Ephesians 1:3-14

Introduction to the Scripture Reading:
Today's scripture reading may leave me a bit breathless. This long, complex, multilayered message that extends from verse 3 to verse 14 was constructed by its author as one long, grammatically unbroken idea. So daunting are these 26 lines of text that even German biblical scholars, notorious for their own convoluted long-windedness, dare to call Ephesians1:3-14 the most garish grammatical goulash to be found in Greek. As we continue our summer series on the letter to the church at Ephesus, we are faced with one of the longest continuous sentences found in ancient Greek literature! Our English language translators have divided it into several sentences.

The glorious language and run-on nature of the thoughts reflect the spiritual joy and excitement the writer feels at relating what he has discovered "in the heavenly places." These "heavenly places" are referred to four other times in Ephesians, but the phrase is found nowhere else in the New Testament. The exalted tone and vocabulary have led commentators to designate Ephesians "an epistle of ascension."

As you listen to this complex reading, help yourself a bit by noticing the phrases that deal with our theme for today: our adoption as children of God and our inheritance as a result of that relationship.

Imagine it. You get a hand delivered, VERY legal looking envelope one day. The return address is a law firm you've never heard of in Redmond, WA. But the letter is clearly addressed and delivered, hand delivered to you. Wondering if you are supposed to tip the courier, you take the rather fat envelope and carefully open it.

It is a notice to you that, although you may have been unaware of it, in a moment of eccentric behavior, Bill Gates adopted you. You had heard about his death, but never dreamed it would have any effect on you. The letter summons you to a reading of the will. Your portion of the estate will not be small.

This is better than the prize mobile from Publisher's Clearing House sweepstakes! Don't you think you'd be dancing and jumping and singing the praises of Bill Gates?!

Well, that's a bit of the feel our writer of Ephesians is intending to communicate in this opening doxology of praise to God. God, the writer exclaims to us, has given us every spiritual blessing! The God of the universe, the God of all that is and was and will be, the writer declares, chose us - chose you, chose me - before anything, before the foundation of the world, before star dust and big bangs, before the elegance seen in string theory, before the foundation of the world, God chose us. In love, in love, God adopted us, it was God's good pleasure, the writer wants us to understand, God's good pleasure to make us children of God.

I want to explore that idea of adoption. Adoption has probably been part of our human experience since our beginnings, but certainly part of our written law since the reign of Babylonian King Hammurabi in the 18th century BCE. While this is not the first evidence of written law, the Code of Hammurabi is the earliest to survive intact with clear definitions of adoption.

What does it mean to be adopted? Teacher Debbie Moon's first graders were discussing a picture of a family. One little boy in the picture had different color hair than the other family members. One child suggested that he was adopted and a little girl said, "I know all about adoptions because I was adopted." What does it mean to be adopted?" asked another child. "It means," said the girl, "that you grew in your mommy's heart instead of her tummy."

While all kids grow in their mom and dad's hearts, the insight of that little first grader is helpful. And we grow in the heart of God. In love, God adopts us.

A colleague was thinking about our scripture and said, "I love preaching from this passage! I am the parent of three special needs children who were adopted at ages 8, 9, and 16. Each of them has spent a few years getting comfortable in our family. Trusting that the adoption is really permanent is a long process. My oldest (who is now 32) finally ?got it' when she was in college. She had a very traumatic experience that resulted in a lot of past anger, fear and pain resurfacing.

"As we stood in the hallway, shouting at one another, I finally said in exasperation, ?Don't you get? You're family. We're stuck with each other.' She later told me that was the time she finally accepted her acceptance."

Are there times in your life when you feel pain, when those broken and wounded places in your heart are raw, when you suffer from guilt, when you feel like a motherless child? Are there times you forget that you are part of a forever family? Do you need a reminder that you are truly a glorious daughter or a remarkable son of God, adopted into every spiritual blessing, chosen before the foundation of the world?

The verses from today's reading also proclaim that God has lavished God's grace upon us, forgiven us and has always planned to gather us and all things into strong, loving, arms of eternal love.

And, as a result of our adoption, verse 11 tells us we have obtained an inheritance. Better than anything Bill Gates might leave us - really! - we have an inheritance that is the saving of our souls. When all seems lost, when everyone betrays us, when we can't seem to be the people we would like to be, we hear a voice from the 1^st century, reminding us, exclaiming to us, "You are a beloved child of the Living God! You are blessed with every spiritual blessing! You have already gotten your inheritance of rich life, eternal life! You are marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit! Yes, you!"

We are looking these weeks at a letter written in the first century. I want to share a letter written in the late 20^th century. It's a letter from a father to his son on the eve of his Confirmation. In it, in the deep love of this father for his child, we see intimations of that amazing love that God has for us.

Now just one thing I want to say about our scripture for today, this letter and some of your lives. We've been using the image of God as Father, and for some of you that image is marred by a distant or abusive or absent father in your life. I hope you will be able to hear and feel beyond those experiences, to a fatherly love - the love of a parent more whole and full. Perhaps you'll want to think of your mother, or grandmother, or grandfather in place of father, if those relationships were more loving and kind and grace-filled for you.

To Matthew, at Confirmation by Walter Wangerin, Jr. (Abridged from Ragman and Other Cries of Faith, Harper and Row, 1984)

Matthew, my son, how far we have come together. How much we have raised each other. How good it has been.

I first saw you in a crib - thick neck, enormous eyes, compact brown energy, fine amber hair, and I thought, "Can I love this one?"

You were three months old then. You kept your body stiff as a stick the whole way home from Indianapolis. Mom felt she had firewood on her lap. You didn't sleep well that night, stranger in a strange bed; nor did you sleep easily the year thereafter. You were a wakeful babe in every way. And I thought, "Can I love this one?"

Well, I'd been a father one bare year; Joseph was the first, but you were the first we adopted, so I had little experience at the job and no knowledge at all whether a parent loves the ready-made child as much as the child that comes from his own loins. I wondered if we missed some mysterious ingredient since you arrived of a mental decision and not of the physical love of your parents; and you were brown and I was white. Where was the love to come from?

Here is the miracle: my love for you came out of you! You trained me.

At first it was a foolish love, aggressive, fierce, protective.

When we carried you to the grocery stores, we gathered the stares of the people. Our family was a riddle they couldn't solve. My ears would burn at their ill restraint; I'd grab you to my heart and stare back to shame their eyes. My face said, "Mine! He's mine, you little minds!" And so you were.

There was a neighbor, in those early days, who said that you couldn't play with her daughter. She'd seen the two of you holding hands, and she said, "Black and white don't marry." Nip it, I suppose, in the bud: you were four years old. I sat in that woman's kitchen and in a low, choked voice declared you were my son and she should think of me precisely as she thought of you. Curiously, she acted as though she and I were the buddies and you the odd-boy-out, since she and I were white together. But to me her kitchen was alien territory, and she the foreigner, and I despised her stainless steel complacency; I hated her hatreds, and I hugged you hard when I went home again, but you didn't understand that nor the burning love begun in me, half angry, half apologetic. You took my love for granted. You were the wiser, and you trained me.

Baby boy, you gentled that love.

And you expanded it.

Hungry, hungry for all experience, you attempted anything life offered, and my heart went with you. In you I knew a wild existence; without you I was too shy to try it.

One hour after you had learned to ride a bike, you built a ramp at the bottom of a hill: Evel Knievel! Down that hill you hurtled. You hit the ramp at top speed. The bike stopped cold, and you flew over it. When I held you, then, I said, "Don't cry, my adopted son." In dear moments I used the word "adopted" so that it would seem a good word to you and a good thing.

Like the "Six Millions Dollar Man" (your hero before Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris and the Steelers) you tried to open the bedroom door with your foot. "Ha-YAAA!" I heard through the house, and then a splintering crash, and the pictures on the walls slid sideways. I ran. I found the door still shut, but a foot stuck through it; and when I pulled the door open, a boy dragged out on his back, smiling. Such committed loyalties you made, O my adopted son. To the ones you honored, you gave yourself completely, totally.

But the second miracle and the second source of my love for you was marvelous, holy, and indestructible, the greatest of them all. I came to understand, through the years, that it is in the very image of adoption, and thus divine, that God participates-

[When I felt like I was not a good father,] I said, "God, how can I know if I'm a good father to this child?" I said, "God, please, you be father for him -"

And quietly I understood: in fact, God is your father, and a better one than I. But God and I both became your fathers in exactly the same way. Matthew, God also adopted you! It was something that he chose to do for you. But his adoption contains a love unspeakably sweet and powerful, far beyond my poor, fumbling efforts. I'm in extraordinary company!

Oh, my adopted son! My love for you and my fatherhood both I hide completely in the remarkable love and fatherhood of God for you. There is where this wonder comes from. He patterns and empowers it. For a little while he allows me to experience the self-same joy that he has loving you. For a little while he lets me be your father - Ajust like him.

Tomorrow, before the entire congregation, you will proclaim your personal faith in [God], because it is your confirmation day. You will say "Yes!" out loud and consciously: "Yes!" to confirm the adoption he began. "Yes! I am a child of God!"

How glad I will be to hear that, because my love is strong, but my strength weaker than my love, and I do sin, but then the Holy Father will be holding you, and nothing, nothing can pluck you from those hands. How relieved I will be to hear that.

Who says adoption makes a lesser relationship than blood or the will of the flesh? Let him contend with the Almighty! And let him be ashamed.

Can I love this one - brown thunder after my white lightning?

Ah, my son, my son! By God I do. By God, I shall love you forever.

By God, we are loved forever.