Sermons Online ...
Sermon - Turning Publicity into Reputation - 20th May 2007
St Alban’s 7:00am, 8.00 am and 10:00 am
Readings: Acts 1:1-11, Psalm 110, Ephesians 1:15-23, Luke 24:44-53
Reputation or publicity? How do we become known for our faith in Jesus as our friend, resurrected and ascended, and our loving service to others as expected by him? In the ancient letterform, such as the Letter to the Ephesians, the ones sending the letters often indicated that they had heard some good news from or about the people receiving the letter and expressed pleasure about learning it. As we know in an age before instant global communication, people could go for weeks or months without news of family, friends or business associates and such news was always treasured. Likewise, in the thanksgiving sections of Paul’s letters, he also often expresses pleasure about some news he has heard about the people who received his letters, but the news he mentions is always more than routine events. The news for which Paul gives thanks has to do with the fundamental Christian virtues: faith, love and hope.
All churches have some measure of these virtues, but what impresses Paul is that the Ephesian congregation has a word-of-mouth reputation for them. “I have heardof your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints …”. What is the difference between a reputation based on word of mouth and one generated through a publicity blitz? One big difference is the source. We know who is making a recommendation or telling us a bit of news when we hear something by word of mouth. Paul names sources of information about particular churches in some of his letters. For example in1 Cor 1:1, “For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people; and 1 Thessalonians 3:6-10,
“But Timothy has just now come to us from you, and has brought us the good news of your faith and love. He has told us also that you always remember us kindly and long to see us, just as we long to see you. For this reason, brothers and sisters,* during all our distress and persecution we have been encouraged about you through your faith. For we now live, if you continue to stand firm in the Lord. How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you? Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith”.
Since Ephesians is a general essay in the Pauline tradition, we do not find specific details, but the opening formula suggests the intimacy of a word-of-mouth report.
We are familiar with the fact that “word of mouth” can take what filmmakers consider a small movie to big-time status. Some record companies often give away tickets, posters and CDs to talk up their favourite stars on the Internet. However, for all the marketing research, focus groups and big-budget advertising, no one has found a way to turn publicity into reputation. How does “the buzz” get going around a particular church? Not by advertising. When people come to our worship, our Bible studies, our women’s’ group, our church dinners, and all the other things we do, they have to feel that special spirit. Ephesians reminds us that the source of the energy, power and spirit at work in the church is ultimately God.
Ephesians’ thanksgiving prayer tells us something else about the genuinely successful church. The people in such a church have a goal, a destination. Therefore, because they know where they are going, they are people of hope.
Sometimes people find it difficult to distinguish hope from faith, but Ephesians makes the distinction very easily. Faith is “in the Lord Jesus”, that is to say, faith is entrusting our lives to Jesus today, in the present tense. Hope is about the future, about where it is that our present trust in Jesus eventually leads. Hope, therefore, requires wisdom, knowledge or insight into the glorious heavenly inheritance that awaits believers.
What is it that we need to know about that destiny? Some people think that the way to find out is to study reports about near-death experiences. Scholars have compared these modern reports on brushes with death to medieval accounts of mystical journeys into the heavens.
Ephesians shows no evidence of “travelling to the other side,” of advocating a spiritual way of life aimed at gaining visions of the enthroned Christ and his angels. Instead, Ephesians relies upon a theological insight grounded in early Christian interpretation of Psalm 110.
“The Lord says to my lord, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstall.”
In it we as Christians see the risen Christ exalted above all the powers in the universe. Combining that insight with Paul’s word picture of the church as the “body of Christ,” originally an image of local churches produces the striking new image of Christ as head of a body that fills the entire cosmos. The main purpose of this image is not to give us a secret peek into the heavenly places but to give us confidence in the power of God, “who fills all in all.” On the feast of the Ascension, that is what we celebrate today. We celebrate that the resurrected Christ is the ruler of the kingdom of God that is coming into fulfilment as we speak, until it is completed at the end of time.
What has that to do with the Christian need to know? Many Christians still think of heaven in concrete terms as a house or a castle or a city filled with people. They fail to adjust their imagination of heaven to suit this cosmic picture of God’s power and glory.
So even though the metaphors in this section of Ephesians seem strange, both the working of God’s power and the exaltation of Jesus that has the body of Christ “filling all in all” have an important message about Christian hope. On matter who we are or what we have done we have someone in God’s presence who speaks on our behalf, who knows how it is to live in the world as a human person with all the associated conditions.
Let us be enthusiastic about out faith, how we worship here and how we follow in the footsteps of Jesus to bring the Good News as we have come to understand it through Jesus, the ascended and exalted One, so that, with the eyes of their hearts enlightened, others may know what is the hope to which we have all been called, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for all who believe, according to the working of his great power.
1. This sermon produced using The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol XI. Abingdon Press, Nashville. 2000.