Genesis 26:17-25, 32-33-22
Stephen Heinzel-Nelson
September 25, 2016

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Ephesians 2:1-22
David A. Davis
September 18, 2016

“But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which God loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” It’s a difficult piece of scripture to read out loud. It’s a long sentence. The sentence actually continues one more verse: “so that in in the ages to come God might show the immeasurable riches of God’s grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus… But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which God loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in in the ages to come God might show the immeasurable riches of God’s grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” The length isn’t the tough part; it’s that abrupt insertion, that phrase that interrupts the grammar, that affirmation that Paul seems to blurt out in the text. How are you supposed to vocalize that?

By grace you have been saved. Stuck right in there in the middle of that long sentence. It’s not just awkward to read out lout, it’s kind of awkward period. Clunky, jarring. “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which God loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” The New Revised Standard Version that I read to you uses punctuation marks for assistance to the reader. A dash before and after to set the phrase apart. Other translations use parentheses. One breaks up the long sentence, uses an exclamation point, and makes it an imperative: You have been saved by God’s grace! One of my living, breathing sources down the street assures me that that grammar in Greek doesn’t make it any easier. While it doesn’t seem to be the case that some later author or scribe came along and inserted the phrase or transcribed it in the wrong place, it is nonetheless abrupt in the Greek text as well. In fact the Greek has the dashes as well. By grace you have been saved (with a yell). By grace you have been saved (with a whisper). By grace you have been saved (slowly).

Think how a composer, a playwright, a novelist, a poet may tag or foreshadow something important early in a piece of work. An image is casually introduced only to become fraught with meaning as the play moves on, the narrative develops, the poem peaks. The cellos play just a few bars that stand out early but that tune comes back to dominate the melody and moves through the orchestra the rest of the way. Perhaps what we have here in Ephesians is Paul’s offering of a theological foreshadowing. It’s a tag, a teaser for what comes more beautifully, and a whole lot smoother, a verse later: For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God… It’s just that there’s nothing all that subtle or artful about how Paul introduces it here in Ephesians 2. By grace you have been saved.

Imagine the father who takes his child along on a shopping trip to prepare for mom’s birthday. Cards, a cake, some presents from both husband and daughter. On the way home they talk about keeping the secret until the birthday dinner the next day when Grandma was coming over. That excited four-year-old doesn’t get two steps into the house before she shouts out, “Mommy, mommy we got you a watch for your birthday!” Excitement can be better than surprise. Maybe the Apostle Paul just couldn’t hold back when it came to that theological exclamation that rests at the core of the gospel. By grace you have been saved.

Or think of two falling in love. It’s one of those “O.R. conversations,” as in “our relationship.” Amid the back and forth and circling around and attempts to clarify feelings and stomach knots and butterflies in the heart, one of the two says it, kinds of sneaks it in, less like a blurting out, more like air squeaking out of a balloon: “I, I love you.” Maybe Paul was searching for the right phrase, stumbling for the right way to say it, trying to describe all that God has done for us in Christ. By grace you have been saved. Yes, yes, I said. That’s right. So he comes back to it with confidence. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.

Paul drops it in here in the middle of that thought, that long sentence about the great love with which God loved us. But he could have interrupted a whole lot of other places too. God has put all things under Christ’s feet and has made Christ the head of over all things for the church — by grace you have been saved — which is body, the fullness of him who fills all in all… But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ — by grace you have been saved… For Christ is our peace… In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord — by grace you have been saved — in whom you also were built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. Maybe Paul was introducing the memorable phrase as a refrain of the faith, a rallying cry, a chant to pass on to your children. Like “USA, USA” or “JETS” or “Bruuuuce,” as in Bruce Springsteen. Passing that kind of stuff on to your kids. It’s just good parenting. “Saved by grace. Saved by grace. Saved by grace.” Of if your texting, “SBG”!

You remember that the Apostle Paul is the one who crafted the most complex and coherent of theological arguments in Romans. And the Apostle Paul is the one who created the beautiful ode to love in I Corinthians (though it had nothing to do with marriage). Paul made those list of spiritual gifts and the sins of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit. And he so artfully describes his own struggle, and his own faith, and his own conversion. In the annals of New Testament criticism, scholars have debated whether Paul wrote Ephesians or whether it was one his followers. Here this morning the intrigue is much simpler. It’s about these awkward, dropped in, abrupt, urgent, parenthetical few words that ought to at least give us pause. By grace you have been saved.

Presbyterians have forever run their meetings and process discussions and decision-making by Robert’s Rules. When calling for the vote, the moderator says, “All in favor, please say, ‘Aye.’” It’s a simple way to offer an affirmation, to say yes. “Aye.” It’s a common answer in a crossword puzzle that links saying yes with Scottish, Celtic heritage. There’s nothing like several weeks on the Island of Islay in Scotland to change forever how you think, how you hear, how you experience a simple “aye.” To say that it is a common expression among those we talked to on Islay would be an understatement. To conclude that it is a synonym for “yes” is just not enough. It is “yes” and “excuse me” and “you bet” and “of course” and “what” and “awesome” and “dude” and “mate” and “I can help you” and “over here” and “please” and “thank you” all rolled into one. Whenever I was struggling to understand in a conversation after church or at the pub or in the checkout line, I always knew what someone meant when they said “aye”… even though it means so much and so many things. Maybe I’m all wrong but it seems like an expression that comes from a deeper place, deeper within, deeper in culture, deeper in context.

I was standing with the funeral director next to the open grave as the bap piper started to play. He had led us from the church up the hill to the cemetery as we followed the casket. Now the committal was finished and he was playing again as folks shared hugs and tears all around. He was a very young piper and close to the family. I learned later it was his first time playing at a funeral. As I watched and listened, I realized he was crying. He was playing the bagpipes through tears. I said to the funeral director in a soft voice, “Have you ever seen a piper cry like that?” He shook his head no, never took his eyes off the young man, never looked at me, and said, “Aye.” It was like he was saying “my, my, my” or “Lord have mercy.” Aye.

God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which God loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. An affirmation for Paul that wells up inside, comes from deeper, ignores the rules of grammar. Rather than blurting it out, or sneaking it in or dropping the mic, what if it’s more like a surprising groan, a kind of guttural affirmation about God’s love and mercy that comes from deep within, one of those expressions that leaves the lips and someone says, “You know I can hear you, right?” By grace you have been saved. Kind of prayer-like. Aye.

Princeton, West Windsor, Montgomery, Bucks County, the University, the Seminary. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but you and I live in communities where there is no shortage of opinion about pretty much everything. When we first moved to Princeton, I coached Little League with a guy who told me “Princeton is a town where people have lots of opinions and the time and inclination to express them.” Most of us, if we’re honest, fit right in. And we could all benefit from a rule-breaking, grammar-shaking reminder that it is only by God’s grace, that it is nothing other than God’s grace, that without God’s grace… by grace you have been saved. Aye.

It’s not only the new students around here that bask in the glow of an admissions office stamp of approval. Every one of us walks the campus of our lives trying to be smart enough, rich enough, connected enough, fit enough, hip enough, liberal enough, conservative enough, organic enough. We could all benefit from an abrupt, guttural reminder that it is only by God’s grace, that it is nothing other than God’s grace, that without God’s grace… by grace you have been saved. Aye.

An urgent, interrupting, intrusive, disturbing, awkward groan that attests to God’s mercy and love for you. You don’t have to understand it, or figure it out, or explain it. You don’t have to be right, or particularly pious, or sign on the dotted line of beliefs A to Z. For we are what God has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. You and I, living to God’ glory. And it is only by God’s grace, it is nothing other than God’s grace, without God’s grace… by grace you have been saved. Aye.

© 2016 Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.

Ephesians 1:15-23
David A. Davis
September 11, 2016

September 11, 2001, was a Tuesday. That first Sunday after, September 16, of course we were in here for worship. I wrote about that remarkable Lord’s Day worship years ago and I described it like this: “It looked like Easter morning at the church that Sunday. There were no extra flowers but the pews were packed. People went looking for a church that morning. It was like Easter without the trumpets. Joy was nowhere to be found. The events of the Tuesday before turned that Lord’s Day into something like the dark side of Easter, not quite the antithesis of Easter. But it was Good Friday content with Easter Sunday crowds.” People weren’t just looking for a church, they were searching for some comfort, looking for a place to weep, trying to make some sense, find some sense where there was none to be found. Nobody came for answers, they came to pray, to be together, to remember, to try to sing, and to be anointed within by the very tears of God. September 16, 2001, we came here searching with our hearts, looking with our hearts, the eyes of our hearts.

So when the Apostle Paul gifts the reader of Ephesians chapter one with the poetic image of “the eyes of the heart” — I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know God, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which God has called you – when Paul writes about “the eyes of your heart,” you don’t have to be a biblical scholar to grasp, to get, to sort of know deep down what it means — that your heart has eyes.

Ephesians 1:18 is the only time the expression appears in scripture. The eyes of your heart. For some the notion of a heart with eyes, that wisdom and revelation and enlightening would be a matter of the heart rather than the mind must be unsettling. The King James translates it “the eyes of your understanding being enlightened.” Another contemporary translation puts it like this, “May God enlighten the eyes of your mind.” One New Testament scholar offers his own translation in his commentary: “May your spiritual eyesight be enlightened.” Spiritual eyesight? Really? You don’t have to know Greek to read opthalmous and cardias in the passage. It is the eyes of your heart. Eyes and heart. Perhaps Professor Clifton Black puts it best, “so that the eyes of your heart may light up.”

“I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know God, so that, as the eyes of your heart light up, you may know what is the hope to which God has called you, what are the riches of God’s glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of God’s power for us who believe, according to the working of God’s great power.” That you may know, with the eyes of your heart, God’s hope, God’s glory, God’s power. God put this power to work in Christ when God raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. Paul’s just singing now. It’s a hymn here in Ephesians chapter 1. Just like Colossians — He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. Just like Philippians — therefore God has highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name. In the middle of the Apostle’s prayer for the faithful at Ephesus, in the middle of his pastor prayer, as he prays for their hearts to have eyes, he starts to sing the doxology.

And God has put all things under Christ’s feet and has made Christ the head over all things for the church, which is Christ’s body, the fullness of Christ, who fills all in all. The last line in the hymn of praise. Christ’s feet, Christ’s head, Christ’s body. As one commentator puts it, Christ who is over the church is also in it and fills it. The fullness of God resides in him, and from him the Body of Christ is constantly supplied with and by Christ’s presence. As Professor Black puts its, “Christians [as the body of Christ] are conduits of Christ’s immeasurably redemptive power: the church is the very body of his fullness that fills all things with loving goodness.”

The church as Christ body bearing the fullness of his love to the world. Even as Paul breaks into song, his prayer for the body of Christ continues. Yes, it’s doxology but it’s also discipleship. His song, his prayer, is praise and it is praxis. Singing, praying, promising that the body of Christ would carry his fullness into the world. When the eyes of your heart light up with God’s hope, God’s glory, God’s power, according to Paul, as the follower of Christ so transformed by his fullness, how can you not turn and baptize the world with his grace and mercy. The fullness of him who fills all in all. Christ alone is head of the church and he also fills it. It is one thing to give up on trying to wrap your head around the world and its seemingly never-ending chaos, but with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you can still give a witness to the wonders of his love, you can still pass forward the selflessness of his compassion, you can still bear his light every day in your corner of life. It’s the discipleship in doxology, knowing that when it comes to God’s hope, God’s glory, God’s power, and the very fullness of Christ, you and I actually have a part to play.

Just this week I was taking my dog out for a walk on what was yet another sweltering early evening. I ran into one of our next-door neighbors. I hadn’t seen him since we had returned after being out of the country for two months. It was clear right away he didn’t know we had been gone. After I told him, he said, “So you have missed this unbearable summer.” I thought he was talking about current events, the news, all that has been going on since I have been away from you. He was actually talking about the weather, the heat, the humidity. When the confusion became clear to both of us, he responded with a wave of his hand and a wipe of his brow, “Ah, the news, we will always have the news,” he sighed. His was a tone of resignation, even detachment. Maybe that was his only means of coping with the sweltering tensions and the tragic grief and the terror unleashed and the disheartening partisanship of the summer of 2016. At some point this summer I imagined standing before you on this morning and making a lighthearted reference about “not much going on while I was away.” The problem, of course, is that there is absolutely nothing lighthearted about it, about any of it.

Some will know that one of Nassau’s members, Dave Kershner, was in charge of the development of the One World Observatory that now stands at the top of One World Trade Center. The exhibit begins in the lobby of that skyscraper as you pass through video presentations of those who built the new building and you see displays of the rock foundation upon which the structure was built. In the moving voices and tears of architects and iron-workers and carpenters, a visitor can’t miss the symbolism of strength, determination, honor, spirit, hope, and life rising out of despair and death, one person, one heart, one voice, one life at a time. Of the many, many things the fifteenth anniversary of September 11, 2001, means for us, and for families that still grieve, and for this nation, and for the world, maybe one piece is that today can also serve to lend a perspective to the oppressive summer of 2016, that from a firm foundation new understandings can arise and that hope can still rise out of despair and that unity among our leaders doesn’t have to be lost forever.

When I think back to this summer of reading the news and being so far away from you, it wasn’t the preaching that I missed. I preached the whole month of July in Scotland. Honestly, some of those other Sundays I was quite relieved to not have to stand up here and offer a gospel word. “Ah, the news, we will always have the news.” For the Christian, that resignation, that detachment, that defeatism in the face of the world’s darkness isn’t really an option… Because of the fullness of Christ and his promise that our hearts would see his light, that the darkness shall never overcome that light, that our hearts would see our salvation, which God has prepared in the presence of all people, that our hearts would see the very face of Jesus in hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned, that our hearts would see what the Apostle Paul called “a more excellent way”.

What I missed this summer was you and I putting our hearts together, searching, looking, with the eyes of our hearts. Because God has promised us that Christ is here above us, here with us, here within us, in all of his fullness. And that we, the Body of Christ, shall always be anointed, comforted, fed, and sent by that same fullness. That the eyes of our hearts will light up with God’s hope, God’s glory, God’s power. It’s not just that God has promised us; it’s that we’ve experienced it. Over and over again. Right here, when we are together, in worship, in this place.

One Sunday after worship in one of the congregations I served this summer, a big burly man came up to me. He had a wonderful flow of white hair, a beard, and this weather-worn red face. He had to be either a sea captain or Santa Claus. He took both my hands in his and as he thanked me for the service, for the sermon, he said, “Now could you please just talk slower and use less words. You’re American, you know.” Then he got teary and with his voice breaking, he said, “There’s just so much there, you have to give us time to take it all in.” He wasn’t talking just about the sermon, of course. He was talking about the gospel. He was talking about God’s grace. He was talking about the fullness of Christ. God’s hope. God’s glory. God’s power. And one man’s yearning for the eyes of his heart to light up again and again and again.

© 2016 Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.

Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Lauren J. McFeaters
September 4, 2016

Freedom comes in many shapes and sizes. Madeleine L’Engle tells an old legend about Judas, that after his death, Judas found himself at the bottom of a deep and slimy pit.

For thousands of years he wept his repentance, and when the tears were finally spent, he looked up, and saw, far into the distance, a tiny glimmer of light.

After a time, he began to climb up toward the light. The walls of the pit were dark and wet, and time and time again he kept slipping back down.

But finally, after great effort, he reached the top and as he dragged himself into a room; he saw it was an upper room; and he saw people, people he knew, people seated around a table.

And Jesus said to Judas,

“We’ve been waiting for you, Judas.”

“We couldn’t begin until you arrived.” (1)

Freedom in Christ sets us free.

For Judas, freedom came in the form of Love, a Love that liberated with forgiveness, lifted restraints, set at liberty a life, and gave him joy.

Today we travel to the Galatians: New Christians for whom Christ’s love has liberated with forgiveness, lifted restraints, set at liberty life, but who find no joy in their freedom.

Instead the Galatians are held captive by unending arguments about the law and food and circumcision – all outward skirmishes taking a lead over inward peace with Christ – all biting and devouring one another rather than living in the commandment they have yet to accept: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

For Paul, whose Gospel message is the unbound and unrestrained life lived in our Lord, the Galatians’ fighting is the outward and visible sign of their ongoing captivity.(2)

Freedom comes in many shapes and sizes. Paul knows freedom in Christ. Perhaps more than most. He’s lost physical freedom many times. He says:

• I’ve been imprisoned in toil and hardship, hunger and thirst, cold and exposure.
• Five times I have received forty lashes less one.
• Once I was trampled with stones.
• Three times I have been shipwrecked.
• I’ve been in danger from rivers … robbers … my own people.(3)
• I’ve known the incarceration of illness, ill-health, and disease.(4)

The wonder of Paul is his ability to find liberty in Christ in the midst of captivity.

Frederick Buechner puts it like this: There was hardly a whistle-stop in the Mediterranean world that Paul didn’t make it to eventually. He planted churches the way Johnny Appleseed planted trees. And whenever he had ten minutes to spare, he wrote letters.

He browbeat, coaxed, comforted, and cursed. He bared his soul. He ruminated and complained. He theologized and arbitrated. He inspired and gloried. And everything he said, wrote, did (from the Damascus Road on) was an attempt to bowl over the human race as he’d been bowled over.(5) The day Paul found freedom in Christ was the day nothing became impossible.

And this is why he is so distraught over his beloved Galatian Church. They’ve taken the gift of salvation and turned it into a reason for self-indulgence and immaturity. For freedom Christ has set us free, yet we, insist on our own way.

It’s obvious what happens to our lives when we try to get our own way all the time; when our wills run riot, and our pleasure-seeking knows no bounds. Without living in Christ and through Christ, our days turn into one big roulette wheel of “Choose Your Fortune!” Paul lays it out for us – what we become without freedom leading the way:

• A stinking accumulator of mental and emotional garbage
• A cheater for grades and advancement
• A selfish grabber of attention and limelight
• An instigator of crisis and drama

How about our:

• Trusting in cutthroat competition and magic-show religion
• Or our vicious tempers and frozen hearts
• Our withholding of encouragement and praise
• Unrestrained need for judgment, gossip, and slander.(6)

But freedom comes in many shapes and sizes. What happens when we set aside our burdens and live as those set free? Why God grants such calm and simplicity, such serenity, much the same way fruit appears on a tree. Amazing things happen, in the blink of an eye we grow up and mature. We gain:

• An affection for others and a willingness to stick with things
• Acts of compassion trip from our hearts
• We cultivate a conviction that holiness permeates all people and conflicts have resolutions
• We find ourselves with loyal friends and we become healthier companions
• Our manipulation and over-control fades away and we’re trustworthy, honorable, and dependable
• We have no need to force our way into other’s lives
• And our ability to forgive ripens to overflowing (7)

You see, for those who belong to Christ, there’s not one detail of life that he will not set free so that we might belong to God body and soul. Living our days in that kind of freedom is like:

• Looking up and seeing (far in the distance) a glimmer of light
• And climbing up to light,
• And when we reach the top,
• We find ourselves at the Table,
• With people we know,
• And Jesus turns and looks at us and says:

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

“And we couldn’t begin until you arrived.”(8)

1. Madeleine L’Engle as cited by James T. Moor. A Place of Welcome. Luke 7:36-50. Day1, A division of the Alliance for Christian Media, Atlanta, Georgia, June 17, 2007.
2. J. William Harkins. Feasting on the Word:  Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year C, Vol. 3. Eds. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, 186.
3. 2 Corinthians 11:24-27.
4. 2 Corinthians 12:7.
5. 1 Corinthians 1:18-25.
6. Galatians 5: 19-21 adapted from Eugene Peterson’s The Message. Colorado Springs, CO:  NavPress, 1993.
7. Galatians 5: 22-25 adapted from Eugene Peterson’s The Message. Colorado Springs, CO:  NavPress, 1993.
8. Madeleine L’Engle as cited by James T. Moor. A Place of Welcome. Luke 7:36-50. Day1, A division of the Alliance for Christian Media, Atlanta, Georgia, June 17, 2007.

© 2016 Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.