Wish List For The Future
Sermon
When I take a wedding service or a baptism service, I like to offer a few moments of silence for people to hold the wedding couple or the baptism candidate in God's presence. I usually suggest that they should think of all they wish for that couple or for that child for their future, and simply hold that thought as they rest in God's presence for a moment or two. Then I collect up all those silent prayers in a suitable prayer (known in the Church of England, appropriately enough, as a Collect).
I often wonder what thoughts people have. What do they pray for? Security? Good health? Wealth? A fantastic job? Happiness? Love? Or something else? I also wonder how most of those wishes relate to what God offers to human beings. Is God offering us what we want and need, or is God offering us something which we really don't much care about anyway? Because if God's gifts to us coincide in any way with the sort of desires people have for the future, we'd be crazy to ignore those gifts. And we'd be crazy, or at least irresponsible, to keep it to ourselves, to fail to spread the good news.
In today's passage from the letter to the Ephesians, the author spells out some of the gifts and promises of God, which you might or might not consider to be the sort of gifts you'd like in your own life. The letter may not have been written by Paul himself, but may be the work of a secretary writing at Paul's direction, or of a later disciple who sought to develop Paul's ideas for a new situation, some time around AD 80-100.
The letter as a whole is talking about the worldwide Church, the head of which is Christ (Ephesians 4:15). The purpose of the Church is spelt out as the instrument for making God's plan of salvation known throughout the universe (Ephesians 3:9-10), and the Church is clearly seen as anchored in God's saving love, which is shown through Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:4-10). The whole of redemption is rooted in the plan and accomplishment of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:3-14). The language used can be difficult for today's audiences, for it's often taken from early liturgy, hymns (Eph 3:20-21; 5:14) and prayers (cf Ephesians 1:15-23; 3:14-19). But although strange to modern ears, the letter glows with praise and worship.
So what exactly is salvation? What is God's saving love which was shown so clearly in Jesus? What is redemption? And how does any of this relate, if at all, to modern wish lists for our own futures?
Salvation is defined in my dictionary in two ways. Salvation is defined as a deliberate, planned guarding and protecting of something felt as precious, and salvation is also defined as the act of preserving or conserving or keeping safe. God has a plan of salvation in which God regards each human being as precious, and means to guard them, to protect them and to keep them safe.
Salvation is also to do with health, for the word arises from the Latin root, "salveo", meaning "to heal". So God also wants to keep each human being healthy. All of these - being guarded, protected, regarded as precious and being kept healthy - are probably quite high on most people's wish list. Most people long for security and safety and good health, and to be loved. And many people's lives go wrong because they're unconsciously longing for one or more of those elements but somehow go the wrong way about finding them. So in God's plan of salvation God is offering us something we all want very much indeed and is also offering us a way to avoid the unnecessary difficulties and problems which arise because our search for them takes us in wrong directions.
How do we take hold of God's protection and love? How do we take hold of God's gift of health?
Obviously we have some responsibility ourselves. If we want to be healthy we must live healthy life-styles. We must eat the right sort of food, drink the right sort of drink and take sufficient exercise. We must also make sure we get sufficient rest and good quality rest, both of body and mind.
We must also make sure that our soul gets the right sort of food with sufficient exercise and sufficient rest, for body, mind and soul are inextricably bound up together and strongly influence each other. If our soul is out of sorts, such as with a long-standing inability to forgive which is pushed away to the back of our minds where we can hardly see it any more, our bodies and/or minds will suffer. If we carry a load of guilt and can't shed it, there will be a long term effect upon our bodies and/or minds.
The Church offers the means to health of soul. The Church offers a way in to God's forgiveness and offers God's food and nourishment for our souls. The Church also offers the means of experiencing God's love, through worship. But if we close our minds and say, for instance, that we only like one sort of worship, then we'll be closing off quite a lot of the channels which God uses to shower his love upon us. If we will only accept God's Holy Communion from certain people and not from others, then we won't receive all the nourishment we need. Those who have closed minds also have closed souls, and God will never push himself in where he isn't wanted.
In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, says St Paul in today's reading. We have heard the word of truth, the gospel of our salvation, and have believed in him, and so we're marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; and this is the pledge of our inheritance.
We see what God is like by studying Jesus. Jesus showed the extent of God's love for us in that he loved us so much he was willing to die in order that we might be able to take hold of God's gifts to us, gifts of love and forgiveness and reassurance for the future. God's gifts to us come via the Holy Spirit, the God within. To make those gifts our own, we need to allow time and space for the God within. We need to relax in God's presence regularly and to open ourselves to him, holding nothing back. We need to receive whatever God offers us and we need to be careful not to reject any of his gifts just because we don't particularly like the means by which those gifts are delivered.
God offers us security, protection, good health, love and happiness. Anyone who rejects those gifts can't have much of a wish list. Those with a genuine wish list are looking for salvation. God offers salvation, and God is always faithful. Let's make sure we accept and receive our inheritance.
I often wonder what thoughts people have. What do they pray for? Security? Good health? Wealth? A fantastic job? Happiness? Love? Or something else? I also wonder how most of those wishes relate to what God offers to human beings. Is God offering us what we want and need, or is God offering us something which we really don't much care about anyway? Because if God's gifts to us coincide in any way with the sort of desires people have for the future, we'd be crazy to ignore those gifts. And we'd be crazy, or at least irresponsible, to keep it to ourselves, to fail to spread the good news.
In today's passage from the letter to the Ephesians, the author spells out some of the gifts and promises of God, which you might or might not consider to be the sort of gifts you'd like in your own life. The letter may not have been written by Paul himself, but may be the work of a secretary writing at Paul's direction, or of a later disciple who sought to develop Paul's ideas for a new situation, some time around AD 80-100.
The letter as a whole is talking about the worldwide Church, the head of which is Christ (Ephesians 4:15). The purpose of the Church is spelt out as the instrument for making God's plan of salvation known throughout the universe (Ephesians 3:9-10), and the Church is clearly seen as anchored in God's saving love, which is shown through Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:4-10). The whole of redemption is rooted in the plan and accomplishment of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:3-14). The language used can be difficult for today's audiences, for it's often taken from early liturgy, hymns (Eph 3:20-21; 5:14) and prayers (cf Ephesians 1:15-23; 3:14-19). But although strange to modern ears, the letter glows with praise and worship.
So what exactly is salvation? What is God's saving love which was shown so clearly in Jesus? What is redemption? And how does any of this relate, if at all, to modern wish lists for our own futures?
Salvation is defined in my dictionary in two ways. Salvation is defined as a deliberate, planned guarding and protecting of something felt as precious, and salvation is also defined as the act of preserving or conserving or keeping safe. God has a plan of salvation in which God regards each human being as precious, and means to guard them, to protect them and to keep them safe.
Salvation is also to do with health, for the word arises from the Latin root, "salveo", meaning "to heal". So God also wants to keep each human being healthy. All of these - being guarded, protected, regarded as precious and being kept healthy - are probably quite high on most people's wish list. Most people long for security and safety and good health, and to be loved. And many people's lives go wrong because they're unconsciously longing for one or more of those elements but somehow go the wrong way about finding them. So in God's plan of salvation God is offering us something we all want very much indeed and is also offering us a way to avoid the unnecessary difficulties and problems which arise because our search for them takes us in wrong directions.
How do we take hold of God's protection and love? How do we take hold of God's gift of health?
Obviously we have some responsibility ourselves. If we want to be healthy we must live healthy life-styles. We must eat the right sort of food, drink the right sort of drink and take sufficient exercise. We must also make sure we get sufficient rest and good quality rest, both of body and mind.
We must also make sure that our soul gets the right sort of food with sufficient exercise and sufficient rest, for body, mind and soul are inextricably bound up together and strongly influence each other. If our soul is out of sorts, such as with a long-standing inability to forgive which is pushed away to the back of our minds where we can hardly see it any more, our bodies and/or minds will suffer. If we carry a load of guilt and can't shed it, there will be a long term effect upon our bodies and/or minds.
The Church offers the means to health of soul. The Church offers a way in to God's forgiveness and offers God's food and nourishment for our souls. The Church also offers the means of experiencing God's love, through worship. But if we close our minds and say, for instance, that we only like one sort of worship, then we'll be closing off quite a lot of the channels which God uses to shower his love upon us. If we will only accept God's Holy Communion from certain people and not from others, then we won't receive all the nourishment we need. Those who have closed minds also have closed souls, and God will never push himself in where he isn't wanted.
In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, says St Paul in today's reading. We have heard the word of truth, the gospel of our salvation, and have believed in him, and so we're marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; and this is the pledge of our inheritance.
We see what God is like by studying Jesus. Jesus showed the extent of God's love for us in that he loved us so much he was willing to die in order that we might be able to take hold of God's gifts to us, gifts of love and forgiveness and reassurance for the future. God's gifts to us come via the Holy Spirit, the God within. To make those gifts our own, we need to allow time and space for the God within. We need to relax in God's presence regularly and to open ourselves to him, holding nothing back. We need to receive whatever God offers us and we need to be careful not to reject any of his gifts just because we don't particularly like the means by which those gifts are delivered.
God offers us security, protection, good health, love and happiness. Anyone who rejects those gifts can't have much of a wish list. Those with a genuine wish list are looking for salvation. God offers salvation, and God is always faithful. Let's make sure we accept and receive our inheritance.
