“By Grace You Have Been Saved” Fourth Sunday in Lent March 22, 2009

(First, read the text for this sermon: Ephesians 2:1-10)

The apostle Paul might have written the letter to the Ephesians. But probably not. The style and the Greek vocabulary is much different from those letters which are indisputably from the pen of Paul. (According to introduction in the new Lutheran Study Bible, “For example, some sentences in Ephesians are unusually long….Nearly ninety words appear in Ephesians that do not appear in other letters written by Paul.”) This kind of thing is easy to see, for Greek scholars. It would be as if English readers compared a passage of Faulkner, for instance, with one from Hemingway. From the different styles of writing, from the different vocabularies used, it would be obvious that two different people wrote those two passages.

In the second and third centuries, though, as church leaders were deciding what would be in the collection we call the New Testament, it didn’t really matter who wrote Ephesians. It was common for a follower of a prominent person to write in the name of that person. What was important was that the letter proved to be so helpful to the churches of the first centuries! It was an easy choice to include Ephesians.

The letter so clearly describes the nearly-inconceivable grace of God. The author has composed a letter of perfect Lutheran theology!

Oh. Wait. It’s the other way around, isn’t it? It’s Luther’s emphasis on grace that comes from the Bible, right?

In fact, the Bible offers contradictory witnesses to God. Over a period of 1,600 years or so, as the authors composed the writings that eventually came to be collected together as the Bible, the authors were witnessing to how they understood God to be working in their times and their places. And so, in the Bible, God seems to act in conflicting ways. That gives rise to an inaccurate stereotype that I hear a lot: “In the Old Testament, God is a God of anger and vengeance. In the New Testament, God is a God of grace and forgiveness.”

It is true that there is a lot of violence in the Hebrew Scriptures. (I said a couple of weeks ago that the story of Elijah is better than any of the “Indiana Jones” movies.) And, it is true that various writers portray God as involved in the violence. (Look at this morning’s story, out of Numbers. Is there any story more weird?! Numbers 21:4-9)

But, mostly, the Old Testament is full of grace! We see that by considering just a few examples.

Consider, for instance, the call of Abraham and Sarah. Who were they that God should call them? Did they deserve God’s favor? Uh uh. Pure grace.

Consider the call of Moses – a no account sheep herder, working for his father-in-law. Pure grace.

Why would God choose the insignificant, powerless, land-less, nomadic Hebrews to be the Chosen People? Why did God save those Chosen People from slavery in Egypt? Why did God give them the 10 Commandments? Of course, the answer to all those questions is: pure grace from God.

Does God get angry in the Bible? Well, certainly! For one example, God’s anger is that of a jilted lover according to the prophet Hosea, because the people have given their love to other gods. Most often in the Old Testament, God’s anger is that of a loving parent, despairing as he watches his children engage in behavior that will destroy them. (Perhaps you’ve known that terrible, angry love, with your children.)

But just as with any parent, all through Bible, God’s anger is temporary. All through the Bible, God offers new chances – even though the people have given no reason for God to do that! God never tires of welcoming the errant children back. Why does God do this? Pure grace.

Grace is the primary and unifying theme – throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. In the Pauline writings, in particular, grace is the point of everything that God has done and everything that God will do. In the Lutheran tradition of Christianity, based on Paul, we assert that grace is fundamental to God. And this passage from Ephesians is as radical a statement of grace as we’ll ever encounter.

You were dead. You were dead. I was dead. Let’s start there.

You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. “Disobedient”: there is the theme of repentance that we’ve encountered in many of our readings during Lent. To be disobedient is to turn away from God, and, instead, to follow “the ruler of the power of the air,” as Paul puts it. (There he is reflecting the cosmology of his time: the ancient assumption that the habitat of demons was up there, in the air.) Repentance means to turn back towards God!

There are Christian traditions that require repentance, as something we do first, in order to be saved. Hmmm. Does God withhold salvation until people first prove that they deserve it, until they first repent? That is not what the author of Ephesians is describing. Instead, it is all pure grace. Listen:

All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. (My emphases.) But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ -- by grace you have been saved -- and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, the author repeats himself! For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – and I say to myself, “Thank God!” Because, I don’t know about you, but I am constantly reminded of how powerless I am to save myself, or even to improve myself. I think, “OK. I’m doing well overcoming this grief stuff”; and then I see a video of my loved one back when she was alive and healthy and beautiful, and then the tears come as if they are new. I’m not doing well at all! I can’t work myself out of it! I can’t do it myself!

Or, I’m working too hard, right? I’m driving myself, and I find myself feeling trapped, and I start becoming resentful. So I come across some good “self help” advice somewhere, in some reading: of how to regain balance; and I recover some perspective; and that works for, how long? Thirty-two hours or so? But 33 hours later I’m driving myself mercilessly again, because I’m motivated by law: if things fall apart, it’s my fault, right? I can’t free myself from this captivity to sin! I can’t work myself out of it. I can’t do it myself!

It is into this, our condition of sin, that God has come. God has come in the flesh and blood of Jesus the Christ, who died on the cross and then rose from the grave. And this is the effect of that: For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God -- not the result of works, so that no one may boast. Pure grace! Our salvation is not what you and I do. Our salvation, instead, is what God has done. Pure grace. For by grace you have been saved through faith.

Can it be that easy? That’s the question we ask. That’s what makes God’s radical grace so difficult to accept and believe! Can you believe that our salvation is a gift, without us doing anything?

And – aren’t you and I supposed to work? Aren’t we supposed to do good things? Hasn’t God given us our work to do?

The answer is: Yes! Of course. Indeed, that is why God frees you and me from the need to save ourselves! We can stop trying to do that now. That’s been done. Now, you and I can devote our energy to the work God gives us to do, our ministries, among the people God gives us to work with and live with and play with.

Listen to how that’s expressed, in the last verse of this morning’s reading (again, with my emphases): For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

So. What about you, on your journey of faith? It’s all grace from here on out, right? Pure joy, right? You’ll never again be hard on others and even harder on yourself. Right?

Yeah, right. It’s the life-long paradox that Luther calls being “saint and sinner.” Separated from God in sin, we turn away from grace. We live by law. We beat ourselves up for every tiny failing. Repentance, the turning back to God, must be a daily movement of our journey in faith.

At least weekly, as we begin our sabbath day worship, we confess our sins and then you hear these grace-saturated words: “In the mercy of almighty God, Jesus Christ was given to die for us, and for his sake God forgives us all our sins.”

Or, using the “right-hand-column” words, as I did a few minutes ago this morning: “God, who is rich in mercy, loved us even when we were dead in sin, and made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved.” (Recognize those words? They’re from this morning’s reading in Ephesians! That’s what liturgy is: the Bible, adapted!)

The words of absolution continue: “In the name of Jesus Christ, your sins are forgiven. Almighty God strengthen you with power through the Holy Spirit, that Christ may live in your hearts through faith.”

Pure grace.

And so, given salvation, freed by that pure grace, the writer of Ephesians puts it this way: we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

Thanks be to God!

In the name of God, who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia