Eulogy and EucharistSecond Sunday after Christmas
January 4, 2008
Ephesians 1:3-14
Most of us know what a eulogy is, and how tricky eulogies can be. The term comes from two Greek words which mean “good” and “word.” Literally, a “eulogy” is “good words.” We usually think of eulogies in the context of a funeral, and that’s where they become so tricky.
Sometimes eulogies aren’t about the person who has died so much as they are about the feelings of the person who is making the speech. The speaker goes on and on about how he or she is handling grief while the congregation squirms uncomfortably in the pews.
I call this the “It’s-all-about me eulogy.” We’ve all heard them, and they are a good argument for installing a trap door in the pulpit.
At the other end of the spectrum is the speaker who waxes eloquent about the virtues of the person who has died. Sometimes the eulogist lays it on so thick that you begin to wonder who is being talked about. Surely this paragon of righteousness, this model citizen, this superhero bears but a passing resemblance to old Uncle Jack or Auntie Lucile.
Eulogies of this style usually conclude with some affirmation that the deceased is now in heaven, having thoroughly impressed the Almighty with his or her long list of qualifications. I call this the “It’s-all-about-him (or her) eulogy.”
Every now and then, a person climbs up into this pulpit, pulls out a few notes, and says something very different. Instead of subjecting the congregation to thoughts better shared in private with a close friend or telling outright lies, the speaker will tell a story or share an insight that is not just eulogy but also eucharist.
· “When I was a little girl, and constantly afraid of falling, he taught me how to ride a bike.”
· “When I wrecked the family car she didn’t get angry. She just wanted to know if I was O.K.”
· “He told me he was proud of me even though I didn’t come in first, and that he would always love me.”
Sometimes God is mentioned. Sometimes not. But it’s obvious that the speaker’s “good words” aren’t just about the speaker or even just about the person who has died. They’re about a kind of shared mystery -- a grace that has been revealed in and through another person. It’s about something much bigger and more important than either the person speaking or the person being spoken about.
More often than not this kind of eulogy will end with words along these lines: “Because he did that . . . because she said that, I’ll always be grateful.”
Eulogy leads to eucharist – good words to thanksgiving.
The opening verses of the letter to the Ephesians is a very long, very complex sentence that is pure eulogy – a sustained, majestic, and grammatically monstrous expostulation that blesses God for God’s blessings. In these verses God is both the source and the recipient of the author’s praise -- the beginning and the end, the subject and the object – and the point of it all is pure thanksgiving.
Blessed be God, the author begins – but not just any God. Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing . . . just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.
To know the God who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is to be blessed, and to be blessed is to be chosen. That’s quite a thing to write to a ragtag assembly of misfits – Jews who had been rejected from their synagogues and Gentiles who no longer fit in with their own people.
You belong, the writer tells the Christians in Ephesus. Not because you are circumcised or not circumcised, not because you obey or don’t obey the Law of Moses. Not because you’ve led a good life and deserve God’s attention. You belong because you belong to God. Long before you were born, from the very foundation of the world, God had it in mind to adopt you.
He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will . . .
I suppose, if they had had any power in the world, that message could have gone to the Ephesians’ heads. It could have given them notions of holy empire or manifest destiny. Certainly the idea of “adoption” or “election” can be, and has been, misconstrued.
But if we listen carefully, we will hear not a celebration of nation, race, or culture, but an expression of abject wonder.
The story goes that many years ago in the divinity faculty at New College in Edinburgh, Scotland, there was a professor of Old Testament named Robert Duncan. “Rabbi Duncan,” the students called him because of his deep learning and even deeper piety. He was a bit of a mystic, and the rumor was that when Rabbi Duncan said his prayers at night, he prayed them in flawless Classical Hebrew.
One night a couple of students listened outside the door of Professor Duncan’s bedchamber as he said his prayers. They expected to hear strains of ancient mysticism wafting their way toward heaven in perfect Hebrew. Instead, this is what they heard:
Gentle
Jesus, meek and mild.
Look upon a
little child.
Pity my
simplicity.
Suffer me to
come to thee.
We are God’s adopted children. We belong to God.
Because you belong to God, the writer says, you also belong to one another. This family you have been adopted into crosses the old barriers of race and religion. You are part of “a plan for the fullness of time,” says the writer, God’s plan “to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”
It’s not about us, you see? It’s about God, the God who loves the world, and in Christ is working to gather up all things in him.
In one sense the gospel of Jesus Christ is particular. It’s about God’s saving love for individuals, for each and every person. In another sense, the gospel is cosmic. It’s about God’s plan for the fullness of time to heal and save the cosmos. The fellowship that you and I enjoy – the love that we know in this community – is a sacrament that points us toward that future.
We are only four days into a new year, but already the woes and anxieties of 2008 have pushed their way onto the crisp new calendar. The rockets fly back and forth over the border between Israel and Gaza. The stock market tosses and rolls like a ship in high seas. Unemployment and underemployment hang over our heads as our elders recall scenes from the Great Depression.
In such times it’s hard to get our bearings. Where is the Polestar? How do we set our course? These opening verses of Ephesians suggest that we should start the year not with anxiety but with eulogy – with good words for the God who loves the world in Jesus Christ. Let our eulogy therefore set the course for 2009.
· God’s grace to us has been lavish beyond measure. Shall we in turn be stingy and protective?
· God in Christ has broken down the barriers that once separated us from one another. Shall we in turn build up the old walls of hostility – the walls between Jew and Gentile, Christian and Muslim, male and female, gay and straight?
· God has led us to set our “hope in Christ to the praise of his glory.” Shall we then live as those who have no hope?
Beloved in Christ, our future lies in the same hands that shaped the cosmos from its beginning. Before the foundation of the world, God called us by name. Before we were knit together in our mother’s wombs, God knew us completely. Before we knew enough to claim God, God claimed us, and with the love that will not let us go, God loves the world.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . Let the eulogy that begins this old letter begin this year and all our years.
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