This is the sermon I preached last week. In it I talk about what it means that we are saved by faith, and to what purpose our salvation has been given to us. The text of the sermon was Ephesians 2:1-10.
My wife’s granddad was an engineer in Texas City. Grandpa Wally moved there just after the explosion in 1947. The Texas City Disaster is known as the deadliest industrial accident in United States History. A ship, the S.S. Grandcamp carrying 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate bound for Europe to help farmers there rebuild after the war, exploded. The explosion was massive. It was as big as an atomic bomb. Though the ship was a mile out into the harbor, the devastation it wrought on land was intense. It leveled nearly a thousand buildings, including, among others, the Monsanto Chemical Company plant. Grandpa Wally was brought in to rebuild the plant, and while he was there he heard the other engineers tell stories of what had happened in the aftermath of the explosion. Wally was struck, with the bravery and heroism of ordinary people facing this extraordinary disaster.
I was visiting Grandpa Wally last week, listening to the family tell stories about Wally and about the explosion in Texas City. Anyway, listening to these stories that Hannah’s family told, one of them stood out to me as an incredible metaphor for what our passage in Ephesians talks about today. For it is by the grace of God that we are saved, through our faith, which is not just belief but belief in action, for the purpose of good works, which God has prepared us for.
One of Grandpa Wally’s coworkers was there, at the Monsanto Chemical Plant, when the explosion happened. It was Hannah’s Aunt Pat, who was telling us this story, and she couldn’t remember his name, but I’ll call him Jim, to make it easier for us to hear and understand the story. Jim was in the refinery when it caught fire. The initial blast was massive, shaking the building to its foundations. Shelves collapsed, tables fell over. Chemical containers spilled everywhere. One of these containers spewed something straight into Jim’s face. After he recovered from the initial blast, Jim tried to wipe his eyes clear, but it was no good, whatever it was that had sprayed him had blinded him. He couldn’t see.
For a blind man in a burning building the chances of survival are slim. The blast threw furniture everywhere, blocking passages, and obscuring familiar routes. Navigating obstacles would be practically impossible. Jim began to try to feel his way out, knowing that he probably had no hope. Only a miracle could save him. On his own, he wouldn’t be able to navigate all of the obstacles and passageways to get out in time.
The author of today’s passage from Ephesians begins by telling us that we were dead. “You were dead,” he says, “through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world.” The author here is talking about what life was like before his readers knew God, when they lived, “in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses.”
Humanity on its own is fundamentally flawed. We’re sinful. Selfish. Broken. And it’s not really working for us. We can eat great food, have big houses and even bigger trucks, have good jobs and go on expensive vacations every year. But it’s not enough. Somehow we are all left wanting. We’re all seeking something more. Something fulfilling, something that makes us so satisfied that we say, as the Psalmist did, “my cup runneth over.”
Without God we’re hopelessly incapable of finding it. We’re too easily tempted by the promises that the world offers us. We’re suckers for empty promises. Just look at how much attention we pay our politicians, all the news we watch, the campaign speeches, the debates, and the commercials. And the weird thing is that all of us know that when the campaign ends the promises will be forgotten. We know the promises are empty, but we chase after them anyway, blind to the one Promise that will truly fulfill us.
In a sense, without God we’re like Grandpa’s friend Jim. Out on our own, trapped by our blindness, with no way of finding a path out, and really no hope of doing so. Like Jim, only a miracle could save us. Like Jim, we’re feeling our way around, trying to find our way out, but completely helpless to do so.
But the miracle of God’s grace is that we are not alone in our world. As our passage tells us, “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.” God saves us from ourselves, from the things we do that condemn ourselves, from chasing after empty promises. God raises us up, together with Christ Jesus, making us righteous where we were unrighteous, clean where we were unclean, filled where we were empty and alone. God gives us exactly what we need. It doesn’t matter how far away from God we have become, how deep we find ourselves in the rabbit holes of empty promises and material things. God’s grace gives us exactly what we need to find our way out. Truly by the grace of God our cups runneth over. We were once blind, but now we see.
As for Jim, his blindness did not go away. But I tell you that God’s grace saved him as it saves us. Not able to see, Jim was fumbling around, trying to find his way out, when he heard a voice. He wasn’t sure he heard it at first. But he stopped fumbling around for a moment, and above the noise of the fire there was a still, small voice, calling out. It was calling out for help. And Jim started moving towards the voice.
Now that right there, is faith. It was a great leap to give up seeking to save his own lives and turn away to help another. He turned away from seeking his own needs, his own desires, his own dreams to go help someone. And faith is what makes the difference. See, when we have faith we can stop for a moment, we can let go of frantically feeling for the exit, we can let go of chasing empty promises, and listen for that still small voice, calling out, prepare the way of the Lord. And only in seeking the Lord, can we find the fulfillment and salvation that our hearts so deeply desire. Faith calls us to turn away from trying to save ourselves and to let ourselves be saved by the grace of God.
In modern times we talk about faith as belief. In fact, many of us would say that they are synonyms. But this was not so in the New Testament. The word for faith is pistis, and though it is sometimes used as a synonym for belief, it also holds something more. Faith is belief that has been acted upon. In the Gospel of Matthew, for example, some people carry a paralyzed man in on a bed, to be healed by Jesus. The passage says, “when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.” Jesus did not see their beliefs; the passage does not say that Jesus knew what they had been thinking as Jesus does with the rich young ruler. He saw their actions, and it was through their actions, through acting on the beliefs that they held, that their friend was saved.
Here’s another example. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus casts out demons, and one of the demons he casts out yells, “I know who you are, the Holy One of God!” Even the demons believe in Christ, but they do not have faith, because they do not act on their beliefs. In fact, they act against them.
And Jim was saved through his faith as well. When he heard that voice calling, he went towards it, in spite of his own blindness. When Jim finally reached the source of the voice, he found a man, lying on the ground, crippled by the blast. He couldn’t walk, couldn’t get out on his own. But God’s grace works in mysterious ways, for although this man could not walk, he could see just fine. And so Jim hoisted him up upon his shoulders, and the man gave directions, and with one pair of legs and one pair of eyes between them, they slowly made their way out of the building.
Our passage tells us that we are saved by grace, through faith. But our passage does not conclude with our salvation, for our salvation is not the end. Our salvation does not occur for our ends alone, but God’s. The passage tells us that God has created us in Christ Jesus for good works. Jim and the stranger he carried out that day were uniquely suited to the tasks which they had been given. Each of them was exactly what the other needed, at just the right moment, that they might both be saved from the fire.
Each of us has also been given exactly what we need. And each of us as well has been given the gifts to be exactly what others need. Each of us is a member of the body of Christ, working together to further God’s will here on earth. We are not saved by works, but for works, that we be ministers to God’s children throughout the world. See, each and every one of us is a minister of Christ.
Each of us was created and blessed with the gifts necessary to do our ministry. Some of us who are teachers are ministers to the children and adults that we teach, sharing with them God’s love and God’s gifts of knowledge, encouraging and enabling them to minister to others. Some of us who are listeners are ministers to those who come to us in sorrow, and in listening they help to share the other’s burdens and lighten their load. Not all of us are good with words, but we make food for someone who is sick or in sorrow, or we fix homes for people who cannot do it themselves. And when we do so, we not only fulfill a physical need, but also remind those in need that there is a community of people who loves and cares for them. Each and every one of us has a calling. Each and every once of us has been saved for the purpose of being ministers of Christ’s body to the world, going out to love and serve the Lord. Police officers are ministers that I admire greatly, for they are often the first people to respond to an incident, to minister and care for the victims.
This is what the Word of God is to us today. That as we stumble around looking for answers, by grace we are given exactly what we need. Faith calls us into action, turning away from ourselves and towards each other. And when we do so we find the fulfillment of God’s promise of grace: new life in Christ and participation in the resurrected body. And we are saved with a purpose in mind, given exactly what we need to accomplish that purpose. We are saved by grace, through faith, for works. Truly, our cups runneth over.
