Breathing Space--July 18, 2024

Breathing Space--July 18, 2024

"With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth." [Ephesians 1:8b-10]

God's stated goal for the universe is to gather up "all things" into the risen life of Jesus. God's purpose in history, as these words we heard on Sunday from Ephesians put it, is to bring everything and everyone in all creation into the embrace of Christ.  It's right there in black-and-white, right in the opening paragraph of this letter from the New Testament. 

And, wow--that is just so much bigger than we usually give God credit for. Honestly, it changes the kind of questions we ask in our theology.  Instead of asking, "What are the requirements I have to do in order to get on the list with God?" as though Jesus is a bouncer who only lets the elite and the cool into the club, we ask, "Will God eventually get what God wants, and gather every last one of us into the arms of grace when all is said and done?"  It means that the people of Jesus are always going to be a group wider and bigger than my local church, my preferred denomination, my political party, my country, and all of my expectations.  You and I may or may not like it or approve of the breadth of God's expansive reach, but it's not up to us. It's God's good pleasure and God's divine plan "to gather up all things" in Christ.

What does that mean our role as Christians is really all about?  Well, first, we can be clear what our role is NOT.  And for starters, as we saw yesterday, too, we are not here auditioning for a spot on a team like we are competing contestants on a reality singing competition.  My belonging in the people of Jesus is not a threat to your belonging also--there is not a limited number of spots on the team, and this is not a zero-sum game.  God isn't voting off losers each week until a lone "winner" of discipleship gets added to the communion of saints, but rather God chooses us as we are, without a need to impress or edge somebody else out who just didn't make the cut.

At the same time, this also means our role is NOT to be the judges on the reality tv competition, either.  I don't get to stand in judgment of somebody else and say, "There's no way God wants THEM for the team!"  And that's simply because, as Ephesians puts it here, God wants us ALL for the team.  And God's intention, God's "plan," as the apostle puts it, is to gather us all--along with everything in heaven and earth--into communion with Christ.  Nobody is off the list of people God wants to gather.  Nobody is negligible.  God's desire and will is "all things in heaven and in earth."

I've heard too many preachers and practitioners of Respectable Religion make it sound like God is just itching for reasons to zap people or kick us out, and that we'd better live in fear of stepping a toe out of line. They make it sound like God is going to settle eventually for a very empty heaven inside big pearly gates to keep the unworthy out. But that just doesn't fit with the expansive way the writer to the Ephesians talks--here we see God's intention to gather us all into the life of Christ.

Maybe it will take some getting used to, this notion that God's vision is bigger than our own.  But rather than being afraid of the idea that God is going to "gather up all things" in Christ, maybe it is actually a relief--like getting fresh air and breathing space after being cooped up in a claustrophobic cubicle of fear for too long.

Maybe today is a day we are finally free... to move.

God of grace, let us be a part of your cosmic design to bind up all this broken universe in the arms of your love.