God’s Prayer List

His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord (3:10-11). That’s really something, isn’t it? Almighty God truly known and recognized precisely because the Church itself reveals the eternal purpose of God accomplished in the Messiah Jesus. Paul has such high hopes for the Church, such extraordinary expectations for us.

I’m not sure there is as much agreement on that proposition as Paul might like. I don’t always get the sense that folks hope for much at all from the Church. Many of the people I encounter seem to have fairly low expectations for the Church and church people. Their past experiences often seem to have been quite negative, and generally it appears that for many, the Church is simply a product they can do without.

I was idling at a stoplight when I noticed the bumper stickers affixed to the car in front of me. One read, “Christians, can’t live with them, can’t feed them to the lions anymore!” The other simply offered a prayer, “Lord, save me from your followers!” Now there was somebody with diminished expectations for the Church! I’ll confess that for just a brief moment I began to calculate my insurance collision deductible while entertaining some sort of vehicular anger fantasy. But I just waited for the light to turn. For the owner of those bumper stickers my response would have been redundant.

The fact is that it’s not just people outside the Church, but even some of us within the Church who begin to live with lowered expectations for our life together. Even some Christians begin to collect their own disappointing stories to tell because not everything that goes on in church turns out to be inspiring, encouraging, or even soul affirming. In the memoir of his first ministerial assignment, Duke’s Richard Lischer described his initial glimpse of the rural church and parsonage he would serve after finishing his Ph.D. in theology. He said arriving at his church was like the very first encounter with the spouse in an arranged marriage. Lischer took no encouragement to see a sad, weary brick building with a peeling cupola “and a steeple with a copper cross from which one arm was mysteriously missing.” The shabby parsonage next to Lischer’s first parish church looked to him like it might have come from a Sears Roebuck catalog, an architectural style he termed, “Early Depression.” Over the years, groundwater from a church cemetery next to the parsonage leached into the parsonage well, forcing Lischer to warn guests and visitors not to drink the tap water because it registered an abnormally high Lutheran content! This was not the kind of place he had anticipated for his first call, not the kind of place where he could expect anything of significance to happen. Lischer’s initial verdict? He said, “The church of the one-armed cross did not fit my own personal profile. . . . I bitterly resented the bureaucrats who had misfiled my gifts, misjudged my obvious promise, and were about to place me in rural confinement.”1 Sometimes church is less than inspiring.

I get that. Being part of a church can be soul-numbing at times. We start off with such high hopes for a life full of faith, grace, and significance in a truly holy Church, but you know how it goes over time. Petty squabbles, pinched and parochial opinions, long simmering resentments smoldering just below the surface pleasantries Sunday after Sunday. Certainly nothing with the size and scope of Paul’s description: His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord (3:10-11).

We were driving to church one morning, just trying to make time in heavy traffic when the caffeine deficient driver behind us started to honk his horn because the woman in front of us seemed to be slowing unnecessarily. She couldn’t help it. Obviously she had her hands full, piloting her suburban assault vehicle full of unruly kids with the demands of the day piling up on her shoulders. Hearing the horn honking from behind her, she gave me one of those internationally recognizable hand signals, apparently believing me to be the impatient driver making her difficult life even more unpleasant. It proved an awkward moment for us, especially since both of us were pulling into our church parking lot! I didn’t really know what to say. “Hi, I’m your new pastor and I guess we have some work to do around here,” just didn’t seem to strike the right tone under those circumstances. Holy Church? One making known the “manifold wisdom of God” by its very existence? Not so much, Paul. Some just don’t share your high expectations for the Church.

I suppose we can’t really blame others, for this is something we have clearly acknowledged in our own Book. After all, the Apostle Paul spends a good deal of time writing one urgent pastoral letter after another to Christian congregations scattered across the length and breadth of the Roman Empire. And from what we read, the evidence is pretty clear that often he wrote those letters in response to some rather messy problems.

Do you remember Romans? That was a heavy letter! Paul probably sent that out Bulk Mail, Library Rate. Five full chapters of theological spadework before Paul lays out a question of such concern for the church in Rome: What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase (Romans 6:1)? What a remarkable question, the way Paul speaks of sinning like it is an actual place. Addressing that problem Paul says in effect, “No, you no longer live in France, so why would any of you keep on speaking French?” Sin is not your native country, don’t go there any more!

Perhaps you remember Galatians. Paul wrote an angry letter to the churches of Galatia, suggesting that as far as he was concerned all those folks still itching to slip circumcision into the revised church membership requirements could just go off and perform some fairly invasive elective surgery on themselves (Galatians 5:12). There is no getting around the fact that Paul was angry when he made that comment. I get the feeling he sent out Galatians marked Urgent, Express, Priority Mail, because sometimes we send our angry letters quickly, maybe before we take a moment to look them over one more time prior to licking the stamp and sealing the envelope. But here it is, Paul’s frustrated letter to the Galatian churches signed, sealed, and delivered in this leather bound Book of ours.

Maybe you recall what Paul sent to the Corinthians. Don’t even get me started on the Corinthian correspondence! There’s enough awkward stuff in Corinthians to make the postal carrier blush. Sexual immorality, rich folks getting drunk on communion wine, factional jealousies and frivolous lawsuits, it’s all there in the Corinthian letters. I just hope the Apostle Paul put First and Second Corinthians in one of those government-issue privacy envelopes marked Confidential, For Your Eyes Only, before he placed those letters in his Out-basket.

Problems, lots of problems. That’s why I was so pleased to pick up this letter to the Ephesians. If you read it through in one sitting, you know Paul sent it out stamped Emergency, Rush, Overnight Delivery, Get It There, probably because he was absolutely certain they would want and need it for services next Sunday morning. It’s so full of Paul’s praise, thanksgiving and intercessory prayers; it’s a letter to a congregation gathering for worship, a church of saints-in-the-making. This is no postcard or third class circular addressed to Dear Occupant, Greco-Roman Society. It starts off so hopeful, so enthusiastic. The first three chapters are chock full of thanks, doxology, and petitions for the Church. Three times in the first chapter Paul tells us that we now live “to the praise of his glory” (1:6, 12, 14). This is the very same theme we heard in our text, that the Church is destined by God for greatness, to be a holy Church revealing the eternal purpose of God now accomplished in Christ Jesus. That our very existence in the world discloses a secret that is now known to anyone who will bother to look: God wants to save everyone! Listen to the tone of surprise in Paul’s voice, the sheer sense of gratitude that he expresses when he considers the weight of this mystery now embodied by the Church: This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus” (3:6).

What’s this mystery? Paul says, “You are included!” Yes, I know you have no proper pedigree. Yes, it’s true you lack the sophistication of a proper grounding in the ethical precision of Jewish Torah obedience. Yes, I recognize, says Paul, that you Gentiles were not trained and steeped in the traditions of synagogue or Sabbath, schooled in the Wisdom of Israel and the holiness of the prophets. But now you are included in the salvation of God! Jesus has rescued you, and you have been set apart for God’s own holy use and service! Any god could take someone with experience and potential and turn them into something special, but only our God takes nobodies and turns them into Somebody’s! Here, says Paul, is this crazy mystery that nobody seemed to recognize until it was revealed in and by the Church: You are the ones God has chosen and called to be saints!

Most of the time we tend to be so cool and blasé about all of this that we no longer catch on at first, but this was and is a pretty big deal. All these followers of the Messiah Jesus, almost all of them Jewish at the beginning, but then came Paul and his unexpected apostolic ministry to the Gentiles. You can imagine there were bound to be some awkward moments in those early years, especially given all the accumulated racial animosity and ethnic suspicions between these alienated peoples. Imagine how it played out the very first time someone showed up with some Honey Baked Ham for the all-church picnic. Imagine that awkward moment when one of the new Gentile believers called the office to make an appointment for the church directory photo and the volunteer filling out the form wanted to know, “What was the date of your circumcision?” Now Paul shouts in triumph that all of that ethnic tension has been rendered obsolete and irrelevant. Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body. Here’s the mystery that nobody seemed to understand, Paul whoops, you are all included! It’s the glory of God, the mystery of the ages revealed now to the unseen rulers and authorities who still battle for dominion and power “in the heavenly realms” (3:10). The Church is a “third race,” a family that transcends all those tired, old categories like “Jew” and “Gentile” (Many preachers will want to read the discussion of these ecclesiological implications in the article by George Lyons, “Church and Holiness in Ephesians” in Holiness and Ecclesiology in the New Testament, Kent E. Brower and Andy Johnson, editors, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007, pp. 238-256). Now all of us can be reconciled to God. Now all of us can be reconciling with one another. This is what God has accomplished in Christ. That is pretty big stuff, indeed!

The curious thing about all of this is that it never seemed to make Paul proud or pretentious. He never seems to lose the sense of wonder and awe at his good fortune. Not even time locked up in a Roman jail seems to make him bitter: For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles (3:1)! A prisoner of Christ. Not because he was obnoxious, but because his message was dangerous and destabilizing for all the powers-that-be still trying to hold onto their ill-gotten positions and privileges. He’s saying, “The world is so threatened by what we’re doing in the Church, they had to throw me in jail!” Yet this is good news, not bad! The biggest surprise of all is that Paul’s good fortune never makes him an ecclesiastical peacock: I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace given me through the working of his power. Although I am less than the least of all God’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone my administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God who created all things (3:7-9). I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of grace, he says, I’m less than the least of all God’s people. It’s humbling!

You get a sense of what kind of surprise this is for Paul in verse 8, such a big surprise that he invents something of a brand new grammatical form just to express his joy at being included in this expansive, inclusive work of God’s grace. Less than the least of all God’s people, Paul says, offering us the comparative of a superlative; or maybe it is something more like taking a diminutive and then diminutizing it again. I am the smallester or the leaster, Paul is saying, what I’m involved in is absolutely cosmic in significance but that does not make me too big for my britches. Think about the unusual nature of this kind of humility and then recognize the careful Soulcraft that it represents. Something remarkable and holy is happening when we can be part of such crucial and important work without becoming overly impressed by our own, personal significance. But still, Paul lacks nothing in boldness: In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence (3:12). Hear this supreme sense of confidence, Paul’s ability to be comfortable and at ease in the presence of God’s glory, and see that it does not result in an exaggerated sense of self-importance. It is an incredible gift, this ability to be involved in something huge without turning grandiose in our self-appraisal. So tell us, Paul, how is this done?

Maybe it is a matter of posture. Something physical, flesh-and-blood, literally embodied. Doesn’t posture at times demonstrate who we are, how we feel, and what we are thinking? Once I heard someone described as an egocentric person with the explanation, “He struts when he’s sitting down!” By contrast, listen how Paul begins his intercession for the Ephesians: For this reason I kneel before the Father (3:14). Isn’t this the only proper posture for saint-making? I kneel before the Father. Yes, that’s it. I begin entering into my apprenticeship in Soulcraft not by fist-pumping like Tiger Woods, but altar bound on bended knee. Somehow it just proves easier to remember that I am not really in charge, not sovereign, not the center of all attention and the source of all knowledge or power when I am on my knees. “This is where it all begins,” says Paul, “for this reason I kneel before the Father.” It turns out that our parents were right. Good posture really is important, and getting on our knees before God always seems to help.

When I was much younger and much smarter, an acquaintance invited me to a small gathering of decidedly high-octane church leaders at the bed-and-breakfast inn he had established on Orcas Island in Washington State. Looking at the guest list of attendees, it was hard for me to avoid feeling some measure of ecclesiastical shock and awe. It seemed obvious that in that rarefied environment of big name TV preachers and celebrity authors, the rest of the group was a Hugo Boss tuxedo while I was a pair of brown penny loafers! In one corner of the room was a megachurch pastor who had given the televised invocation at a previous presidential inauguration. Just next to me was another superstar evangelical featured so prominently on the bestseller lists that he might well be praying every night, “O Lord, Thou Who hast also written a Book.” In short, there were so many luminous dignitaries and so much clout in that room that if ego were jet fuel we could have opened our own luxury airline! But how did our gracious host open the meeting to which all of us had been invited? He trapped all of us together on a Puget Sound charter cruise that circled Orcas Island for two full hours, allowing us to watch a Dahl’s porpoise surfing off our bow, the bald eagles nesting onshore, pods of killer whales chasing harbor seals and sea otters feasting on Chinook salmon. “You needed to see the bigness of God’s work before you could get past your own ego,” our host told us, and not one of the preachers on board dared raise any objections. Getting on our knees before God always seems to help, and now Paul is praying us into our best posture!

As important as posture can be to our formation as a holy people, listen carefully to this incredible prayer of our brother Paul: I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of the fullness of God (3:16-19). Nothing trivial here, no sputtering or stammering, no shifting nervously from foot to foot, standing uncomfortable before the Almighty. This is the Apostle Paul at his praying best, making good on everything that he had already affirmed to us earlier in our text: In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence (3:12). Freedom. Confidence. Now the full privilege of participation in the Father’s intimate, family business. This is how Paul prays for us. He begins by pulling us into the largeness of who God is, the expansiveness of what God is doing, into the full length and breadth, height and depth of the love God intends to release in the world. He begins by praying us into the immense, rich depths of God. Paul does not begin by praying over the drab and puny confines of the lives we have made for ourselves. Yet he is not ignoring our needs. Paul simply refuses to let us define ourselves on the basis of our needs. We are not defined by our needs. We are the ones for whom Paul prays, the very ones who can only be rightly named by God! For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom the whole family of believers in heaven and on earth derives its name (3:14-15).

I wonder if you heard yourself named rightly, fairly, accurately by the Father just now while Paul was praying over this family of ours. Did you hear your name? There are always so many others who will name us as they see fit, giving us all sorts of names and labels, but that is not how God gives us a name. Just think of all the names handed out in this sin-damaged world, all of the names that others may have given you right up to the moment Paul began praying you into the presence of God, our true Father. Have you heard any of these names? Unemployed, Divorced, Cancer patient, Abused, Gay or Gender Confused, Bankrupt or Foreclosed, Alcoholic or Chemically Dependent, Disabled, Manic or Bipolar, Stressed, Clinically Depressed, Underachiever, Type A, Grieving or Despondent, Burned Out, Chronically Fatigued. All of these names, just some sloppy terms we use in that kind of lazy, emotional shorthand, reduce the mystery of the persons God created in love to nothing more than a set of problems to be solved. None of those terms will ever name us accurately. Only God can do that, and Paul is praying us deeply into the love of the Father “from whom the whole family of believers” takes a name. Only God can name us rightly!

Tom Long of Emory University spoke recently about a New York Times reporter interviewing a New York physician named Joyce Wilkins:

Dr. Wilkins could have had a toney Eastside medical practice and made a lot of money, but instead her medical practice was out of the back of a Ford Econoline van cruising through midtown Manhattan looking for prostitutes. She would strike up a relationship and win their trust, and then she would take them into the clinic and do blood tests and give them medical care and a word of encouragement and hope. The reporter interviewing her said, “Even though you give them medical care, many of them die. AIDS is an epidemic. You lose a lot of your patients. It must be very discouraging.” But Dr. Wilkins said, “Well, that’s one way to look at it, but that’s not the way I look at it. My mother taught me to look at it another way. My mother was for all of her life a teacher of brain-damaged children, and she taught me when you look at people you don’t look at the damage. You look at the image. You don’t look at the damage; you look at the image of God in them. I knew that most forcefully,’ she said, ‘one night when my mother had for parent’s night her class do a performance of My Fair Lady. It never occurred to my mother not to let a brain-damaged girl in a wheelchair roll across the stage singing, I could have danced all night, I could have danced all night” (This story was told in a sermon on John 11:1-21 by Thomas G. Long)2

You don’t look at the damage; you look at the image of God in them. Isn’t this what Paul is doing in his prayer? Anybody can see the scabs and scars and breaks and bruises in the Church. Anybody can see the mess and the problems and all the damage we have done. But there is something else to be seen, the image of the Father who alone can name us rightly for what we are and Whose we are. Paul doesn’t look at the damage. Paul is looking for the image, the image of the Father who loves you: I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of the fullness of God (3:16-19).

How long has it been since someone prayed for you like that? Prayed you right into the very presence of God, bringing you back in touch with the One who gives away power, gives away love, gives away the family name until even hopeless outsiders come to know and believe they are insiders? How long has it been since you heard your name, your proper Child of God name, on the lips of someone like Paul, praying that the name you are will be fully and completely the person God has called you to be? Have you been prayed for like that? Do you know that your name is on Paul’s prayer list?

Maybe you do know, or maybe you don’t. Regardless of what you think you know, let me remind you that even though Paul has been praying, there is still another Voice to be heard in our prayer. No matter how great it is to hear Paul pray for us, an even greater gift is available to us. As wonderful as it is that Paul has prayed that the Spirit will strengthen us, that Christ may dwell in us, that we will be rooted in love and really filled with all the fullness of God, there is still more to be given and received. More? How could that be? Well, don’t forget the doxology in Paul’s prayer, don’t stop listening just because Paul has turned from petition to praise: Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever (3:20-21)! How do you like that? Now we’re involved in the very prayer life of God, for the holiness God will accomplish in us by God’s Spirit is God’s ultimate plan for the world. We’re the ones who will demonstrate God’s glory, the ones in whom the immeasurable power of God will be at work. We’re the Doxology People, the Amen of God let loose in the world!

I know, I know. It is a lot to believe, and the truth is that much of the time we face a good deal of difficulty just trying to connect some of those words Paul has used. Putting glory in the same sentence with church can be a pretty tough stretch, but that’s the doxology we just heard in Paul’s prayer. Then again, maybe that’s why the doxology is there at all. Maybe it is only the power of God at work within us, the indwelling Spirit of God who will strengthen us, the Christ who resides in us to root and establish us in love until we are filled with all the fullness of God; maybe it is only this God who would dare to do more than we could ask or imagine by revealing the glory of God in anything so thoroughly human as the Church! It’s the type of thing only God might try. Tthankfully, we’re on the prayer list of God!

Glory connected with Church? Only God can pull that off, but don’t be surprised when it happens. Pastor Heidi Neumark is somebody who has seen a church transformed into Doxology People. In her case, the people God turned loose as an Amen in the South Bronx probably did not look like much when she first arrived as their pastor. She says that she figured out what kind of church she was serving on her very first Sunday when she found a jar of rat poison next to the box of communion wafers under the altar. Living among the poorest of the poor in that urban neighborhood, Heidi served that church for more than two decades, watching the love of God at work among recovering addicts and street criminals, undocumented immigrants and the homeless. It seems Pastor Heidi knew Paul’s prayer, and when you get pulled into a prayer like Paul’s, all the safe bets are off!

During one Holy Week in Heidi’s ministry, she led her congregation in a passion play dramatizing each of the events in Christ’s Passion from Palm Sunday to Easter. There were a few unexpected moments, but grace happens that way. There was the dramatic entry of Jesus into the city where the congregants chanting “Hosanna!” borrowed a live donkey for the actor standing in for the Messiah. Somehow it just seemed right that the parade of chanting churchgoers ran into a real-life street demonstration protesting some recent act of police brutality in the neighborhood. Eventually the cheering crowd turned into the sanctuary where Heidi had arranged three members of the congregation to give scripted testimony to the truth of the resurrection account that had just been acted out before their eyes.

Each of the three witnesses was to begin their testimony by standing to say, “I know that He is alive,” before telling their true-life story of grace and transformation. Angie talked about being molested by her father, falling into alcoholism, and turning to sex before being diagnosed HIV-positive. Then Angie began to narrate her own resurrection: her introduction to a welcoming church, her attendance in worship and Bible study, her new life as a seminary student studying now to be a pastor. “I know that He is alive,” Angie said, “because He is alive in me. I am now alive because Jesus Christ lives in me and through me. I am a temple of the Holy Spirit.”

The next two witnesses followed the same script, each of them giving testimony to the same basic affirmation: “I know that he is alive!” When that part of the Passion play was complete, Pastor Neumark assumed that the service would move on to something else but the congregation had a mind of its own that morning! Others began to rise, unscripted and spontaneous all around the sanctuary. “I know that He is alive,” they shouted, “because He is alive in me.” Nothing and nobody could stop them, “I know that He is alive because He is living in me!” The former prostitutes. Recovering drug users. Homeless men and women. Victims of violence and the people who used to violate them. All of them standing to their feet, offering witness, giving praise to the One who had given them their true name, filling them with all of the fullness of God.3 They were Doxology People, the glory of God in the Church! Maybe you just had to be there to believe it.

I know it’s hard to believe, but let me look at you again. Maybe Paul saw it best, but once you see something like that, you can’t un-see it! Can you see it like Paul? You are the Church, the redeemed God has called to be saints, a Doxology People who can live as the Amen of God in the world, and the very ones God intends to fill with the Spirit to demonstrate Christ’s love. You aren’t at a distance from the real action, you aren’t missing out on better things happening somewhere else. You were created to be the holy Church of Jesus Christ, the people who will embody the glory of God in the world. Nobody is disqualified from this; no one needs to be left out because God’s Spirit remains completely present, waiting to gain unrestricted access to each of us. All you really need to find your Amen right here in this world is to trust yourself one more time to an old Doxology, because you are already on God’s prayer list: Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever (3:20-21)!
Notes:

1. Richard Lischer, Open Secrets: A Spiritual Journey Through a Country Church, pp.

2. www.covenantnetwork.org/sermon&papers/long.htm, accessed April 9, 2009.
3. From Breathing Space, by Heidi B. Neumark. Copyright © 2003 by Heidi Neumark. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston

	Pentecost Sunday May 31, 2009
	Trinity Sunday June 7, 2009
	June 14, 2009
	June 21, 2009
	June 28, 2009
	July 5, 2009
	July 12, 2009
	July 19, 2009
	July 26, 2009
	August 2, 2009
	August 9, 2009
	August 16, 2009
	August 23, 2009
	August 30, 2009
	September 6, 2009
	September 13, 2009
	September 20, 2009
	September 27, 2009
	October 4, 2009
	October 11, 2009
	October 18, 2009
	October 25, 2009
	November 1, 2009
	November 8, 2009
	November 15, 2009
	November 22, 2009