With characteristically penetrating insight, C. S. Lewis once
observed that we would know that something was seriously wrong with any culture
in which it was possible to pack an auditorium full of customers paying to
see a plate of steak presented in strip-tease fashion. Were such a thing to
occur, it would be patently obvious that rampant hunger and not healthy appetite
was the explanation for the drooling crowd. The arousal of such an extraordinary
and unrestrained enthusiasm would more likely be the result of experience
with famine rather than familiarity with times of feasting and celebration.
Trolling the spirituality shelves of any Borders or Barnes & Noble bookstore, a similar suspicion begins to rise. While the sheer abundance of available resources breathlessly touting one after another soul technology or new approach to spiritual formation would seem at first to be an unqualified benefit, perhaps a note of caution should be sounded.
It may well be that our myriad and often exotic options for
pursuing spiritual enrichment signal the presence of a profound hunger rather
than health. Accustomed as we are to lifestyles of conspicuous consumption,
at first we might miss the inherent dangers associated with the embarrassment
of our own apparent riches. Instead of seeking to satiate our sin distorted
sense of need, authentic biblical spirituality insists that Christians enter
into the experience of soul health as we attend to the God revealed to us
by our texts. These scriptures typically invite us to respond to the largeness
of God instead of affirming our frequent efforts to reduce the mighty Creator,
Redeemer, and Sustainer of the universe to the puny confines of our immediate,
felt needs. As Karl Barth once put it, the biblical witness is that God was
in Christ reconciling the world to God. The Bible does not testify that God
is reconciling God’s self to the world.
This subtle but crucial distinction is at the heart of the present
series of texts drawn from the lectionary for the Sundays of Ordinary Time.
As we borrow Eugene Peterson’s phrase to speak of Soulcraft in our readings
from the Letter to the Ephesians, the series will focus on sustainable practices
of saint-making within the discipleship community. Roughly speaking, the first
three chapters of Ephesians overflow with Paul’s exuberantly doxological
prayers, focusing theologically on the calling of God to humankind. As the
third chapter comes to a close, our attention shifts toward ethical concerns
as two key words are positioned in close proximity within yet another prayer
(3:14-21). Speaking now of saints (3:18) in connection with church (3:21),
Paul seems to suggest that we move beyond characteristically reductionistic
ways of thinking. People are not merely the aggregate accumulation of their
material resources, innate virtues, aspirations, personal achievements, and
observable behaviors. As Paul sees it, people are instead created by God to
be saints, and this identity and vocation is now being disclosed to the world
in and through the Church. At first glance, few seem to recognize what is
being revealed, perceiving all too clearly that the community of faith is
quite obviously a collection of sinners. But Paul is adamant that this saint-making
of God is to be located in community, for the Holy Spirit remains willing
to take in everyone without insisting on admission requirements of character
in the Church. The obvious implication is that we should forego our customary
idolatry and bypass every romantic preference for turning the Church into
a society of moral people out to improve the world. God can do better than
that. God can make us saints! If this is true just as Paul affirmed, then
the Church turns out to be God’s workshop for the large and inclusionary
art of grace. For it is precisely within the alternative community of the
Church that we are called to embody the essential ecclesial practices of Soulcraft.
The first decision facing the preacher is whether or not to
establish the text as outlined by the lectionary (3:14-21). While the lection
conforms to the prayer Paul offers on behalf of the Ephesian congregation,
contextual factors favor inclusion of verses 1-13 for consideration within
the sermon.
Verses 1-3, for instance, begin the sequence of thought by commenting
upon the “mystery” that Gentiles have been included in the expansive
workings of grace now revealed by God. So important is this unexpected good
fortune that Paul has been willing to suffer imprisonment as a condition of
apostolic commission (v. 1). Improvising something of a new grammatical form
by taking a diminutive and then “diminutizing” it again in verse
8 (a literal rendering would come out something like “leaster”
or “smallester”), Paul testifies with joy that while he remains
personally insignificant in the grand scheme of God’s work, his life
has been dignified by the privilege of service as an apostle to the Gentiles.
The net effect of this unforeseen vocation is that Paul has been called into
a firsthand experience of God’s glory as the Church fully reveals the
incomprehensible mystery of grace to rulers and authorities (vv. 10-11). As
a result of this privilege, Paul encourages the Ephesians to enjoy with boldness
the confidence of an unrestricted access to God that will be recapitulated
by the intimacy of his prayer in verses 14-21.
What remains is the remarkable way Paul demonstrates the practice
of healthy Soulcraft in the prayer itself. By first giving attention to the
physical aspects of spiritual formation when he describes his kneeling prayer
posture in verse 14, Paul does not allow spirituality to become an exercise
in Gnostic interiority. Neither will Paul tolerate an exclusive, elitist spirituality,
for he prays in verse 15 recognizing that every family receives its true identity
from the God he has addressed as a Father. This does not suggest that all
families are Christian, but rather that every household is personally named
and truly known by the divine pater familias. Nobody is overlooked by this
Godfather!
The commentaries will identify three primary petitions arising
in the intercession of 3:14-21. The first request, in verses 16-17, puts stress
on an empowering of the Spirit to be granted to those for whom Paul prays.
In the second petition of verses 18-19, Paul prays that the recipients will
be able to comprehend and know the fullest possible measure of divine love.
The final and shortest of the petitions coming at the conclusion of verse
19, serves in effect to summarize and restate the previous requests. By asking
God to entirely fill believers with the fullness of God, Paul’s intercession
seeks to make real the familial intimacy of which he had spoken as he prepared
to pray. But while such gifting will be welcomed by every individual believer,
the preacher should not forget that Paul is nonetheless praying that the glory
of God will be revealed in the church (v. 21). This may perhaps be the reason
that the preceding doxology speaks with such confidence about the unimaginable
effectiveness of the God addressed by Paul. For it would seem possible the
text is suggesting that only our God could imagine the full realization of
divine glory in anything so thoroughly human as church.
Let the preacher begin by imagining the congregation poised
to hear a Word. Precisely how is that preacher to persuade congregants to
enter into a holy life? Certainly one of the most obvious and immediate barriers
would be our intuitive sense of inadequacy entering into the presence of God.
Who among us does not blanch at first, knowing bone marrow-deep that we are
no doubt unworthy and ill-equipped for the ordeal of holiness? Perhaps we
will be ready someday. Maybe we will be able to answer the call if we can
only manage to accumulate a few more years of positive experience and spiritual
growth. But Paul offers no support for such polite and pious evasion. As he
tells the Ephesians in verses 8-10, the mystery now revealed in the Church
is that even Gentiles are included in God’s plan for humankind redeemed.
For us to think otherwise by disqualifying ourselves from the holy life at
present is by implication not an expression of humility, but rather an act
of spiritual stupidity! The great problem is not that the lavish grace of
God will prove to be insufficient to our need. Instead, the great problem
is that for too many of us such grace remains unclaimed due to a lingering
suspicion that there must be others loving, serving, and praying better than
we do. We live below our means, refusing to appropriate grace meant to be
revealed within a church of saints. What we need is a spirituality shaped
by the boldness Paul affirms in verse 12, the bedrock confidence on which
he has grounded his intercession for the Ephesians in verses 14-21.
Hoping that the brevity of the preceding comments regarding
Paul’s intercession does not obscure the preacher’s awareness
of the significant empowerment and infilling the apostle seeks for the Ephesian
congregation, even more can be said regarding the content of God’s own
prayer list for the Church. Certainly there is nothing to discourage a holiness
preacher within the prayer of Paul in verses 14-19, especially given the concluding
petition for a focused knowledge of the love of Christ that will be a reflection
of the full perfection of God. But what is on God’s mind as Paul prays
for the Church?
Fortunately for us, Paul’s doxology in verses 20-21 beautifully
positions all of the preceding petitions in a final expression of praise that
assumes that God will accomplish even more than that which remains for us
inarticulate and unimaginable. In other words, after Paul is done praying
for the Church, he nevertheless remains cognizant of the fact that God continues
attending to a divine prayer list that infinitely exceeds all our expectations!
How could the Church live as anything less than the embodiment of God’s
glory in the world, supported and upheld as it is by this underlying power
of God ready now to be made evident in the sovereign ease of its working?
Or perhaps the better question might be to ask why the Church would ever wish
to live as anything less than the glory of God revealed in the world? What
answers we possess to that question undoubtedly indicate the seriousness by
which we have listened to Paul pray. Because whatever we might believe to
be predetermined by our own biography, it seems quite clear that this prayer
establishes a bold, new agenda for our theology when we reflect on Paul’s
assurance of full access to God as adopted members of the divine family. It
is not to be doubted that intimacy with God is a reliable confidence builder!
For just a moment, let’s review the gains we have experienced
in this text. With the assistance of our brother Paul, we have discovered
the secret mystery that nobody seemed to know: We are the ones God has chosen
to be saints! The significance of this revelation is enormous, for this mystery
has even been disclosed to cosmic rulers and authorities. As a result of this
new and stunning change in our self-awareness, we may be bold and confident
to enjoy all the privileges of immediate access to God. We know further that
the scope of what God has done is comprehensive, for nobody has been excluded
from the loving, paternal interest and advocacy of the Father who has given
a name to every family on earth. Given these completely unexpected, comprehensive,
and intimate assurances regarding our status as full and beloved members of
God’s own household, we have been pulled into a series of intercessory
requests intending that our lives be filled with that all-encompassing love
which is indistinguishably characteristic of God. Should any of this strike
us as too tame and self-limiting, Paul concluded his prayer with a doxological
shout that God’s own concerns for us remain even more transcendent than
we could anticipate. Contrary to all our revisionist criticisms and popular
misconceptions, this says Paul, is the true identity and vocation for saints
created to bring glory to God in the Church. Perhaps it is time that a holiness
preacher reminded us who we are and to Whom we belong!
(For the full manuscript
of this sermon go to www.preachersmagazine.org and click on “Sermons.”)
Recognizing that how something is said contributes significantly to the intelligibility and meaning of what has been said, both the preacher and the congregation should benefit from a sermon giving careful attention to the rhetorical dynamics inherent to the form of a biblical text. As Tom Long put it memorably, because particular forms prefer aesthetic expressions adapted to the unique features of such forms it would be unthinkable to install vinyl siding on the cathedral of Notre Dame! By implication, our text suggests we should consider how a preacher could extend the rhetorical impact of Paul’s intercession for the Ephesians. Although we know that no sermon is ever quite the same thing as a prayer, perhaps the preacher could aim to evoke a very real experience of being “prayed for” within the sermon. And is there any doubt that many will desire that divine infilling for which Paul prays?
