Harmonies of Faith, a sermon series for the Summer on the core beliefs of harmonious faith, week 9 of 14, preached July 28, 2024
Sermon
Context
We believe different things and differences help us grow, or create conflict. Some believe the best way to resolve the conflict is to make everyone believe the same thing. I don’t think God’s goal is for us is to all believe exactly the same things. I do believe God’s goal for us is to tune all our different beliefs to God, to put our faiths into harmony inside ourselves, between one another, and with God’s own faithfulness. So we are calling this summer series, Harmonies of Faith.
As we’ve been doing for a while now, lets group up in 2s or 3s, and wonder with one another the question of the day…
Question of the Day
"What have you heard must we believe or do for God to forgive us?” Ready? Go!
(Open YouTube livestream, muted, on iPad, and chat with online attendees?)
Great! For anyone wishing to share, in person or online, what did you come up with?
Prayer for Illumination
Let’s pray… God as we open your word, may it open us. As we read your word, may it read us. Amen? Amen.
Scripture Ephesians 1:1-14
1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God,
To the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful[a] in Christ Jesus:
2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,[b] 4 just as God chose us in Christ[c] before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before God in love. 5 God destined us[d] for adoption as God’s children[e] through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of God’s will, 6 to the praise of God’s glorious grace that God freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of God grace 8 that God lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight 9 he has made known to us the mystery of God’s will, according to God‘s good pleasure that God set forth in Christ, 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things into him, things in heaven and things on earth. 11 In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance,[f] having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to God’s counsel and will, 12 so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of God’s glory. 13 In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had the faith of him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; 14 this[g] is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of God’s glory.
This too is the word of God for the people of God… (Thanks be to God)
Sermon Election and Predestination
Most jokes about Presbyterians involve some misrepresentation of the theological doctrine of predestination.
Did you hear about the Presbyterian who rode in an elevator all day? He felt he had no right to choose a floor to get off at.
Why do Presbyterians avoid Uber and Lyft? Because the driver expects them to tell him where they want to go.
Why do Presbyterians prefer subways and trains? Because the destinations are all pre-determined.
How many Presbyterians does it take to change a light bulb? Well, they first have to debate whether to change the light bulb because maybe God meant it to be dark. They also have to debate which of the elect should stoop so low as to perform manual labor. So they appoint a task force to write a theological paper, and in the meantime the Baptist janitor changes the bulb, and the Presbyterians fail to notice.
As a Presbyterian pastor for almost 19 years now, I’ve grown to laugh along if someone has a joke like this about me, about us. The last thing they expect in a Presbyterian, especially a pastor, is a sense of humor, the ability to not take ourselves too seriously and to laugh. So that’s enough of a curveball without having to confront them on the false premises behind their jokes. But today, we are safe in here from the jokesters, so we can still not take ourselves too seriously and still laugh a bit, but expose the flaw in these jokes.
The jokes refer to the reformed theological doctrines of Election and Predestination. This summer, we’ve covered other doctrines. We started with a God who chooses to reveal God’s self, who is triune three and one, who created all things, even life itself, and provides more than enough to maintain life and goodness in all creation. Humans are a special creation of God, very good, created in God’s image with a spark of God’s own self, a will, a conscience. However, we are not God, and we do not use our God-spark for pure good and holy things. Sin or evil leak from us, from all of us, into God’s creation, from the beginning humans to now. So God comes into creation as one of us, fully human and fully God, as the Christ, and in the life death and resurrection of Christ, God has already repaired and is still reconciling all the brokenness of sin and evil, even death. Holy Spirit is with us, beside us, among us, even inside us, pushing us to help God, persuading us to trust God has, is, and will make all things one, new, whole, holy again. That’s where we are in the logical progression of our theology so far. Are y’all with me?
Okay, remember that part where human beings are created very good in God’s image, with the God spark of will, conscience, reason, whatever and are yet unable to use our will freely, only for good, pure, holy stuff? Well, we don’t just stain our words, lives, and relationships with sin. We also stain with sin the Good News of God in Christ. We twist it away from the purity of Christ into something less than.
See, Christ comes as a Jew to redeem the people of Israel to God, and Christ proclaims God’s good news in a way that equally includes gentiles. Jesus comes as a Rabbi and collects a small group of male disciples around him to learn and continue his work, and Jesus often pauses and teaches women the power of the Good News through them, hereby inspiring them to continue his work too. Jesus teaches adults about the coming Kingdom of God AND lifts up children as the ones who see the Kingdom more clearly. Jesus loved going to synagogue and having scriptural and theological conversations with scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, anyone who thought they already knew and understood the law, and he talked God and scripture with sinners, tax collectors, lepers, Roman centurions, prostitutes, giving them the same attention and care, whether or not they knew the traditions or Torah, or worshipped this God. This Jesus, our Christ, embodied a God whose chose people and healed or forgave or commissioned people in ways that no one expected.
When we are talking about the doctrine of election, we are trying to understand who God incudes, saves, chooses for healing, elects for salvation and service. The early Christian letters, like Ephesians, struggled with that too. People kept asking, “Well then, who does God include, save, choose? Does God include, save, choose me, choose us, me and my people? Does God choose, include her, him, them, those other people?”
There are only three possible options to the question, who does God choose, elect… option 1) none – God chooses none as worthy of God’s self-sacrifice OR option 2) some – God chooses some for salvation and service OR option 3) ALL – God’s choice in Jesus the Christ ALL humanity, maybe even ALL creation.
Christians throughout time have thrown out the none option. I mean, God wouldn’t have come if NONE was the answer. Lots of Christians throughout time have also thrown out the ALL option. The term “universalist” is a conversation ending insult in most American Christian communities. Besides, there are lots of parables of Jesus that talk about the sheep and the goats, those who heard the word and those who didn’t, those who kept their lamps lit and made it to the wedding and those who let their lamps burn out and were not let in when they knocked. Christians have assumed those parables of Jesus are about God’s election, God’s inclusion and salvation in some future kingdom. Therefore, the assumption goes, what God is doing and will do at the great end cannot be for ALL.
That would only leave us with SOME, God chooses, elects some for grace and salvation. Then with our God given gift of will and reason, that we always taint with sin, we start trying to figure out where God draws the line, how God chooses, elects people. Because, we really want to know, “What do we have to do or say or believe to be on the good side of that line? If what God is doing, God is only doing for some, how do we know who the SOME will be, who will be in and out? Is there a way to guarantee me and my people are chosen, on the good side of whatever God is doing, you know, saved??
For the last 100, 150 years, many have said and preached, “Yes! We can know! Only those who repent, and are baptized, and believe, and accept and profess Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior are chosen by God for redemption.” In doing so, Christians have threatened eternal judgment and damnation on anyone that wasn’t baptized, that wasn’t baptized the right way with the right amount of water at the right age, or that never professed, or that did profess but didn’t really mean it. Lots of Christian communities claim to know where the line is between God’s chosen, the elect, and those God lets pass by.
That Ephesians passage we read tries to answer the question but its basically one long run on sentence in Greek. Let me try to read it again and break it down, phrase by phrase, thought by thought, with some clarifiers as we go.
“3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who blessed us in Christ … 4 just as God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world (not for salvation but) to be holy and blameless … 5 God destined us for adoption as God’s children through Jesus Christ, (not because we did something but) according to the good pleasure of God’s will, (and not to our glory but) 6 to the praise of God’s glorious grace that (we didn’t earn but that) God freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. (It not in our faith but) 7 In him we have redemption, (and not through any work or belief of ours but) through his blood, (we have) the forgiveness of our trespasses, (not because we earned it or deserved it but all) according to the riches of God grace 8 that God lavished on us. … according to God‘s good pleasure that God set forth in Christ, 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things into him, things in heaven and things on earth. 11 In Christ we have even obtained an inheritance,[f] having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to God’s counsel and will…”
Whatever God is doing now, and will do at our end or the great end, God is doing of God’s own will, God’s own choice. And we hope God has been planning to do it since before the foundations of creation were poured. We hope whatever God planned and willed would always be good and would end good. God is not doing what God does in Christ only IF or WHEN people earn it or deserve it. God wants to do and is doing it and will do it because its who God is. God is gracious. The plan doesn’t appear to be, in Ephesians, to gather only some, a select few who meet God’s extra-special criteria, but to gather ALL of creation into God at the fullness of time. And we can’t be sure, but we can hope that is God’s purpose, and that is creation’s destiny. If this God really is the same God we know in Jesus the Christ, we hope and trust this will all be accomplished.
That’s the doctrine of election. God chooses. We cannot choose ourselves or anyone else in, or out. We cannot repent, believe, baptize ourselves in or out of God’s love and forgiveness. We should no assume who is and isn’t graced by God. But our judgments or expectations of others or ourselves are NOT God’s judgments. In the end, it is God’s choice, God’s election that matters.
This does not dismiss us from the responsibility of living faithful, loving lives of peace and justice, sacrifice and service that assist God’s kingdom from coming on earth as it is already in the heavens. When we trust a God is that good, that kind of life would be the only life we want to live! That kind of faithful life is still our calling and purpose as the special human creations of God we all are. But we should not confuse God’s grace inspiring our responsibility to live beautifully despite our sin, with our lives or our faith deserving God’s forgiveness. The only way we are made whole is by God’s choice toward us despite our sin, because we cannot make a sinless choice for God, none of us. The doctrine of election removes our sinful assumption we can save ourselves, with our faith, and leaves election and salvation where it has always been, with God.
Now can we talk predestination. Most of the jokes we started with confuse predestination with pre-determinism. Pre-determinism assumes God’s plan is predetermined, and every action in all our lives is pre-scripted. In that case, we really have no will. We are just going through the motions of what God always intended, like the big clock winding down we talked about long ago in week 1 of the series. That cannot be true. If it were, sin and evil in our world would be God’s plan.
We’ve shown how God gave us will, room to think and choose and decide, but we fail to freely use it for pure good. That’s where sin and evil come from, from our misuse of our will, not from God’s pre-scripted predetermined plan. So whichever elevator button I push, or where I take the taxi, or whether or not I change the light bulb do not reflect God’s great plan nor do they have the ability to derail God’s. Those are simple little decisions I can or cannot make. They will make differences in my life and the lives of others around me, but in the grand scheme of things, God’s will WILL be done. All things will come to what God intends.
The word predestination is not about all the little decisions of elevator buttons, taxis, and light bulbs, but only about the final destiny, destination of all things, that somehow God’s will of returning all things to God will be done at the great end. We might do our very best to be faithful then sell Jesus out for 30 pieces, or we may spend a lifetime cheating others for profit just to return it all fourfold. Those faithful sinful choices make a big difference in our lives and the lives of others around us. But they do NOT determine the destiny of all things. God and God’s grace determine that, for each of us, for all of us, for all things.
Prayer
Amen? Amen.
Charge
Benediction
Now blessing, laughter, and loving be yours, and may the love of a great God who names you and holds you as the earth turns and the flowers grow be with you this day, this night, this moment, and forever more. Amen? Amen.
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