Thanks, Megan, for reading that. It’s a thicket of words. Mostly because the underlying Greek is a thicket of words. English needs the words to be in a particular order to have the sentence make sense. In Greek, the endings of the words make the sentence make sense. So in the Greek the subject and the verb don’t show up until verse 5.[1] in some ways you don’t know what you’re talking about until you’re almost done with the sentence. In other ways, you know what’s really important, because it’s right up front, even if you don’t know why we’re talking about death and trespass and life before something happened.
But if I broke you guys into small groups and asked you what you thought it meant (I’m not going to do that), most of you would have to sit there with the text in front of you, and go phrase by phrase, watching where all the commas land, and what clause is talking about what other thing. Especially the beginning part.
So now I’m going to ask Megan to read the passage again. But this time from the Bible translation called The Message.
2 1-6 It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.
7-10 Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
But if I broke you guys into small groups and asked you what you thought it meant (I’m not going to do that), most of you would have to sit there with the text in front of you, and go phrase by phrase, watching where all the commas land, and what clause is talking about what other thing. Especially the beginning part.
So now I’m going to ask Megan to read the passage again. But this time from the Bible translation called The Message.
2 1-6 It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.
7-10 Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
Show of hands. Could most of you follow that better?
I know you don’t have it in front of you like you have the other one. But, again, if I asked you what you thought it meant (I’m not going to do that), would this version be easier to work with? I think so too, but I needed to check my assumptions before launching into the rest of my argument.
Thank you, Megan for having to do twice the lay reader duties in one service. There’s an extra cookie for you at coffee hour to help you get your strength back.
In last week’s service, I asked you guys a question about how much context do you want from me when the Gospel stories differ. And John Panto said that you trusted me, which was not the answer I was looking for, so I teased him about his answer. But I have been thinking about that comment all week. Because I know you trust me. And I trust you to let me know when you need something more or different or less from me. And I trust the Holy Spirit to get me to the right place.
A worship service is all of us working together. All of us bringing who we are right now, today, with all our joys and concerns, all our hopes and fears, all our vulnerabilities. And when I write the reflection each week, I’m hoping that I offer something that meets that whirlpool that we all make together.
In the early draft of this week’s bulletin, I had The Message translation of Ephesians in there, because I thought it was so much clearer. And I was going to do something about how we don’t earn our salvation through good works and we don’t overcome the deficit sin take us into with good works. Good works are just a response to the grace that God has given us. Except, it didn’t go anywhere and it didn’t spark anything. It wasn’t the right message for this group of humans on this day.
I switched back to that more tangled translation, because while it’s not as easy to understand, there are more traces of something that’s in the original Greek that I think we are working on as a congregation. But it’s going to take me a couple steps to get there.
So first off, do you guys have something set up in your life to support a habit that makes your life better? Like, there’s a hook right by the door where the keys go, so you don’t ever have to look for them. Or the fruit is on the counter and the cookies are in the cabinet so if you want a snack, it’s an apple not an Oreo. Does anyone have an example of something like that in your life?
Thank you, Megan for having to do twice the lay reader duties in one service. There’s an extra cookie for you at coffee hour to help you get your strength back.
In last week’s service, I asked you guys a question about how much context do you want from me when the Gospel stories differ. And John Panto said that you trusted me, which was not the answer I was looking for, so I teased him about his answer. But I have been thinking about that comment all week. Because I know you trust me. And I trust you to let me know when you need something more or different or less from me. And I trust the Holy Spirit to get me to the right place.
A worship service is all of us working together. All of us bringing who we are right now, today, with all our joys and concerns, all our hopes and fears, all our vulnerabilities. And when I write the reflection each week, I’m hoping that I offer something that meets that whirlpool that we all make together.
In the early draft of this week’s bulletin, I had The Message translation of Ephesians in there, because I thought it was so much clearer. And I was going to do something about how we don’t earn our salvation through good works and we don’t overcome the deficit sin take us into with good works. Good works are just a response to the grace that God has given us. Except, it didn’t go anywhere and it didn’t spark anything. It wasn’t the right message for this group of humans on this day.
I switched back to that more tangled translation, because while it’s not as easy to understand, there are more traces of something that’s in the original Greek that I think we are working on as a congregation. But it’s going to take me a couple steps to get there.
So first off, do you guys have something set up in your life to support a habit that makes your life better? Like, there’s a hook right by the door where the keys go, so you don’t ever have to look for them. Or the fruit is on the counter and the cookies are in the cabinet so if you want a snack, it’s an apple not an Oreo. Does anyone have an example of something like that in your life?
Now I’m going to ask you to zoom out.
And this part I won’t ask you to share. But is there something you have set up in your life because it supports you in the person you want to be? For instance, you don’t want to be the kind of person who has to count every penny in retirement, so there’s a part of every paycheck that goes directly into an IRA. Or you grew up in a house of artists, which was so exciting and fun, but nothing, nothing was ever put away and you could never ever find anything you needed, so your own home has a place for everything and everything in its place.
The first one is a kind of habit inside your life to keep things running smoothly. The other is more of an identity thing, it’s being the person you want to be. From the outside, it may look exactly the same, the gym bag is by the door every evening. But for one person it makes the morning go more smoothly and for someone else it’s the result of the commitment they made to see themselves as athletes.
Still with me? Ok. So in the original Greek, there’s a word in the beginning and in the end[2] that literally means “walking” but in the sense that our lives are paths that we walk.[3] And before God who is great in mercy (Ephesians 2:4) and out of the great love God feels for us (Ephesians 2:4), and all of those other nested clauses within clauses, before God raised us up with Jesus, we were walking in a life that was sinful and dead and honestly a total mess. It could be slightly less messy with some good habits, but it wasn’t going anywhere.
And somehow we think that we’ve chosen to walk in a life that is God-fearing and in right relationship with God. But even that life isn’t going anywhere. Even if the neighborhood is nice and you can get a latte whenever you want it.
No, God is offering us something completely different. A whole new way of walking in the world. Right now, right here. We’re being offered the kingdom. Not because of anything we’ve done or not done or anything. Just because God loves us that much. Just because God wants to call the kingdom forth that much. We were made to walk through the world that way, to follow that path through what appears to be this world, with all its lost keys and Oreos in the cabinets, and direct deposits into IRAs. But in reality, it’s the kingdom. It’s a whole new life God is giving us for nothing. We just have to open ourselves and our steps to it. We were made for it. But we can get so focused on being more efficient or living a kind of life that no longer fits us that we miss the call to simply walk where God is leading us. And be grateful we’re being led.
So I gave you the more tangled up version of the passage from Ephesians. In part because life is more tangled up, in part because walking through that text was more of a chore and that’s definitely what it feels like when we resist God’s invitation because we insist on being in charge. But also because The Message translation had lost that flavor of walking God’s path in life, following God’s direction in our journey, and that seemed more like what we needed here and now. Let me know if I got us walking in the wrong direction.
The first one is a kind of habit inside your life to keep things running smoothly. The other is more of an identity thing, it’s being the person you want to be. From the outside, it may look exactly the same, the gym bag is by the door every evening. But for one person it makes the morning go more smoothly and for someone else it’s the result of the commitment they made to see themselves as athletes.
Still with me? Ok. So in the original Greek, there’s a word in the beginning and in the end[2] that literally means “walking” but in the sense that our lives are paths that we walk.[3] And before God who is great in mercy (Ephesians 2:4) and out of the great love God feels for us (Ephesians 2:4), and all of those other nested clauses within clauses, before God raised us up with Jesus, we were walking in a life that was sinful and dead and honestly a total mess. It could be slightly less messy with some good habits, but it wasn’t going anywhere.
And somehow we think that we’ve chosen to walk in a life that is God-fearing and in right relationship with God. But even that life isn’t going anywhere. Even if the neighborhood is nice and you can get a latte whenever you want it.
No, God is offering us something completely different. A whole new way of walking in the world. Right now, right here. We’re being offered the kingdom. Not because of anything we’ve done or not done or anything. Just because God loves us that much. Just because God wants to call the kingdom forth that much. We were made to walk through the world that way, to follow that path through what appears to be this world, with all its lost keys and Oreos in the cabinets, and direct deposits into IRAs. But in reality, it’s the kingdom. It’s a whole new life God is giving us for nothing. We just have to open ourselves and our steps to it. We were made for it. But we can get so focused on being more efficient or living a kind of life that no longer fits us that we miss the call to simply walk where God is leading us. And be grateful we’re being led.
So I gave you the more tangled up version of the passage from Ephesians. In part because life is more tangled up, in part because walking through that text was more of a chore and that’s definitely what it feels like when we resist God’s invitation because we insist on being in charge. But also because The Message translation had lost that flavor of walking God’s path in life, following God’s direction in our journey, and that seemed more like what we needed here and now. Let me know if I got us walking in the wrong direction.
Amen.
[1] Charles Cousar, “Fourth Sunday in Lent: Ephesians 2:1-10” in Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV – Year B, ed. Walter Brueggemann et al. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993), 226.
[2] Kyle Fever, “Second Reading: Commentary on Ephesians 2:1-10”, Working Preacher “Lectionary Commentaries for March 15, 2015, Fourth Sunday in Lent (Year B)”, https://www.workingpreacher.org/?print-all=30028%2C30027%2C30026%2C30024 (accessed 5 October 2023)
[3] Fever.
[2] Kyle Fever, “Second Reading: Commentary on Ephesians 2:1-10”, Working Preacher “Lectionary Commentaries for March 15, 2015, Fourth Sunday in Lent (Year B)”, https://www.workingpreacher.org/?print-all=30028%2C30027%2C30026%2C30024 (accessed 5 October 2023)
[3] Fever.