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Sermon - Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (B) - 26th July 2009
St Aidan's Anglican Church West Epping
Reading: 2 Samuel 11:1-15; Psalm 14; Ephesians 3:14-21; John 6:1-21
If I asked you to express your ideas about God in a few sentences, I wonder what responses I would get. I suspect I would get a fair range of ideas. If I went out into the streets of Sydney asking the same question, I would get an even greater variety of ideas. People vary on whether there is one God, many gods, or no God at all. Some will have clear ideas about what they believe, while others won’t be sure at all. Some will believe in a personal creator, while others will have different ideas. Large numbers will say that no one can really know whether there is a God at all.
Many of us who accept the basic teaching of the Bible don’t experience God as very real to us. We may hear of other people’s experiences that give them a strong sense of the reality of God, but perhaps we don’t experience him the same way. Our Christian faith can seem pretty theoretical, and our Christian lives fairly humdrum, rather than a series of wonderful events in which we constantly experience God at work.
If that sounds like you, that’s the experience of many followers of Jesus. For many Christians, discipleship means plugging on when not much seems to be happening; keeping going when you are wondering how real it all is. We want to feel God in a real and personal way, but it doesn’t seem to happen. In fact, our feelings can be a very unreliable gauge to the reality of God in our lives. Often it is the feelings-oriented Christian who falls hardest when feelings change. In the end, we need to keep turning to the scriptures, where we find the message on which we depend and by which we live.
This morning we reach the halfway point of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. Most of today’s passage is a prayer, an earnest prayer, for Paul is on his knees. But it is a confident prayer, for he prays to his eternal Father, who shows us what true loving wise Fatherhood is all about, in a world where all fathers fall short, and far too many fathers turn to violence, abuse and neglect, distorting and undermining the privilege of fatherhood.
What sort of God does Paul pray to? In the last couple of verses, we get a big picture.
God is able. He is a God of power. He has the capacity to do things. He is not weak, or lacking in strength and wisdom. But Paul says more than that.
God is able to accomplish abundantly. His power is great. His resources are mighty. He can do wondrous things. But Paul says more than that.
God is able to accomplish abundantly far more than we can ask. If we need God to do something great, he can do it. If we need a mountain moved, God can do it. Of course, God will not always answer our prayers in the way we ask: we know that. But no matter what we ask God to do for us, we will never get the reply: “I’m sorry. That’s just a bit too hard. Please ask for something easier.” But Paul says even more.
God is able to accomplish abundantly far more than we can ask or imagine. God is so great that we can’t even begin to imagine how great he is. We can’t take in just how extraordinary and how infinite are his divine resources and power. The God we worship is an almighty God: great beyond our understanding, powerful beyond our imagination.
Perhaps that heightens some of our problems in relating to God. For such a mighty God is intimidating. He may be remote and disinterested in ordinary people like us. And much of the time he can seem that way. But Paul has one more thing to add to his powerful description.
God is able to accomplish abundantly far more than we can ask or imagine, according to his power at work in us. Yes, Paul is saying that God’s power is at work in us as followers of Christ. We may feel it or not. We may be conscious of it or not. But God’s immense, unlimited, divine power is at work in us. God is not far away or remote at all. God is not simply watching us from a distance: his power is at work in us, his Spirit with us, day by day.
And what sort of things can this great power do for us? Once again, Paul gives some clues in the passage.
He gives us spiritual strength. Paul prays that we “may be strengthened in our inner being with power through his Spirit”. The overwhelmingly great God who is with us, within us, desires to give us spiritual strength as we follow Christ.
Strength to serve Christ, and to serve one another. Strength to make decisions that reflect his goodness, and then to follow through those decisions. Strength to keep going in our faith, even when the going gets tough. Spiritual strength through the Holy Spirit, God himself, at work within us.
He also gives the reality of Christ’s presence. Paul’s prayer is that “Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith”. Through faith we open up to the love and presence of Christ. But his desire is not simply to “ be there”, but to dwell there. There are places where you feel comfortable, you feel “at home”. Christ is present in every Christian, but is he “at home” in us? If our lives are out of kilter with the Saviour, he will not really be at home. Our lives will not reflect his character, his purpose, his will. May we allow Christ to be more and more at home in our lives. May we welcome him as he seeks to be intimately involved in all we do. And as we do that, we may well find a growing confidence in Christ’s presence within us.
And then God wants to give us a deep and solid love. Paul’s prayer is that we may be “rooted and grounded in love”. What kind of love? God’s kind of love. The love which is not based on how worthy or how attractive or how nice the other person is. The love which reaches out to the other person, seeking their well-being even when it involves cost. The love which puts the best interests of the other person first. The love which is supremely expressed in the self-sacrifice of Christ. The love of God.
May we be rooted in love, like a plant whose roots have gone deep into the soil, so that it is secure and well provided with food. May we be grounded in love, like a building whose foundations are properly prepared, so that it remains solid and firm in all the storms of life.
And if we are to express that love, which is of course the fruit of the Holy Spirit, we need to know something of that love. Its breadth and length and height and depth are beyond measurement. In all its fullness it is beyond our capacity to understand. Nevertheless, we all need a growing knowledge of God’s love, and the grace to express it more and more in our lives.
And then Paul seeks one more blessing for his readers, and ultimately for us as well. “May you be filled with all the fullness of God ”, he prays. It seems an almost absurd prayer, perhaps even a blasphemous desire. How can mere humans be filled with all the fullness of God? Obviously this is not a literal filling. What Paul is surely asking is that God will be fully at work in our lives, that we will walk with him more and more closely, and that we will know him better and better.
What a great prayer this is. Might we not pray it for ourselves and for each other? Perhaps we too could ask God to be at work in us through his Spirit, that Christ will indeed be present in our lives, that his love might be growing within us, and that we may be more and more open to his purposes and his work.
Will it happen? Perhaps part of the reason God doesn’t seem so real at times is that we prefer it that way. He’s less threatening, less demanding if we keep him at a distance. We can put up barriers up between us and God, which he may not remove, because we are not ready to have them removed. May we have grace and honesty and determination to acknowledge those barriers and deal with them in whatever way we can.
Of course, no response will automatically guarantee that we sail into sweetness and light. Spiritual maturity and obedient service of Christ often means struggling through darkness, rather than a series of glorious triumphs. Nevertheless, God knows our circumstances and needs, and is with us in all our struggles.
Our God is infinitely great. His love is beyond measure. But he generally prefers to work with us, rather than in spite of us. May we become more open to his power and his love, that Christ may be at home in our lives, and that his love may reach out to others, as the Spirit who is God himself works in us and through us. Amen. Paul Weaver