Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (July 26, 2009)
“Strengthened With Power and Love” (Ephesians 3:14-21)

Today's text is the Epistle lesson from Ephesians 3. Please listen as I read that portion of God's Holy Word one more time. St. Paul writes to the church at Ephesus: For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

That's a funny place to begin a reading. It starts off in the middle of a thought. “For this reason,” it says. For what reason? Before we go any further, we ought to figure that out. And to do so, we need to revisit what St. Paul has been writing about in the earlier chapters. He wanted to make clear that it is God who chooses us, and not the other way around. God the Father has chosen us in Christ his Son and lavished us with his gifts of forgiveness through the blood of Christ. Paul also wanted to make it clear that salvation and the forgiveness of sins are completely free gifts of God's grace, received by faith alone in Christ alone and not by doing good deeds or religious acts to somehow earn God's favor. Furthermore, Paul wanted to explain how God took two groups of people – Jews and Gentiles, people once alienated from each other – called them to faith in Christ, and made a new man out of the two … the Holy Christian Church, the Body of Christ with barriers broken down. Through faith in Christ Jesus, both Jews and Gentiles have equal access to God the Father and are “fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” (3:6) And it is “for this reason” that the Apostle Paul bows his knees and offers up a prayer on behalf of the Christians of Ephesus. His prayer can become our prayer, too … a prayer for our congregation, a prayer for our fellow believers in Christ, and a prayer for ourselves.

First, Paul prays that his hearers would be “strengthened with power through [God's] Spirit in your inner being.” Paul has made it perfectly clear that you and I are powerless to accomplish anything on our own in spiritual matters. Apart from Christ we are dead in our trespasses and sins. (2:1) It is by grace we have been saved, and this is not our own doing. (2:8) Left to our own resources, we are weak and helpless because of our sinful nature which each of us has inherited from Adam. And throughout our life that sinful inheritance weighs us down with guilt and shame because we know that we have been distracted from the attention we should be giving to prayer and worship and that we have failed to love our neighbor as ourselves.

So we need some real power. Something that really packs a punch. A real blast of divine assistance. After all, the word for power here is “dunamis” from which we get the word “dynamite.”

But God's dynamite explodes quietly. It works in a less than spectacular way. It doesn't come with all kinds of outward miraculous manifestations. Some people might say that the kind of power we have to offer is really a dud, that we are underestimating the power of God's Spirit. But in Romans 1, Paul said that it is the Gospel itself which is “the power of God” … the “dynamite” of God, if you will… “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” (Rom. 1:16) The message of the Gospel, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures and was raised to life again on the third day … that's where the power lies to deliver life and the forgiveness of sins to those who hear and receive it in faith. The Holy Spirit is the one who comes through this message in our “inner being” and strengthens us. He begins to renew our emotions, our thoughts, and our will and redirects them toward God and others as opposed to ourselves.

Paul says that in all this, the end result is “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” Now there's a comforting truth. Even in a big crowd, we often feel alone. At work. At school. At home. But you are never alone. Through the faith that the Holy Spirit has worked in your heart, Jesus your Savior and Friend dwells there. Jesus himself has taken up residence in your “inner being.”

In our hymnal, they left out a great stanza from Henry Lyte's hymn “Abide with Me.” I had to go back two hymnals ago to find these words that so aptly describe how Christ dwells with us. It's stanza 3 in the 1941 hymnal:

Not a brief glance I beg, a passing word,
But as Thou dweltst with Thy disciples, Lord,
Familiar, condescending, patient, free.
Come not to sojourn, but abide with me. (TLH 552.3)

Jesus does not walk by us and give us a brief glance over his shoulder. He doesn't greet us with a passing word and then continues about his business. Although we can't see him, he dwells with us even more closely than he did when he walked on the water and got into the boat with the disciples. Jesus dwells in our very hearts. He is familiar, not distant. He is high and lofty, yet condescends to be with us in his Body and Blood. He is patient with us, not wanting anyone to perish, but for everyone to come to repentance. (2 Pet. 3:9) And he is free. His love and forgiveness cost you and me nothing, yet it cost him his very own life at the cross.

This is the power of God that is “at work within us.” This is the power of God “who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think.” This is the power of God that can forgive and transform even people that we are sure could never be forgiven and transformed. This is the power of God that can forgive and transform even people like you and me.

After Paul prays that his hearers would be strengthened with power, he then prays that they would be strengthened to comprehend the love of Christ. He prays that they would be “rooted and grounded in love,” and here he uses the Greek word “agape” … that unselfish, unconditional, sacrificial love that always looks out for the good of the other. Jesus is the only person who ever perfectly lived and loved this way. Paul prays that his hearers, being so rooted and grounded in the love of Christ, would then “have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God.”

Did you ever ask your kids when they were little, “How much do you love me?” How would they answer? “I love you THIS much.” And they would stretch their arms out as far as they could. And you would respond, “I love you even more,” or something like that, taking them up in your arms. But can anyone really answer the question, “How much do you love your children?” Your love for your children can't be quantified. It can't be measured. Your love for your children has no limits. Even in their worst moments, even when they screw up, even if they were to one day completely rebel and disown you, you will never stop loving them.

If that's the way it is with our children, think how much greater and immeasurable the love of Christ is for us. How can we begin to measure its breadth and length and height and depth? Maybe we can begin to comprehend the love of Christ by picturing the cross, with its two beams that point in four directions. The breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ extend towards infinity. Christ love is limitless. The breadth of Christ's love overcomes our narrowness, our concern only for those who are like us. The length of Christ's love overcomes our impatience, our unwillingness to forgive the foibles of others. The height of Christ's love overcomes our smallness, the way in which trivial matters outweigh the truly important things in life. And the depth of Christ's love overcomes our shallowness, our lack of serious thought in divine matters.

But remember, knowing the love of Christ is not only about “serious thought.” It's not just about academic knowledge, knowing facts and figures and being able to run the Bible category in Jeopardy. Knowing the love of Christ is having a heartfelt trust in the facts of what Jesus accomplished for you at the cross and the empty tomb and growing daily in a deeper understanding of what the Gospel means to you personally. Christ's love for you is a love that “surpasses all knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God.” And here we have come full circle to the Christ who dwells within us, since “in Christ all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” (Col 1:9) If Christ is dwelling within us, then we are filled with the fullness of God and have his strength to draw upon at all times.

Strengthened with power through the Holy Spirit. Strengthened to comprehend the love of Christ. That was Paul's prayer for the Christians at Ephesus. That can be our prayer, too … for each other, for our congregation, and for ourselves.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.