Sermon on Ephesians 1:3-14

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Our second reading for the next seven weeks will be from Ephesians, so I thought we’d do an introduction today to give some context as we read through much of it through the rest of the summer.

A little background: it’s one of the letters that make up much of the New Testament. The letters would be read aloud to a community of faith and often passed around from one community to the next. This one, though,seems less customized to a specific community than some, since it doesn’t address specific concerns or greet people by name.

This and the way the content and vocabulary differ from the letters that we’re very certain were written by Paul makes some scholars think that it may have been written by a student of Paul’s under his name. That was a common practice then and wasn’t considered plagiarism like it would be now.

Whether it was written by Paul or one of his students, it’s still a part of our sacred scripture and has some beautiful language and important content for the early Jesus followers who were trying to figure out how to live life together, which we can learn from too.

The letter has two halves.

In the first part, the writer reminds the audience that God loved them and cared about them from the very beginning. It talks about God’s grace and all that God has done for us.

Chapter 2 verses 8-9 are verses we often hear on Reformation Sunday: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”

The second half of the letter then turns the focus from God to the audience and instructs them in how to live in the world in response to being part of God’s family.

The very structure of this letter is abeautiful illustration of how Luther later explained the relationship between faith and works:

We don’t earn God’s grace—it’s a gift. Our salvation is God’s work, not ours. And then out of gratitude and love for God, we can show God’s love to others without being afraid that we have to earn God’s love or approval.

To tie this into our Sabbath theme, we don’t have to work ourselves to death trying to be good enough, because God already loves us and nothing can change that. We can rest in God’s love.

Another important theme in this letter and a bridge between the two halves is unity. The early Jesus followers were made up of both Jewish people and Gentiles, and they were having a hard time figuring out how to do life together.

Chapters 3 and 4 reminded the audience that they are one in Christ—made into a holy temple to God and making up the Body of Christ.

It’s both comforting and frustrating to realize that the Church has always had its internal conflicts.

But Ephesians reminds us that our kinship in God is more important than our disagreements.After all, as the letter says, “there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”

We are one in Christ, and we all have different gifts and viewpoints that enrich and also challenge our community. And within that, we are equals in God’s eyes. God loves each of us infinitely, and therefore, equally.

How would our lives be different if we saw every person as completely beloved by God and then we appreciated their uniqueness?

The second half of the letter has more specific instructions on how to live.

We don’t have enough time today to fully explore the instructions. If you want to dig deeper, please let me know. We can schedule a Bible study and nerd out together—I’d love that.

But here are some important parts of the instructions and some caveats.

Overall, the second half of the letter calls people to live differently because of the grace and love they have received from God. Again, salvation is God’s work, and there’s nothing we can do to earn God’s love.

And also, out of gratitude for that incredible gift, following Jesus means being transformed inside and out, which shows up in our behavior.

The behavior the letter talks about ranges from speaking the truth to forgiving one another to not being foolish to singing to God together. There are some lovely reminders to imitate Christ and love one another.

And then there are also parts where the behavior of people who are not followers of Jesus is described so abominably that one could come away thinking that it isn’t possible for non-Christians to do any good in this world. That just isn’t the case. Christians do not have a monopoly on ethics, thoughtfulness, or compassion. There are Christians who do terrible things and loving things, and there are people of other faiths, atheists, agnostics, and any other non-Christians who do terrible things and loving things. The binary of “Christians equal good” and “non-Christians equal bad” just isn’t true or helpful. The writer used extreme language to exhort people to live differently, which is the point of that section.

Then, there are the household codes. Take a deep breath—we are treading in controversial territory.In chapters 5 and 6, there’s a list of instructions for households: for wives and husbands, children and fathers, and slaves and masters. We definitely don’t have time today to fully explore the various ways these have been used and abused over the centuries.

These texts have been used to justify the domination of wives, children, and enslaved people. Abusers of this text conveniently forget the parts that talk about husbands loving their wives as their own body or the instruction for fathers not to provoke their children to anger. And of course, there is no acceptable way to treat enslaved people except freeing them.

These are difficult texts. It may be that the behavior laid out in this section was milder and more mutual than other household codes of the time, but this passage has done a lot of damage over the years. This part isn’t even included in our prescribed readings over the next seven weeks, but it’s important to know what’s there.

The final section of the body of the letter talks about spiritual warfare and the need to don the “whole armor of God” to stand against the evil forces that oppose God.

This is a rich image and can be very inspiring. We need to be careful, though, that it doesn’t lead us to eitherspiritualizing people’s problems instead of tending to our neighbors’ physical needs or dehumanizing other human beings into “enemies” that need to be defeated.

There is so much more to cover here, but that is a brief overview of the contents and challenges in the second half of the letter.

As with much of scripture, when we get too into the weeds about individual instructions and forget to look at the big picture of our loving God, it can be frustrating, produce anxiety, and even justify judgmental behavior.

So, let’s remember that the overall arc of this letter is that God chose you and loves you, and therefore you’re free to love your neighbors in union with your siblings in Christ of all kinds.

We are unified in Christ and still have a lot of different perspectives and understandings. We’re allowed to see things differently and decide through discernment both on our own and in community how to live in a way that’s honoring to God and true to our consciences.

So, that is a glimpse into the letter to the Ephesians. I invite you as we read more of it over these next seven weeks to watch for the themes and messages we talked about today. May it enrich your experience of hearing from this part of our sacred scriptures.

I’d like to close as the letter begins and ends: with a blessing.

Praise be to God who had us in mind while creating the world.

May you rest in that love and be at peace in God’s salvation.

And may gratitude spur you on to serve your neighbors while appreciating their uniqueness.

Let that unity in God strengthen you and bring you peace. Amen.