Ephesians 1:11-23
“Obtained an Inheritance”
Preached Sunday, November 6, 2022
Have you ever received an inheritance?
Perhaps for some of us, we have been left money when a family member died. Or perhaps a piece of jewelry or something special to us and our loved one that was passed on to us. Or even something we gave them - I know I have this little glass penguin that I gave to my grandmother when she was alive. Some of us, I know, are left with the responsibility of their parents’ or siblings’ houses when they die - and that’s a whole other story, less of an inheritance per say and more of a responsibility to care for.
When we think of the word inheritance we think of large sums of money, estates..perhaps we think of the stereotype of spoiled heiresses or we think of crime movies that start with the reading of a will…
On this All Saints Sunday, I would encourage us to realize that we all have received an inheritance worth far more than anything that can be left behind in a will.
First, from those who we have called saints of our lives, we have received all they had to teach us, all the love they had to give us, and all the memories and moments that makes us who we are because of their love for Christ and us. By saints of our lives, I am referring to those people in our lives who we call saints. Not a saintdom decided upon by an institution, not a saintdom based on miracles performed or any other sort of rubric…but a saintdom based on how they loved Christ and how they loved their neighbor and how they loved us while we shared time with them on earth. These are those people who have the opportunity to remember today and give thanks for. These are the people that we will have the opportunity to remember today. To read their names, to light candles…
And to give thanks for them and all that they have given us - the inheritance they passed on to us. Not an inheritance of things but an inheritance of showing us how to live a life of love. Of showing us what it means to follow Christ, what it means to be a saint. Perhaps of how they participated in a local church community. Of how they talked about their faith. Of how they helped those in need. Of how they had love for us and for others. They left us an inheritance of Love - Love for God, love for neighbor, love for us.
Let’s take a moment and we’ll just do 2 or 3 - does anyone want to lift up a way that a saint in your life left you an inheritance of love? To go ahead and share that aloud….
(Sharing)
That’s one of our inheritances. For which we say, thanks be to God!
And secondly, in Christ we have obtained an inheritance far beyond any other!
Our short but very theologically dense passage today from Ephesians uses the word inheritance three times. I’m going to quote from that passage now for the three times it’s used. But Paul is particularly wordy and uses run-on sentences in this passage - including the longest sentence in the New Testament! So I’m going to use some ellipses here and there to help illustrate our inheritance in Christ.
“In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance…so that we…might live for the praise of his glory.”
“In him you also,...were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people”
And then the last one is part of a prayer toward God: “that…you may perceive what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints…”
Now normally we think of inheritance as something we receive after someone dies. And in the traditional usage of that word, that’s what it means. But the inheritance we have in Christ is not something we have to wait to receive - Christ has already given us his inheritance, in the here and now. Christ’s inheritance is being a beloved child of God. Christ’s inheritance is the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Christ’s inheritance that we obtain through believing in Christ is enabling us to live a life for God’s praise and glory, loving God and loving neighbor. In other words, living the life of a saint.
Living the life of a saint…here and now. Today we remember the lives of those we’ve loved who have died. And let’s be honest, sometimes in death, people do get a little white-washed. We don’t want to “speak ill of the dead.” We might forget the rough edges and remember the good times. Or not - each and every relationship is complicated. But, often, in general, we give someone the title of saint AFTER they die. But our inheritance of having everything we need for sainthood is given to us, here and now, in this life.
So what do we need for sainthood?
We need love. Simple as that.
One, we already have God’s love. We are God’s beloved children, adopted by God, and thus full heirs with Christ - and we’ve obtained that inheritance through Christ!
Two, we need the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And we know we have that. The Holy Spirit is given to all of us. The Holy Spirit is our inheritance in Christ. The Holy Spirit is God at work in our lives, here and now, and is with us all, never farther away than our next breath.
And three, we need Grace. Grace is God at work in our lives and God, through the Holy Spirit, is always at work in our lives. As Methodists we have a specific term for the grace that helps us to love better - and we call that sanctifying grace. Sanctifying as in - to make sacred. What is it to be sacred in the Christian tradition? It’s to resemble God or to be of God. And who and what is our God? Our God is the God of love. So we believe that every day, God gives us sanctifying grace - that is, every day, God works in our lives to help us make choices and actions that allow us to love God and to love neighbor as self. And overtime, day after day, we get better and better at it. We find we can more easily choose and show and share love. This is the work of sanctification - the work of becoming more like the God of love - the work of being a saint, here and now.
And well, we have all three of those things! Isn’t that a marvelous thing when you realize we have all we need to live our lives as saints? We have all we need to choose and show and share love every day - love of God, love of neighbor, love as self.
We already have everything we need to be saints!
Isn’t that a really great feeling? It’s like when you get a craving for cookies or an itch to bake and you haven’t done it in awhile and you walk into your kitchen and you open the pantry and you realize - you already have everything you need! You can bake cookies here and now.
But we also have a bonus ingredient: We have the examples of those whom we call saints in our lives. Those are like the chocolate chips in our cookies - they just make everything better. We have all we need - and we can look to the examples of those who are saints, who have shown us and others their love for God, we can pull on our inheritance from them - our memories, our lessons learned, all the love shared - and look to their examples to know where to go - with everything we could ever need - to choose love every day, love of God and love of neighbor as self - to be a saint.
And so today as we read the names of those who have died in the last year and light candles in honor and memory of the saints of our lives…and as we share in Holy Communion, a meal which surpasses all boundaries of time and place - even the boundary of death - a meal that we share with all the saints of earth and all the saints in heaven - As we do all this, may we remember and give thanks for all those who have shown us and the world the love of Christ. And may we follow in the footsteps of those saints, knowing that we have all we need through the inheritance we’ve obtained through Christ - and live as saints, here and now.
May it be so. Amen.
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