It’s the anniversary of a terrible day. Or an amazing day of grace and life and hope and community. Depends. It depends on which you want to acknowledge, which you want to remember. We could be reminded that we are vulnerable, that we have enemies - but where’s the news in that? Anyone who has studied history already knew that, we didn’t need a tragedy to be told that. Or maybe we did. Anyone who has read the Bible seriously knows that we are vulnerable, that we have enemies, Jesus told us that, prophets too many to name in this space told us that. We didn’t need a tragedy to be told that. Or maybe we did.
But what would be better to remember is that we did come together as a nation. That we set aside differences long enough to care and support and heal and strengthen. In the dust and ash of the falling towers, race didn’t matter, in the shouts of pain and the echoes of promised support, accent didn’t matter. In the rubble of our arrogant confidence in our individualism and nationalism, tribal origin didn’t matter. In our cry for the loving arms of our God, how we prayed didn’t matter. Just that we prayed. With words and with tears, with sacrifice and with hands outstretched to help and to hold, we prayed. Fifteen years later it is possible to forget that we prayed. And that prayers were answered by those like us and those not like us, those we know and trust and those of whom we are now suspicious. What brought us together is what we need to remember. And not just the tragedy, but the will, the will to rise and to care and to give and heal, the will to be a nation of community and trust, of sacrifice and goodness. The tragedy did not define us, the response did. Let us live into that definition.
All year long, in the background of our worship experience, there has been a prayer. A prayer for the church from the Letter to the Ephesians. We now turn to an examination of that letter. Ephesians is divided into two sections, chapters one through three and chapters four through six. For two weeks we will examine part one, then we’ll take a breather and then two weeks on part two. The prayer for the church is the hinge around which the two parts turn. Part one is about what God has done in Christ. Done for us, done in us. About grace and inheritance, about the presence of God in Jesus and how we tasted that presence in our adoration of him, and how we were brought into the glorious light. Part two is the so what part. It is our response to all that has been done. Because of Christ, we now live. And what does that life look like? Because of grace we are empowered, so how do we employ that power? Because we are reconciled, brought back into the light of Christ, we can see, ourselves and our world and the promises on the horizon. So what do we see and how do we speak of that seeing?
That’s what Ephesians does for us. So, we need to sit in that light these weeks. But we’re going to study this word in a way that will feel strange to us. To study means to dig down and mine for the nuggets of knowledge and insight. We need to take notes and ask questions, we need to wrestle with interpretations and possible meanings. We need to engage our brains. That’s how we study. How we usually study.
But this time, these weeks, we need to engage our hearts. We need to engage our souls. No, we don’t turn off our brains, but we release our brains to listen and flow and let the light come how it comes. Four weeks for six chapters. Each week we will be presented with a chapter and half of this amazing letter. Too much to attack with tweezers and scalpels. We are, instead, riding on the surface of the poetry of the language, letting it carry us where we need to go, seeing who we need to be. Letting it wash over us, like standing under a torrential rain, or a waterfall that pours down over us. We can’t swallow it all, we can’t digest each drop, but we can be soaked to the skin by a word of grace. Which is just what we need.
At least I believe it is. We need to be still and listen to God’s Word. Even when our brows furrow from the unfamiliarity of the phrasing, the words that cry out to be interpreted. We’re going to let them stand on their own. Stand, no, the Word doesn’t stand. It washes over us, it cleanses us, it carries us away. The Word of God is living and active. It doesn’t just stand. If it seems to just stand, if it feels like we are just letting it stand there, like a marble statue to be gazed at and then walked away from, then it is because we haven’t opened ourselves up enough, we haven’t prayed that the Word will come alive in us. That’s the prayer we pray this week. Let the Word come alive in us. That we might come alive because of the Word. That we might know life, the life the Word wants to impart, to breathe into us. We aren’t attacking the Word to wrestle out a meaning, we are encountering the Word so that meaning takes root in us.
If you’re able to worship with us at Aldersgate, then you’ll have an opportunity to encounter this Word in worship. I invite you to come prepared to be exposed to God’s Word, vulnerable, risky. Come expecting to be challenged and transformed and loved. If you’re not able to come, you can wait and listen online (www.aldersgatecommunity.org) and let the Word speak into your ears through the computer. Let that spoken Word, that performed Word come alive in you.
Or you can read it yourself. Find a Bible (I’m not pasting the passage here - go look for it), turn to Ephesians 1:1 and read through to Ephesians 2:10. Read it as if it mattered. Read it as if it were a letter from your lover, from your mother, from your teacher, from the friend you hurt a long time ago and have carried the guilt for that hurting ever since. Go and read it as though it was written for you. Because it was.
Next week in this space we’ll do some background on the Letter. I almost did it here, but decided to wait. Right now, I’m just inviting you to dive in. Into the deep waters of the Word of God as found in the Letter to the Ephesians. I’m praying for you as you read, or listen, or dangle your toes in the waters of life, or dive into the depths. I’m praying for you, with Paul. And this is our prayer:
Ephesians 3:14-21 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. 16 I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, 17 and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. 18 I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 20 Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
And amen.
Shalom,
Derek
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