Sermon from May 31, 2009
"Election"
Ephesians 1-3

I would like to make a life-transforming proposal to you. It is about your faith in God and the way you live your life. It is not for spiritual superstars; it is for people making their way everyday right down in the jungle of life. You may say, “I’m a religious amateur, and I don’t know anything about the Bible.” This proposal is for you. Others of you may say, “Then, with all due respect, it’s not for me. I have a lot to learn, but I’m not a beginner.” But it’s for you too. This proposal is flexible enough to fit all the diversity in this room and specific enough to transform your life.

This is the proposal: Everyone in this room has a religious vocation.

You may not know what that means, but I don’t think you will soon forget it. That’s the first thing I need from you: to remember it. I will return to that simple, memorable statement throughout the summer. I can’t control your response to it: You may accept it, and I hope you will; or you may reject it.

My task is to make the proposal sing and win your heart, and to make it clear and win your mind. I will stay away from hard words but not hard ideas. I will address issues that seem far away and bring them close to you so that you can feel their relevance.

I can’t do this by myself. You and I both need outside help. Ephesians 1:17 expresses part of the help I am counting on. Paul prayed for the Church: I keep asking that the God our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. Ephesians 3:16-17 expresses the rest of the help I am counting on. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.

That’s my prayer for you. I want you to know God better. I want Christ to be so at home in you that He can freely do the necessary renovations there. As that happens, you will experience your religious vocation as a living, growing thing.

A Chosen People
Everyone in this room has a religious vocation. What is that vocation? You are God’s chosen people. You’ve heard it said that the Jews are God’s chosen people. That’s true, but Christ made it possible for the Church to be included in God’s chosen people.

Why would God entrust His reputation and His eternal purpose to Israel and the Church? But He does! Why would He choose foolish things of the world to shame the wise and weak things of the world to shame the strong? (1 Corinthians 1:26-29) But He does, and a third of the human family now makes up His chosen people.

I love what Jewish writer, Michael Wyschogrod, says about God’s election of Israel to be His chosen people. If you take out the word circumcised, his statement also applies eloquently to the Church. “‘The circumcised body of Israel is the dark, carnal presence through which the redemption makes its way into history. Salvation is of the Jews because the flesh of Israel is the abode of divine presence in the world. It is the carnal anchor that God has sunk into the soil of creation’” (ibid, 46).

We too, my Christian brothers and sisters, are “the dark, carnal presence through which the redemption makes its way into history.” The flesh of the Church also “is the abode of divine presence in the world.” We too are “the carnal anchor that God has sunk into the soil of creation.” That is your religious vocation.

Where does this idea come from? It comes from a resilient little people group called the Jews or Israel. In the sacred writings of the Jews the book of Deuteronomy is a theological interpretation of their long and mysterious history. Look there with me at Deuteronomy 7:6.

Moses said to the children of Israel: For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession. The important word here is chosen. That’s why we say that the Jews are God’s chosen people. The important idea here is that God chose a community. He chose the Jews to be his people, his treasured possession. That’s very different from the idea that election is only about individuals.

Now, what caused Jews to think that God had chosen them? The next two verses answer that question. The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

I’ll show you in a moment the oath God swore to their forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But God’s oath would have been nothing but words, if He had not backed it up with action. Verse eight says: he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. That’s the exodus. Their liberation from bondage in Egypt was the act by which God chose the Jews out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession.

A Chosen Purpose
But what about the oath God made to the forefathers of Israel? Look at Genesis 12:1-3. The Lord had said to Abram (later renamed Abraham), “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

God’s oath made three foundational promises: I will give you a land; I will make you into a great nation; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. You cannot take too seriously that last promise to Abraham: “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” At the heart of election is the mandate to be a blessing to all peoples on earth. Election doesn’t make you a snob; it makes you a servant to the rest of the world.

It made Israel a servant to the rest of the world. Some Jews, like the prophet Isaiah, caught that global vision. For example, look at what he wrote in Isaiah 2:2-4.

In the last days
     the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established
          as chief among the mountains;
     it will be raised above the hills,
          and all nations will stream to it.
Many peoples will come and say,
     “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
          to the house of the God of Jacob.
     He will teach us his ways,
          so that we may walk in his paths.”
     The law will go out from Zion,
          the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
     He will judge between the nations
          and will settle disputes for many peoples.
     They will beat their swords into plowshares
          and their spears into pruning hooks.
     Nation will not take up sword against nation,
          nor will they train for war anymore.

No one ever expressed the yearning of our world any better.

Your religious vocation is to be God’s elect community with its mandate to be a blessing to all peoples on earth.

The Blessing Goes Global
And you say, “Maybe, but that’s a story about Jews, and most of us are not Jews. Where do we come into the story?” Please stay with me for a few minutes of close Bible study in Ephesians 1-3. I’ll go slowly. It’s worth the effort. The ideas are revolutionary.

We begin with verse three. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Paul says here that God has blessed us. The pronouns we and our and us occur nine times in verses 3-12. Who was Paul talking about?

Verses 11-12 begin to answer that question. In him (Christ) we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.

Who were the first people to hope in Christ, the first Christians? They were Jews. All the first Christians were Jews. Paul (a Jew) was writing verses 3-12 about God’s chosen people, the Jews.

Now, you’re ready for verse 13. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit. To whom does the pronoun you refer? If we means Jews, then you must mean Gentiles.

I am not guessing. Look next at Ephesians 2:11-12. Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (that done in the body by the hands of men) – remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. Not much doubt about it: the pronoun you refers to Gentiles, who had become Christians.

Ephesians is talking about Jews and Gentiles, who were socially and religiously segregated from each other. Verse 12 says that when religious walls segregated Gentile from Jew, the Gentiles were excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise. Verses 13-14 tell what changed that. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Jesus. For he himself is our peace.

Verses 19-20 give the apostle’s revolutionary conclusion. Consequently, you (Gentiles) are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people (the Jews) and members of God’s household (Israel), built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.

If I understand him rightly, the apostle was saying that Gentile believers in Jesus are now fellow citizens with Jews, “the dark, carnal presence through which the redemption makes its way into history.” That’s the revolutionary proposal that Ephesians makes to the Church. I have to tell you: significant voices in European and American Christianity now accept that proposal. If you accept it, you will forever feel a kinship with Jews, even if you sharply disagree with Jewish points of view.

Paul made the same point again in Ephesians 3:6: This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus. Election is not only a story about Jews; it is also a story about all who believe in Jesus Christ. We the Church have become part of God’s elect people with its mandate to be a blessing to all nations on earth.

And to top it off the Church turns out to be the way that the spiritual mandate to the Jews is being carried out. Even more curious, many Jews today acknowledge that the Church carries out that mandate in a way that Jews do not. About 140 Jewish scholars recently signed a public document that says: “While Christian worship is not a viable religious choice for Jews, as Jewish theologians we rejoice that, through Christianity, hundreds of millions of people have entered into relationship with the God of Israel” (“Dabru Emet: A Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity,” The Sun, September 10, 2000, Page 29a).

Let me give you a recent, startling example of that. “On December 18, 2007, the Chinese Politburo held an extraordinary meeting. All twenty-three members of China’s top leadership gathered for a daylong set of lectures on the subject of Christianity – and even more significantly, announced that it was doing so: an unambiguous signal to the public that the Communist party now approved of the practice of Christianity alongside Buddhism and Confucianism.” (First Things, “China’s Catholic Moment,” Francesco Sisci, June/July 2009, 28) The Church, in this case the Chinese Church, is “the carnal anchor that God has sunk into the soil of’” China.

It is surely a sign of the times that while President Obama seems eager say that America, the most Christian nation in the industrialized world, is not Christian, the Chinese Politburo is going to extraordinary lengths to approve the practice of Christianity in Communist China. Go figure!

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
The Chinese have a proverb whose wisdom goes far beyond their borders. “When a tree falls it crashes with a noise, but when a forest grows no one hears anything.” That forest is God’s elect people, which is growing among every tribe and language and people and nation on earth. Only God could be discreet on such a global scale.

BVBC belongs to the dark, carnal presence by which the redemption makes its way into the history of the Brandywine Valley. You are God’s chosen people. That is your religious vocation, your spiritual calling.

Now, let’s make the connection with the next four sermons in this series. Look down the page to Ephesians 4:1. As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling (the religious vocation) you have received. All summer, Pastor Mark and I will be talking about the scriptural vision of life that is worthy of our religious vocation. Don’t miss a Sunday!