“Can you see it? Do you know it?” on Ephesians 2:1-10 by Michelle Ellis – Oct. 6, 2024

This past summer I read a powerful story about a young man who was rejected by his parents, became involved in gangs and deep violence, and then had an experience of powerful conversion after a pastor who had felt called to minister to New York City gangs told him repeatedly that God loved him. It was a powerful story of a very dramatic change just like in this text a story of a very distinct ‘then’ and ‘now’. I know some here also have very powerful, beautiful stories where they can point to when they were dead and the moment that God began to make them really alive. I am so encouraged by these stories and can imagine people who have lived those lives reading this text and thinking, yes, this is my story, too.

My own story of discipleship is far less spectacular. It has been an adventure in its own way, but it doesn’t read like someone who was rescued from gang violence. I remember feeling the presence of the Holy Spirit from when I was very young, and I was a child and teen who was pretty eager to do good for the most part. I can’t look back to a time where I would say, yes, I was definitely dead in sin at that time in my life, even though sometimes I wore my sister’s clothes without asking. I can see lots of sin in my life, lots of brokenness, lots of things I regret, but I don’t know that I can point to a time in my life where I would say, then I was dead in sin, and now I’m not.

We’re a mixed crew here. Some have stories of a dramatic past, some may have stories of more gradual growth. And maybe some of you can, like me, wonder if being ‘dead in sin’ describes who we are.

For me, I heard this passage more clearly when I noticed that Paul is pointing to the reality of the big picture of the nature of sin and its impact. He includes the whole world in the picture. Paul’s scope is not just thinking about me stealing my sister’s clothes — or the street life of a gang member, though these figure into the picture each in their own way — Paul’s scope is the whole world and all of its history as being deeply impacted and enslaved by sin.

Even if you can’t look at your own individual story and point to a time where you can say, yes, at that time I was dead in sin and rebellion, when we look around at our world, if we look at humanity’s story through history, death is everywhere. Have you ever taken a break from listening to the news because of the helplessness and despair that can come from regularly hearing about powers so much bigger than you that you feel powerless to change anything? The number of people being killed in the wars in the Middle East many of them women and children, the huge rise of people dying from fentanyl, not to even speak of the things that drive people to use drugs in the first place, the epidemic of loneliness and isolation in our culture, racism, sexism, the hugely unfair distribution of wealth and resources in our world, storms and fires wiping out communities, famine and sickness. Then there are all the regular, everyday things like deep relational brokenness, like people belittling others and dismissing them, like greed and its real impacts.

Something is deeply wrong in our world, it is deeply broken. And this brokenness and sin runs through everything from governments to skateparks, from farms to home life, right down to cutting right through each of our hearts. And despite the efforts of so many well-meaning people, division, war, greed, relational break-down all keep going on and on. Our world in so many ways is in a place of death, deep in sin, deep in despair and we are all victims and casualties of this sin and brokenness as well as perpetrators in ways as big as supporting and contributing to unjust systems and as seemingly small as harbouring hatred or jealousy in our hearts.

Paul doesn’t bring up sin to scold us or make us feel like we’re bad people. Paul talks about sin because it is a reality. It is a real part of our world and each of our own individual lives: Can you see it? Do you know it?

When I allow myself to see it and when I allow myself to know it, I confess that what I feel is such a deep longing. Such longing for things to be made right, for this world to be healed, for all the brokenness to be made right again. I long for my own heart to be healed, to be changed from a heart of stone into a heart of flesh. And in my longing, I know deeply that so much of this is bigger than us, bigger than our good intentions, than our efforts. It is beyond me and it’s beyond any one of us here.

And this is where Paul comes in and reminds us of the very heart of the gospel, the heart of the good news: while we were all together dead in sin, God came and made us alive. God sees our world. He sees each one of us, our selfish hearts, our broken desires. He came in Jesus to do what we couldn’t, what we can’t, he came to make us alive, to heal our broken world, to heal our broken hearts, to make us new: Can you see it? Do you know it?

Sin is real. Redemption is also very real, it is even more real, and it has begun in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It has begun, and even now God is at work by His Holy Spirit in each one of us and in His wider world doing the work of strengthening tired feet, giving those who wait new strength, softening hardened hearts, making the way for His healing and for His new life, bringing about resurrection from death in so many ways both small and big in His world. Paul says when you were dead in sin, God came and made you alive. God is doing the work of making you and His whole world alive. That is the work that God is up to in history, in His church, and in each one of us as individuals—bringing life when otherwise there would be none. Stirring desire for Him when otherwise there would be none, giving compassion when otherwise there would be none. Giving wisdom and presence when otherwise there would be none. And in the end, when our race has been run, giving us life after death when otherwise there would be none. In the end, making everything sad come untrue, as one of our kid’s Bible’s says: Can you see it? Do you know it?

Just as real as the presence of sin and brokenness in this world, is the reality of life, the reality of redemption, the impact of God’s action fueled by His deep love to make us and His world alive again and to heal it.