“God’s Plan, Bane or BAIM”

Sunday July 7, 2024
St. Andrew Church
Rev. Anne McAnelly

First Lesson:                                                  Psalm 85

¹ Lord, you were favorable to your land; you restored the fortunes of Jacob. ² You forgave the iniquity of your people; you pardoned all their sin. Selah ³ You withdrew all your wrath; you turned from your hot anger. ⁴ Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away your indignation toward us. ⁵ Will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger to all generations? ⁶ Will you not revive us again, so that your people may rejoice in you? ⁷ Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation. ⁸ Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.  ⁹ Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land. ¹⁰ Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other. ¹¹ Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky. ¹² The Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase. ¹³ Righteousness will go before him, and will make a path for his steps.

Second Lesson:                                                Ephesians 1:3-14

³ 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, ⁴ just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. ⁵ He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, ⁶ to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. ⁷ In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace ⁸ that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight ⁹ he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, ¹⁰ as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. ¹¹ In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, ¹² so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. ¹³ In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; ¹⁴ this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.

When we studied the book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, by Rabbi Kushner, we looked at the tragedies that befell Job and how he and his friends responded. It opened the discussion about how we see painful things in our lives and how we think about God’s involvement in those. We discussed evil in the world, the trite things we say when we experience loss, like “God will not give you more than you can handle” and our own free will. Most found comfort in the idea that God does not cause the bad things in life. Kushner wrote, “I no longer hold God responsible for illness, accidents, and natural disasters, because I realize that I gain little, and I lose so much when I blame God for those things” (14 7). But several people really struggled with the idea that God was not completely in charge of life and everything that happened. There is a comfort in a God who is directing everything. Of course, this led to the discussion of predestination and God’s plan for our lives.
Ephesians is Paul’s poetic writing about God’s inclusive plan for Jews and Gentiles. According to God’s eternal plan for humanity, Christ’s death brought together both Jews and Gentiles into a new, unified community. READ Ephesians I :3-I 4, FYI it is all one sentence in the Greek.
I love this passage filled with blessings, adoption, inheritance, and mystery. It declares God’s eternal plan as well as our benefits from our relationship with Christ. But imbedding within is God choosing us before the foundation of the world, a plan for the fullness of time, and our being marked with the seal of the Holy Spirit. That all sounds like God’s plan and predestination. This is comforting at times, yet troublesome when we consider free will. If God causes everything, God’s plan can be baneful. Our spouse gets sick, how is that God’s plan? Earthquakes happen, baneful and destructive. Yet I do not believe that God is the author of these bad events. Rather they happen through the laws of nature and negative forces in the world. God can use these events for God’s purpose in our lives, but God is not the puppet master pulling strings, causing pain.
So rather than God’s plan being baneful, let us look at what scripture says, the four things we are promised: blessings, adoption, inheritance, and mystery. It almost made a great acrostic, BAIM, so close to bane. I know you would rather me not do puns and word plays. But since this passage is all one sentence, we need to hold it all together in our minds.
Think of a time you felt truly blessed. Maybe gratitude flooded your heart, maybe comparison showed you what you really have, maybe you felt the Holy Spirit move. I asked a friend how he was, and he did not say “Fine” or “Good,” but rather “Blessed.” Do we go through the moments of our days feeling blessed? Paul speaks of three kinds of blessings. Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is right to bless God first, acknowledging God is the source of all blessings. God has blessed us, blessed you and me. Ponder that for a moment. God has blessed you. Blessed your birth, your breathing, your life. God does that with the Holy Spirit. Scripture says spiritual blessings, but that is just reminding us, that blessings flow from God through the Holy Spirit to us. The fruits of God’s blessing are two, predestination and love. God chose us before the foundation of the world. ‘When there was still void, before God created everything, God chose you! And I think there is something more. God chose us to be holy _and blameless. That is how God created humanity; to be holy and blameless and to live with God forever. But we know what happened, so now we get to imitate Christ, seeking to emulate God’s Son in righteousness. We can’t quite do that, so God sent Jesus to show us love and to restore us to the fullness of that relationship with God. The greatest blessing of all.
God explains that blessing through adoption and inheritance. I have long wanted to write a book about God’s adoption of us and my experience of being adopted. My very first sermon in my home church was about adoption and being a child of God. Belonging, adoption, child of God are all very powerful spiritual images for me. But for those not adopted, the image lacks something. Sort of like Jesus as the Good Shepherd said more to the pastoral people of the first century who kept sheep. Adoption means I have four parents instead of two. Two parents raised me, loved me and cared for me, but who did not give me birth. So being adopted by God is like getting an additional parent- one who .chose you out -of love, and cares for you deeply. It took me a long time to realize that my birth parents loved me so much they wanted a better life for me than they could provide. That my adoption was a blessing they gave to me out of love.
God adopted us out of LOVE and blessed us with an inheritance. Inheritance comes by birth or adoption and is a gift, a blessing, from your loving parent( s ). In Christ we have obtained an inheritance according to God’s will (11). Our divine parent has given us a blessing, a gift to sustain us in life. I inherited money from my adopted family. I was grateful for my monetary inheritance but longed to have my parents instead. In a similar way God gave us two inheritances: We get to praise God, our divine_ adopted father. Praising God keeps us connected to our heavenly Parent. Our second inheritance is the seal of the Holy Spirit. The Comforter and the Guide in life is promised to us. The Holy Spirit inheritance works for the redemption of God’s own people, the ones chosen and elect. This takes us back to predestination. Predestination is the belief that God has predetermined who will receive salvation and who will not. So, this letter is promising that Jews and Gentiles were children of God before the foundation of the world. Jews are no longer the only chosen ones._ Now all are part of the family of God through Christ. Calvin and Augustine have focused on predestination, and it has fallen out of favor for many. But I like to think about it as God loves all people, and anyone who comes to Christ is welcomed and preordained. I do not hold that predestination is the idea that God is in control of the universe in general, even over mundane things. That would be the puppet master idea. Free will is vitally important as we consider how God created us. We get to choose God, we get to praise God, that is our inheritance. But that is very different than God creating us without free will to follow God blindly. Remember this long sentence speaks of God’s love, grace, adoption, inheritance, and blessings. In verse 7 we see the blessings we get through Christ and will soon taste again in communion. We are redeemed by Christ blood, Christ takes away our sins, and God lavished grace upon us.
Blessings, adoption, inheritance and mystery- BAIM. All of this is a mystery of faith. Psalm 85 declares the mysterious movement of God from anger to peace, and the promise of salvation. The kiss of steadfast love and faithfulness, of righteousness and peace, we can experience these because of the mysterious will of God through the life of Jesus Christ. One commentator writes, “The point is that the salvation of Gentile Christians through Christ has been a part of God’s plan· from the beginning of creation. This is ‘the mystery of [God’s] will’ (9). In the first-century context, this was an important lesson for Gentile Christians, as the status of Jews as God’s sole people prior to the coming of Christ raised questions about God’s fairness to and love for all people. The passage assures the audience that they were part of God’s plan all along” (Working Preacher, Scott Shauf). We are part of God’s plan too, since the beginning. God has claimed us, us Gentiles, as beloved children of God, adopted in grace, blessed with inheritance, clothed in the mystery of God, according to the good pleasure of God’s will. Amen.