11 In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, 12 so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. 13 In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; 14 this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.
Ephesians 1:11-23
15 I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason 16 I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers, 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, 18 so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may perceive what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. 20 God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. 22 And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
My sermon from All Saints Sunday (November 2, 2025) on Ephesians 1:11-23.
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So now that my youngest is in first grade, she comes home with a lot of paper covered in all kinds of writing. She, along with her classmates, are working on their penmanship and their spelling. After writing down a sentence or two, they use the acronym C.O.P.S. as a checklist to see if they did everything right. The students first identify any errors with their capitalization since the first word in each sentence, proper nouns, and “I” are supposed to be capitalized. Once that’s checked out, they then look at how their work is organized – making sure transition words connect their ideas, the spacing between the words are correct, and that there are no run-on sentences. The next letter in the acronym, P, is about punctuation with punctuation in 1st grade focused on adding a period at the end of a thought. Once all of that is taken care of, the students end their editing by double checking their spelling. This simple strategy is an awesome way to help kids grow as critical thinkers and learn how to communicate their thoughts to others. But if Paul, the writer of our first reading from the Bible, was asked to use C.O.P.S today, this entire section would need to be re-written since these are sentences which go on and on and on.
Now I know these words from Paul’s letter to the Christian community in the town of Ephesus are readable to us but that’s because our English translation of the ancient Greek added punctuation to help it make sense. We began in the middle of one sentence and followed that up with another just as long. Verses 11-14 and 15-23 are two interconnected thoughts filled with a lot more. Yet I wonder if there’s a strategy we could use to make these words feel less abstract and way more human. We, I think, could do a reverse C.O.P.S. by keeping the spelling but removing the capital letters and periods our translation throws in. If we then read what Paul wrote, all these words would flow in a flood – speeding up as we got deeper and deeper into what Paul was trying to help us see. We might add, mentally, a few commas and semi-colons as a way to catch our breath and reflect on what we just heard. Yet Paul, I think, wanted our experience of these words to be a kind of overwhelming event pushing us towards something new. We can almost imagine Paul getting more and more excited as he dictated these words to a scribe he hired to write down everything that he said. And as he talked, the energy, passion, and power at the heart of his relationship with Jesus and God just came tumbling out. That gives us, I think, a hint of how Paul experienced his faith – as a living, breathing, and animating thing that livened his soul. What he believed was more than simply a few thoughts floating in his head. Rather, the trust he had in God was fuel for the life he led. These opening words he uttered were a blessing related to his Jewish identity. God had, according to Paul, blessed the world by deciding those who were not Jewish would, through Christ, have a new identity as children of God. This new relationship would not be at the expense of the Jewish community nor did Paul imagine Christians as being more chosen than God’s chosen people. Instead, what God had done was expand the boundaries of who was included in what God was up to. It might be difficult for us to feel what that kind of inclusion would be since we’re actively living out that kind of intentional expansion through the worship we’re doing right now. But when we step back and notice that we – with all our lumps, imperfections, fears, and anxieties – that we really are part of what God is doing in the world – our emotions might be stirred in unexpected ways. This inclusion, though, isn’t meant to be defined by some else’s exclusion. God’s willingness to include you doesn’t mean God doesn’t want to include anybody else. God will always do what God will do and there’s no competition we can enter that will, somehow, make God love us more. Instead, God’s welcome through baptism and in faith is simply the promise that your life is already more. The old bits of wisdom we carry, the old way we choose to live, and the old way of acting as if we’re the real center of the universe – isn’t the limit of who we get to be. Instead, we’ve been blessed by being drawn into a holy community where Jesus truly is at the center of it all.
And we, I think, have experienced this through the different kinds of people God has brought into our lives. This blessing is reflected in those who won’t let our worst days be the only ones that define us. They are the ones who showed up, stuck around, and wouldn’t let us live this life alone. And when they would screw up, they showed us how we can all keep growing into who God has made us to be. It’s these saints who showed us what gives life its meaning. They helped us cultivate deep connections with our neighbors, our friends, and our family. The relationships they built with us allowed us to be transformed into better versions of ourselves. The peace, unity, kindness, and safety they gave us helped us face our own lives with courage and grace. And it was they who, in big and small ways, showed us how we get to live this meaning out loud by helping and caring for others like Jesus did. Spending our days learning to be kinder to ourselves and to others, figuring out how to swallow our own selfishness for the greater good, and recognizing how joy is always richer than being happy is how we make the most of the life God has given us. And while this kind of living isn’t always easy, the fact God chooses to be for us and for our world is the wisdom that carries us through. It’s this wisdom that invites us to do the hard thing of making the most reverent and loving best guess we can when a difficult choice comes our way. It’s this wisdom that helps us recognize how courage and strength is always measured in the mercy, compassion, and hope we share. It’s this wisdom that lets our being included in what God is doing is not something we’re entitled to but rather a gift we get to share. And it’s this spirit of wisdom and revelation that lets us lean into Christ no matter what comes our way. The wisdom God gives us, the wisdom God shows us, and the wisdom God edits our lives with is a wisdom that looks exactly like Jesus. And while we will often capitalize our own point of view rather than His and let our own opinions and perspectives punctuate our lives in ways that can be unholy and untrue, we – because of Jesus – get to let Jesus be at the center of all of us as we discover the saint God has made each of us to be.
Amen.