Today our church has the privilege, blessing and joy of celebrating the baptisms of A and M. So let me start right out by saying that I don’t understand baptism and don’t anticipate that I ever will, at least not in this life. (I hope God offers some kind of seminar in liturgical theology in the Great Beyond!…)
Baptism, like Eucharist, comes to us as a convergence of human symbol and divine action. As human symbol, it is conditioned by history and culture in ways that can be difficult to unpack. As divine action, its intention and efficacy are mysterious to us. I believe that baptism does something. But I’m darned if I can tell you what.
However, by the grace of God, our cycle of Sunday Scripture readings has brought us one of the best baptismal texts there is: the second chapter of the letter to the Ephesians. Those verses – along with the preceding chapter – tell us a couple of things about baptism, about being part of this thing we call the Church. It’s about being chosen, and it’s about being sent.
It’s about being chosen, and it’s about being sent.
Way back last winter, I read something online and immediately tucked it away for my next baptism sermon. If you don’t use Twitter, you’re probably aware of it as a social media platform used for live commentary on major public events like the World Cup or the Episcopal Church’s General Convention; for presidential proclamations, bot attacks, and goofy humor. One of the other things Twitter is good for is micro-fiction – tiny, tiny stories that make you pause or wonder or laugh, in 144 characters or less. Here’s the one I saved, last December – a snippet of conversation, from the Micro Science Fiction & Fantasy account:
“You’ve been chosen,” the spirit said.
“What?”
“Save the world, make it kinder, cleaner, safer.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“We chose everyone.”
(@MicroSFF, Dec 31, 2017)
We chose everyone.
Let’s talk about being chosen.
The author to the letter to the Ephesians – some scholars say it’s Paul, some scholars say it’s obviously not Paul, some scholars say it’s Paul’s thoughts recorded by someone with a strong stylistic hand – in any case: this author dives right into chosenness, as soon as he’s finished saying hello: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as They chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before Them in love.” (1:3)
God chose us in Christ, before the foundation of the world. God destined us to become God’s children. And a few verses later (Hart’s translation): We were marked out in advance according to the purpose of the One who enacts all things according to the counsel of Their will.
Our chosenness comes with gracious gifts, says the first chapter of Ephesians: We have been bought out of bondage to the world; we are forgiven all our mistakes and failures; and we are given a glimpse of God’s great plan for the fulness of time: a plan to gather all things together in God, both heavenly and earthly things, in one capacious and beautiful harmony.
Today’s passage from the second chapter of Ephesians returns to the theme of chosenness, with one of my very favorite passages of the Bible: “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints, the holy ones, and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.”
The preceding verses tell us more about the context for this letter: the author is addressing Gentiles – non-Jews. In Jesus’ time and the time of the early Church, the distinction between Jews and Gentiles was a huge social and religious divide. In the book of the Acts of the Apostles we see early Christians wrestling with whether their message and mission should be extended to Gentiles – and God leading them to an emphatic Yes. Ephesians affirms that joyful Yes: the Way of Jesus Christ is for people of both Jewish and Gentile backgrounds. And indeed, the unity of those formerly-divided groups is a sign of what God is up to in the world. “For Christ is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, the hostility, between us… creating in himself one new humanity in place of the two.”
The situation is specific but the message, I think, transcends it: God chooses us for community, for what we can be and do together – even across the differences that feel most fundamental. God chooses us to call us out of our alienation -whether we ourselves feel other and outside-of, or whether we cast that shadow on someone else. God chooses us as citizens of a new society; as members of a household with an unshakable foundation; as building blocks for a holy temple, a dwelling-place for God.
Being chosen could imply that there’s also a group of not-chosen. One of the things I love about this text from Ephesians is that it’s not at all interested in that issue. It’s all invitation and no exclusion, all celebration and no disparagement, all door and no wall. We chose everyone.
The choosing is beyond our power to understand or influence. The author says, This is grace, a gift from God – not our accomplishment. But all the same, it is not passive. Citizens shape their society; members share in the common life of the household; even stones of a building have their share of the weight to bear. We are chosen, and we are sent.
“You’ve been chosen,” the spirit said.
“What?”
“Save the world, make it kinder, cleaner, safer.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“We chose everyone.”
The verse just before today’s passage says, “We are what God has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” Those who have spent some time with Rite I may remember these words from that liturgy: “And we humbly beseech thee, O heavenly Father, so to assist us with thy grace, that we may continue in that holy fellowship, and do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in.”
What kind of good works? Well – the overarching theme of the letter to the Ephesians is unity and reconciliation – not only of Jews and Gentiles, but of the whole creation – the cosmos, system, created order. The reconciliation of the whole creation, through the agency of the church, the people of God, chosen and sent.
We are given that precious, heartbreaking gift of a glimpse of God’s great plan to gather all things together one day, things in heaven and things on earth. And we as God’s people, we ourselves have been put back together – reunited with God and neighbor, re-gifted our birthright of belonging and belovedness. And our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to go out and put more things back together. A hope that some theologians call the Great Restoration.
Nature writer, poet and theologian Wendell Barry speaks about it – listen: “We all come from [brokenness]. Things that have come together are taken apart. You can’t put it all back together again. What you do is the only thing you can do. You take two things that belong together and you put them back together. Two things, not all things. That’s the way the work has to go. So that the made thing becomes a kind of earnest — of your faith in, and your affection for, the great coherence that we miss and would like to have again. That’s what we do, people who make things. Whether it’s a [chair] or a film or a poem or an essay or a novel or a musical composition. It’s all about finding how it fits together and fitting it together.” (Wendell Berry, in the documentary “Look & See”)
The Great Coherence…I love that word because it captures not just fitting together what is broken or separated, but also becoming comprehensible and meaningful. That stirs up my deep yearning, in a time when so much seems incomprehensible and meaningless.
Coherence. Unity. Restoration. Reconciliation. Making whole what is divided, scattered, riven. Ilia Delio, writing about the Jesuit monk and scientist Teilhard de Chardin, writes about his insight: “Those who follow Jesus are to become wholemakers, uniting what is scattered, creating a deeper unity in love.”
We name reconciliation as one of our practices of discipleship here at St. Dunstan’s – it’s on the fans! – “We follow the teaching of Jesus Christ by living as ambassadors of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:20), seeking to restore unity among humans, between humans and God, and between humans and creation.”
Like all of our discipleship practices, there are countless ways to live it out. There are people in this congregation who live their vocation of wholemaking, of coherence-creation, by helping preschoolers learn the tools of friendship and peace. By designing technological solutions to human problems. By communicating what really matters, building bridges between hearts and minds, through journalism, design, music, art, poetry, prose. By caring for creation, and teaching others to do the same. By patient loving presence with teenagers, elders, those who struggle, so that nobody has to feel alone.
Now, I’m speaking about this ministry of reconciling as the call of the church, a core practice for those who seek to follow the way of Jesus. It would be easier to make that case if we could look around us and see Christians consistently striving for the wellbeing of neighbor and world. Such is not remotely the case. And many of those who do strive faithfully for wholeness are people of other faiths, or ambiguous faith, or no faith.
What I can say is this: At its best, the church – this church, any church – is a community that names itself as called and sent. A community that provokes one another to good deeds, in my favorite verse from the letter to the Hebrews. That acknowledges and holds up our mission of reconciliation, coherence, whole-making, and seeks to live it out in big, small, and middle-sized ways, each and all.
Friends, you’ve been chosen. To save the world. To make it kinder, cleaner, safer. To make it more whole. But don’t worry. You don’t have to do it alone. God chose everyone.