saving work in our life is for
us to become what God has already made us. Life is
a school. Life is a school in which we
are learning what God has made us. The
good and the bad parts of life, the ups and the downs, the loving
relationships and the difficult relationships, and the relationships that are
both loving and difficult at the same time – all of these things are part of
the school of life. Our job is to
learn in this school of life who and what we are made to be. An old
friend of mine, who is a full-time pastoral counselor, says that life is the
best therapy. Life is the best
therapy. Everything in life is part of
God’s process of making us who God has already made us to be, and it happens
to us as a gift. Now, I personally
don’t believe God throws things at us.
I don’t think that God says, “Dean is not paying enough attention to
the realities of life or thinking profound enough thoughts; therefore, I’m
going to throw trouble into his life.”
But I believe that life itself is created in such a way as to test us,
to stimulate us, to encourage us, to challenge us so that in the process of
living we discover who and what we really are. I was
watching one of the religious channels on television last night until Jane
came into the room and made me change the channel. It was one of the religious channels, and
they were broadcasting live from a large gathering at the There
was one speaker who intrigued me because he was talking about his own financial
disasters in life. He had built up a
rather large business in his twenties, mostly on the basis of credit. Then, at some point in his life, the banks
called in his notes and he didn’t have the money. His empire began to crumble one after
another and it was devastating to his life and devastating to his
family. After that, he said he began
practicing a new way of managing his money, which he said consisted primarily
of cutting in half his credit cards. Now, in
the course of his sharing, he used a phrase that is apparently a popular
phrase in the sort of religious world that you will see on some of the
religious channels on cable. He was
talking about the difficulties of his past and how painful it was. In the middle of it, what he said was this
phrase, which is apparently a slogan popular in these circles. They’re much better at slogans than we are
because as soon as we lay out a slogan, we start ripping it apart and say
this doesn’t apply and adding footnotes and ending up again with a term paper. But this was the slogan, and I really heard
it. He was talking about all this
trouble he’d had in the past, and then he said this phrase, “It’s all good. It’s all good.” What he
was trying to say is that even the most awful, worst experiences of his life
were good because he had learned something from them, and grown from them,
and become the person he is today.
It’s all good. Now, I would
never say that to a person who was in the middle of a tragedy in their
life. But if we in our lives can come
to the point when we can look back on everything, the good and the bad, the
things we thought would break us, the stupid mistakes we made and to be able
to say all of that is good because through those things I have learned who
God made me to be. I want to know who
God made me to be, were it not for the difficult times as well as the
joys. It’s all good because through it
I have been saved and being saved means learning who and what God made me to
be. Now the
verse says two other things that I will mention just quickly. It tells us who we are made to be. It says that we are created in Christ Jesus
for good works. This is who God means
us to be, has made us to be. People
created in Christ Jesus for good works.
I think there are six good works.
Six good works are love and mercy, justice and peace, truth and
beauty. This is what God has made us
to be, people who practice love and mercy, justice and peace, truth and
beauty. If there are places in our
life where we are choosing hate rather than love, we are not being who God
made us to be. If there are places in
our life where we find ourselves being cruel, or places where we are
participating in violence that hurts other people, or in things that are
unjust that oppress other people, or things that are lies and not truth, or
things that are ugly and not beautiful that do not make beauty, then we are
not being who God made us to be. I was
talking to a friend whom I know from outside of church this past week. He
said to me in the middle of our conversation, “I need to find a new
job.” I asked him why he needed to
find a new job and he said, “Because my present job is more and more of an
expectation that I will do things that will deny services to poor people.” He said, “I am coming to realize that is
not who I am.” If we
are participating in things that are hateful rather than loving, cruel rather
than merciful, that are violent rather than peaceful, unjust rather than
just, lies or ugliness, then we are not being who God created us to be. The last
thing the verse says is this, “That even before we were made, God prepared
all of this to be our way of life.”
God has great confidence in us.
God believes that in all of life and all of living, we will discover
ourselves, and we will come to know who we really are and live it, and live
it, and live it. www.foundryumc.org |
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