SECOND
SCRIPTURE READING (PASTOR)
EPHESIANS
1:3-14
Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who
has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,
just
as God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world
to
be holy and blameless before God in love.
God
destined us for adoption as God’s
children through Jesus Christ,
according
to the good pleasure of God’s
will,
to
the praise of God’s glorious grace that
God freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
In
Jesus Christ we have redemption through his blood,
the
forgiveness of our trespasses,
according
to the riches of God’s grace that God
lavished on us.
With
all wisdom and insight God has made known to us the mystery of God’s will,
according
to God’s good pleasure
that God set forth in Christ,
as
a plan for the fullness of time,
to
gather up all things in Christ,
things in heaven and things on earth.
In
Christ we have also obtained an inheritance,
having
been destined according to the purpose of God
who accomplishes all things according to God’s counsel and will,
so
that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ,
might
live for the praise of God’s
glory.
In
Christ you also,
when
you had heard the word of truth,
the
gospel of your salvation,
and
had believed in him,
were
marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit;
this
is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people,
to
the praise of God’s glory.
***
I
have met people like this, seen them sermonizing as if street corners were
sanctuaries, heard them preaching from the pulpits of public transit, listened
to their loquacious testimonies from hospital’s Behavioral Health units. Paul sounds
like those people, and though I am not in the field of diagnosis, his
words have the grandiosity of the mania in bipolar, sictzophrenia, or certain
types of substance abuse.
Paul
speaks without pause, a run on sentence, that reads like thirty false starts
which never get to the point. He uses metaphors such as adoption and
inheritance, feelings such as love and grace and good pleasure and blessing.
Paul’s setting is both, “things in heaven
and things on earth.” He measures time
from before the foundation of the world, to our destiny. All of this, spoken in
cliches, which don’t seem to
communicate much of anything, or, at least, don’t seem to really touch the hearer. Its
the problem I have with subway preachers. Not knowing their audience, they make
it easy to remain disconnected, as if for the hostage commuters and travelers,
starring at our phones or the grey speckled floor is more of a connection then
looking up into the preacher’s
eyes. Staring at that floor we know there is a community of avoidance of which
we are a part, and to recognize the preacher would be to go it alone, and risk
the fear of being sucked in, or at least a sucker giving money. Either way, the
sermon always seems to be about those preachers, about their beliefs, and us on
the outside. Likewise, I wonder, if this is more about Paul.
Paul,
certainly, has been touched in a real way, and I believe that. I believe when
he says, he has heard a word of truth, and I believe, he believes all he says,
from his divine knowledge about God’s part in the foundation of the world,
and its ultimate redemption. I believe Paul was touched in a real way. Paul was
a man who debated against the Christians, was blinded on the road to Emmaus,
was spoken to by God, and restored with both faith in Christ and sight. Paul
was certainly touched by God, and I am not sure, how Paul could ever explain
all that. I find also, that the moments which touch me the deepest, are the
ones to which there are no words. I went on a full moon snowshoe the other
night. It was one of the most exquisite scenes I have ever experienced. I have
attempted at three separate times to write about it. I can’t. What comes out
seems cliche and choppy and perhaps disrespectful to the moment itself because
the chasm between what was, and my words is so wide. It makes sense to me that
I can’t describe
something so beautiful; neither sight nor feeling can be put into words. I can’t describe what God
put in motion at the foundation of the world, nor can I explain what it feels
like 4.5 billion years later to watch that same moon rise full over ___ at
night. Yet, like Paul, I tried, and like Paul too, I sent my description along
in a letter to some friends. Friends who both might scratch the surface of what
the experience meant and therefore know my story more deeply, and friends who
might edit its run on false starts, to make the description more clear. I hope
they edit it to pieces because an experience of God, longs to be communicated,
and perhaps this is just what Paul was attempting to do.
I
don’t know if Paul, is
literally mentally ill, or if perhaps, I am. But there is something about
trying to describe God which is crazy making, which is attempting to do the
most impossible of all impossible. They say being crazy is to do the same thing
and expect different results. Even while writing this sermon, I wonder when I
can sit down next, and work on that description of the full moon. It will never
match up to that night, but I still long to try. I suspect Paul was not too
different. I suspect, the subway preacher is much the same, and maybe that is
where the connection lies. Maybe, in Paul’s grandiose description, that subway
sermon, and a letter about a full moon snowshoe, we can find the connection, in
humanity’s ever present
attempt to describe the divine.
This
connection tells us about ourselves, and it tells us about God. This connection
tells us about our yearning, that we were created for closeness with our
creator, it tells us of our adoption and inheritance, of love, and grace, and
God’s good pleasure and
blessing. It tells us of the things in heaven and things on earth, from the
foundation of the world, to our destiny or redemption. This connection tells us
a word of truth, when words are impossible.
