Pentecost 6 (Proper 10B), July 12, 2009
BCP: Amos 7:7-15; Psalm 85 or 85:7-13; Eph. 1:1-14; Mark 6:7-13
RCL: 2 Sam. 6:1-5, 12b-19 and Psalm 24 or Amos 7:7-15 and Psalm 85:8-13; Eph. 1:3-14; Mark 6:14-29
What does one need to believe and do in order to be counted among God’s elect? The question has dogged Christians from the very beginning, and answers have spanned a vast spectrum. The strict requirements of all manner of cults provide one option, and the absolute license of other groups gives quite another. It’s an especially compelling problem for Christians involved in modern so-called “culture wars.”
Today’s reading from Ephesians was a central text for both Augustine and Calvin in the development of their respective doctrines of predestination. A casual glance at its content might even make it the same for us today. God “destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ,” we’re told, “having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will.” All this took place, moreover, “before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:5, 11, 4).
High Calvinism taught that, while there might be “signs” of individual election, a person’s beliefs and actions were immaterial to God’s immutable plan. A modern interpretation of this might be the growing universalism of some churches in the western world today. Personal beliefs and actions, so it’s held, have nothing to do with faith, since all are honored by God and all people are foreordained to salvation.
A practical problem of predestination is that it obviates any need for the Lord’s great commission to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19-20). If the elect are already infallibly chosen, and if their beliefs and actions ultimately mean nothing, then what is the point of evangelism? What’s the motivation for ministry to be anything other than chaplaincy to like-minded individuals?
To the extent that TEC’s rapid “downsizing” is connected to its apparently growing universalist thinking, perhaps we need to reconsider just how God “destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ.” Might it have had something to do with being called to repentance, as suggested by Amos? And might baptism, at least alluded to in today’s peculiar (RCL) gospel reading, have played some part? It’s worth our thinking about, at least.
Look It Up
What are we required to believe and do under the terms of our Baptismal Covenant (BCP, pp. 304-5)?
Think About It
What might motivate me personally to engage in a ministry of evangelism?
Next Sunday
Pentecost 6 (Proper 11B), July 19, 2009
BCP: Isaiah 57:14b-21; Psalm 22:22-30; Eph. 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-44
RCL: 2 Sam. 7:1-14a and Psalm 89:20-37; or Jer. 23:1-6 and Psalm 23; Eph. 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
