Ephesians 1:3-14
“How blessed is God!...Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.”
“Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people – free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free!...It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.” (Eugene Peterson, The Message (Colorado Springs: NavPress Publishing Group, 1993), p. 402)
He was known by most people as Tom Weber. I called him "Coach." While in college I periodically went home on Friday nights to watch the high school football team play. I would often run into "coach" and we would talk. During one of those chance encounters he said to me, "Hey, Bill, you can call me Tom now." I said, "Thanks, coach." It took me several more years before I could do it.
(I shared most of what I'm going to share in this post in a sermon on the above Ephesians text when I was serving the Lima Trinity United Methodist Church. I used Tom's and my relationship to illustrate God's grace. Part of the service was on the local radio station at noon each Sunday which meant some folks in Ottawa would sometimes turn it on to listen to it. Apparently several did that day because I received numerous letters and phone calls from people who appreciated what I shared about Tom. When Tom passed away a number of years later his wife, Marilyn, and children further honored me by asking me to share what I said in my sermon during his funeral. What follows is the rest of that sermon.)
There's a lot more to the story of why Tom Weber had a significant role in my life than simply the fact that he was my high school basketball coach. Coach Weber demanded a lot of respect. And when I say demanded, I don't mean he verbally insisted on it. Rather, it was his mere presence - his personality - his command of the settings he entered. He was tall - strong - had a really deep and powerful voice - and he could play a pretty mean game of ball himself. He knew the game of basketball and he knew what he wanted his players to do in order for the team to be successful.
Well, there was this one 5’8” guard who thought he knew his basketball too. Some claimed he had a tendency to play a little out of control. Some said he dribbled too much and that he tried too hard to prove how good a passer he was by trying to thread the ball between opposing ballplayer’s outstretched hands. He also had a tendency to give into the temptation to play the game at the fastest tempo possible. So, sometimes Coach Weber had to get in this particular guard’s face which usually resulted in me having to take a seat on the bench next to him or down on the end depending on how upset we were with each other.
Coach Weber coached a lot of big games in his coaching career. My senior year we were ranked second in the state and only lost two games – one during the season and one in the tournament, both to the same team. But, coach also fought some pretty significant health battles over the years – surviving an aneurism and a bone marrow transplant to combat leukemia. I believe it was lung cancer that finally took his life.
The year before he passed away I was inducted into my high school’s Hall of Fame. I asked Tom to introduce me. But, I didn’t ask him to do it because he was a great basketball coach, although he was – nor did I ask him because of how he handled his health problems, although there’s much to be admired in how he did that as well. You see, in the middle of my second year in college, I applied for a position at a YMCA camp near Akron, Ohio – Camp Y-Noah. Near the end of the interview the director of the camp, Bob Wells, said something like, “I think you should know it was because of your high school basketball coach’s recommendation that we invited you here to be interviewed. He sure thinks a lot of you.”
I was speechless, flattered, humbled, ashamed and proud all at the same time. All the way home I wrestled with what Tom had done for me in spite of my obnoxious, cocky, know-it-all, stubborn basketball player I was for him. And, what he did has been one of the things that has shaped me into the kind of person I’ve been ever since. It’s made a difference in my theology – it’s made a difference in how I’ve dealt with hard to handle, even hard to like young people – it’s made a difference in who I’ve been and how I’ve done my ministry – it’s made a difference in how I’ve responded to those with different ideas than mine – it’s made a huge difference. Grace makes a difference. It’s amazing – it’s awesome what experiencing grace can do to a person.
Grace – it’s amazing – it’s awesome – it’s not deserved – it doesn’t have to be offered – it can’t be earned.
Some of the words which make up our religious dictionary suffer from overuse. That is, they’ve been used so much or so inappropriately that they’ve, for the most part, lost their meaning – their power – their significance – their richness. But, as far as I’m concerned grace isn’t one of those words – one of those concepts. If anything, it suffers from a lack of use. The thought of a good God actively seeking us – sinful, weak, sorrowful, miserable, lonely people that we are – seeking us, is a concept we need to understand and accept and experience and share and offer and believe.
Frederick Buechner writes in his book, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC: "Grace is something you can never get but only be given. There's no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth.
"A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertion that people are saved by grace. There is nothing you have to do. There's nothing you have to do. There's nothing you have to do.” (1)
The letter to the Ephesians was written by Paul while he was in prison. In the original Greek the portion above was this one, very long, single sentence. It's believed that the reason it was written that way was because Paul was so filled with emotion about the wonderfulness of God's activity on our behalf that the examples of God's graciousness just kept tumbling out of him - that he was so caught up with the wonder of God's work through Christ on our behalf that he simply could not stop for breath. The passage takes on this almost lyrical song of praise - a litany of those things which reveal God's gracious nature to us - each phrase chosen to capture a storehouse of evidence of God's gracious work in our lives. The really well-known and highly respected Bible scholar William Barclay wrote about the passage: "Paul's mind goes on and on, not because he is thinking in logical stages, but because gift after gift and wonder after wonder from God pass before his eyes and enter into his mind.” (2)
God’s grace – God’s amazing grace – that’s what so excited Paul – that’s what kept him going despite all the hardships he had to endure. Prison was nothing in comparison to the hope of heaven – in comparison to being chosen by God – in comparison to being a member of God’s family through adoption – in comparison to unmerited forgiveness.
In response to the question, “Why do we call grace amazing?” one preacher wrote: “Grace is amazing because it works against the grain of common sense. Hard-nosed common sense will tell you that you are too wrong to meet the standards of a holy God; pardoning grace tells you that it’s all right in spite of so much in you that is wrong.
“Realistic common sense tells you that you are too weak, too harassed, too human to change for the better; grace gives you power to send you on the way to being a better person.
“Plain common sense may tell you that you are caught in a rut of fate or futility; grace promises that you can trust God to have a better tomorrow for you than the day you have made for yourself.”
Have you experienced the healing quality of God’s amazing grace in your life? Do you understand that God wants to adopt you into the holy family? Do you understand that God wants to bestow on you – to put inside you – a sense of worthiness – a sense of peace – a sense of hope - a sense of joy? Do you understand that God wants to do this for you even though you feel unworthy – even though you don’t deserve it? God’s grace is a free gift. Do you want what God has to offer? Healing from your anger? – Forgiveness of your sins? – Release from the stranglehold of guilt? I invite you to open up your heart and let God’s grace have its way in you - in your heart, soul, mind and body.
Oh, and thanks "coach" for embodying this theological reality!
1 Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1973), p. 33 – 34.
2 William Barclay, The Letters to the Galatians and Ephesians (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1958), p. 88.
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