AtomEphesians 3:14-21 “A Love Beyond Comprehension”
I pray…that you may have the power 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. Ephesians 3:16
One of you sent me a poem by e-mail this week.
I was shocked, confused, bewildered
As I entered Heaven’s door,
Not by the beauty of it all,
Nor the lights or its decor.
But it was the folks in Heaven
Who made me sputter and gasp—
The thieves, the liars, the sinners,
The alcoholics and the trash.
There stood the kid from seventh grade
Who swiped my lunch money twice.
Next to him was my old neighbor
Who never said anything nice.
Herb, who I always thought
Was rotting away in hell,
Was sitting pretty on cloud nine,
Looking incredibly well.
I nudged Jesus, ‘What’s the deal?
I would love to hear Your take.
How’d all these sinners get up here?
God must’ve made a mistake.
‘And why’s everyone so quiet,
So somber - give me a clue.’
‘Hush, child,’ He said, ‘they’re all in shock.
No one thought they’d be seeing you.’
I don’t know if that was meant to be about me or the one who sent it. No matter…none of us here would probably want to admit to such a judgmental attitude, but I have a hunch that the Apostle Paul might confess to us that this poem was him…when Paul was Saul and before Jesus stopped him dead in his tracks and took hold of his heart. You might remember from the book of Acts and from the telling of his own story in letters to the Galatians, that Paul was a pretty straight up guy when it came to life and faith. He lived by the book. Paul not only kept the commandments. He kept the bullet points underneath them. He kept all the 613 Jewish bylaws pertaining to the big 10. Paul was like the guy at the office who has read the employee handbook from cover to cover and goes beyond it. His hair and beard is never longer than regulation; his suit always pressed. He never pads his expense account, always showed up early for appointments and his desk is always clear at the end of the day. Paul probably also made his bed every morning and hung up his towel after his shower. And you know he never missed church! I could go on, but you get the idea. Paul, when he was Saul, would not have gone out to WeFest either, not even as a chaplain. Paul not only lived by the book, he threw it at others.
You remember that it was Paul, then Saul, who participated in the hunting down and stoning of the first followers of Jesus who dared to tell others that being a part of God’s chosen was not about keeping the commandments, but about trusting the death and resurrection of Jesus. It was Paul who stood by and cheered on those who were stoning Stephen, one of the witnesses to Jesus in the opening chapters of the book of Acts. You remember…and you remember that Saul’s anger was directed primarily at fellow Jews who had once kept the laws, but who were now following Jesus and daring to say that the law was not the law anymore - that in Jesus God was reaching out to the just and unjust.
Imagine, then, if Saul felt this about his fellow Jews – how he felt about the Gentiles – the non-Jews, the unclean, the outsiders, the sinners, the worshippers of other gods who knew nothing of Abraham and Sara and Moses and Miriam and God’s commands. We need only imagine our stereotype of the gathering of bikers at Sturgis this weekend or those who come to WeFest for the parties in the campgrounds to imagine Saul’s prior view of Gentiles and their place in God’s kingdom. They were destined for the dung heap and the fire as far as Saul was concerned. Surely God hated them for how they lived.
But then Jesus caught up with Paul, then Saul. On the road to Damascus, on his way to another lynching of those who dared to speak of a God who forgave and loved, Jesus stopped Saul cold. Jesus blinded him so he could begin to see in a new way, sent messengers to care for him and to open his eyes to the truth of God’s intentions. And then irony of ironies, Jesus sent him to be the messenger of God’s love to the Gentiles – to those that he had already decided were beyond God’s love, disqualified and unable to enter God’s family.
And so here in chapter 3, Paul marvels at what he has seen in his own life, what God has done in the lives of the Ephesians – those heathens, those unclean and unwashed scum. If you have your Bibles, look back at Chapter 2:
Remember that you were…aliens from the community…strangers to the covenants of promise…having no hope and without God in the world…but now you who were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ…so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God… (vv. 12-19)
Paul marvels at the love of God that has reached out and included even these who were “nobodies” in his world and joined them to the people of God. And Paul marvels further that God has opened his own eyes and heart to see that this is okay and right and “just like Jesus.”
This is what I hear in the words of Ephesians three, a praise song swelling with wonder. In the first verses, Paul marvels at what has happened in him:
Of this gospel I have become a servant according to the gift of God’s grace that was given me by the working of his power. Although I am the very least of all the saints (read “proclaimers of Jesus”), this grace was given to me to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ…in whom we have access to God in boldness and confidence through faith in him. (vv.7ff.)
And then the lesson that is before us, beginning with verse 14:
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and earth takes its name. I pray…that you may have the power 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 know the breadth and length and height and depth…the love of God that surpasses knowledge.” Paul marvels at the love of God that is so much greater than our own – even beyond our ability to imagine. I remember as a youth in Sunday School singing a little song of God’s love:
“So high you can’t get over it, so low, you can’t get under it, so wide you can’t get ‘round it…” Remember?
God would have us remember and give thanks that what is true for us is also true for others – even those we might not think worthy of God’s love.
Last week in New Orleans, the Youth Gathering assembled each night in the Super Dome for worship and learning. 37,000 young people and their adult mentors gathered for worship – can you imagine? And through scripture and music and video presentation and the witness of a whole variety of followers of Jesus we grew in our own desire to follow and serve. One of the unique features of this particular gathering (and I have been to 5 during my years of ministry) was the multiple voices heard – not big name authors or speakers – no Max Lucado, or Ann Graham Lotz, or Tony Campolo, but folks involved in various ways of being the presence of Christ in their neighborhoods and workplaces. Besides Bishop Hanson, I believe we only heard from one other Pastor. But I have to tell you, that one pastor was a piece of work.
He walked onto the staging area dressed in black, and not clergy black with the little white collar. I would call it “biker black” – black jeans, black shirt, black boots, black ball cap. It was only when the camera zoomed in and we could see him clearly on the jumbotron that those of us in the balconies could see that he wasn’t wearing a long sleeve shirt. His arms only looked to be fully clothed because they were completely covered with tattoos, as I have to believe was much of the rest of his body, because we could see the tattoos reaching up from his shirt collar on to his neck. “When I was growing up,” Jay Bakker began, “I believed that God hated people like me, who had done what I have done.”
It might interest you to know that this Jay Bakker is none other than the son of Jimmy and Tammy Faye Bakker, well-known flamboyant followers of Jesus in the 70’s and 80’s. They were hosts and teachers on the Nationally syndicated “PTL Club.” They were prominent voices in the evangelical Christian Community. And Jay was their son, raised in the faith – exposed to all the teaching of Jesus and the church that one would want to be exposed to. But Jay ran away from the Church and from Jesus, like the Prodigal Son of Jesus’ story.
I couldn’t help but think here of aTV news article this week. It began with a police video cam following a car driving erratically down the road, swerving and nearly running in the ditch before pulling into a driveway and stopping. At that point the driver’s door swung open and a seven-year-old boy jumped out and ran into the house. It seems that his Daddy had taken him to church and shortly after they arrived the boy snuck out by another door, took the family car and ran for it!
Jay Bakker ran, too, but in much more destructive ways. He did most everything his parents had taught against. He did things that he knew they hated and he knew God hated. And he believed therefore that God must hate him. But then God stopped Jay Bakker in his tracks. Or maybe Jay stopped himself when he hit bottom. But when he did, Jesus was waiting for him in that bottom place.“ And I realized,” says Jay Bakker, “that God doesn’t hate me. God loves me. Even though God hates the things that I do that hurt me or hurt others, God doesn’t hate me. God loves me. And God loves others like me. And that is why I do what I do – in the inner city with folks that a lot of the church believes are lost and without hope – because our God is a God of Amazing Grace.”
“Never take grace for granted,” Jay Baker said, spreading his tattooed arms wide. “You may know about it, but there are a lot of people who don’t, who don’t believe God could ever love them after what they have done, how they have lived, the hurts they have caused, the ways they have failed to live up to their parents’ or their God’s expectations.” But the Good News of Jesus says, “God loves in ways bigger than our imaginations.”
This is what I hear in chapter three of Ephesians – a prayer, “That you (whether you consider yourself on the inside or the outside of God’s love) may have the power to comprehend…what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of God that surpasses all knowledge.” It is the love of God that surpasses our expectation…and our imagination. Though I have no doubt that there are those worshipping with us this weekend who have done things, said things, thought things, lived in ways that they believed that God must surely hate them, most of those who really believe God hates them are not here. They usually stay away…until someone comes looking – even as the Father looked for his Prodigal son – until we as the church come looking with that love of God that sees not only the brokenness or the self-destructive decision-making but sees a beloved child of God, and embraces them and invites them home.
Which is why 37,000 young people spread out through the city of New Orleans to clean and to paint and to listen and comfort, to embrace a community that many have written off as lazy and depraved, or even “deserving of the tragedy it has experienced.” That is why the chaplains and other followers of Jesus went out into the campgrounds of WeFest night after night to help folks find their way safely home, because when we are tempted to write off our neighbor or even ourselves as beyond the love of Christ, Jesus says, “Not so!”
Friends…is it hard to get past our expectations and our reluctance to embrace or include those who don’t do the right thing or don’t look like us or act like us? You bet. Just ask Paul. He knew. But he also knew – verse 20 – “the power at work within us able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.” God will help us to do what we can’t do on our own…to love like Jesus… Let’s pray…
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