When the Light Comes On
(Ephesians: 3: 1-12)
I remember this one case I had not long after I started practicing law. I had been appointed to represent an older lady who had been accused of forging the title to a used pickup truck. It had been purchased by a man, now deceased, who had bought it from a local used car lot and had given it to his cousin, my client, to drive. The man unexpectedly passed away and his current wife, who did not like my client, wanted it back. My client refused to return the truck, asserting that the truck was a gift, and that she had a signed title to prove it. The widow insisted that the signature on the title was not her husband’s. My client insisted that she did not forge the signature, and that she was innocent. It’s a known fact that most defense attorneys never get to represent an innocent client, euphemistically known as a unicorn, so you just take what your client tells you at face value and push on. The District Attorney offered to dismiss the charges if my client would just give the truck to the aggrieved widow. My octogenarian client defiantly refused so we set it for trial. The elected District Attorney, my wife’s cousin, wanted nothing to do with the case so he passed it off to his assistant Bill Burnett who I went to law school with. It was a pretty short case with only three witnesses: the widow, my client, and the owner of the used car lot. Both women testified convincingly so it was up to the used car lot owner to shed some light on the controversy. You could tell he didn’t want to be there and wasn’t much help. He seemed strangely nervous, uncomfortable. He remembered selling the truck, that it might have been for my client, but that he had no recollection of who could have forged the deceased’s signature. It was at that very moment that the light came on, that Bill and I simultaneously had an epiphany which is defined as a “sudden understanding of something important, a moment when you feel you suddenly understand.” You got it! That “ah-ha” moment. Apparently, one or more of the jurors had the same epiphany and, after being found not guilty, my client triumphantly exited the courthouse and drove home in her pickup truck.
And it’s that great epiphany, that moment when the Apostle Paul suddenly understood, when the light came on, that our scripture lesson for today is all about. Paul explains that he, the least of all God’s people, is imprisoned and suffering because of his work for and with Gentiles in service of the mystery of Christ. Hidden in the past but now revealed, this mystery is God’s plan to overcome the powers and principalities that divide human beings and unite both Jew and Gentile in Christ Jesus. The religious leaders in Jerusalem, who felt threatened by Christ’s teachings and didn’t believe Jesus was the Messiah, pressured the Romans to arrest Paul and bring him to trial for treason and for causing rebellion among the Jews. Threatening your opponents, your rivals with treason and imprisonment seems to be a time-honored practice, and one that is quite effective for the one who wields the power and wants to silence the opposition.
In any event, Paul starts out by saying: You’ve heard, of course, about the responsibility to distribute God’s grace, which God gave to me for you, right? God showed me his secret plan in a revelation. Paul casually inserts that he had briefly mentioned it to them before and that when they read his letter, they will understand his insight into the secret plan about Christ. Yeah, it will all become clear, it will be a sudden understanding of something important, the light will come on. He continues by stating: Earlier generations didn’t know this hidden plan that God has now revealed to his holy apostles and prophets through the Spirit. This plan, he explains, is that the Gentiles would be coheirs and parts of the same body, and that they would share with the Jews in the promises of God in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Remember that before his conversion on the road to Damascus, Paul was a Pharisee and was aggressively on the hunt for fugitive Followers of the Way of Jesus Christ so he could bring them back to Jerusalem to stand trial for blasphemy, the religious version of treason. This shocking epiphany of Paul is so disturbing to the ruling religious hierarchy that they’ve convinced the Roman authorities to imprison him to keep him quiet. What they didn’t understand, or refused to acknowledge, was that it was always God’s plan to have Jews and Gentiles comprise one body, the church. (That appears to be a long way off, but that’s a sermon for another day.) It’s not like they hadn’t been told beforehand by one of God’s prophets. In Isaiah 49 the prophet speaks of the future redeemer and says in verse 6: It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth. I guess their defense would be that it was never specifically revealed to them by the prophets that all Gentile and Jewish believers would become equal in the body of Christ.
Paul continues by telling his readers that he became a servant of the gospel because of the grace that God showed him through the exercise of his power. I think Paul realized that God could have done one of two things. God could have struck him dead with a bolt of lightning or use his unique skills for good, to become an apostle to the Gentiles. Paul writes: God gave his grace to me, the least of all God’s people, to preach the good news about the immeasurable riches of Christ to the Gentiles. God sent me to reveal the secret plan that had been hidden since the beginning of time by God, who created everything. This is Paul’s epiphany, his sudden understanding of something important, that moment when he suddenly understood. His ah-ha moment. He explains that God’s purpose is now to show the rulers and powers in the heavens the many different varieties of his wisdom through the church which is consistent with the plan he had from the beginning of time which has now been accomplished through Jesus Christ. In Christ, he says, we have bold and confident access to God through faith in him.
Paul, the former Pharisee, no longer sees the Gentiles as outsiders. He realizes that they are equal brothers and sisters in Christ, and so he will give his very life to make sure the whole family of God knows they are welcome in God’s household. He uses this opportunity, his imprisonment, to explain that previous generations did not know about this secret plan of God to redeem the Gentiles through Christ. This helps to clarify the enmity the Jews had towards Gentile inclusion into the people of God, and why Paul was repeatedly persecuted when preaching the gospel, a truth many did not want to hear, a light they didn’t want to see. Because of this, Paul was given a revelation of his own and he now declares that his authority to preach this word comes directly from God. And in spite of this amazing revelation, he doesn’t let it go to his head. He considers himself nothing more than a servant of the gospel.
Paul’s transformed life demonstrates the power of God, a power to which Gentiles now have access through Christ. He makes it clear that God’s grace is an active concept. Not only does God’s grace bring forgiveness, but it also has other purposes. Paul received grace for the purpose of making known God’s long-hidden plan, which has now been revealed. Paul explains the purpose behind this revelation is to display to the spiritual powers God’s multi-faceted wisdom through the church, to demonstrate that in God’s unified people God is working to restore wholeness to a broken creation. Now that Christ has defeated sin so that those who are in Christ now have confident access to God, an access that was once controlled by the religious elite, the ones in power who were more interested in maintaining their own status quo at the expense of others, physically and spiritually.
It is an awesome privilege to be able to approach God with freedom and confidence whenever we want and wherever we are. Most of us would be apprehensive in the presence of a powerful ruler. But thanks to Christ, by faith we can enter directly into God’s presence through prayer knowing that He is listening, knowing that He cares. We know we will be welcomed with open arms because we are His children through our union with Christ. The light has been turned on, the mystery has been revealed, and we have no reason to be afraid of God. He accepts us just as we are. We can talk to him about anything and everything. He is waiting to hear from you.
Let us pray.
Just as we are, without one plea but that Thy blood was shed for us, and that Thou bidd’st us come to Thee, O Lamb of God, we come, we come. Yes, gracious and all-loving God how grateful we are for the revelation through your servant Paul that you have accepted us into your family as your children as you planned from the beginning of your creation. We are so grateful that we can freely come to you with our conflicts, our doubts, our fighting’s, and fears and that you will listen patiently and by your Spirit will show us the path we must take to have peace and eternal life with you and all the saints. O Lamb of God, we come, we come, in Jesus’ name we come. Amen.
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When the Light Comes On
Paul received grace for the purpose of making known God’s long-hidden plan which has now been revealed.