Have You Looked into the Water? (Ephesians 1)
A prayer of intercession using the themes of Ephesians 1 and this sermon can be found here.
The Liturgy for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B (Mark) also uses themes from this sermon and the prayer of intercession can be found here.
Introduction
Recently my family and I were in western Missouri, attending to matters related to my late in-laws. We traveled there to bring back mementos and prepare the house for an estate sale and the upcoming closing. Sorting through their belongings, including children’s books handed down for generations—some over 130 years old. Some of those stories are great.
Let’s revisit one of those children’s stories handed down to us. It starts like all great stories, “In the beginning,” but in this case, it’s “Once upon a time.”
Once upon a time in a barnyard, a mother duck sat upon her eggs. At last, the eggs hatched, and one was peculiar. Unlike his siblings, he was larger and uglier. The other barnyard animals mocked and bullied him relentlessly. It was so unbearable that he ran away, seeking a place where he might belong.
He wandered the countryside, encountering various animals, but each encounter reinforced his first experience of rejection. In one instance, he stayed with an old woman, her hen, and her cat, but they too ultimately rejected him.
Autumn turned to winter, and bad turned to worse. Almost frozen to death and contemplating his woeful state, he saw a group of majestic swans flying overhead and felt a powerful, indescribable longing inside of himself.
Winter passed. With the arrival of spring, now grown, he found himself near a pond. To his delight, he saw the swans again, swimming beautifully. Tired of his isolation and loneliness, he decided to approach them, even if that meant being rejected or pecked to death. To his surprise, they not only welcomed him but praised his beauty. This touched him so much that he bowed his head, which allowed him to gaze into the water, where he saw his reflection for the first time. He was no ugly duckling but was a beautiful swan.
It's such a wonderful story. Why did Hans Christian Andersen write that story? Was it because he discovered this was a common problem experienced by ducks and swans in the early 1800s? No. It’s a problem common to all people in all places and times.
Identity and Transformation
Like the story, there are times when we wonder who we are, who we are becoming, or what we’ve become. At certain moments, we may long for something undefined yet deeply felt.
Just as the “duckling” is inherently a swan and was always going to become that, Ephesians 1 states you are a child of God because of God’s lavish grace.
The “duckling” changes throughout the seasons, yet the change us unnoticed, unfelt, and underappreciated by him. The change is taking place nonetheless. What he becomes externally is what he was always internally. His identity became his destiny.
Your failures and imperfections do not change your identity. They may change how you feel about yourself, but they do not change who you are. The roles you play (parent, spouse, child, grandparent, friend, worker, volunteer, advocate, etc), are important but they are not ultimate. They do not define us because they are not internal and they are not eternal.
Your identity is being a child of God who has every spiritual blessing given to you through Jesus by grace. That is what is inside of you and that is what God is trying to bring to the surface in prayer, reading, worship, sacraments, and the disciplines of life.
Bad religion works on and is fixated on the outside, on the way we appear. The gospel as taught by Jesus and retaught through the New Testament is about the inside and living into who you are.
Our life changes the moment we realize that.
When are we more prone to realize the significance of our belovedness? It seems to be that we are more open to understanding the significance of God’s adoration of us when we fail and understand the power of grace and forgiveness, or when we experience hate, rejection, or disappointment from other people.
Those are the moments when our eyes are opened to who we really are. Like the swan that looked into the water, we see ourselves truly in need of God’s love and God’s parenting.
Let’s talk about grace and redemption now.
Grace and Redemption
In our passage, Paul emphasizes that through Jesus, we have redemption and forgiveness. Despite our imperfections, God offers grace and continues the relationship.
Paul writes, “In him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.”
Let’s put this text in context to feel the weight of what Paul is saying, which is astounding.
When Jesus Christ was born, he was very different from everyone else. He grew up in humble surroundings. When he left home, he encountered people who rejected and mistreated him repeatedly. His own hometown rejected him.
He would leave that town, go to another, and be rejected again. This happened over three years. People could not see his true nature, the divine nature of God. They could not see his true identity as the Son of God, the Messiah, whose purpose was to teach them the way of God in a difficult world.
Though beautiful and virtuous, striking with his commitment to truth, justice, and mercy, we treated him as if he were scandalous to look upon. Isaiah the prophet said, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2).
Paul tells this group, “Though you treated Jesus that way,” God’s response is not retaliation but forgiveness, welcome, reconciliation, and belonging. God could have condemned and cursed us, but instead gave us every spiritual blessing.
If God can forgive how we treated the Son, then there’s nothing in your life that cannot be redeemed. God has done everything, Paul says, to keep the relationships intact.
You may think of yourself as poor and outcast, but God is rich in grace and lavishly pours it out upon you.
Isn’t this good? Uplifting. Doesn’t this elevate your perspective?
There’s one more thing I think we should consider. You are predestined with a purpose.
Predestined Purpose
The way Hans Christian Andersen told the story, you think it’s a duckling until the end when it is revealed the duckling is a swan. After the story, you realize, that as soon as that egg was laid and the creature hatched from it, it was destined to become a swan. There was no other choice.
Just as the swan was destined to become what it was meant to be, you are destined to be God’s child, marked forever by God’s love, guided by the Spirit.
This is your purpose in life. Your purpose in life is to become more and more of your true self, which is to be a child whom God adores. Sure, you can have more than one thing on the list, but ultimately the purpose under every other purpose is to live fully and confidently into your identity as someone who is known deeply and loved greatly.
Your behavior may not reflect it all the time. Your attitude may not reflect it all the time. Your emotions may not feel it all the time. You may not always remember every day. That does not change the fact.
Yet, it is true, that we are and we are becoming. We are completely loved and incomplete in our development.
Who has God called us to be? Our sacramental, Reformed faith speaks to this. It acknowledges our predicament without heaping guilt and shame upon us because in Reformed theology the focus is on what God has done for us and not what we must do and our own subjective perspective.
That’s why you need to look into the water, the water of your baptism.
The duckling sees his reflection in the water and realizes that he has become something he had longed to be but couldn’t put into words. When we look into the water of baptism, we see an old self washed away and a new self, chosen and beloved of God revealed.
Just using this one passage, this is who you should see looking back at you. Someone who:
1. Is blessed in Christ with every spiritual blessing. No other person has something you don’t have access to.
2. Is chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. God loves you on purpose for a purpose.
3. Is holy and blameless in the eyes of God.
4. Is destined for adoption as God’s child through Jesus Christ. In a world of groups that like to segregate, separate, and annihilate enemies, God doesn’t just say, you are included. God adopts you as a child and treats you the way God treats Jesus.
5. Is a recipient of glorious grace freely bestowed upon you.
6. Redeemed.
7. Forgiven your trespasses according to the riches of his grace.
8. Is someone lavished with grace.
9. Is someone who knows the mystery of God’s will. The mystery of God’s will is that through non-retaliation on the cross, God will demonstrate love and forgiveness for all people and bring all nations together in a family called the church.
10. Is someone who has an inheritance in Christ.
11. Is destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to the wisdom of his will.
12. Is marked with a seal of the promised Holy Spirit.
That is who you are. That is who you are becoming.
Does this burn in your chest? Do you see this being lived out in others, and you say, “I want that for me”? Does this passage put some things into words for you?
Conclusion
So, what does this all mean for us?
We often find ourselves in situations where we feel out of place, misunderstood, or unappreciated. We may struggle to see our own worth, questioning our identity and purpose. But God, in infinite wisdom and grace, has already seen us as who we truly are—beloved children, destined for goodness through Christ.
The descriptors from Ephesians remind us of our true identity:
We are blessed.
We are chosen.
We are adopted.
We are redeemed.
We are marked with the Holy Spirit.
In moments of doubt and despair, when we falter, remember that your identity is not defined by the world’s rejection or your performance, but by God’s unwavering love and acceptance. God has loved you on purpose for a purpose, so that you may grow to become more of your beloved self.
When we look into the water of baptism, we see the reflection of our true selves, washed clean and made new in Christ. Our old selves are washed away, and we emerge as the chosen, beloved children of God.
Embrace your identity in Christ, live out your purpose, and let God's grace guide you through every season of life.
Let the Word of God speak to your handsomeness and beauty until it causes you to bow your head in humbleness. And then, you will see yourself, perhaps for the first time in the water.
