Homily, July 14, 2024
From The Pastor
What role will your life play in salvation history? How is your life revealing the glory of God? With the spiritual blessings that are yours in Christ, how will your individual and personal way of believing in and loving God make Christ more evident in the world? Though this may sound heady or inflated, it is the call and purpose of our lives in Christ as we share the Divine nature.
The Letter to the Ephesians today is not only a beautiful expression of the nature and identity of Jesus. It is also a call and expression of who we are in Christ and the will and plan God has for us and all creation. St. Paul is putting to words the essential movements and designs of Christian spirituality. The work of creation and the gift of redemption is an unsolicited gift of God. With willful intention, God takes the initiative to create and to redeem all that has been made. God initiates and we respond. Our response to God’s offer is free; in faith we can accept a loving relationship with God, or we can reject God’s offer to make our own meaning in life.
Moving through the verses of this beautiful passage, we can ponder the life given us in the Lord Jesus. ‘Blessed be God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has given us in Christ every spiritual blessing in the heavens.’ God has chosen you as his own with unending love. Consider this truth. Beyond our religious identity, we are blessed and chosen by God. This is not a spiritual nicety, but a fact of our Christian faith. Neither sin nor human failure changes the nature we share with God in Christ. In love, God chose you and made you his own. I hope this is a felt part of your faith. Can you name a time when you have not felt chosen, but forgotten, abandoned, or of little value to God or another? This kind of feeling is an open door of an awakening to the inclusive love and acceptance of God. Many have come to God this way.
God has not only claimed us as his own in Christ but has done so with loving desire. Why? That we may give praise and glory for the grace of God. That we might proclaim God’s goodness through our manner of life as his beloved. Do you feel the goodness of God in you? The nature and the goodness of Christ is a vital part of you. It is the will and design of God that we know his goodness and reflect it to others. Not feeling this so much? It is there. It can’t not be there. In Christ, it is the essence of your nature given you in his Incarnation.
How? ‘In Christ and through his blood we have been redeemed and our sins forgiven so immeasurably generous is God’s favor to us.’ This is familiar to us. We know the Cross Jesus endured for the forgiveness of sin that offers a new relationship with God. Do you feel this in your life of faith? Is this redeeming, healing, forgiving love real for you? The words are common and readily professed as true. But do you trust and feel them in a life-giving way? Does this freedom in Christ allow you to live peacefully in the mind of grace and acceptance, or are you stuck in the mind of sin that creates fear and doubt?
It can be a challenge to accept the goodness and love of Divine forgiveness. The weight of sin causes shame, guilt, and a sense of unworthiness that often resists the grace and mercy freely given in Christ Jesus. Let God love you. Make the redemption of Christ personal and effective in your life. God’s forgiveness is real. It is a pure gift of perfect love. Jesus as a man, human in all things but sin, freely chose to give his life to ransom us from the death of sin. You are so important to God that God freely and willingly gave himself to us in Christ that we may forever be one with God, here and hereafter. Resistance is a waste of energy. God will never give up on you.
In Christ, God has made known the Divine plan for all creation. Jesus is the truth of God made flesh. Jesus is the fulness of time, the fulness of all God intends and desires for us. You are part of God’s plan for the beauty and goodness of the world. At least four times in this reading, God makes it clear that we exist to praise his glory. What does that mean?
If you allow God to love you, forgive you, and be an active part of your life, your life will become an image of God for others. Your life will be an image of God’s goodness, revealing his glory. It will not make you perfect. You will not glow in heavenly light. But you will, despite every trial or distress, know the peace of Christ. Some days you will suffer. Some days God will seem absent. Still, the grace of God will be ever-present.
Jesus is the glory of God. You are the glory of Christ. That means you accept Christ and live in such a way that you make Christ more evident and present in the world. Your life is God’s gift. Give all glory and praise to God with loving gratitude. Despite all, you are in him, and He is in you. Let that make your day.
Father John Esper
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