Vampires - moody and sparkly and cool. Zombies - creepy and hungry and terrorist. It’s a scary world out there. At least that is what popular culture would have you believe. Threats around every corner, threats with power much greater than yours. Threats against which there is no real defense. So, eat your popcorn and hunker down and prepare to be scared out of your wits.
Of course some argue that all of this is more psychological than sociological. It is more about the fears within than about the fears without. Maybe that is why all those magazines and websites ask you to do a quiz to find out if you are more like a vampire – Team Edward, anybody? – or more like a zombie. I don’t know the kind of questions you might need to ask to determine which form of undead you are, but I’m sure they are powerful ones. Probably like the ones Paul would ask.
Wow, that’s a leap, you are saying. Well, maybe not. Especially if you look at our passage for this week. It begins with a declaration about death. Your death. In the past tense. Spooky. As in it already happened, but you got over it. Or you got better. Just like in the comic books.
OK, before I get myself farther in a hole, let’s just take a look at this letter to dead people. Or people formerly known as dead people. Or undead people. Or ... never mind. Just read.
Ephesians 2:1-10 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 Christ1 -- 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.
“You were dead.” Can’t get much more blunt than that, I guess. “You were dead.” We were all dead - or were all “children of wrath.” Now that’s a catchy phrase, don’t you think? Wonder what it means? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that dead people – living dead people that is, that’s who we are talking about – have nothing to focus on but themselves. A child of wrath, it seems to me, is one who is most concerned about his or her rights. About getting what is due. About slights real and imagined. About arguing about everything just for the sake of arguing.
Sometimes you just wonder about people. What’s going on in their little pea brains, anyway? Until you listen closer and decide that what is going on in most people’s little pea brains has been going on in yours, at least at some point in the not too distant past. We all have trouble getting over being dead. It kind of clings to us. Like the garlic bread we had for lunch. There is an air of dead, of children of wrath around us at times. It almost makes us disgusted at ourselves. Makes us wonder why anyone should bother with us, why anyone would bother with us. We’re just so ... so ... dead.
Which is why it is so amazing that there is another option. It is so amazing that God reaches right down into our deadness and rescues us. Amazing! Well, think about it for a moment. What is your inclination when confronted with a wrathful child? You want to walk away. You want as much distance between you and that one who smells like death. But God, says Paul, because of the mercy which defines our understanding of God, because of the love by which we have come to any awareness of God, reaches right into our deadness and pulls us out. Pulls us up.
We’ve been there too. For a moment, perhaps, a brief breath or two. We’ve felt loved completely, totally accepted and welcomed. You might have to think way back, or maybe it was this morning, but it is there. At least I hope and pray that it has for you. Oh, if we were to weight the days where we felt like death, the days of our child-like wrathfulness against the days where we felt seated in the heavenly places in Christ, we might be troubled by the pointer on the scale. We tend to retreat into death, into wrathfulness more than we really ought, more than we really want. But we can’t help but feel that is where we belong, or that is where we’ve earned a place.
Because the other is so beyond us. So out of our reach. How can we climb up into the lap of God? How can we make our way into the heavenly places? That is out of our reach, that exceeds our capabilities, we can’t stretch to that limit. Right! We can’t. We won’t. We don’t. Which is what makes it all the more amazing. We can put ourselves in death, but we can’t bring ourselves to life. We can climb down to the pits, we can claim the wrath that is within us, but we can’t get rid of it or climb our way up to the heavenly places. That’s God’s job.
Look carefully at the words Paul has chosen to describe this process. It is not your doing, it is not your willing, it is not you at all. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God ...” It ain’t about you. It’s about God.
No wonder we worship. No wonder we want to live lives of gratitude. No wonder we want stay close. No wonder. Because that is where we want to be. We’ve been down and we’ve been up, and if we are thinking at all, we prefer the up. We’ve been dead and we’ve been alive, and alive is so much better, so much more fun, so much more ... alive! And we’ve been wrathful and we’ve been Christlike - and while there is an odd sort of pleasure in getting our way from the terror of others, we must acknowledge that when Christ works in us we feel more complete, more right than at any other time.
Face it, there are a lot of the undead around us. Even here in our faith communities, even in ourselves more often than we would care to admit. That half alive kind of life that might bring us our rights, but never satisfies our souls. And yet we persist. It is the way of things, we say. We get so busy, as someone wise once said, making a living that we forget about making a life.
So, how do we hang on to it? How do we claim this gift, how do we transform ourselves from children or wrath, from the dead into those fully alive? Children of light, children of God in Christ? If it isn’t us, but God, are we doomed to follow this pattern over and over and over, waiting for God to rescue us one more time from the pit we have become so familiar with?
Last verse: 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. We can’t work our way into God’s presence, into God’s good graces, into life. But we can work because we’ve been there and want to stay there. We can work, we can serve, we can live that life of gratitude that expresses thankfulness with our hands and our hearts as much as with our words. This is what we were made for, Paul says, this life of service, this life of giving. The life of self satisfaction, self-centeredness is a dead kind of life.
And no matter how cool vampires and zombies might appear in our media - it’s no way to live!
Shalom,
Derek
Of course some argue that all of this is more psychological than sociological. It is more about the fears within than about the fears without. Maybe that is why all those magazines and websites ask you to do a quiz to find out if you are more like a vampire – Team Edward, anybody? – or more like a zombie. I don’t know the kind of questions you might need to ask to determine which form of undead you are, but I’m sure they are powerful ones. Probably like the ones Paul would ask.
Wow, that’s a leap, you are saying. Well, maybe not. Especially if you look at our passage for this week. It begins with a declaration about death. Your death. In the past tense. Spooky. As in it already happened, but you got over it. Or you got better. Just like in the comic books.
OK, before I get myself farther in a hole, let’s just take a look at this letter to dead people. Or people formerly known as dead people. Or undead people. Or ... never mind. Just read.
Ephesians 2:1-10 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 Christ1 -- 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.
“You were dead.” Can’t get much more blunt than that, I guess. “You were dead.” We were all dead - or were all “children of wrath.” Now that’s a catchy phrase, don’t you think? Wonder what it means? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that dead people – living dead people that is, that’s who we are talking about – have nothing to focus on but themselves. A child of wrath, it seems to me, is one who is most concerned about his or her rights. About getting what is due. About slights real and imagined. About arguing about everything just for the sake of arguing.
Sometimes you just wonder about people. What’s going on in their little pea brains, anyway? Until you listen closer and decide that what is going on in most people’s little pea brains has been going on in yours, at least at some point in the not too distant past. We all have trouble getting over being dead. It kind of clings to us. Like the garlic bread we had for lunch. There is an air of dead, of children of wrath around us at times. It almost makes us disgusted at ourselves. Makes us wonder why anyone should bother with us, why anyone would bother with us. We’re just so ... so ... dead.
Which is why it is so amazing that there is another option. It is so amazing that God reaches right down into our deadness and rescues us. Amazing! Well, think about it for a moment. What is your inclination when confronted with a wrathful child? You want to walk away. You want as much distance between you and that one who smells like death. But God, says Paul, because of the mercy which defines our understanding of God, because of the love by which we have come to any awareness of God, reaches right into our deadness and pulls us out. Pulls us up.
We’ve been there too. For a moment, perhaps, a brief breath or two. We’ve felt loved completely, totally accepted and welcomed. You might have to think way back, or maybe it was this morning, but it is there. At least I hope and pray that it has for you. Oh, if we were to weight the days where we felt like death, the days of our child-like wrathfulness against the days where we felt seated in the heavenly places in Christ, we might be troubled by the pointer on the scale. We tend to retreat into death, into wrathfulness more than we really ought, more than we really want. But we can’t help but feel that is where we belong, or that is where we’ve earned a place.
Because the other is so beyond us. So out of our reach. How can we climb up into the lap of God? How can we make our way into the heavenly places? That is out of our reach, that exceeds our capabilities, we can’t stretch to that limit. Right! We can’t. We won’t. We don’t. Which is what makes it all the more amazing. We can put ourselves in death, but we can’t bring ourselves to life. We can climb down to the pits, we can claim the wrath that is within us, but we can’t get rid of it or climb our way up to the heavenly places. That’s God’s job.
Look carefully at the words Paul has chosen to describe this process. It is not your doing, it is not your willing, it is not you at all. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God ...” It ain’t about you. It’s about God.
No wonder we worship. No wonder we want to live lives of gratitude. No wonder we want stay close. No wonder. Because that is where we want to be. We’ve been down and we’ve been up, and if we are thinking at all, we prefer the up. We’ve been dead and we’ve been alive, and alive is so much better, so much more fun, so much more ... alive! And we’ve been wrathful and we’ve been Christlike - and while there is an odd sort of pleasure in getting our way from the terror of others, we must acknowledge that when Christ works in us we feel more complete, more right than at any other time.
Face it, there are a lot of the undead around us. Even here in our faith communities, even in ourselves more often than we would care to admit. That half alive kind of life that might bring us our rights, but never satisfies our souls. And yet we persist. It is the way of things, we say. We get so busy, as someone wise once said, making a living that we forget about making a life.
So, how do we hang on to it? How do we claim this gift, how do we transform ourselves from children or wrath, from the dead into those fully alive? Children of light, children of God in Christ? If it isn’t us, but God, are we doomed to follow this pattern over and over and over, waiting for God to rescue us one more time from the pit we have become so familiar with?
Last verse: 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. We can’t work our way into God’s presence, into God’s good graces, into life. But we can work because we’ve been there and want to stay there. We can work, we can serve, we can live that life of gratitude that expresses thankfulness with our hands and our hearts as much as with our words. This is what we were made for, Paul says, this life of service, this life of giving. The life of self satisfaction, self-centeredness is a dead kind of life.
And no matter how cool vampires and zombies might appear in our media - it’s no way to live!
Shalom,
Derek
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