Loaded
When you start on a trip, you like to have a full tank of gas. When you go for a hike, you like to have everything you need in your pack. Before you start cooking, you like to have every ingredient at the ready. It is a good feeling to have everything you need.
One of the things I love about how St. Paul starts off his letter to the Christians in Ephesus is the confidence he instills. It is a wonderful epistle and happens to be our second lesson for next Sunday. He begins by blessing God the Father, and the Son, as a word of praise. Then he declares God to be the one who has fully blessed us with every kind of blessing possible. It is Paul’s way of saying, “Thanks to God’s generosity, my good people, you are loaded. You are replete with blessings, and gifts of the Holy Spirit. Here is the opening and the closing to the passage we will contemplate in Church on the Third Sunday after Pentecost:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
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; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God's own people, to the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 3-6, 13-14)
I hope we all realize together, as those baptized into the life of God, that we are spiritually gifted. We have God’s blessing, and particular gifts for ministry to accomplish things for God in this world. This is to say, that today as you set out into the day, and tomorrow and every day, you are given everything you need for life in Christ. You have everything you need to represent Christ in the world. You are packed, as a careful hiker would be, with all your necessities before the excursion. God has “blessed you in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.”
You will have the things to say that you need to say as an ambassador for Christ. You will have the pastoral gifts and intuitive gifts to minister effectively. In a world of terrible news, you have Good News to report. In a fearful and fearsome world, you bring love and courage to bear. Thank God for you (I mean this in a good way): you are loaded.