The Sign of Peace

First Presbyterian, Fort Scott, KS

Psalm 85:8-13

Ephesians 1:3-14

Yesterday was the memorial service for Harriet Reeves’ mother Dorothy Carr.  Dorothy was an active leader in this congregation for many, many years.  And for those of you who are new to this congregation like I am, you should know that in 1967 she was the first woman elected as a ruling elder in this church.  I’m grateful to be a part of a congregation where women and men serve and lead together as God has gifted us.

Today and in the weeks to come we will be reading and reflecting on the book or letter called “Ephesians.”  It’s addressed to the Ephesians, but it was a letter meant to circulate among the churches.  It concerns God’s plans for the world and how we fit into those plans. 

I want to invite you to do two things over the course of the rest of July and August.

First, I want to ask you to begin reading Ephesians on your own during the week.  Let its language and images work their way into your heart and mind.  Read it slowly and prayerfully, allowing it to settle down into the center of who you are.  And see what God might be saying to you in all this.

You’ll get a sense for the big picture, the drama of what God is up to:

“God made known to us the mystery of his will . . . to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ” (Eph. 1:9-10).

“God’s intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Eph. 3:10-11).

But if that sounds too lofty or abstract, don’t worry.  Ephesians is very concrete and practical as well.  Here’s what God’s plan looks like in our lives:

“Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.  Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Eph. 4:32).

Well, that’s a life-long project.  Not something we’re going to complete in the next six weeks.  But we can get started.  “How?” you might ask.  According to Ephesians, the primary tool God provides for us is the practice of prayer.

“And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests” (Eph. 6:18).

And so, to be honest, I’m not asking you to absorb information as you read.  I’m asking you to let this writing shape the prayers of your own heart.

Second, I want to ask you to write down questions that arise for you.  You might have questions that emerge from your own reading.  Places where it doesn’t make sense.  Or places that it just doesn’t appear true in your own experience.  Or maybe there are hard cases from your own life that don’t seem to fit within what the author appears to be saying.  Or maybe something from one of the sermons will provoke a question, or a need for explanation.  During the next six weeks, write these questions down and get them to me.  Or email them to me.  And toward the end of August I will make time to address as many as I can.

You’ll notice that the image on the front of our bulletins is a little gruesome.  This is the head of John the Baptist.  The story of John’s beheading in the gospels is a continual reminder that the world we live in is a world full of hostility.  When people suggest that the Bible is a kind of nice little fairy tale, I’m assuming they have not read it very carefully.  The founding story of God’s creation of everything good and beautiful is followed immediately by the story of Cain murdering his brother Abel.

Life with God is about peace-making in the midst of real hostility – and it begins with us, in our own hearts.

The “greeting” time at the beginning of our service is an important part of what we do when we gather here.  We’re not just filling time.  Some traditions refer to it as “passing the peace” or “offering one another the sign of peace.”

What’s happening?  Well, on the surface it looks not all that profound.  We greet one another with words, with a handshake or embrace.  We might tell someone it’s good to see them again.  Or we might introduce ourselves to someone we don’t know.  We’re welcoming each other into this place.

But there is more than meets the eye.  This practice of greeting one another is a profound mystery.  With our eyes, our mouths, our hands and bodies – we are extending to one another God’s welcome, God’s gladness that we are all here.  And there is hidden in these ordinary greetings an acknowledgement that we belong here with one another, as part of a family called to live and work for God’s glory through the life of this congregation.

But here’s what I want you to take away from today: God has a plan and you’re part of it.

We’re told that God “chose us in Jesus Christ before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight” (v. 4).

In the very next verse we’re told that God “predestined us for adoption” through Jesus Christ (v. 5).

It seems kind of strange, doesn’t it, all this language about God “choosing” us?  Does that even make sense?

It sure feels like we’re all here of our own effort and initiative.  You woke up.  You made coffee and your breakfast.  You took a shower.  You brushed your teeth.  You got dressed.  You got in your car and drove here.  You walked into this sanctuary.  God didn’t do any of that for you. 

All in all, it took a good bit of effort and energy on your part to get here.  You had to plan and organize to get yourself here. 

And what’s true of just getting here today also seems true of the life of faith in general.  You have decided, chosen, to involve yourself with God, you’ve chosen to follow Jesus, and you have intentionally invited God’s Spirit into your life. 

Yet, Ephesians invites us to see all of our “choosing” as held within a larger embrace of our being  “chosen” by God’s grace first.  Put differently, all our best efforts to be loving human beings is ALWAYS a belated response to God’s initiative.  Or think of it this way.  God is loving and delighting in you while you sleep, and you wake into that. 

To be chosen means that you’re here on purpose.  You’re here because God wants you here.  God has chosen to have you as part of this family.  And you’re part of God’s plan.

And God chooses to love and include us in the most lavish, extravagant way.

If you’ve ever been picked last for a game of basketball or dodgeball, you already know that it doesn’t exactly feel like you’re wanted.  If you get picked last, it feels like you’re being chosen begrudgingly.  You’re picked and included not because the team is excited to have you, but instead because you showed up.  And the teams are obligated to pick until there’s no one left.

God’s choosing of us is not anything like that.  God takes delight in choosing us to be a part of God’s plans.  Our lives are characterized by excess, by lavishness, by opulence.  We’re awash in God’s plentiful gifts.

That’s the language used in this opening prayer. 

It begins by praising God for blessing us “with every spiritual blessing in Christ” (v. 3).

The grace of God is “freely given us in the One he loves” (v. 6).

The riches of God’s grace have been “lavished on us” (v. 8).

Here God is pictured as a profligate giver, an extravagant, excessive giver, showering us with an abundance.

What God gives to you in choosing you cannot be measured. 

My kids argue about who is getting which brownie.  We try to cut them symmetrically in order to avoid these arguments.  But our children will study the pan like a surveyer solving a boundary dispute to discern which is the biggest brownie.  They worry that someone else will get more than they do.  They are measuring and calculating who gets what.

What I’d like to do is just dump the whole pan of brownies over their heads.  And dump 30 more pans of brownies over them.  So that they’re sitting in the middle of a mountain of brownies.  THEN I could ask – are you still worried about measuring who gets what?

Chosen by God and washed in blessings and gifts and goodness, we cannot relate to each other in unkindness, with a mean spirit, stingy, territorial, always worrying what’s “fair.”

Instead, our lives can take on the tone of sharing together God’s lavish provision.

God has a plan, and we’re part of it.

In Ephesians the mystery made known is that God wanted a church that unites Jews and non-Jews.  But we can think even beyond Jewish history to the mind-boggling span of cosmic time.  And even though we humans occupy a tiny sliver of time in the ancient universe’s life, we can still say: God’s plan all along has been to unite all things in Jesus Christ.

And God has chosen the church to be a visible sign of that peace.  Because we live in a small town an hour south of Kansas City, it would be possible to demean or dismiss our city as an unimportant little hamlet in the great sweep of things.  Check all the lists of the “best places to live,” or the “25 most important global cities,” and we won’t be on it.  The national media directs our attention to important people in important places – but does not register our ordinary little lives here.

And yet this church, like every other church anywhere, has been chosen by God to be a visible sign of God’s peace.

One of the primary themes in Ephesians is the importance of the church in the unfolding of God’s plan for the world.  And the point isn’t to dismiss all the other organizations and social groupings that make up the texture of our lives:  family life, government at all levels, businesses, schools, hospitals, voluntary associations and clubs – all these things contribute to our lives.  But none of them are named as the primary place where God wants to make clear and visible God’s plans to bring all things into unity in Jesus Christ.  For that, God has chosen the church.  God has chosen us, to be here together, to work and worship as a sign of peace.

Ephesians begins with a prayer.  And it ends with instruction for all of us to “pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests” (6:18).

We cannot become peace-makers if we do not receive the gift and practice of prayer.  Why?  Because peace-making is a matter of the heart.  And we work on our hearts in prayer. 

But I’m not the kind of person with a lively prayer life, some might say.  We say that because we are thinking of prayer as a kind of advanced degree for the really religious, for people with time, or a long background, or who are wired up to be more serious religiously.  But that’s not what prayer is in Ephesians.  It is the tool God’s Spirit makes available to us so that we can do the work of peace-making in our lives.

When you are angry at someone else.  When you feel hostility, or are dreaming of revenge . . . these are the best times to pray.  Forget silly pictures of tranquil saints off in the woods somewhere without a care in the world, at peace with themselves emotionally.  That’s not prayer.  Prayer is the hard work of becoming a peace-maker by attuning our hearts to God’s lavish blessings towards us.  And doing so when hostility and hate are right nearby.

God has given you the Spirit in your hearts, to begin in you the great unifying of everything that is God’s plan for all the world.  If God has included us in the unveiling of this great mystery, let us receive the calling with the weight it deserves.

“I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received” (Eph. 4:1).