Ephesians 3:14-21

 

     I know you will find this hard to believe but when I was in the fourth grade I got blamed for something I did not do.  I was at school and we were coming in from recess. There was some pushing and shoving in our line as we were going up the steps and one person got knocked down.  When we got back to our classroom the fifth grade teacher came into our room and called me up front.  All of a sudden she started blaming me for the commotion in the line.  I tried to explain to her that it was not me but she would not listen.

 

      Frankie Vandermark came forward to let Mrs. Purcell know that it was not me, that he was the guilty party.  At that point she said it was someone who had a silver colored hood on the back of their jacket.  So she had me go into the cloakroom and get my coat.  Of course my coat had a silver colored hood.  She told Frankie that if he ever lied to her again she would slap him. 

 

       The truth was that Frankie wasn't lying.  He also had a silver colored hood on his coat but Mrs. Purcell did not ask him to get his coat.  She was convinced that I was the guilty party.  The facts bore that out when she saw my coat.  The trouble was that the facts were not the same as the truth.

 

     The first three words of the text, "for this reason" send us back to what preceded those words.  Our text is a prayer.  Paul is saying that I am praying this prayer because of what I have already shared with you.  Paul is giving thanks that the Gentiles have heard the gospel and have believed in the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ.  Jesus has made Jew and Gentile one.  For this reason Paul bows in prayer before God.

 

     But as I read Paul's prayer I have a difficult time distinguishing between the truth and the facts.  According to what Paul wrote previously in Ephesians the truth is that Christ is our peace, Christ has made us both one.  He has broken down the dividing wall of hostility.  And then I look at the world in which we live and I see war in the Middle East, I see division in denominations, I see feuding in congregations, I see abuse in families.  And I wonder, where is the peace, the oneness.  Where is the evidence that the dividing wall has come down?  There seems to be a difference between the truth spoken in scripture and the facts of the world in which we live.

 

       In Paul's prayer we read about the truth of the love of Christ.  The truth is that the love of God surpasses all knowledge.  It is a love that welcomes home the prodigal son, that forgives those who people who hung him on a cross, that says he who is without sin cast the first stone.  We cannot discern the breadth and length and height and depth of this love.  The facts are that people are hurting and suffering and wondering where that love is, why that love doesn't do something.   Again there seems to be a difference between the truth of the prayer and the facts of our lives.

 

        Last week I read Leaving Church by Barbara Brown Taylor.  In talking about her ministry in the Episcopal church she had this to say, "On my worst nights I lay in bed feeling like a single parent, unable to sleep because I knew I did not have enough love in me to go around."  She didn't have enough love to take care of everyone in her congregation and in her family.. 

 

       Barbara is not alone in feeling that way.  I think many of us would affirm that statement.  We don't have enough love to cover our aging parents, our spouse, our children, our grandchildren, our friends, the people we work with, our sisters and brothers at church.  We just can't love them all they way they need to be loved.  It is humanly impossible. 

 

         Barbara's next line is this: "God is the boundless lover."  That is the truth that we all believe and affirm along with Paul.  We cannot comprehend the breadth, length, height and depth of God's love.  This is the same Paul who wrote in I Corinthians 13 about the three gifts of faith, hope and love and that the greatest of these is love. 

 

          This is the God who continued to love David after he lusted after another man's wife and eventually had that man put to death.  This is the God who allowed his son to be killed on a cross so that sinners like us could have new life.  There are no limits to his love.

 

          And yet we try to put limits on it.  And as soon as we put limits on God's love we begin to build walls between us and others.  All of a sudden there are the insiders and the outsiders.  Paul wrote in Galatians, in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, there is neither male nor female.  You all are one in Jesus.

 

         Remember that God's call to Abraham included that following statement: "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."   God's purpose has always been reconciliation.   The facts of our lives speak to division, warfare, hatred.  The truth speaks of a God who will bring reconciliation to a broken world and broken people.  Pray that we would be drawn closer to the one whose purpose is reconciliation.  May we live as people who are loved by a God who is a boundless lover.  May we not allow the facts of the world blur our understanding of the truth of God.