Ephesians 1:3-14
Proper 10 (15) - Year B
Christmas 2 - Years A, B, C
This is one heck of a long sentence. To try to condense it runs the risk of misrepresentation. Nonetheless, here is one shortening:
Blessed be G*D,
who desires us to be holy and
blameless in love
as we move toward G*D
by way of Jesus’ witness to
redemptive experiences.
What is your best approximation of this broad purpose statement that will get more specific as the letter goes on?
While you are at it, see if you can figure out the antecedents for all the “he” and “his” language. In terms of a Trinity, it would be helpful to have more than just male references. Earlier saints who speak of Mother Jesus help us out of unnecessary confusion. To simply read it as it is in a public setting loses folks very quickly. It would take a thespian’s thespian to read this aloud to today’s congregation and have them follow along. This same confusion also frees preachers to make any number of assertions about destiny as a forgone fact rather than a journey toward a destination.
Blessed be G*D,
who desires us to be holy and
blameless in love
as we move toward G*D
by way of Jesus’ witness to
redemptive experiences.
While you are at it, see if you can figure out the antecedents for all the “he” and “his” language. In terms of a Trinity, it would be helpful to have more than just male references. Earlier saints who speak of Mother Jesus help us out of unnecessary confusion. To simply read it as it is in a public setting loses folks very quickly. It would take a thespian’s thespian to read this aloud to today’s congregation and have them follow along. This same confusion also frees preachers to make any number of assertions about destiny as a forgone fact rather than a journey toward a destination.
As found in Wrestling Year A: Connecting Sunday Readings with Lived Experience
Blessed be! We have been blessed with every spiritual gift.
Remember this is a corporate blessing.
Together we are adopted and we adopt one another.(1)
In this we find our voice of praise and thanksgiving and the wholeness of a healthy salvation, one for all.
Planned or unplanned, this is a cup of kindness.
Resolution 4: To receive grace and peace on behalf of those not yet able to receive and to continue sharing the same with them regardless of their present ability to receive.
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(1) A Pale Blue Dot - an opportunity for a new year.
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Bonus New Year Material:
Hear Kenneth McKellar sing Auld Lang Syne in Scots.
The Millennium Prayer (combo of Lord's Prayer to Auld Lang Syne tune)
Aretha Franklin & Billy Preston bring another kind of joy to the song.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html
Imagine being chosen as a focal point for G*D's love to be lived.
From even before such a common phenomenon as time and down through the annals of same comes the moment known as you, or me. All of this, and more, asks what we will do with our inheritance.
Will we further any cause of liberation through the gift of redeeming love?
Tomorrow I speak with someone who is part of a reconciling United Methodist congregation in the L.A. area and who is here in Wisconsin dealing with the last stages of AIDS. The question on the answering machine was whether there were any gay friendly congregations here.
How would you respond to that question in your setting? Can you imagine with this person that they were chosen before time to be a focal point of G*D's love and that they are living that right now?
What are we to do with all the riches of G*D's grace that has been lavished on us? Hoard it? Give it away? Measure it out in response to deserving behavior or acceptable affirmations?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/january2003.html
This is one heck of a long sentence. Here is one attempt at condensing it. Such a try always runs the risk of misrepresenting the creedal and religious aspects of it.
"Blessed be G*D, who desires us to be holy and blameless in love as we move toward G*D by way of Jesus' witness to redemptive experiences."
What is your best approximation of this broad purpose statement that will get more specific as the letter goes on?
While you are at it. see if you can figure out the antecedents for all the "he" and "his" language. Just trinitarianly it would be helpful to have more than just male talk. Earlier saints who speak of Mother Jesus help us out of some unnecessary confusions. To simply read it as it is loses folks real quickly. It would take an expert's expert to read this to today's congregation and have them follow it. Of course, that same confusion also frees preachers to make any number of assertions about destiny being a forgone fact rather a journey toward a destination.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/july2003.html
The mystery of G*D's will has been made known to "us." That's a pretty powerful position to be in. What are we going to do with this gnostic wisdom?
Paul goes on to give this mystery away. In verse 13 we hear, "In him you also ... were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit...."
My goodness, the presence of G*D is not uniquely for me! Others have the same mark. Can that really be? The narcissistic part of me says, "Nyah, can't be." The holy, blameless, love part of me says, "Hooray!"
What part of you is saying what in regard to simply being part of a process where everything will be gathered up in the fullness of time?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/july2003.html
Here is a book title I hope someone will use, "Once and Future Redemption."
Verse 7, "In Jesus Christ we have redemption..." It goes on to use the blood and guts approach, "through his blood."
Verse 14, referring to Holy Spirit, "this/who is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption."
(italics added.)
The Message talks about this "toward" as a "first installment." The New Jerusalem Bible uses, "pledge" and the New International Version speaks of a "deposit". Old fashioned "earnest" money is the picture of the King James Bible.
John Wesley uses verse 14 in two of his Sermons on the Mount. In sermon 21 it relates to the blessing of the poor in spirit and John's connection with the joy of the "kingdom of heaven or of God which is 'within'". In sermon 30 John reflects on the outward, when the world is turning to rend you to pieces - this forward nature of GOD leads us to prayer.
Prophets move toward a dynamic future, not a static past. The energy of movement from where we are to a better place is well grounded in joy and prayer.
As you look back on this past year, how characteristic are joy and prayer for you. I am currently in the midst of two books, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Al Franken [Joy] and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Spirituality in the Workplace [Prayer]. Hopefully they will increase my quotients in both these gifts so they will abound the more this next year.
May your Joy and Prayer and sense of "Towardness" grow.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/january2004.html
Again the highfalutin language about wisdom and plans for fulfillment that somehow or other never involve us. It is all God's doing. That may have cut it at some time, but given what we know about the permutability of circumstances and actually being able to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear (hooray for genetic recombination) there would seem to be a place for talking more about desire and participation than destiny and bestowal.
As we proceed through this letter there are some specifics that are important to consider (see 4:25-32 for starters). If we don't get to what these praiseful words mean in the realities of our lives, we will have missed their import.
The place I connect with this passage is toward the end with images of being marked with the Holy Spirit and moving toward redemption. Here there is room for us to shift our bodies into different choice patterns and to take appropriate responsibility for journeying in a direction that leaves us better off in the long-term.
Where do you find yourself reflected in this passage?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/january2005.html
Our twelve verses here are one long sentence in Greek. Near the middle, verses 9 and 10, we have the mysterious plan for all things in heaven and earth to be gathered together in Christ.
Just how might a Christ, a Messiah, a Savior gather up all the living and the dead after this week? Where does the unlikely rescue fit with the end of a whole family line? Can we count some of the gathered as smart because they built on a hill and others as dumb for having been sea-level dwellers? What about the next major disaster that gets the hill dwellers and leaves the sea dwellers alone - will all of them also be gathered?
This is indeed a mysterious plan. It doesn't label folks as better or worse sinners because a tower fell on them or a sea rose up over them. It doesn't label folks as better or worse sinners in rosy times or sad times. It doesn't label folks as better or worse sinners for following Buddha, Allah, Christ, or other Spirits. It doesn't label folks as better or worse sinners, period.
The Holy Spirit is rather profligate and indiscriminate in sealing all with a promise of being gathered together. The various denominational mission and relief agencies might be seen as the Holy Spirit at work in a post-sea-wave time, doing Christ's work of gathering up all the living and the dead from this past week and binding them together.
Check your own denomination's websites for information about how they are going about the practice of the theory of praise of Christ.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/january2005.html
Ephesians 1:3-14
2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19 or Amos 7:7-15
Psalm 24 or Psalm 85:8-13
Mark 6:14-29
Dancing David
Stumblebum Uzzah
Beheaded John
Face-saving Herod
Plumbline holding Amos
Fearful Amaziah
Destined Christ
Promised Holy Spirit
The earth (see above for its variety) is G*D's and all that is in it (even the female not mentioned above).
Lift up your heads, O David, John, Amos, Christ, Holy Spirit! and be lifted up.
Lift up your head (__your name here__)! and be lifted up.
Imagine even Uzzah, Amaziah and Herod able to lift their heads, for all are chosen in Christ. Imagine the hardest person you have to deal with. Their head, too, will be lifted. There is no stopping the results of steadfast love and faithfulness, righteousness and peace. They will not stop at such nothings as political promises and betrayal, falseness and war.
Lift up your heads, O Uzzah, Amaziah, Herod! and be lifted up.
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nothing tries so hard
to be something
when all that is needful
is nothing
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html
Always with the particularlizing.
Christmas turns out to not be a joy to the world, a sign of peace to all people. One way and another, laying a baby in an open manger transfers the significance from angelic song to joy and peace for all to only being available through one personification of an expansive and expanding G*D.
What new lens is needed to see everyone as adopted? Are we all in this together, or not? What value is there in continuing to make "wisdom and insight" smaller in scope rather than larger?
Read your Rahner again to see that everyone is marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit.
Was your Christmas for you and yours? Was there an element of it being for everyone? If the last 2,000 years are any indication, an end to us will not happen before another celebration of Christmas. This gives a year in which to better celebrate a wider joy and a deeper peace. Blessings on your journey from an echo of a previous Christmas to the implementing of a next Christmas of "every blessing".
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/12/ephesians-13-14.html
How does it feel to be destined, fated, determined?
This is Paul saying that he has filched a copy of G*D’s plan while visiting a seventh heaven (well, third, at least) and all will be well if you give in to the plan now and praise, praise, praise.
Want proof?
When you believed you got the Good Holy Spirit seal of approval (now where did I put that?) which is your guarantee of moving toward getting paid for praising. Maybe it is still a long, long way off, but if you can pin that seal of approval on your lapel it is bound to happen by and by.
A blessing is appreciated, but a bit of its edge is taken off when there is a self-serving expectation that comes with it.
In its day Ephesus was the population equivalent of a Chicago or Houston in the USofA. You can pretty much expect that there will be an audience for a blessing of any kind. Imagine how many sects are in a large city and then begin to add them together. An American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) in 2008 indicated 2,804,000 people in the USofA were part of New Religious Movements & Others (many of which sound very Pauline but with non-Christ imagery) and 34,169,000 had no “religion”. Paul would have had a built-in audience.
So far a pretty negative review of “celebratory theology”. This does shift if the first two verses are left in. Here the context set is that of a community, not an individual. Our tendency these days is to privatize faith and religion. It also shifts if we extend the passage for two more verses, which orients folks to others. To universally celebrate is one thing; to celebrate from a privileged position is quite another. Eventually these matters come down to how one experiences being welcomed rather than acceding to an internally coherent theology. The above mentioned seal of approval is not a lapel pin, but the reality of community. Can folks see our “love of one another” or just my looking for an edge?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/07/ephesians-13-14.html
Ah, the Utopian dream—we can be holy and blameless before G*D in love”. The Common English Bible notes that this is the way believers are to think of themselves, but need to be careful not to see those outside the church as unholy and blameless, because if they should come to join the church they too must have been chosen before creation.
This attempt at a softer and gentler predestination still comes with the bitter pill of dissection. How do we measure the holy and blameless, find ourselves sadly lacking, and still have an assurance of whatever salvation might mean in either the short- or long-term?
It shouldn’t take too long to figure out that every measure of Holy lives under an obelus banner. Rulemakers set up rules they can follow. These rules become a shibboleth test for who is in and who is out.
How different it would be to affirm that G*D has blessed everyone and we are to come to the aid of one another to discover and enact (or enact and discover) our gift for the common-good.
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For extra credit, compare and contrast: prevenient grace and predestined grace.