Ephesians 1: 3-19 (links validated 6/4/24a)
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Sermon Starters (Christmas 2C)(2025)
In his book Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, Frederick Buechner eloquently and lyrically writes about the praise with which Paul basically begins his letter to Ephesus’ Christians. He notes how “We do a lot of measured praise: Good job! Big boy! Nice work! The way the 148th Psalm describes it, praising God is another kettle of fish altogether. It is about as measured as a volcanic eruption, and there is no implication that under any conceivable circumstances it could be anything other than what it is. “The whole of creation is in on the act – the sun and moon, the sea, fire and snow, Holstein cows and white-throated sparrows, old men in walkers and children who still haven’t taken their first step. Their praise is not chiefly a matter of saying anything because most of creation doesn’t deal in words. Instead the snow whirls, the fire roars, the Holstein bellows, the old man watches the moon rise. Their praise is not something that at their most complimentary they say but something that at their truest they are. “We learn to praise God not by paying compliments but by paying attention. Watch how the trees exult when the wind is in them. Mark the utter stillness of the great blue heron in the swamp. Listen to the sound of the rain. Listen how to say Hallelujah from the ones who say it right.”Spoiler Alert
According to the book of Ephesians, lurking beneath all of creation is this unifying principle — Jesus Christ, who is the glue that holds everything together. So if we want to understand God’s original design for the world or for human life, we need only look to Jesus. And there we will find a heart filled with an unshakeable love. Interestingly, according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, scientists tell us that any natural system, if left alone, will decay. In spite of that, the earth is filled with a variety of life forms that are highly organized and complex. Thinking about the contrast between those two statements, Dr. Boris Dotsenko the former head of the nuclear physics department at the Institute of Physics in Kiev, Russia wrote: “It suddenly dawned on me that there must be a very powerful organizing force counteracting the disorganizing tendency within nature, keeping the universe controlled and in order. “This force could not be material; otherwise it too would become disordered. I concluded that this power must be both omnipotent and omniscient. There must be a God — one God — controlling everything.” In other words, he offers a modern scientific reason to believe that Paul was at least on the right track...
Illustrated Resources from the Archives
Sermon Starters (Proper 10B)(2024)
In her book, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, Kathleen Norris writes, “To me the most intriguing thing about John Calvin’s doctrine of predestination . . . is not his belief that some are gratuitously predestined by God to eternal salvation and some to damnation but that no one but God knows who is who. “There, among the heroin addicts, is one destined for eternal joy. There, among the faithful widows of an ordinary church, is one destined for damnation. It strikes me that only a French lawyer could have come up with so complex, if not bizarre, a justification for treating all people as if they could be among the elect, the chosen of God.”Sermon Starters (Christmas 2C)(2022)
Adam and Eve* adopted Rachel and Leah* shortly before Rachel’s age would make her ineligible to remain in her home country’s foster care system. They helped rescue them from an uncertain future that had elements of danger. Adam and Eve provided them with a loving and nurturing home, and surrounded them with loving siblings and a caring community. Yet as Rachel and Leah grew older, they in some ways rejected Adam and Eve. The trauma of their childhood as well as issues with which many children who are adopted struggle became almost too much for them. While Rachel and Leah maintain some contact with Adam and Eve, their relationship isn’t as close as I imagine Adam and Eve had dreamed and hoped. There is always risk in parenting children. Adopting children may heighten some of those dangers. After all, the pain and grief of children who are adopted is very real and can linger for a long time. Children sometimes in varying degrees reject their adoptive parents. Might Ephesians 1’s proclaimers say something similar about God’s adoption of God’s beloved sons and daughters? God takes huge risks in adopting us. God’s children whom God has adopted don’t always live for God’s glory. Yet God so passionately loves God’s people that God continues to risk adopting us from the evil one’s family anyway.Sermon Starters (Proper 10B)(2021)
A number of years ago Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko wrote about a man named Bill Mallory who traveled to India to discover the meaning of life. He didn’t, however, find it. On his return to the United States the disappointed Mallory saw a sign outside a Chevron gas station that read, “As you travel, ask us.” So each time he entered a Chevron station, he would say to an attendant, “I’m a traveler, and I’d like to ask a question. ‘What is the purpose of life’?” Sometimes Mr. Mallory received answers like, “I’m new here” or “I don’t remember reading anything in the manual about that.” Mostly, however, he just got blank stares. Yet Mallory’s persistence made him famous among Chevron station employees. Eventually a Chevron district manager called him to suggest he put his question on paper and mail it, with a self-addressed envelope, to corporate headquarters. A few weeks after Mallory did precisely that, he received a letter back from Chevron’s customer service department. So what was Chevron’s corporate headquarters’ idea of “the purpose of life? To have a company credit card, an application for which it sent to him. While Royko’s story may make us smile, a credit card may actually be a good metaphor for the purpose of life for many North Americans. After all, we use credit cards to buy the bigger, better, faster, more beautiful things we so deeply crave that we easily assume give us the meaning we perhaps even more deeply crave.Unity in Christ’s Family
John came into the family room where his parents were watching the news. He heard the end of a report about a man trying to collect a large inheritance. “If that man’s parents died, why can’t he get the money that was left?” John asked after Dad turned off the TV. “He ran away from home when he was sixteen years old,” Dad explained. “That was thirty years ago, and he never contacted his family again. They searched and searched for him and found out he’d moved to another state. They wanted to have a relationship with him again and made repeated efforts throughout the years to contact him, including several visits to the city where he lived. But he wouldn’t even speak with them.” “But he’s back now, so won’t he get at least some of the money?” asked John...The Dance
Howard Thurman was a Baptist minister and author, dean of the chapel at Howard University in the 30’s and 40’s and the first African-American dean of the chapel at Boston University. In his autobiography he talks about his principal, Dr. Hope, who was at Morehouse College where he studied in the 1920s. He said that Dr. Hope always addressed his students as “young gentlemen.” They were black men in Georgia when lynchings, burnings and unspeakable cruelties were part of the routine existence. Thurman said "Our manhood, and that of our fathers, was denied on all levels by white society. No matter what his age, whether he was in his burgeoning twenties or full of years, the black man was never referred to as `mister,' or even by his surname. No. To the end of his days, he had to absorb the indignity of being called [by any of several racial slurs]. No wonder then that every time Dr. Hope addressed us as `young gentlemen,' the seeds of self-worth and confidence, long dormant, began to germinate and sprout."...Stepping Back
The Louvre Museum in Paris is a place jammed full of works of art. Some of the paintings are surprisingly small. For example, I was surprised to find that the Mona Lisa is just a little over 77cm high and 53cm wide. Other paintings are enormous. A painting that stands out is entitled ‘The Coronation of Napoleon’ which is 6.2 metres (20 feet) high and almost 10 metres (33 feet) wide (that’s not including the magnificent frame). As I walked past the painting I was close to it and focussed on what I could see. In a distorted way, I could see the individual faces of the people in the painting, their expressions, what they were wearing, but overall, the painting didn’t seem to make that much sense because there was so much going on that I couldn’t see. The problem was this. I was too close. I could only gaze at one section of the painting at a time. The top of the painting was so far up it was just a jumble and a blur and it was too wide to take it all in. When I stood back, a whole new world opened up. From a distance I could take in the whole painting and the moment of time the artist had captured with this very complex work. Stepping back enabled me to see how all the people, their expressions, the action of Napoleon and Josephine all made one complete picture. At the same time I wondered how many times the artist had to get down from his ladder to step back and view the bigger picture of what he was doing...Preaching Helps (Proper 10B)(2018)
William Sloane Coffin once noted that when we think about Jesus’ call to receive the kingdom like children, we often think only about the natural humility of kids. But, Coffin said, we should not underestimate the sweet idealism of children. It’s children, after all, who want to save the seals, save the whales, and save everybody else while they’re at it. It’s kids who set up lemonade stands and sell cookies so they can then turn their nickels and dimes over to this or that relief agency. It’s children who take home the little church-shaped piggy banks, fill them with copper coins, and then bring them back to the minister, really believing that those pennies will help make a new addition to the church a reality. It’s children who have a neighborhood walk around a school, holding up homemade signs calling for racial reconciliation and really believing that they are making a difference by taking to the sidewalk that way. And, of course, we encourage this in children...Cosmic Super Glue
When I was a teenager, I read every single mystery Agatha Christie ever wrote. I always thought she had a wonderful ability to create an atmosphere — one that gave her readers a sense of a time and place, especially that of England during the time between the two world wars. More importantly, her plots were often brilliant, so that it was a great mental exercise to try to outguess her. Over time, I began to learn enough about her tricks that I could begin to distinguish which clues were significant and which were red herrings. However, even after I gained that skill, it took a while to master the ability to string those still-ambiguous clues together to identify the guilty party. So I was very proud of myself when I finally was able to do that, even if I couldn’t do it every time. But then I read a review of one of her novels, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. The reviewer explained that Christie had done something in that book that no other mystery writer had ever done before, something I won’t disclose in case any of you ever want to read that book. But in that review, the author revealed who murdered Roger Ackroyd, and there was no warning that a spoiler was coming. So I was disappointed to be robbed of the chance to figure things out for myself. However, when I read the novel after seeing that review, I discovered that it provided a whole new way to enjoy her book. Now that I was in on the secret, I could see the clever ways she scattered both real clues and distractions throughout the book. That proved to be an interesting exercise in learning writing technique...To the Praise of His Glorious Grace
"Franz Jägerstätter who was a farmer living in a small town in Austria near the German border at the start of World War II. He had had somewhat of a wild youth, but in his twenties he enrolled in religious classes and his life was suddenly and totally changed. In 1938, when Austrians were asked to vote on whether their country should be annexed by Germany, Franz spoke out strongly against the plan..." and other illustrationsThere's Chance and There's Chosen
This idea of being disordered and reordered, of chance and choice, plays out in an interesting way in the collages of Jean Arp and Ellsworth Kelly. Collage itself is a gathering and ordering process. Originally made of paper (papier colle...or pasted paper), collage may include any number of materials and processes, assembled and reassembled, arranged and rearranged, until the desired image or effect is achieved...Invincible Summer
We are in the midst of winter, and the philosopher Albert Camus had something to say about that. In 1954, he wrote an essay called “Return to Tipasa” in which he describes going back to his hometown in Algeria, after World War Two had destroyed much of what he remembered and loved there. And he makes it clear that more than a town was scarred by that war – Camus himself has lost his youth and his optimism, he has seen far more than he wants to of the world’s injustice and cruelty, and he himself has become hardened, a fighter. Now he’s back where he started, trying to start again. He writes: “Disoriented, walking through the wet, solitary countryside, I tried at least to recapture that strength, hitherto always at hand, that helps me to accept what is when once I have admitted that I cannot change it.” And as he walks and reflects and remembers, something does start to happen for him...A Caveful of Compassion
Over the past few weeks, most of us were transfixed by the dramatic events in a cave in northern Thailand. The eventually successful quest to rescue twelve boys and their young soccer coach captured our imaginations and drew people together in a shared hope like few other stories in recent years. I think that at some primal level, all of us can identify with the feelings of being trapped underground and unable to get out, because somehow these stories always get us hanging on the edge of our seats, glued to the news reports, following every development until the end...Redeemed, Forgiven, and Adopted
During the terrible days of the London Blitz at the beginning of World War II, an eight-year-old boy was found sobbing amid the smoking ruins of a burned-out building. The boy was asked where his father was. “He’s overseas in the service,” the child answered. “What about your mother, brothers, sisters?” “I don’t have any,” was the boy’s reply. “They have all been killed.” “Any relatives, grandparents, anybody?” The boy responded negatively. The rescuer then stooped down nearer to the child’s face and asked, “Son, who are you?” Sobbing convulsively, the boy said with a quivering voice, “Mister, I ain’t nobody’s nothing.”...The Gift of Grace
("One day there was a limousine parked along a highway. It had apparently overheated. But, no one stopped to help. Finally, after several hours, Robert Wise saw the troubled limo and stopped to help. The driver asked him if he would drive to the next town and call his boss about his predicament. 'No problem,' Wise responded. A short time later, Wise returned and told the driver he had made the call...")