A sermon based upon Ephesians 3: 14-21
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Fifth Sunday After Epiphany-C, February 10, 2019
(6-14) Sermon Series: Growing Up In Christ (Eph. 4:15)
Several years ago, after the terrible school shooting in Charlottesville, VA, Philip Yancey, the evangelical Christian writer, responded by writing a book to answer a question many young people were asking. Many of them were not only wondering how something terrible like this could happen. They were also wondering ‘how’ God could allow it. In other words, if God allows such suffering in the world then “What good is God?”
Maybe you’ve wondered that too. Maybe you’ve wondered, in this world where religion, church, and even Christian Faith seems to be losing to all our other interests and opportunities in life, What good is God? We’ve all got better things to do, don’t we? We’ve got other plans. God is on the back burner for many. God has become an option or a mere leisure activity, at most. If something else is happening on Sunday, Wednesday, or any other time, God must take a back seat. What good is God?
I don’t know how many of you have seen the classic move, “Chariots of Fire”. It’s an older movie about the Olympic track star, Eric Liddell. Eric was a winning, talented runner for the United Kingdom and he was also an Olympic hopeful of his day. But when a Track event was planned on a Sunday, Eric refused to run. He was not going to desecrate the Lord’s day. It looked like it would finish Eric’s career. Instead, it just made him faster, and an even greater mystery to others.
But of course, Such devotion seen as unnecessary today. God comes in second to all the other things people have on their plates. If this is your mindset you might be wondering: Why in the world would someone as talented Eric Liddell miss a chance to win a race in order to prove his devotion to God? What was he thinking? Why did he do it? What was so ‘good’ in God that he would not miss worshiping God even on one single Sunday?
In chapter three of Ephesians, just before today’s text, the apostle Paul writes about his privilege to preach to the Gentiles ‘the unsearchable’ (KJV) or ‘boundless riches of Jesus Christ’ (3:8). Here, Paul opens up about the specifics of God’s goodness and the unlimited riches that come to us ‘only’ from God. His words are a prayer that others might come to know what he knows about the goodness of God.
STRENGTHEN YOU WITH POWER (v. 16)
The first good of God is the power that only come from God. This, of course, is a different kind of power. It’s the power that works in us from the inside out. It’s the power of fortitude that gives strength for living our lives, each and every day.
Singer Demi Lovato needed this power to keep her from overdosing on drugs last summer. She had depression, but she and needed more than treatment, managers, family and friends to keep her on the right track. She needed an inner strength; a power from beyond herself to help her overcome her situation and her human weaknesses.
Many people in our culture think they don’t need God. They think they can hold life together on their own. They are modern, advanced, educated, and they think God is a ‘crutch’ unnecessary for these days. They think they know better, and that they can manage both their life and their death without God. Like the Greek fable of Prometheus who stuck his fit in defiance toward the gods, most today live, choose, and determine their own life without giving in to any serious thought of God. Why should they? We have medicine, treatments, therapies and therapists, so what good is God?
But even though we live physical lives, and have many modern technological advances, we also know that humans can become captive to those technologies. We not only need a the power of self-control to manage these advances, but we need the moral, emotional and mental strength to keep from destroying each other, or our own selves, with these new-found powers. What we learn from the ‘dangers’, as well as, the ‘advantages’ of human ingenuity is that life not only has a physical reality, it also has an mostly unseen emotional and a spiritual basis in all that we do. Negotiating the realities and powers of life and death, require much more than our physical strength. And even our emotions are linked to more than what we simply think or feel in any given moment.
Do you recall the fable of the mouse and elephant? The elephant had fear of the little mouse, even though he could crush it. In the same way, a big, powerful circus elephant can break the chains that hold the, but because they have been chained since birth, they don’t realize they have that power. Those Elephants are victims, not of physical limits but they become captive by their own short-sightedness. In others words, they simply don’t know their own strength because their minds and habits hold them back.
In the same way people can be chained, addicted, and overcome, even by small things they should be able to master. People can be overpowered by habits, attitudes, feelings, and desires they and we should easily master, but we can’t. We are not mere logical beings like Spock on Star Trek, but we have weaknesses, flaws, and hang ups that we can’t easily overcome in our own strength. Even the smartest people can do the most stupid things. Even the most trained, capable persons can fail in what they are able to do.
Eric Liddell understood, whether he knew it at the time or not, that the key to winning was not just physical strength alone. He understood that winning demands as much psychological, emotional, even spiritual strength, as it does physical talent, training and ability. When the best athletes are competing against each other, they are all well trained, capable, and able to win, so most often the key to victory is something intangible, but real. It is often the mental, emotional, psychological or spiritual edge that pushes them across the line first.
While the unseen mental, psychological and even spiritual resources that are part of our human reality don’t prove the value of having faith in God, they can point to it. The apostle Paul understood that faith in God is not a given in life, but it is a gift for life that flows from the God who not only created life, but still works to sustain life. God sustains our human lives with the spiritual power and strength that gives us courage, fortitude, and self control to withstand the destructive forces are also real, even in the best things we humans can accomplish. Even in a world, where people think they have no need of God, we still do.
As I wrote this, news headlines reported on concern over whether a computer programmer had the write to sell computer software and hardware which would enable someone to make an assault weapon using a printer from files sent over the internet. This would allow anyone, including criminals to make their own guns, which would not be registered or traceable by authorities. Interested, even the NRA was not getting involved in this, because it would cut into the profits of regular gun makers. What we can all understand, is that the lines between the freedom for self-preservation, and the freedom that gives Americans ‘enough rope to hang ourselves, or enough guns to shoot ourselves, is a very fine line. What gives us the strength and ability to walk this line, is not only common sense, but it’s also moral sense and strength.
God must be our moral and emotional strength because God is the source of life and only God’s promises gives us the reason, will and courage to live good, moral, worthwhile lives. Why is this? This brings us to another of the riches of God’s goodness.
DWELL IN YOUR HEART BY FAITH
This power for living a life that is good and worth living comes to us by our faith through Jesus Christ. That’s how Paul described it. According to Paul the apostle of God’s goodness given in Jesus Christ, the key to understanding the greatest secrets of life, for life, are not ‘out there’ in some Martian discovery of a salty lake, nor is it in some future human discovery or fascinating invention, but the key to life’s power is a discovery that has and will remain a discovery that can only be found within our own hearts in our own living soul.
When Paul prays for ‘Christ to dwell in your hearts by faith’, he’s not merely talking about believing in Jesus, but Paul means making Jesus your Lord and Savior each and every day of life. Paul’s not referring to having a mere religious experience, or joining a church, or simply growing in our understanding of life or faith, but Paul means making Jesus the guiding focus of your life by reorienting everything in your life; your dreams, your hopes, and all that you desire and do, around God’s reconciling and redeeming purposes of faith, hope and love.
This is not a life-changing and life-challenging power that comes to you because you have the best ideas, made all the right moves, or have always made all the right choices, but this is a power that comes from within your heart, as a gift, when you open yourself fully to God’s heart, so that you invite the sprint of ‘Christ to dwell within you’. God’s spiritual power becomes your own emotional power, when you align your heart with the promise and power of the resurrected Christ.
Now I know there are many interpretations, as well as, misinterpretations of what this means. Just like there are multiple religions and denominations with religion, there are multiple angles and paths for what it might mean for Christ to ‘dwell’ with your heart. What I definitely don’t mean, is that Jesus dwells in us like a genie to give us all our hearts desire. Remember that famous TV show, “I Dream of Jeannie”. We all know it would be both dangerous and detrimental to our human existence to have that kind of access to power or promise. Having ‘access’ to God’s throne, as is visualized in the gospel, does not mean getting what we want.
No, allowing Jesus to dwell in our hearts means that our hearts are fixed and focused upon God’s heart as it has been revealed as the unfailing love that is on display through Christ’s life, death and resurrection. God reveals his heart for us through His son, so that we can have our hearts challenged, changed, and also comforted, by God’s loving presence and promise.
A good biblical example of how Christ loves dwells in our hearts to challenge, changes and to comfort our hearts is the story of Saul, who became Paul. Paul came to speak of Christ ‘dwelling’ In him, because the living Spirit of Jesus came to him to challenge and changed him from being a murdering, religious zealot into a becoming a compassionate servant of Christ who gave his his life to serve and bring hope to others.
Because of what Jesus did in his own heart, Paul came to realize that know that the greatest resources in this world, not not written down in books or laws, but are what happens within the human heart that moves us to live like Christ, in the spirit of love and grace. Whatever you fix your heart upon, is who you become, Paul realized. If you only focus on rules and laws, your faith becomes rigid and legalistic. When you focus on the Spirit of Jesus, since Jesus has the greatest heart of love, when his love love fills our hearts and rules our lives, we gain the power to live and to love in a way that follows and patterns our lives after God’s love in Jesus Christ.
Of course, we all know that we become what, or who, we set our hearts and minds on becoming, don’t we? The greatest power in our human possession is the power of choice; the ability to choose. “What do want to become, when you grow up?” Our first answers, as children, are already people we admire: a fireman, a doctor, or a nurse? Then later, we discover other desires and dreams. New realities set in and we make choices about who and what matters, all over again. Then we go to college, get a job, or start a career. As we make these choices, not only do we make our dreams a reality, but the dreams and realities also make us into who we become.
But where does God fit into all this? Where does Christ dwell in our hearts as we go after our heart’s desire? Do so many people lack faith these days because people take so little time for matters of the heart? Perhaps more and more people think God doesn’t matter, not because God is lacking, but because their own faith is lacking. If you have too little time to cultivate your faith, do. We think that faith grows all on it’s own? While having faith is a gift from God, we do have to open the package, and we do have to learn how to use the gift.
Isn’t it interesting that Paul says Christ dwells in our hearts by faith? Faith is a power, a resource for living, which God gives to us as we continually put our trust in Christ in the ups and downs of life. Notice that Paul does not say that faith brings power, but he says rather, that power and strength opens our hearts allow Jesus Christ to dwell in us by faith. Why does Paul put it like this; saying strength brings faith, and not the other way around?
ROOTED AND ESTABLISHED IN LOVE (v. 17)
I think Paul says it like this, because the reason for God’s goodness is not just because of God’s love for us, but God’s goodness is because of God’s love for all. God’s goodness is not just because of his love, but it is because his love can change us into being love. This is why God’s goodness is love, not just to prove his love for us, but to ‘root’ and ‘establish’ his love in us, so that love will grow in, through, and around us.
The whole point of Jesus ministry was to move ancient Israel out of its preoccupation with politics and national identity, and to move Israel on to the spiritual and relation ministry it needed to have to become the kind of people who could rule the world with Christ. This was not by becoming a stronger Israel, but this was by becoming a better, more caring, and more compassionate people.
Unfortunately, ancient Israel did not chose the caring and compassionate way of Christ, but took on the power structures of this world, trying to defeat them ‘at their own game’. Not long, after crucifying Jesus, Jewish zealots took on Roman power their own way, choosing to fight ‘sword up against sword’ and the disaster of disasters--- the end of ancient Israel, which sent Jews into a diaspora for 2,000 years. Still today, people still misunderstand that the kind of ‘strength’ that gives peace, must be more than mere physical or military strength. The greatest people’s and greatest nations reveal their greatness in the strength to love, to care, and to live by the highest ethics capable within the human heart. This is the way Jesus came to root and establish love in our hearts. It was, and still is, this kind of caring and compassionate love that can bring hope, redemption, and salvation into our world.
Do you recall that black American Episcopal bishop, Rev. Michael Curry shaking up the British royals a bit, when he preach at the royal wedding and quoted Martin Luther King’s own words about ‘the power of love?’ His quote was from Dr. King’s own book, entitled, ‘Strength to Love‘ which said: "We must discover the power of love, the redemptive power of love. And when we do that, we will make out of this old world a new world, for love is the only way."
ABLE TO DO…MORE (v. 20).
Love is the way, Paul says, that we can have ‘power’ together with ‘the Lord’s holy people’ (v. 18) so that we can know how ‘wide, long, high, and deep is the love of Christ’. Isn’t that a great statement? The riches of Christ, the good of God is the that we can forever learn the way of love, through the way of Jesus Christ, with each other. This is a good of ‘love that surpasses knowledge’, Paul goes on to say (v. 19). It is a ‘love’ that ‘fills us with the fullness of God’.”
Now, with a statement like that, you would think that Paul has said everything that is ‘good’ about God, or ‘good’ from God, but her is where the good keeps on going and giving. Paul ends his prayer with the limitless possibilities of goodness in God when he concludes his prayer with a blessing that never ends: ‘Now, unto him who is able to do unmeasurably more than we can ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work in us”(v.20).
When I read this great text again recently, I couldn’t help but hear the Geico Insurance commercial in my head: “More!” It started with the commercial in the Gym, with the guy saying ‘more’ as his muscles grew bigger and bigger every time he pressed the dumbbell. Then, next they came with the cowboy belt-buckle ‘more’, with the already big cowboy ‘buckle’ getting larger and larger with each ‘more’.
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