September 23, 2012 Joined and Knit Together 3. “What Was the Reason?”
Scripture: Ephesians 3:14-21
Sermon: I.
A. “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and earth takes its name…”
B. For what reason? What is the reason that brings the author of Ephesians to his knees before God? To borrow some words from a Charles Wesley hymn, what is the reason that brings him to his knees, “lost in wonder, love and praise?” In other words, what reason has brought this follower of Christ to worship?
C. Well, what are some of the reasons that you and I fall on our knees in praise and adoration of God? I’m sure there are many. As someone that loves camping and hiking, I can recall any number of sacred moments when I have experienced the grandeur of creation and couldn’t help but worship our magnificent Creator.
D. Maybe you can relate to the experience of a youth group leader that was leading his youth group on a backpack trip. He was with a rambunctious gang of teenage boys and girls who had gone into the mountains for a couple of days of hiking and camping. The second afternoon, so the story goes, they were struggling up a steep trail, gradually working their way towards the top of a mountain where they were going to spend the night. The kids, not surprisingly, were complaining – wanting to stop every few feet, joking around, shouting at and teasing each other… you know, typical teenager stuff! They had been walking along a path that was covered with thick undergrowth and overshadowed by trees.
They were so busy trudging up the trail that they didn’t realize the afternoon sun was setting behind them, at least not until they came to a clearing. To the left lay the great expanse of the valley below them. The setting sun inflamed the hills across from them with brilliant reds and oranges. And suddenly, the whole group fell completely silent. Everyone just stopped and stared at the wondrous spectacle nature was unfolding before them. No one said a word. That is until on of the youth counselors said quietly, “I will lift up my eyes unto the hills from whence comes my help. My help is in the name of the Lord.”
E. You see, they were “brought to their knees,” so to speak, filled with awe, struck silent by the “riches and glory” before them. For that one, wonderful, awe-filled moment their otherwise occupied, distracted minds comprehended what is the “breadth and length and height and depth” of the majesty of God. They worshiped. And God be praised for such summertime reasons for worship.
F. But what was the reason being referred to here in Ephesians? “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name.” What was his reason for worship?
II.
A. To find the answer, we need to look backwards in the text. Verse 14 is actually continuing the thought first mentioned in verse 1 of this chapter, where Paul (or the author writing as if he were Paul), says: “This is the reason that I… am a prisoner for Christ for the sake of you Gentiles.” But that doesn’t quite get us there, does it. We have to go back just a little further to realize that the reason the author bows his knees before the Father is found in the previous chapter in verse 14. And here it is… “For [Christ] is our peace, who has made both groups into one, and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us… that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of two, thus making peace…”
B. There’s the reason!
C. This letter to the Ephesians has been addressing the tough problem of divisions and walls of hostility within the young Christian church. In this case the wall was between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians and that wall of separation was ancient and tall and wide. In our day, we could name other walls of separation and division within the church, but back then this was “the wall,” the main issue of contention. And here the claim is being made that all the centuries of hostility and mistrust and separation between these two groups have now become a time of peace because Christ “has broken down the dividing wall of hostility.” In fact, in writing this, the author is reminded that in the beginning of the human story God created “every family in heaven and on earth.” We all come from God. So peace and unity in the church is like a return to the first days of creation where there were no walls, no labels, no divisions due to race, or class, or nation.
D. I am personally getting a lot out of our study of Adam Hamilton’s book, Seeing Gray In a World of Black and White. In his chapter on “Spiritual Maturity,” he writes about the deep and hostile divisions that still define the Christian Church today. One of them is the division of denominationalism. Listen to what he says…
When we insist on certainty, we often begin to think that we are right and those who disagree with us are wrong – and perhaps even evil. In the church, what tends to happen is that we become undone about small matters of doctrine and then divide over them. Wanting certainty when certainty cannot be found often causes us to over-simplify issues and polarize. This is why there is a long history among Christians of dividing and separating from one another. Today, there are more that 3,000 different Christian denominations in America, and there are tens of thousands of non-denominational churches. Division results when we insist on seeing everything in black and white…
E. After reviewing some of the deep and enduring hostilities between Catholics, Orthodox and Protestant Christians, Hamilton says:
When I think about divisions within Christianity, I am reminded of the Pharisees. There must be times when God looks at us within the church and thinks, When did you become Pharisees? Jesus said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practices without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel! (Matthew 23:23-24)
Indeed, that is how we are. We tend to nitpick, straining out points of doctrine and dividing from one another. In the process, we miss the kind of life Christ actually called us to live. No longer do we pursue the things that are truly important. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, said, “Would to God that all the party names, and unscriptural phrases and forms which have divided the Christian world, were forgot; and that we might all agree to sit down together, as humble, loving disciples, at the feet of our common Master, to hear his word, to imbibe his Spirit, and to transcribe his life into our own!” Wesley’s words describe beautifully what I mean by seeing gray. It is the capacity to look at people who are at different places theologically and spiritually than yourself and say, “You are still my brother or sister in Christ, and I have something to learn from you.”…
Seeing gray is the capacity to look at other people who disagree with us and say, “I might disagree with you, but I still love you. Instead of being undone by our differences, I am going to listen and hear what you have to say; and maybe my own faith will be enriched and strengthened as a result.” The ability to listen and learn from one another requires humility. When we humble ourselves, we are willing not only to listen and learn but also to serve others in humility – just as Jesus taught us to do.
III.
F. The radical claim of Ephesians is that through Christ’s life, death and resurrection God has torn down the walls of hostility and division. The radical sacrificial love that was pinned to a cross by hostility and released into the world through resurrection reaches out to all, embraces all, forgives all. It’s already done.
What’s not yet done is our acceptance of it. What’s not yet done is our full comprehension of what God has done in Christ. In Ephesians is embedded the prayer that one day we will get it in our heads and hearts and lives just how great is the “breadth and length and height and depth” of the “love of Christ.” Then we will be able to worship. For that reason we will bend our knees before God who has made all things new, all things one… even us.
G. This morning we have to come here to worship. But how many of us have come as if nothing has happened, as if all the old boundaries, all the old labels, all the old divisions and distinctions are firmly in place.
1. How many of us have brought to worship with us today an old grudge from long ago – an affront suffered at the hands of a relative, a feud that has kept him or her separated from you and your family for years?
2. Who of us has come with a consistent low-boil anger inside, eaten up with resentment for one who used to be a friend but is no longer because of jealousy or disagreement.
3. Who of us has come to worship with a deep-seated basic mistrust or fear or hatred of this group or that group – dismissed collectively because of the color of their skin, or their culture, or their age, or their appearance, or their customs, or their reputation?
4. Secret, unseen, yet rigidly enforced and deeply cherished borders – walls that divide, fences of hostility inside the church and outside the church that keep us wary and afraid and angry and separate. How do we do worship a God whose love is as big as we see in Christ while we remain caught in the narrow confines of the old age.. as if God never acted in Jesus and nothing has changed? How could our singing not be a bit off-key, our praise a bit hollow, our prayers less than earnest? We have not yet fully comprehended a God as large as the one who love and grace is so broad, so long, so high, so deep as the love of Christ.
5. I invite you to join me in prayer, as we bow our knees in worship. Let each of us search our heart for those walls of division and hostility that we have built out of anger, fear, or mistrust. Perhaps the hostility is with someone here in this congregation. Perhaps the wall is between you or someone of a different political or theological persuasion. Perhaps it is with a family member that has hurt you or disappointed you or frustrated you to the point that there is a huge gap of separation in your relationship. Perhaps the dividing wall is with a group of people that has gotten under your skin – those with money or those without, those of another religion, those of another country, those of a different generation…
6. As the choir sings the anthem, “Love Grows Here,” I invite each of us to face the walls of hostility and division in our own life and write down the person’s or group’s name on the card inserted in your bulletin, praying that God’s wall-breaking love will lead us in a way that will heal the brokenness and deepen our trust in the reconciling work already accomplished in Christ.
I’m not suggesting that we pray God will miraculously move in to erase history and fix broken relationships. But I am suggesting that we pray God will create a space in our hearts where love will take root and will grow into the humility that enables us to say: “I might disagree with you, I might fear you, but I still love you. Instead of being undone by our differences, I am going to listen and hear what you have to say; and maybe my own faith and life will be enriched and strengthened as a result.”
7. If you write anything on the card, I hope you will do one of two things. Either take it home and place it somewhere where you will regularly see it throughout the week or, if you prefer, come forward during the singing of the first of our two closing songs, “When We Are Living,” and place your card and prayer on the altar.
8. Either way, may we find ourselves on our knees before God, and with the author of Ephesians, pray to God asking that “with both feet planted firmly in love [we’ll] be able to take in with all Christians the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love.”
May we “Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! plumb the depths! Rise to the heights!” (Eugene Peterson, The Message) Amen
Prayer:
Loving God, who has come into our lives with power and love, we have come into your church to worship you. This is the day we have set aside to give you our praise and honor.
Yet in our heart of hearts, we wonder if that may be our problem. We have set aside this day, detaching it from all our other days - this quiet day of worship and rest set aside from the everyday, workaday world in which we live.
Lord, let this day of worship before us not a day to get away from it all, but rather a day to:
- bring it all before you,
- seek your guidance for the lives we must live when we leave this place of worship,
- pray for the power to live up to our convictions,
- ask for the insight to live with all whom we meet,
o not as strangers, but as brothers and sisters loved by you.
You came to us, God of love, not to take us out of the world, but to give us a different way of being in it. Now, give us the gifts we need to live up to your calling of us…