Hope On Christ

Sunday, November 7, 2010

All Saints C

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

Ephesians 1:11-23

Theme: Resting in the sufficiency (and the Glory) of Christ

¹¹In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, ¹²so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. ¹³In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; ¹⁴this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.

¹⁵I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason ¹⁶I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. ¹⁷I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, ¹⁸so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, ¹⁹and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. ²⁰God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, ²¹far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. ²²And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, ²³which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

We were a bunch of college students, most of us coming from a very protected childhood, venturing out into the world of urban missions.  The previous day we had boarded two 15-passenger vans in the parking lot of First Baptist Church, Bowling Green, KY, and driven northeast for a bit and then directly north along the Indiana-Illinois line until we reached Chicago.  We pulled into our hotel parking lot, looking out the windows with sometimes more than a little apprehension as we drove into and through the Uptown neighborhood, where we were going to be spending the next 2 or 3 days doing door-to-door canvassing, and inviting people to come to our host church, Uptown Baptist Church, for services. 

We got up the next morning and drove the few blocks to the church to have breakfast before heading out into the community.  We brought our own breakfast – nothing fancy – cereal and milk, some fruit, coffee, of course.  Then we were given a brief tour of the church’s facilities.  The Church, a relatively young congregation, had decided to rent an existing building, and it was big, but it was also run down and aging, drafty, and in need of repairs.  I remember the young man giving the tour talking about the plans and the vision that the church had for using their space.    

The final stop in the tour was the sanctuary.   We dutifully took our seats, and this young man, an associate pastor of the church, who I believe was in seminary at the time, shared a brief devotional with us.  He read to us from the same passage we just heard.  He underscored verses 18-19:

¹⁸so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, ¹⁹and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.

At the time I was 19 going on 20, and was just beginning to come to grips with the fact that I was needing to work out what I believed and why I believed it for myself – what I’ve shared with you before as the transformative time in my faith pilgrimage that began in college and lasted through … well, that is still going on today, actually.  But when he read those words – so that with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe…  it resonated with me in a way that it had never done before.

His words were words of encouragement as we set out to canvas the neighborhood surrounding the church, to find out what needs there were, what kind of response there might be to the idea of a relatively new church starting in what was apparently one of the roughest areas of the city.  What remained with me through those subsequent days of walking and visiting and knocking on doors and talking to the other folks in the group was that sense of the wonder of what we were carrying around and were saying we wanted to share …

It was springtime, and the nights were still cool, but the days were getting warm, so it was a good time to be walking around outdoors.  The Uptown neighborhood had, at some point in the past, been a thriving cultural area of the city.  There were stately old homes and old apartment buildings, as well as housing projects.  I never felt unsafe, and the people we met were all friendly and generally helpful and attentive, but they were also a little distant.  We were obviously NOT from the city – NONE of us.  And coming from Kentucky, a fair number of us drew smiles simply by opening our mouths and saying “good morning”. 

As we continued through the neighborhood canvassing, those phrases, the riches of his glorious inheritance, and the immeasurable greatness of his power kept running through my head. 

Since then, every time I’ve read that passage, I remember that morning, shivering in an old drafty sanctuary, getting ready to step way out of my comfort zone and talk to strangers about their faith. 

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is unique in one particular way.  Some of the earliest manuscripts of the letter do not have the specific opening greeting to the church at Ephesus.  It simply reads ‘To the Saints who are faithful in Jesus Christ’, rather than ‘to the Saints who are in Ephesus and who are faithful in Jesus Christ’.  Some scholars believe that it may be a true circular letter – one intended from the beginning to be read to MANY congregations in a given region – to be passed from one church to the next, or copied and forwarded from one church to the next. 

In many ways, this holds up.  Its themes are, if not universal, at least general and common for the time and the area.  Paul speaks to how they should treat each other, with kindness, with gentleness. He speaks to how children should be with their parents, as well as parents with their children and with each other.  He speaks of how the faithful should stand in the face of idolatry and immorality; Ephesians is where we find the armor of faith passage in chapter 5, as well as those passages that speak to how the church is blessed by different people having different gifts in chapter 4.  Ephesians is replete with practical advice about the life of faith: a kind of nuts and bolts listing of … tools in the toolbox, but not quite so formulaic, not quite so cut and dried.

But it all starts … well … at the beginning.  There may be some disagreement as to whether Paul was a task theologian or a systematic one.  That is, did Paul think through what his theology became apart from the circumstances he was confronted with, which would be a systematic approach to theology – to ‘thoughts about God’ – or did he let the circumstances he found himself in inform his understanding of the movement of God and what God was about – a task orientation? 

And at the beginning we find this wonderful reminder of the preciousness of what we are carrying inside – what we are recipients of – and what we have access to as Christ followers:  the riches of his glorious inheritance and the immeasurable greatness of his power.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?  

I wonder how much of our life of faith is lived in the full knowledge of just what it is we hold within us?  I know I don’t always live in that fullness, that assurance of the inheritance that is so glorious.  I am distracted by wavering convictions, doubts, and worries that pile up sometimes on a daily and sometimes on an hourly basis.  Even knowing this passage, even having committed it to heart, I need that reminder to ‘reset’ my uncertainty.  It is a constant struggle, and it is one that I am resigned to be dealing with for the rest of my life. 

But even in the periodic absence of that wonder, I stand on Christ’s promise of presence.  On the promise that we – that I – would never be alone.  So my faith does not rest on how I am feeling on any given day, but on the assurance that God has provided for me – for us – to live out his life in such a way as to magnify him, to glorify him, to reflect him into the world.  And that is why I can step out of my comfort zone – in the faith that I know Christ showed – and make myself available to him for what he has for me to do. 

It is in that way that we can live with our hope on Christ, and not on anything else. 

Let’s pray.