The letter to the Ephesians begins with a deluge of blessing and praise, washing readers and listeners in a downpour of poetic, hymnic exultation.[1] The great challenge the letter addresses is as old as humanity: how to live together, given our many differences. But the author doesn’t begin with a good, hard look at the various lines that have long divided us – Jews and Gentiles, women and men, rich and poor, blue collar, white collar, citizens and migrants. The letter’s sender addresses as a Jew a largely Gentile audience with the good news that in Christ God has “made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.”[2] Living with differences requires real effort, and the author acknowledges that it takes humility, gentleness, and patience[3] — but the first words are not words of congregational analysis and pastoral admonition: the opening sentence is an outpouring of blessing and praise, with all the attention given and directed to what God has done in Christ.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing… and what follows is just one breathtakingly long sentence, phrase after phrase naming what God has done to bless us and why we in turn are to bless God. “The rambling form of the sentence … seems to have trouble finding a place to stop,” one commentator observes, adding, “This is the grammar of worship more than it is the grammar of … argument, and it is no surprise if we are left struggling to keep up.”[4] It is like standing in a river of praise, a stream of grace washing over and around us like waves, and through us like a cosmic current originating in the heart of God. Blessed be God who has blessed us in Christ… choosing us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be God’s people, without blemish in God’s sight, full of love… destining us to be adopted as God’s children through Christ… redeeming us through his blood… making known to us the mystery of God’s will… as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth. The whole world and all who live in it… Earth and heaven… the entire universe washed in this grace… All things reconciled to God the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of creation… All things reconciled to God and to each other in the wide embrace of Christ on the cross…
The letter begins with a deluge of blessing and praise, washing us in a downpour of poetic, hymnic exultation, and inviting us to begin our year, our moments and our days by entrusting ourselves to this stream, floating in it, singing.
Praise doesn’t come easy in these days of twittered rage, mournful lament and cautiously leashed hope. Full-throated rejoicing may feel premature or insensitive to those who live their days far from joy — and there is much grace and love in such hesitation — but the stream is there to carry us, and the right words will come when the time is right.
The letter to the Ephesians reminds us, in poetry and prose, that in Christ we participate in a new humanity, wherein everyone and everything in heaven and on earth is reconciled to God and one another. In Christ, even our deepest and proudest divisions come to an end, and we greet and embrace one another as kin. Augustine, who became Bishop of Hippo at the end of the 4th century, said in a sermon on the feast of Epiphany,
Now, then, my dearly beloved [children] and heirs of grace, look to your vocation and, since Christ has been revealed to both Jews and Gentiles as the cornerstone, cling together with most constant affection. For he was manifested in the very cradle of his infancy to those who were near and to those who were afar – to the Jews whose shepherds were nearby; to the Gentiles whose Magi were at a great distance. The former came to him on the very day of his birth; the latter are believed to have come on this day. He was not revealed, therefore, to the shepherds because they were learned, nor to the Magi because they were righteous, for ignorance abounds in the rusticity of shepherds and impiety amid the sacrileges of the Magi. He, the cornerstone, joined both groups to himself since he came to choose the foolish things of the world in order to put to shame the wise and “to call sinners, not the righteous,” so that the mighty would not be lifted up nor the lowly be in despair.[5]
Luke tells us of the shepherds and Matthew of the wise men, but when we put together the Nativity set, year after year, we put the whole world in and around the stable — Jews and Gentiles, poor working folk and star gazing royal figures, locals and outsiders, ox and ass, sheep and camels — the vision of peace is for all of creation. And all because the one in the cradle “came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near,” as we read in Ephesians. And now it doesn’t matter anymore how we determine who or what is “near” or “far off” because the one who went from the cradle to the cross brought us all near in the wide embrace of his love. “So then [we all] are no longer strangers and aliens, but … citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.”[6] Members of the household of God. One life, shared by all. The purpose is no longer hidden, but revealed in Christ’s embrace of the world.
Left to our own devices, we can’t escape our tendency to rend asunder what God has bound together. Catherine of Siena, speaking in the voice of God, said, “I could easily have created [human beings] possessed of all that they should need both for body and soul, but I wish that one should have need of the other, and that they should be my ministers to administer the graces and gifts that they have received from me.”[7] Left to our own devices, we keep trying to grasp for ourselves all that we should need both for body and soul, and in the process we create alienation, distrust, suspicion, and hostility. Left to our own devices, we make a world where unless you are like me, I have no need of you; unless you are with me, I have no need of you; and unless you are useful to me, I have no need of you.[8] But this proud dismissal, “I have no need of you” was never an option for human life; it became a reality only because of the power of sin.
The letter to the Ephesians begins with an outpouring of blessing and praise, because we are not left to our own devices: Christ has conquered sin so we might live in the community of his making, reconciled to God and one another, in the blessed conviviality of creation, to the praise of God’s glory.
We live in a new day, because God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. Christ has made us his own, and because we belong to Christ, we are part of God’s great enterprise of reconciliation and the healing of God’s broken world.
God said about us humans, according to Catherine of Siena, “I wish that one should have need of the other, and that they should be my ministers to administer the graces and gifts that they have received from me.” And Brian Doyle once said to a friend, “We’re only here for a minute. We’re here for a little window. And to use that time to catch and share shards of light and laughter and grace seems to me the great story.”[9] The creation and redemption of the world is God’s great story, and for you and me, Doyle suggests, it’s the dailiness of catching and sharing shards of light and laughter and grace.
Doyle spoke of God as the “coherent mercy” that cannot be apprehended but may be perceived by way of “the music in and through and under all things.”[10] To the writer of Ephesians the music in and through and under all things is Christ, and from that lovely tune our praise erupts — because God has made known to us the mystery of God’s will: to gather up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth, all of creation made complete in him. All things reconciled in Christ. All things healed and whole in Christ. All things — even the wounds of our hostility and our broken hearts. All because of God’s relentless determination to bless the world.
We live in a new day, not because Earth has completed another course around the Sun, but because Christ is come. Thanks and praise be to God.
[1] Eph 1:3-14
[2] Ephesians 2:14; see Susan Hylen https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-of-christmas-2/commentary-on-ephesians-13-14-12
[3] See Ephesians 4:2-3
[4] Brian Peterson https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-of-christmas-3/commentary-on-ephesians-13-14-9
[5] Augustine, quoted in Connections, Year A, Vol. 1, 153.
[6] See Ephesians 2:17-19
[7] Quoted by Stephen Boyd, Connections, Year A, Vol. 1, 139.
[8] In addition to Catherine, see 1 Cor 12:21.
[9] From a collection of Doyle’s essays, One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder, quoted in https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/opinion/impeachment-trump-pelosi.html
[10] Margaret Renkl https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/books/review/one-long-river-of-song-brian-doyle.html