The Simplicity of God's Redemptive Work

I have dabbled in music in the past. Something that I find remarkable about many forms of contemporary music is its simplicity. Blues, rock and roll, country, and gospel songs often have no more than four chords. In fact, some of the greatest songs written in the modern world have no more than four chords. All Along the Watchtower has three. So does the Old Rugged Cross. You could say that the power and the beauty of much contemporary music lies in its simplicity, and that nothing takes away the power and beauty of blues, rock and roll, country, and gospel as trying to throw in too many chords and make things too complicated.

The same is true of the most basic message of the Christian faith. In this weeks Revised Common Lectionary readings, we find this message summarized in the first ten verses of Paul's Letter to the Ephesians: God loves the world, and because of his love for the world, God has redeemed us and reconciled us to God in the saving work of Christ.

This is the message that binds us together as the Body of Christ. This is why we are the Church. And this is the message that we are called to proclaim.

We need to hear the message proclaimed again and again, because we remain in denial of the simplicity of the message. On some level, we simply can't believe that the message is this simple, and that God simply loves us unconditionally and was willing to do anything to bring about our redemption. We remember the bad things that we have done, individually and collectively, and we think that God certainly could not love us and redeem us with all our imperfections. So like bad contemporary music, we clutter up the message and complicate the message.

I used to think that it was not necessary to preach sermons that lead to justification (a term of Methodist theology that refers to our acceptance of the saving grace that is offered to us in Christ). I was wrong. The message of justification needs to be heard over and over again. I need to hear it over and over again. We need to hear it and proclaim it until we finally believe it.