I wish I could play the piano. Not just picking out a tune with my right hand, but really playing - composers like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart. As most of you know, my mother plays. She’ll be back here in May, and Martie’s already agreed to let her play for the service. Even though she’s done with her 18-year project to complete all the Beethoven sonatas, she’s still giving annual concerts. And when I was growing up the piano was always playing in the background. Of course I wanted to play too. So - I took lessons for 8 years. But did I learn to play like my mother? Nope. Not a chance. Because I didn't practice. Scales were BORING, and besides, sitting on the piano bench for even half an hour made my back ache. My mother, on the other hand, practiced for 6 hours a day. She played exercises for an hour before she even started on performance material. And whenever she started learning a new piece she would work over and over and over on each phrase until she got it right. At 85, she still practices nearly two hours every day. I knew what it cost to be the kind of pianist my mother was. I loved the music - but I didn't want it badly enough to put in the effort that it took.
It's a good thing that God doesn’t give up just because his creation keeps producing discords, isn’t it. Failing to the follow through is not one of the divine attributes. God repeats things over and over - until we get it right.
If we can understand that, then we can see that when Paul prays for the Ephesians he’s not just voicing a vain hope, sort of a "wouldn't it be nice if..." He's asking for something that is already theirs, and he’s also praying for us, because it's ours as well.. Paul prays for us to receive what God wants for us, and has already offered to us. And God has a purpose for us, the church of Jesus Christ, that is a whole lot bigger than any earthly artist's performance.
Since its been nearly two months since we looked at the first part of this chapter, let me remind you of what Paul said in v. 10, just a few verses earlier. He says that God's plan for his church is that "the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places." Now, that's a pretty big deal, when you stop to think about it. The idea of human beings actually demonstrating God's wisdom to the "rulers and authorities" is a heavy responsibility. It's also pretty kind of hard to believe. Imagine the audience up there watching, snickering every time humanity makes another collective nose dive or prat-fall, elbowing each other and whispering things like, "I told him it'll never get off the ground."
But the success of God's plan is not up to us - thank God. He has taken our human shortcomings into account. He has provided every resource we could possibly need, and all we have to do is ask.
We mustn't make the mistake, though, of assuming that God is just going to wave a wand and make us instant Maestros. We have to travel the road he has laid out for us ourselves. We can't delegate it, and we can't just read guidebooks. We have to do it. Now, mind, God provides everything we could possibly need for the journey: food, clothing, maps, shelter. We are guided, accompanied, empowered and rewarded by His love. But walk it we must. We have to build spiritual muscle, so to speak.
My mother had to abandon her music for several years, and when she took it up again her hands wouldn't obey her. I particularly remember the way she worked on the Chopin Polonaise Militaire because it has a killing series of left-hand octaves in double time. She worked until she was nearly weeping with pain. She knew the music - but her hands wouldn't cooperate, because she wasn't in practice. What's inside your head isn't enough. You have to practice. Your body - your reflexes - your habits of behavior and response - have to be trained. And love is like that, too. Being told about the love of God doesn't make you able to experience it. You have to practice love in order to have it.
But how do you practice the love of God? In Eph 3:14-21 Paul has outlined a sequence of 4 steps for us to take.
The first step is to claim the grace, goodness and power of God. Look at verses 14-16.
"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. 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."
For what reason? Remember those plans God has for us. That's one reason. But beyond that, we are members of God's family. We are his adopted children, co-heirs with Christ. Because we are His children, it is proper for us to look to God to supply our needs. It is the delight of a father to supply his family with evidence of His wealth. God's children are advertisements for his generosity. And because God has plans for us, which are for our good and his glory, we may confidently ask for what we need to fulfill those plans.
My parents weren't wealthy. But their dearest value, their highest priority was their children's education. Therefore, even when they had to go without things, they paid for most of my college tuition. What's more, they were willing to do so even after I dropped out of two schools in a row. They wanted me to get an education. When I asked for what they wanted to give me, they couldn't have been happier. And God is like that, only more so. Luke quotes Jesus as saying,
"Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" [Lk 11:11-13]
Because God wants us to know and respond to and grow in his love, we are invited - in fact begged - to ask him to give us what we need to do it. And because without him we can do nothing, we must ask him to equip us.
All too often, we - clergy and laity alike - see the work we do in ministry as gifts we make to God, whereas in reality it's the other way around. The work we do in ministry is God's gift to us. The right approach isn't to say, "Look what I've done for you, now can I have a blessing?" It's "Please give me the blessing of having something worthwhile to do with my life." This is similar to the idea that took the country by storm a few years back in The Prayer of Jabez: "Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my border.” [1 Ch 4:10] Give me something important to
do! And the most important thing we can do is to serve Jesus Christ. So let's not be timid about asking to be empowered to do just that. There's nothing in the fine print on this offer that says " offer good while supplies last."
So of course the second step is to invite Jesus into your life. Now, in this company, most of us have done that already, right? It's taken care of, we don't need to do it again. But is that process ever really ever over? Let's take a good look at v.17.... "that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." There are three key ideas here. Let's take them in reverse order, shall we?
The first is faith. Now, that's a pretty big subject; entire shelves of books have been written on faith. But I want to emphasize one particular aspect of faith here, which is trust. Vital faith is trust in God. It is because we trust Jesus that we invite him in. And when we say we trust him, that means that we will let him manage our lives. We turn over our right to direct our own lives because we know that Jesus makes better decisions than we do.
The second key idea is heart. The heart isn't just the seat of emotions, as we tend to think of it in the 20th century. It's the essential identity, the life force, the person's true self, and it includes mind and will as well as feeling. We are to invite Jesus into the very center of our lives, the control room, as it were. The third idea is of dwelling. Christ is to live in us, not just get parked in the living room to be entertained, or to be trotted out on show when we have company over. We're to let Jesus be free of all the messy closets and leaky plumbing and moldy cellars of our minds.
Now, this may sound a little odd, but I think Jesus is a gentleman. He doesn't go where he's not invited. If you keep steering him away from the locked cupboards he won't insist. But the job we originally asked him to do will be incomplete. Sometimes we act as if we think Jesus doesn't know what we have so carefully hidden from the world - sometimes even from ourselves. The point I am trying to make is that the presence of Jesus in our lives is for our benefit, to clean out our inner selves. Our job is to make the rounds with Jesus. He does all the dirty work. He does the heavy lifting. But we have to go with him. We hand him the keys to those locked doors - or, sometimes, grant permission to lay explosives - depending on what kind of mess the inside of your head (or heart) is in. And the reason it's important is that getting our insides straightened out is central to everything we do in Jesus' name. Jesus said, "what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defiles a person..." [Mt 15:18- 19] Jesus also said, "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." Mt 12:34 Only Jesus, through his Spirit, can
clean out our hearts so that what flows naturally from our hearts and out of our mouths can be a credit to him. And it doesn't work just to ask him in at our conversion and then forget about it. The same process goes on throughout
all of our lives.
Now I said at the beginning that Paul gave us directions for how to practice love, and I haven't even mentioned the word yet. When am I going to get to the meat of the matter? Well, we're finally ready. We've gotten out the music, and the piano's been tuned. Now we can finally start practicing.
The third step is to display the love of Christ. Paul's prayer continues: "as you are being rooted and grounded in love, I pray that you may have power to comprehend, with all the saints, the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge... [v. 17b-19]
What does it mean to be rooted and grounded in love? We covered those in the first two points. We're rooted in God's love, and the presence of the Holy Spirit within us establishes the ground, so to speak, for beginning the building. Because of this, what God has already done for us, we may begin to get a sense of the magnitude of his love ... Paul is almost searching for words here, to describe size - it's so wide that.... it's so long that.... it's so high that .... it's so deep that.... Words failed him, and they fail me, too.
Grasping - comprehending - alone isn't enough. The mind can't handle it. It's not a matter of understanding, but of relating - intimate, reciprocal involvement, something that grows in the interchange between two people. The English poet W. H. Auden said "Our bodies cannot love. But without them, what works of love could we do?" Christ's love is spiritual, but it's not just in our heads. It is far beyond words. It isn't a concept, or a metaphor, it's an active verb, and it takes two people to make it come to life.
Jesus loves us. We know that by what he has given us, what he has done for us. But how do we do our part? How on earth can we love Jesus back?
After washing washes the disciples' feet, before the last supper, Jesus says, "I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you." [Jn 13:15] He goes on to say, "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another." [Jn 13:34] Again, in the next chapter, he says, "Those who love me will keep my word." [Jn 14:23] Matthew reports even more specific instructions: “. . .I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.' [Mt 25:35- 36] Jesus ends by saying, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.' [Mt 25:40]
So you see, over and over again, Jesus tells us that it is in loving others that we act on our love for Jesus. And this love is specific. It reaches out to one person at a time. Jesus' love is not abstract. It is not vague or general. It is personal. In the late 60's, the heyday of the hippie era, the rock musical Hair came out. It had a song in it that I've never forgotten, called "Easy to Be Hard." It started "How can people be so heartless?" and goes on with "Especially people who care about strangers, who say they care about social injustice. Do you only care about the
bleeding crowd? How about a needing friend? I need a friend." Your neighbor is the person beside you who is hurting. Love that person.
As we love one another we come to fathom more completely how Christ loves us... somehow, as we give love we know love in new ways. What Jesus has done for us becomes both clearer and more wonderful, and somehow we are filled more fully with the grace of God.
And that shows us that step number four is really step number one all over again - only starting a little bit higher, a little bit closer to God.
For the journey of faith is like a spiral stair, the whole held up by the love of God, but the sequence of steps always the same. Commit yourself to the grace of God. Surrender more of yourself to Christ. And love the people he puts in your path as if he himself were before you - for he is.
We can't even guess, much less see where that staircase will lead, for as Paul says, "by the power that is at work within us, he is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we ask or imagine." [v. 20] But as we commit ourselves to following the path God opens up before us, we will begin to catch glimpses. This is how the church is to glorify God. It is in loving one another that we who are the followers of Jesus Christ will bring him the glory that will demonstrate God's wisdom in "the heavenly places."
This is His commandment: that we love one another as he has loved us. It is as easy - and as impossible - as that.
