The Rev. Charleston Wilson
In the Name of the Living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
I don’t know about you, but, to me, being “blameless” – which is what leaps right out at me in our Epistle today – is an almost impossible concept for me to grasp. For one thing, I’m fairly mischievous. So I’ve been blamed for this or that my whole life. Furthermore – and with no small amount of Malacy’s help – I’m even realizing and beginning to accept the fact that I actually am to blame for many – if not most – of the things that go awry in the Wilson household. Thus, any notion whatsoever of being blameless is a completely foreign concept to me. I truly know more about rocket science than I know about being blameless.
Nevertheless, the opening sentences of St. Paul’s letter to the Church at Ephesus ultimately force me to encounter the most important eternal reality of all: that God in fact “chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love…and destined us to be his children through Jesus Christ…according to the riches of His grace.”
Thus, if we are “in Christ” – in other words, in a relationship with God the Father, through God the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit – we are in fact holy and blameless in God’s eyes.
The essence, therefore, of the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ was, is and ever shall be this: If you’ve been baptised into Christ’s death and His resurrection – whereby you have renounced the flesh, the world and the devil – and you abide in that love, you are, in the eyes of God Almighty, a holy, blameless and brand-spanking-new creation! Blameless in the Greek, in case you’re wondering, literally means “unblemished, without spot or blot – even faultless.”
This means that no matter what happened yesterday and no matter what happens tomorrow, if we are “in Christ” – a phrase St. Paul uses no less than 30 times in Ephesians – we can rest assured that we indeed “have redemption through his blood” and “the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us.”
But here’s the problem I have, and you probably have, with all of this: believe it or not, I am so aware of my own shortcomings, and even my sin and my mistakes, that I actually find it hard to listen to all of this stuff – this admittedly wonderful stuff – about the possibility of being made holy and blameless in Christ, “according to the riches of his grace” and so on. And, by hard to listen, I should say hard to even fathom.
John Webster, the well-known Oxford theologian explains, “The task of listening seems simple enough. We know the story pretty well, most of us, and we have some ideas about how to make sense of it. But, in fact, the listening required of us is terribly hard – above all because we don’t want to hear. We’re sinners, estranged from the one who speaks, and what he has to say is alien to us. We don’t want to be spoken to by this one; we don’t want His intrusive voice.”
Sorely hindered by sin, you see, we find it hard – nearly impossible – to listen to such a celebration – to something so grand and wonderful, something so “alien and intrusive.” So I think Lewis is perfect here: “We are not merely imperfect creatures who must be improved; we are rebels who must lay down our arms.”
And it’s only through that laying down of our arms that we can begin to listen for this delightful – albeit “intrusive” – voice of love, mercy, grace and even celebration.
“Grace is the celebration of life, relentlessly hounding all the non-celebrants in the world,” says Fr. Capon with his normal flair, and “[grace] is a floating, cosmic, bash shouting its way through the streets of the universe, flinging the sweetness of its cassations to every window, pounding at every door in a hilarity beyond all liking and happening, until the prodigals come out at last and dance, and the elder brothers finally take their fingers out of their ears.”
Have you taken the fingers out of your ears and listened?
“He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. And He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.”
“I’m a Christian because Jesus Christ found me and called me, around 40 years ago,” said the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, this week to a group of journalists. “I’m a Christian,” he continued, “Because Jesus rose from the dead, he conquered death and sin and suffering. I’m a Christian because in Jesus I see the God who didn’t say, ‘this is how you lot have got to behave and I’m going to watch you and judge you,’ but came alongside us and lived in the middle of the absolute foulest mess and himself died unjustly young in great agony and bore all that was wrong in this world on his shoulders. “I’m a Christian because in my own experience I’ve run away and he’s met me and yet not been angry with me; when I’ve failed he’s picked me up and healed and strengthened me. That’s why I’m a Christian. And that’s why, whatever happens, whatever stupid mistakes, I know that even at the end of it all, even if everything else fails, God doesn’t, and he will not fail even to the end of my life.”
Archbishop Justin said God found Him and even called him. Have you listened for His voice?
Hear the Word of God to all who truly turn to him: Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you. God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but
have everlasting life. This is a true saying, and worthy of all men to be received, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the perfect offering for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world.
“Christ calls one and all; we who follow will not fall” (paraphrase of “All My Hope On God is Founded”).
Sermon preached by the Rev. Charleston D. Wilson
The Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
19 July 2015
8th Sunday after Pentecost