Sermon on Ephesians 2:1 – 9

Written by Rev. Dr. Luke Bouman

Ephesians 2:1 You were dead through the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. 3 All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us 5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ– by grace you have been saved– 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God– 9 not the result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

Lifelong Faith Travelers

The two year old looks defiant, with his newfound mobility and his growing vocabulary he is about to declare his independence. “MINE” he shouts with an edge to his voice that will come to drive his parents crazy before the week is out. Usually this utterance comes as he clutches something that he is laying claim to, much like Christopher Columbus claiming the new world for Spain. It wasn’t at the time, but the intention was that it soon would be. The parents of this modern two year old “ Columbus” roll their eyes, suppress a laugh, and start the long journey of teaching their child about faith. Such teaching is required of them as part of the covenant they have with God and with their child, sealed in Baptism. Faith does not come naturally to us, after all. It must be taught.

For a two year old, faith involves discovering that we are not defined by what we have, or even by who we are, so much as by who we belong to. We first discover this by learning that we belong to parents, to a family. Later we discover that we belong to God. In the process we learn to let go of the things that we try to cling so tightly to. We even learn that it is not so much that we cling to God as it is that God holds us in his caring embrace, no matter where we wander, or what we claim as we go about pretending to conquer God’s creation. It is a teaching that can and does happen throughout a lifetime journey of faith.

I am living proof that the teaching doesn’t catch the first time, either. God knows, certainly my family knows, that some of us must be taught this lesson again and again. Whether I like it or not, whether I admit it or not, I cannot exist on my own, without God. It is this vital bit of information that is the start of the relationship of faith that I have with God. As basic as this is, it is startling how many ways and how often I have forgotten it. It is a good thing that God is patient with me. But then, God is a good parent. God knows that I must journey through various stages of faith until I become mature. God teaches me what I need to learn.

Strange though it may seem, we all must go on this journey of life and faith. We come into the world dependant and trusting out of necessity; we cannot do for ourselves. We try on various sizes and patterns of independence and dependence, as we grow and mature. As toddler and teenager alike we are defiant of those who tend to our needs. Wise parents know that this defiance is a necessary step in our growth, that we are learning to separate ourselves so that we can become ourselves, and they tolerate our words and actions that seem for a season to push them away. God does the same. The hope is that we come to that golden moment of interdependence, when we can be truly ourselves, and at the same time connect with and touch others. Such a moment is possible with our families. It is not possible with God.

The importance of faith

Faith is defined as many things in the bible. Mostly it is defined by example. The most common example used is Abraham, who, because he trusted in God’s promises, is commended by James and Paul alike. As adults we are taught that this childlike trust is a risky thing, and rightfully so. Life, after all, is a risky thing. There are no guarantees. At any moment there could be twists and bends. At any moment life could end. While there are financial planners and insurance salesmen that will tell us otherwise, there is no way to live and manage all the possible risks out there.

God has promised us two things. First, that our journey will not be risk free or safe. Where we interact with people, of course we know this, but also where we interact with the world, the same is true. Even if we are able to live relatively risk free lives, death always looms, and from it no one escapes. God warns us, maybe even promises us that there will be bumps in the journey of life, and the largest looms at the end. Second, God has promised that there is no bump too great, no risk in life so strange that he will not journey it with us and lead us through. We have but to trust in God’s guidance.

The problem is when we don’t. The problem is when we start to trust other things instead of God. It is then that our lives become “bent,” to use C. S. Lewis’ description from his novel, “Out of the Silent Planet.” When we trust our intellect, our technology, our human relationship, our politics, our possessions; anything other than God, we are mis-shaped, no longer living authentically as God’s creatures. Let’s be clear that the problem is not that we lack faith. We always have faith, it is just misplaced. The “gods” we believe in cannot possibly hold up in the face of the expectations we place upon them. It is at this point that we collapse into either idolatry or despair, neither of which is faithful to the God who creates us, redeems us, and sustains us. We collapse into caring for ourselves, primarily, and others as an after thought, if at all.

Authentic faith, authentic because it places its trust in the author if life, God, is good news for us, because it is liberating. Faith is God’s gift to us to help us to understand and live in a primary relationship with God alone. Faith is not first and foremost something that we do. It is a response to God, through Word and Sacrament, through the work of the Spirit to call us out of the downward spiral of self absorbing life and into God’s liberating affirmation. Giving is an act of authentic faith because only when we locate our trust in God’s promises are we truly free to give ourselves without reservation.

Grace, Love, Life, Faith

A quick look at Ephesians two gives us a snapshot of Paul’s rich theology of Grace. Paul starts off this chapter reminding us that we are enslaved by our own desires and passions, much in the same way a two year old is. Paul uses language about the passions of our flesh, not because our physical bodies are bad, but instead because our propensity to satisfy our desires at the expense of others, even God, is the very heart of our difficulty. God’s response is not to punish us, but to give us the gift of himself. Grace is the heart of what God is, and how God is oriented toward creation.

God does this of course for the same reason that parents do things for their children: love. It is out of love and care that I changed diapers, read stories, ran behind an unsteady peddling child on a bicycle. It is out of love for the creation that God continues to involve himself with us, to pour out love for us, “as a mother hen who gather’s the chicks under wing.” God gives love in the form of himself. And we learn, like any child learns, by watching how God acts.

What we discover in the process is that what God gives is not just the things we need to live, helpful as those things may be. What God gives is a whole new way of living at all. God frees us by his gift of live in Jesus Christ to live for others rather than for ourselves. This happens wherever the “good news” of Jesus’ death and resurrection is proclaimed and lived. Certainly this new way of living is not something that we “earn” as Paul rightly points out. It is something that we do, however.

Paul says, “we are created in Christ Jesus FOR good works.” That finally brings me to the definition of “faith” that I like better than all others. “Faith is the act of trusting God’s way of being in the world as our way.” This means many things, and certainly is more than just knowing the right information about God or have the right attitude toward God. It means living as God lived in Jesus. For in Jesus Christ we discover a God who is gracious, who is giving at the very core. It occurred to me a long time ago that faith in God means that I cannot be a stingy human being. My dependance on God throws me back into the world as a giver, a distributor of the gifts I have been given.

We Never Journey Alone

There is never a point in our lives when we can do without God and when we relate to God on God’s level. Our faith development, unlike our cognitive or emotional development, never gets to the “golden moment”of interdependence. We rely on God, and God entrusts us with ministry, but God does not rely on us, choosing instead to nurture and sustain us for the journey of faith. The reason is that God provides so much of what we are, God is the very one in whom “we live and move and have our being.” God both creates us human in birth and names us “children of God” in baptism.

My wife, Kathy, and I have lived most of our marriage acutely aware of our dependance and trust in God to provide. We married as an act of faith without many belongings, with no furniture, and no place to live to put it in. We had no jobs on our wedding day, and only the promise from a seminary that I would be admitted and there would be some kind of financial aid package for me there. We found a one room apartment and furnished it meagerly, mostly with hand me downs from my family. Our closet was larger than my kitchen, and in half of it I installed shelves for my books and a desk, so that I could study at night without bothering Kathy. (Thus, sadly, it is true that I was a “closet” theologian for my first year in seminary, and equally true that there are those who would have preferred that I never “came out”!) Still God provided for us. Each time we moved we wondered how we would ever make it. Each time there was always enough (sometimes JUST enough). But from the start we had a habit of returning a percentage of our income to God as a sign we trusted the giver of all. Even though some outside of our families questioned the wisdom in giving when we had so little, to us it was a non-negotiable aspect of our faith lives.

Finally, several years after I was in my first parish, Kathy finished her turn at returning to school and we both had secure jobs and good salaries. Then came Nathan and a return to one income. We remembered clearly the days that we were first married and the faith that had sustained us. It was easy for us to return to the kind of faithful living that we had then because we had come to know God as a wise giver of all that we need. We are not always sure of the way in which God’s gifts will come, but we are always sure that there will be enough. We are so sure, in fact that we have been free to live for others, including by generous giving of our finances. It is how we participate in the very heart of God. It is an act of faith.

Rev. Dr. Luke Bouman
Pastor, Tree of Life Lutheran Church,
Conroe , Texas
lbouman@treeoflifelutheran.org