Over the past 36 years of serving as a Presbyterian Minister I have baptized many infants and a
few adults. And for me, the baptismal service has always had a certain mysterious feeling to it, a feeling that I have never
been able to fully comprehend or explain. For when we baptize persons in the
name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are expressing what we believe to be God’s basic nature. We are expressing that we believe God loves us unconditionally, and God will keep us in fellowship with
him both now and evermore.
In our Sunday morning worship services, normally one of the ministers gives the Call to Confession and the Assurance
of Pardon while standing near the baptismal font. The reason for doing that is
to declare that because we are baptized, we are claimed and named—we therefore can confess to God all of our shortcomings
and our offences. And, we can be assured that despite what we have done or not
done, that God will continue to love us. The
words from the baptismal service in the Book of Common Worship expresses what we believe: “In
baptism God claims us, and seals us to show that we belong to God. God
frees us from sin and death, uniting us with Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection.”
Some time back I was attending a funeral service in a Presbyterian congregation. During
that funeral service the minister prayed, “…we thank you for your servant...whose baptism is now complete in death.” Those words, “whose baptism is now complete in death,” expressed for me
that between these two defining points of our lives—our baptism and our funeral —we live amidst all that life
has to offer: joy and sorrow, triumph and trial, temperance and temptation, gratefulness and groaning. And yet all of these events are to be lived within the embracing love of God for each one of us. We certainly suffer, and we celebrate throughout our lives; yet we do not suffer or celebrate alone—for
God’s love remains the constant in our lives.
No
writing within the New Testament expresses God’s faithfulness to us better than the Epistle to the Ephesians. Moreover, that Epistle has shaped our Reformed theology as much, if not more, than many other passages
of Scripture. For example…
John
Calvin, the father of our Reformed faith, once wrote that God “comforts us in our miseries and strengthens us through
patience.” Calvin certainly knew that fact throughout his own troubled
life. On Sunday, May 1, 1558, while serving as the pastor of a Reformed congregation in Geneva, Calvin began a series of 48 sermons on Ephesians. Preaching
verse-by-verse, he completed his sermon series a year later in March. That year
would turn out to be a tough year for Calvin, for that year he suffered from untreated Asthma, and he often would struggle
to breathe as he sought to preach. Further, that following summer while preaching,
a blood vessel in his neck would burst and he would be confined to bed for weeks.
However, the influence of The Letter to the Ephesians on the Reformers did not stop with John Calvin. One of Calvin’s
students, a daring Scottish political figure and fiery Presbyterian preacher by the name of John Knox, brought the Reformed
faith to Scotland. As Knox was confined to his bed being terminally ill,
he frequently requested that his aides read to him selections from John Calvin’s sermons on Ephesians. Hearing Calvin’s sermons on Ephesians gave him great assurance in God’s providential care.
Why was the Epistle of Ephesians so influential on one these men? I believe
it is because the Apostle Paul wanted to get it across to his readers, one primary fact. And
that is, our salvation and our response to the gospel rest first and foremost on Almighty God’s choice to love us. Hear what Ephesians has to say: “Before the foundation of the world he chose
us in Christ to be his people, to be without blemish in his sight, to be full of love; and he predestined us to be adopted
as his children through Jesus Christ.”(REV)
I want you to call your attention to three grammatical constructions that are found in these verses…
The first grammatical construction is this: In the Greek language, in
which the New Testament was written, in all of these verses, all of the verbs are active verbs. As such they speak of God’s actions on our behalf: “God blessing us, God choosing us, God predestining
us, God adopting us, God bestowing upon us, and God redeeming us.” All
these active verbs are expressing that God loved and saved us long before we even knew of God.
The second grammatical construction is this: In the Greek New Testament,
all of the 11 verses are one long sentence. In that one sentence, the Apostle
Paul has used a series of dangling dependent clauses—phrases tumbling over one another, all expressing God’s blessings
unto us in Jesus Christ. Paul was declaring that God continues to act upon us
and for us, far more than we can ever imagine or deserve! Every day God continues
to bless us in ways of which we are not even aware.
When we were teaching one of our daughters, Margaret, the Lord’s Prayer, she got mixed up on one phrase. Instead of thanking God for her “daily bread”, she thanked God for her
“daily breath.” We did not correct it, for theologically it was totally
correct. For each breath that we take is God’s gift to us, and for each
breath we can be thankful.
The third grammatical construction that I want you to notice is that all of these verbs are framed in the past tense.
They are completed actions--actions that God has done through Jesus Christ. And because of what God has done in Jesus Christ in the past, the future of all creation
has been changed. Just as the Defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 stopped a potentially successful Spanish invasion of England;
and just as the victory of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066 changed the face of English
history—even more so, what God did in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has changed our present and our future.
All of our lives are the result of God’s past actions in Jesus Christ.
Further, God has not only chosen to love us in this life—but God also has a plan for us for throughout eternity.
That plan is, “…that the universe, everything in heaven and on earth, might be brought to a unity in Christ.”
On that day, all hatred, envy, alienation, grief, sorrow, loneliness, death,
and war will be no more. For on that day all humanity will be gathered in praise of the Almighty One.
But we are not there yet. We are living in a time between Christ’s
resurrection and his coming again at the end of time. And in this interim time, God has given us the Holy Spirit as God’s
pledge of God’s faithfulness. As Paul puts it, “…that the Spirit is a pledge of the inheritance which will
be ours when God has redeemed what is his own, to his glory and praise.”
At the same time, God’s good plans for us should not cause us to live self-centered or selfish lives. Rather,
in celebration of God’s love for us, our whole being should rise up in praise of the Almighty. John Calvin put it this
way, “Faith is the fruit of election.” God saves us that we might serve him faithfully..
For years I normally have taken off the Sunday after Christmas as vacation time. One
year when Mickey and I were living in Richmond, we decided to travel to Williamsburg that Sunday so that we might be able to attend worship at the Bruton Parish Church. The Bruton Parish Church is the original church in Williamsburg where many of the leaders of the American Revolution worshipped. Therefore,
I checked it all out on the computer and found that the Bruton Parish Church had an 11 a.m. service that Sunday. We got off early that day for the trip, so that we
would be certain to be on time for the 11 o’clock service. Upon arriving, however, to our great disappointment
one of the greeters at the church told us that the service hour had been changed to 10 a.m. for that Sunday only. They had forgotten to note the change on the church’s webpage. He
further said that the sanctuary already was filled and we would not be able to go inside. Disappointed
we walked around Williamsburg and looked into several of the shops that were open.
By that time, the Bruton Parish Church worship service would have concluded; so we decided to look inside the Bruton Parish sanctuary. We wanted to see how it had been decorated for the Christmas season. Upon
opening the vestibule door, to our surprise, we heard singing inside. We were
welcomed by one of the greeters. She told us that so many people had wanted to
worship that day that the ministers had decided to conduct a special service. During
the service, we went forward along with others that we did not know, and together
as the Church Universal we received the broken bread and drank from the common
cup, There gathered with fellow Christians from throughout the world, I was reminded
that the worship of God is the ultimate human response that we can make to God’s goodness. For in worship we declare what we believe about God—what he has done for us in Jesus Christ—and
how we are to live in response to his love for each of us.
Therefore, it is appropriate that we gather this morning in worship, and break the bread and drink from the cup. And we gather not only on the first Sunday in the New Year 2010, but we also gather
on the first Sunday in the new decade. As we gather, we know that if this coming
year is typical of most other years, there will be times of sadness, and there will be times of joy in the life of this congregation.
Moreover, we know that this coming year is a time of opportunity for us. It can
be a time of renewal in our worship
and service of God—it can be a time of renewal in our own personal spiritual renewal—and it can be a time of congregational
renewal in our preparation for and calling of a new pastor to lead this congregation. May
God’s blessing be upon us all, and may we strive to serve him in our worship, our work, and our daily lives.
Dr. William dePrater
