What God Has Made Us

18 March 2012

Ephesians 2:1-10

           When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, and the spirit of God swept over the waters and God said, Let there be. And there was. And God saw that it was good. Indeed, it was very good.

So, what happened? Why, when we get to the end of the book which has such a promising beginning, why are Christians seeing the world so differently? Why are they writing as if the world were something other than God’s good creation? Why are they writing as if the world was irredeemably corrupted, and the source not of life but of death: as in:

            “You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient.”

            This dualism—the distinction between the way of the world and the way of God--represents a change from Paul’s early letters, and that change leads scholars to believe that this writing is later and probably from one of Paul’s disciples, and not Paul himself.

            Jesus seemed to see the world as an evidence of God’s goodness and endless blessing. He saw God’s fingerprint in the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. He and his disciples enjoyed the produce of the land and the vineyard. Jesus lived as if the earth was full of the goodness of the Lord, a perspective that is consistent with the Hebrew Scriptures.

            Despite the dualistic heresy evident in today’s epistle lesson, there is a nugget of pure gold in the expression, “we are what God has made us.” We are created for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. Echoes of Moses, and Joshua, and Jeremiah: Walk God’s way so that it may go well with you in the land you are about to inherit. Choose this day whom you will serve. God set before you the way of life and the way of death. Choose life that you may live!

            We are what God has made us, we are not our own, we belong to God. And those who are different from us, who believe differently, they are also people whom God has made. And the earth including the fire the flood, the earthquake and the hurricane, are as God has made them. When people go to war with each other, or when the earth seems to be at war with people, it is too easy to resort to dualism: to say one people is of God and the other of the devil. The gentle rains are of God but the flood is of the devil. Or one is for reward and the other for punishment. It is all of God, created for good, meant for blessing and not curse.

            When we experience the world as a harsh and hellish place, it is best to remember that it isn’t always going to be this way. Best to remember God’s saving history in the world: that when people cry out in their distress, God hears, and God makes a way out of no way, provides healing, and help, rivers in the desert and bread from heaven.

            We are what God has made us and God has made us with an independent will, and the ability to choose. To choose the good, and reject the evil, to choose life and not death, to choose to be liberators and not captors.

            Wait for the Lord, you who trust in God, for God seeks to save. If salvation seems to be delayed, wait for it! Help is on the way. And when God comes as promised to deliver the oppressed, where will we be? Among those who are seeking to alleviate suffering, or among those who create it? We were made for good. Let us be and become what God has made us.