There's a new morning ritual. We've only engaged in this ritual activity the last few years. But let's acknowledge how our morning rituals have changed in a very short time.

The ritual?

Actually it's not just a morning ritual. It's an all-day ritual. But it's most heavy in the morning: deleting the overnight invasion of junk e-mails.

In this massive assault, there are always two or three cut-rate, can't-pass-it-up, how-can-you-not-consider-buying-this ads for life insurance policies. Visual versions also pop-up on television as well. You can tell one is coming as soon as you see featured a comfy living room stocked with chatty aging actors who suddenly begin urging us to make sure we don't leave any burdensome debts for our loved ones after we've headed for the Big Sky home on the range.

It amazes me what scrawny pittance these life insurance policies pay out compared to the amount of debt the average American now carries. Any life "insured" for such a paltry payoff is thinly covered indeed - a tattered, threadbare shroud that leaves more of our lives exposed than covered.

Yet we keep getting bombarded by these e-mail offers and TV commercials because people are buying. No one wants to leave a legacy of debt to their family. We all want to feel our lives were finally and fiscally worth something. For those highest up on the food chain, that something is counted as the stacks of dollars in the bank, the real estate holdings amassed, the stocks and bonds wallpapering a safe deposit box, or the gleam of jewelry in a vault.

But such a legacy is as fleeting as life itself. A few bad investments, a taste for drugs or alcohol, a fire, hurricane, or tsunami, and all those carefully acquired things can vanish. If things were the only measure of our lives' value, that value could easily be obliterated.

Today's epistle lesson addresses the church in Ephesians with a prayer of thanksgiving. But the text is far more concerned with precisely detailing what God has done for believers than it is with itemizing the good characteristics of these Ephesians. The value of the lives of these faithful followers isn't found in the good deeds they have accumulated, but in what God has done for them. Our text offers no final payoff of life insurance to those who confess Christ. Instead it celebrates the divinely gifted life assurance that has been provided through the work of God, the Father of glory, in Jesus the Christ.

Using a unique phrase the Pauline text implores these Ephesians to know this truth "with the eyes of your heart enlightened" (verse 18). One of the most popular praise songs of recent years has been "Open the Eyes of My Heart Lord" (1997, CCLI Song No. 2298355). I'm not sure whether or not this was the text that inspired Paul Beloche to write this song. But I do know that our text this morning tells us what we will experience once the eyes of our hearts are opened.

With the eyes of our hearts opened, we experience God's threefold gift: 1. "the hope to which he has called you;" 2. "the riches of his glorious inheritance;" 3. "the immeasurable greatness of his power."

Let's name the three gifts again: 1) a grand hope; 2) a glorious inheritance; 3) a great power.

We think of some people as charismatic, as having some special energy that's contagious and infectious. But there are also charismatic concepts as well as individuals. And these are three of Christianity's most charismatic themes.

T. S. Eliot once said that each person has only a couple of themes that are played out in a variety of ways over a lifetime. He also argued each one of us must identify what those themes of our lives are, develop those themes, and evangelize those themes.

This morning we come face to face with three of Christianity's most charismatic themes. I love how Joni Erickson Tada invites people to pray. Instead of saying, "Now let's bow our head," she says, "Let's bow our heart." This morning let's bow our hearts so that we can ask God to open our hearts to this grand hope, this glorious inheritance, and this great power.

Grand Hope

First, this grand hope.

Hope isn't easy to come by nowadays. Everywhere you read, and everywhere you look, there are people who are throwing in the towel or at least hitting our hope with wet blankets. Here's John Peterson, of the W. Alton Jones Foundation: "A hundred or more novel chemicals are swilling around in our bloodstream, chemicals which, before this century, were not found in human beings. It makes all of us, as well as our children and grandchildren, a walking experiment - one with completely unknown results."

Or have you been reading scientists recently about the changes in our climate, and the increasing frequency of strange weather whether it be hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, or volcanic eruptions?

I even saw a cartoon recently where two planets are passing each other. One asks the other, "How are you?" It replies: "I'm not very well, I've got Homo Sapiens." The first planet replies: "Oh, don't worry. It will soon pass."

Nor by grand hope does Ephesians one mean what Robert Schuller said memorably in his autobiography, My Journey: "You can go anywhere from nowhere. My life is witness to that. I was born at the dead end of a dirt road that had no name and no number - in a flood." This is the grand hope of America, the American dream. This isn't the grand hope of Ephesians 1.

The grand hope of Ephesians 1 is the hope to which we have been called as disciples of Christ, the hope of a life with Christ here and hereafter because of the gift of grace, "not of works, lest any should boast." This hope of grace is a gift of God's love and kindness. Or as the early church father Ignatius put it, "Let us not be lacking in feeling for (God's) kindness, for if (God) were to imitate our way of action, then we would exist no more" (Magnesians 10.1).

Our hope is in Christ. "Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness." And it's because of what Christ has already done for us that we can have hearts of hope.

Glorious Inheritance

When the eyes of our hearts are opened, we also see what a glorious inheritance has been given us.

"George MacLeod of the Iona Community related a conversation that he had with a Marxist who had never heard an explanation of basic Christianity. The man listened with wonder and surprise. Finally, he burst out, 'You folks have got it; if only you knew you had it and if only you knew how to say it" (Haddon Robinson, "Foreword," in Mark Galli and Craig Brian Larson, Preaching that Connects (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 9.).

Part of our glorious inheritance is a great cloud of witnesses, ancestors who knew we had it and knew how to say it, even though often they were persecuted for saying it.

"The prison letters Samuel Rutherford wrote three hundred years ago continue to encourage Christians today. Arrested for his stance against the king of England's heresy, Rutherford languished in a prison in Aberdeen for years, yet never gave up his confidence in God. Writing to his parishioners, he said, 'I see grace groweth best in winter" (Faith Hill, Grace in Winter (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1989), 64.).

The history of Christianity is the story of a grace that grows best in winter.

Here's but one example: We're all familiar with the Charles Dickens, Tale of Two Cities story of Sydney Carton, who changed clothes with Evremonde in the prison. Just before his head was chopped off in the guillotine, some of the most famous last words in fiction were uttered by him: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it's a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known."

So tell me, why do we know the fiction, and not the fact? Why do we not know of our ancestor Alban, a Roman-Briton Christian who was caught up in one of Dioceltian's murderous rampages against the Christians around the year 209. Alban schemed to change clothes with a priest marked for death, so the priest could continue spreading the name of Jesus through the countryside and escape Dioceltian's soldiers. (King Offa built St. Alban's Cathedral in Wormingford in his memory. For more see Ronald Blythe, The Circling Year (Norwich: The Canterbury Press, 2001), 52.)

This is but one example of our glorious inheritance when the eyes of the heart are opened.

Great Power

Finally, on top of a grand hope and a glorious inheritance the eyes of the heart reveal a great power.

This is how Paul put this great power: "I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me" (Philippians 4:13).

And this great power is one of our great problems in the church today, why "The adventure has gone out of the Christian venture," as D. H. Lawrence put it in 1924.

Christians need to learn how to exercise power. One of the best definitions of power I've ever heard is this one: "Power is the capacity, ability, and willingness to act." But the kind of power we need to exercise is relational power. Not unilateral power, but relational power.

Unilateral power sees 100 people sitting in this sanctuary. Relational power sees 50,000 people sitting in this sanctuary.

Cesar Chavez knew the meaning of relational power. Chavez worked hard to ban the short-handled hoe, the el cortito ("the short one"), a hoe dubbed "the devil's arm" that was only 24 inches long and required the farm workers who used it to hunch and bend over all day long in a position that led to serious, lifelong injuries for many. One young female farm worker told a grower that she had measured his land inch by inch with the short-handled hoe.

Chavez knew the devil's arm (el brazo del diablo) very well, as he used it in his youth in the lettuce and sugar-beet fields along the Sacramento River. The 5'6" Chavez himself suffered from constant back-pain. The devil's arm became a symbol of oppression and injustice.

Because of Chavez's understanding of relational power, the UFW was the first truly effective farm workers' union ever created in the US. One of United Farm Worker's proudest achievements was the banishment of the devil's arm from California's fields in 1975. It didn't come easy. As many times as Chavez's life was threatened, Chavez refused to let his bodyguards go armed.

At his death, state flags were lowered to half-mast. The Pope sent condolences. The President of the United States sent condolences. The President of the California State Senate called him "The great Californian of the twentieth century."

In his simple pine casket made from hand by his brother, there was placed two symbols: the carved eagle, the symbol of the UFW movement, and a short-handled hoe.

The great power of the gospel isn't like the world defines power. Here's something that's making the rounds of the Internet.

(This could easily be adapted for Mother's Day, and would make a great Mother's Day ending for your sermon.)

This came to me under the subject line of "What Do Teachers Make?"

The dinner guests were sitting around the table discussing life. One man, a CEO, decided to explain the problem with education. He argued, "What's a kid going to learn from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?"

He reminded the other dinner guests what they say about teachers: "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." To stress his point he said to another guest: "You're a teacher, Susan. Be honest. What do you make?"

Susan, who had a reputation for honesty and frankness replied, "You want to know what I make? I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could. I make a C+ feel like the winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor. I make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall in absolute silence.

"You want to know what I make? I make kids wonder. I make them question. I make them criticize. I make them apologize and mean it. I make them write. I make them read, read, read. I make them show all their work in math and perfect their final drafts in English. I make them understand that if you have the brains, and follow your heart, and if someone ever tries to judge you by what you make, you must pay no attention because they just didn't learn."

Susan paused and then continued, "You want to know what I make? I make a difference. What do you make?" - With thanks to Gary Zustiak, Director, CIY (Christ in Youth)

Jesus' death was the only death in history that didn't leave the world impoverished, but enriched. And because of that death, and resurrection, we have been given a great power - not just to make a difference in the world, but to make a different world.