Sermon Eph 1-3-14 Take 2
When I was growing up in Creighton mine, I never wanted for much. I always thought that what I had in my own little world was all there was to have. I could walk to school without being frightened. I could get a bath once a week in the metal tub that my mother filled up in the kitchen. I never thought that it was a hardship or great disadvantage to having to use the outhouse because we did not have an indoor toilet. I always had fresh cut French fries with real gravy at no cost because my mother was a short-order cook in the restaurant. In the winter, I played ball hockey in the streets and tobogganed in the hills just behind our house. I was happy to worship in the small white church, 100 yards just behind the house with the rest of my friends. I had everything at my doorstep, security, friends, a sense that everything was okay.
It was not until I was 19, in the army, traveling the world, that I began to realize just how small my world was. I thought that many young adults my age had inherited through genetics and birth rite, so much more then I ever had- money, good looks, more education. I envied them because they seemed to have been bequeathed a head start in life. I began thinking that I never inherited anything of value. I became determined to work hard so that I could catch up with others.
But since then, I slowly and sometimes painfully learned that the world’s concept of inheritance, that is getting something for nothing, or being born into privilege by chance, is really a mixed blessing.
Some people cannot grasp their inheritance even when someone is shoving it them. In the early 80’s, there was a 50 year old man, a graduate of Oxford in England by the name of Stanley William McKenna Walker. At some point in his life, for whatever reason, whether it was mental illness, or some addiction, or emotional trauma, or laziness, I guess the bottom of his life fell away and he was living on the streets of Chicago. His family anxious to find him, placed an ad in the local papers hoping that he might read it and surface from life in the alley ways and curbs. Stanley was the son of a wealthy British shipbuilder who had died. The family wanted Stanley to know that he was the heir of an inheritance of 4,000,000 dollars. For months Stanley did not respond to the ad. Eventually Stanley was found dead in a doorway on a cold night. Stanley could not understand the value of his inheritance, or he did not want it and ignored it.
It is a tragedy that some people ignore their inheritance, won’t claim it, choose to forget it, or once they have it, squander it away.
Faith and grace is also our inheritance that we that we can also choose to ignore, squander or use wisely and pass on. Looking back, I can say that for a long time as a younger adult, in trying to catch up and build a material inheritance for myself, I chose to ignore my faith. As I read this passage in Ephesians, I have come to the realization that God gives us our entire lifetimes to choose to claim gratefully, and use wisely, our spiritual inheritance. More importantly, God has given us a spiritual inheritance that we are meant to pass on to others in a manner that makes whole our lives, and the lives of those who inherit our faith. If we have come to realize in maturity and through hard lessons of life that it is wrong to squander our money, our health, our sanity on bad choices, then why would we also squander God’s inheritance of Grace in our lives.
Scripture speaks about inheritance often. The ancient biblical societies structure depended on stable inheritance laws. Jewish law recognized that only blood relatives on the father’s side were considered family and hence entitled to inherit wealth and land.
This rule had preserved the social fabric of the tribes of Israel since God made them heir to the promised land. The concept of inheritance by birth right became a primary way of describing God’s relationship with a nation or person. God promised Abraham that he would be heir of a great nation and Jacob inherited the promise, and made his 12 sons the heirs of Israel.
But now in this passage from Ephesians, Paul tells us that Jesus death and resurrection changed the rules of inheritance. He says that “In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance”. Paul says this with great joy. You can hear his excitement because this entire passage in the original Greek, is one long sentence of blessing: no punctuation, no time to take a breath, just word after word of great thanks to God for our inheritance through Christ. And Paul is saying this inheritance of God’s grace in not about birth rite. Its not about whether you are born a Jew or a foreigner. In other words it is not about genetics, or religion, ethnic or social status, material wealth or spiritual piety; it is about God’s grace choosing us, making all of us heirs to the Kingdom of God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. All of us have become adopted children of God in Christ. Its our inheritance from Jesus (legacy is something we pass on).
Paul says that there is two aspects of this inheritance we have claimed in Jesus: First it is grace through the Holy Spirit that gives us the strength to live for today. In other words in the life and death of Jesus Christ we have inherited a model for how we are to go about claiming our inheritance and using it wisely. Christ has made us heirs of true humanity. To be human in the model of Christ is to attempt to live motivated by mercy and compassion, motivated to do the right thing because we have hope. Hope that our relationship to God makes us whole and makes our relationships with each other compassionate.
A story in last week’s Maclean’s magazine illustrates this. Edith Petes is a woman who inherited a Christian faith tradition in Communist Hungary and who emigrated to Canada in 1991. At 47 years of age, she came to know a 51 year old Muslim co-worker by the name of Zahir who was dying of liver failure. Zahir had a chance to live if the doctors could find a donor who would give a third of their liver to Zahir. Apparently this is a relatively new surgical method. Edith was the one person that met all the medical criteria for this transplant and was willing to give a part of herself to Zahir. She also went through a battery of psychological tests. The psychiatrist thought that she might be motivated by money, or status, or even because she was unable to bear children successfully. Edith was motivated in her life to simply try and do the right thing. She gave up part of her liver and Zahir did not survive the operation. She embodies the gospel definition of salvation that Paul talks about. She bequeathed a part of herself as an act of faith and love that to a near stranger to try and bring some wholeness back into his life with no material benefits for her. She claimed God’s grace and passed on her faith. Don’t you feel when you hear a story like this that you have inherited something of what it means to live a wholesome life, of what salvation might look like.
The second part of our spiritual inheritance that Paul says we receive in Christ is that we have become heirs to eternal life. As we have lived our lives faithfully motivated by mercy and compassion, we inherit eternal life through the compassion and mercy of God- literally life after physical death. Now this is a part of our inheritance of salvation that we don’t understand well. For me it means that one day I will find again that perfect contentment, freedom, and wholeness that I knew as a child growing up in Creighton Mine where I had everything and indoor plumbing did not decide who I am in God’s eyes.
What is it for you? Do you have a sense of eternal life beyond this one. Imagine this inheritance is like waiting with anticipation to taste the Christmas turkey. My mother would say “stay out of the kitchen’ supper is not ready yet”. Stay in the living room and enjoy yourself and your friends. I will call you to the table when supper’s ready”.
Even though I could not see what was going on in the kitchen, I knew by the sounds of activity and especially the smell of the roasting turkey that I was going to taste something heavenly very soon. I anticipated eating this meal and I knew it was coming so I could enjoy my time in the living room. All of us here today are in the living room with our friends but we will inherit the great mouth-watering smells of the turkey meal in God’s banquet hall in God’s time, when God calls us.
So the question about inheritance is what we have because we all have a great inheritance to claim. The question is that we realize this truth, claim it, use it wisely and pass it on to our children. At 19 years of age, I had forgotten all of this. I had forgotten my faith inheritance. I had forgotten that I was given a great blessing of grace not because of birth rite but because of what I had learned about Jesus from my parents. I forgot that going to church and getting the opportunity as a nine year old to read this very passage from Ephesians to the congregation strengthened my claim to the inheritance that I was forever a child of God, not by birth rite but through the grace of Jesus Christ. I forgot until God’s grace reminded me almost twenty years later that I had never felt more complete, more content, less afraid or alone, then when I was reading about my faith inheritance in this Scripture.
As human beings, we cannot choose our parent’s or our genes. But in Christ, Paul says we have been chosen for salvation by God-- That sense that we are all right in God’s eyes. Paul rejoices that in Jesus’ death and resurrection, God has made all of humanity an heir to grace. God has shown through Jesus, that love is never a matter of owing someone favours, or of expecting an inheritance by birth rite. It is given out of the goodness of God’s being, not the righteousness of our living. We cannot persuade God that we deserve this inheritance, for God has already blessed us with it. We can only gratefully claim it and pass it on.
Amen.