Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Summer Series Week Eight
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
So much of what I believe, so much of what Jesus invites me to consider is a world that is possible. Welcome to the Commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.
Speaker 1:Welcome to church today. My name is Jerry and thanks for being here with us. Couple things before we get rolling. We are getting back ready to launch a new season, season seven here at Commons, if you can believe that. We started this church in 2014 and we will be turning six this September.
Speaker 1:But this September will be a little different than years previous. It won't be quite the party we're used to. We certainly won't be cramming 1,200 plus people into our tiny little building this year. But we miss you, we love you, and we're so thankful that you have stuck with us and continued to journey toward Jesus together. Season six was not exactly what we were expecting, especially not the second half.
Speaker 1:Season seven will no doubt bring its own challenges as well. But we've got new journals at the printers right now. We're excited to get those into your hands. We're gearing up for new ways of grouping together to learn and support each other this year. We've got new ideas on the burner for the fall that we think are going to be a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:And we have in person services in Kensington by reservation. Again, we'd love to see you whenever you're ready. But if anything, this pandemic has reminded us how to shift and be agile and how to expand our imaginations of church. And that is actually what we're talking about today. Imagination.
Speaker 1:And imagination is a word that I use a lot. People have noticed this and they make fun of me sometimes. Like all of us, I do have little linguistic crutches that I tend to fall back on from time to time. Imagination is one of those. But I find imagination a word that is particularly compelling when it comes to the Christian story.
Speaker 1:So much of what I believe, so much of what Jesus invites me to consider is a world that is possible. A world that God has already dreamed up. A world that already exists in the mind, in the imagination of God, in heaven as it will be one day on earth. I mean, when Jesus teaches us to pray, Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. For me, this speaks to the centrality of God's imagination for the world in my experience of it.
Speaker 1:The closer I move toward Jesus, the better I see the world as God sees it. The more that I align my choices with God's intent, the more that I am invited to participate in the co creation of God's preferred future, the future God imagines. But how can any of that begin without the imagination to see a world that is possible? Rachel and I live with a six year old and now a six month old in our house as well, so there is no shortage of imagination that surrounds us. Just last week I went to the comic shop with my son and as we browsed the aisles looking for the next hero to inspire our imaginations he held up a Captain Marvel comic.
Speaker 1:Dad, he said, I found a great comic we could buy for mom. Now seizing the opportunity to perhaps expand his imagination a bit, I said, hey, that's a good one, but we should buy that for you. Boys need heroes that are girls too. To which he said, Ah, obviously, dad, but mom loves Captain Marvel. I watched that movie with her like three times.
Speaker 1:And so a little bit proud and a little bit chastised, I said, Alright, I'll pay. Point is, our imagination of what is possible will take a big idea like equality and make it something obvious and achievable like it is for my son. But it will also take small mindless choices like spending $1 on a reprint como book and remind us of the significance behind even that. Imagination is a big deal. So let's look at our scripture for today and then after that we'll pray and then we'll dive in together.
Speaker 1:We're in Ephesians today. This is chapter three starting in verse 17 all the way through to the end of the chapter. It reads: in love, may have the power as together with all of the Lord's holy people to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen.
Speaker 1:Let's pray. God of all grace, who stretches beyond all of our imaginations, and yet who invites us to imagine with you a preferred future, a tomorrow where your kingdom is at work, alive among us, here in the earth as it is already in heaven. May our imaginations be renewed, be inspired, be enlarged. May we actually begin to understand that our choices, small as they may be, contribute to a future you already see at work in the world right now. Christ, as you lead us, as you guide us, as you reinvent our imaginations, may we be drawn closer to you.
Speaker 1:May your path become our path. And may we begin to see ourselves, to imagine ourselves the way you already see us. In the strong name of the Risen Christ we pray. Amen. Okay.
Speaker 1:Today we're time to talk about rooted and established, power and grasping, surpassing love and this this idea of immeasurably more. But let's start by situating this passage a little bit. Paul is writing to a church in a city called Ephesus and this is sort of his false finish to the letter. He starts to wrap things up here as if he's done, but then of course he goes on to another two chapters describing a bunch more things. Classic preacher power move here.
Speaker 1:Now I kind of like that. Sometimes people imagine Paul writing these letters as if they were a doctoral thesis and there is of course value in writing doctoral theses. No offense Scott. Part of the beauty of the scriptures is that theology often comes to us as conversation between friends. And sometimes those conversations catch a second wind.
Speaker 1:Now there's room for prophets and poetry and words that have been poured over and refined. But sometimes that moment when you already said goodbye and then you think you should say one more thing, you should add I love you one more time. That too is sometimes sacred. Let's look at what Paul says here as he starts to wrap up for the first time in this letter and what that might tell us about our imaginations. He writes, I pray that you being rooted and established in love may have power.
Speaker 1:Now we're going talk about that power in a second here but first of all rooted and established in love is just a really great line. It's hard to say if Paul has explicitly here a point he's trying to make but the words and are kind of neat together because they're both metaphors that mean essentially the same thing but they're drawn from two different worlds. Chryso is literally to take root is the gardening term. A plant extends its roots down and this becomes the basis for its life. Familia, which the NIV has translated established, is literally speaking to the foundations of a building.
Speaker 1:You are grounded or established in the footings or the foundations. So your roots or your foundations are basically the same thing. It's just that one is drawn from the world of biology, the other from the world of architecture. And maybe those in the audience that farmed for a living, they found themselves connected with the one and those that framed houses connected with the other and maybe that's as far as it went for them. Maybe that's all Paul had in mind but I do find the interaction here interesting for myself at least.
Speaker 1:Particularly in that our roots and foundations are grounded in love for Paul. Because when I think of my roots in love and when I imagine flowers and leaves and stems and seeds as the metaphor for love I tend to think of the way that I grow into love and I learn to emote and feel and respond and care with empathy. It's sort of this very organic image of love that comes to mind and I love that. But then when I think of foundations and I think of structural engineering and I imagine a house as the metaphor for love, I tend to think of love in the more structural way how I speak, how I spend, how I vote, how I protest. All of these things together seem far more profound than what either image conjures, for me at least on its own.
Speaker 1:Love is empathic and caring and strategic and deliberate and I really like that. I think part of what we're seeing brought to the forefront right now in culture with conversations about anti racism meaningfully creating space for all at the table is that warm feelings aren't love, at least not on their own. What happens in us needs to be partnered with what happens through us in the world. When that happens, when organic roots become structural foundations, now we're really talking about something significant. My son, who just turned seven this week by the way, happy birthday buddy, has this phrase that he's picked up and when I have messed up and I need to apologize to him I will often say I'm sorry and he will say Well, sorry doesn't make things right, dad.
Speaker 1:And he's right of course. Sorry is a start. It's where things take root, but then we need to build on that. Our love needs to be both emotion and strategy to be actualized. But these are foundations from which Paul says that all that being true about love, I pray that you may have the power to grasp just how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.
Speaker 1:We need to talk about this for a second as well because we're in a moment where power seems to have become completely misconstrued in Christianity. Now the word here is exis quo and at a very basic level it means to be able. So sometimes this passage will be translated I pray that you have the strength or you have the ability to understand and that's fine. In fact it's actually the real intent of the sentence here. But this word, exis quo, does have overtones of power to it.
Speaker 1:In both Jewish and Greek literature this was the strength to overpower someone or the ability to impose yourself on someone. So it wasn't just to be able, it was the power to be able. And so the question then is, well why is Paul using this overpowering, imposing language to talk about grasping love? I think that's part of Paul's point. He's using the language of power to remind us that love subverts our imagination of power.
Speaker 1:When we are grounded in love, when that becomes the structure through which we engage the world, our imagination of power slowly transforms away from our ability to overpower someone or to impose on someone. And it becomes our ability to grasp a new path toward significance. We start to grasp just how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ that gives itself away continually. Paul is literally saying that the only power we grasp for in Christianity is the power to stop grasping for every other expression of power. We grasp Christ's love.
Speaker 1:We grab ahold of self giving. We strive for a life that offers itself to others. And in that, we let go of power. We let go of coercion. We let go of prestige.
Speaker 1:We let go of maintaining our privilege over another. Henry Nouwen called this the downward mobility of Jesus, the movement that calls us to serve. But it brings up some strange stuff here that tends to be a little covered up in our English translations. First, our English translations have added half a sentence here for us to make things easier. Because when Paul says, I pray that you may have the power to grasp how wide and long and high and deep, well he's actually done there.
Speaker 1:Now in English we've added how high and deep is the love of Christ, but Paul actually just leaves it at grasping how wide and long and high and deep. And I think that's really beautiful because none of our manuscripts have any suggestion that part of the text is missing here. This is just what Paul meant to write. And from the context, we can actually tell that the translations like the NIV are on the mark when it comes to his intent. I mean, he's clearly talking it with the love of Christ here.
Speaker 1:So it's not that they're wrong. What I like here is the way that for Paul talking about the dimensions of the universe. For Paul the very concepts of height and depth and width and love, the implied divine love that surrounds us always. As if for Paul grasping the world around us speaks to the goodness around us. As if contemplating where we are right now in this moment wherever we are taking up space, breathing in and out and physically occupying part of God's creation in all of its depth and breadth.
Speaker 1:All of this is part of the mystery of grace. That actually makes more sense to me because when I hear Paul say, I pray that you may have the power to grasp the height and depth and width and length to know this love that surpasses knowledge. I mean, the question I want to ask is, well, how do I understand something that surpasses knowledge? I mean, that just seems contradictory. Part of the problem is trying to clean up Paul's sentence for him, but part of it is also that sometimes translations unintentionally introduce new ideas for us.
Speaker 1:See, knowledge here is the word gnosis, which is the idea of intellectual comprehension what you know. And God's love will surpass your intellect. I don't think that's out of character for Paul to say. But the word grasp here is this word katalambano which actually means to physically grab a hold of something. And that's actually language that we might expect to hear since Paul is talking about height and depth and width and length.
Speaker 1:Now in English we also use grasp for understanding and so that's sort of where our minds tend to go but for Paul the idea here is much more tactile than all that. He's literally saying something more like I pray that you have the power to grab a hold of everything that surrounds you. All of the heights and all of the depths, all of the width and breadth of the human experience as it comes to you. Grab a hold of all of it. Because that is the beginning of understanding surpassing love.
Speaker 1:I find this an incredibly compelling imagination for life. Because what I find is that it pushes back against some of the boundaries that I tend to create for myself. Have I started to imagine that God is present in church but not in the full breadth of my week? Have I started to imagine that God's love for me is defined by how I perceive this particular moment but maybe not in the full length of my journey through all of its twists and turns. Do I see God in heights but not in the depths?
Speaker 1:Do I turn to God in the depths but forget sometimes to be grateful in the heights? And so much of what Paul is doing here is trying to remind us that our imagination of where God is possible determines where we see God in practice. And the bigger your imagination of God, the more you push back the height and the depth and the width and the breadth to see God everywhere, the more present God will seem to be. Because if God is everywhere always, in all of the height and depth and width and breadth of life, and the only barrier to seeing God anywhere is where we're willing to look for the Divine. And so he writes: Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all that we can ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us And by the way, buried in the translation here is just this little play on words.
Speaker 1:Now to him who is able according to his power, that's the word dunamis. And dunamis is where we get words like dynamic or dynamo or dynamite, all powerful stuff. But the idea here is that God is able to do more than you imagine precisely because God is already at work within you. God's power is not something to be grasped because God's power is already within us if only we can grab ahold of God's love. This is good stuff from Paul.
Speaker 1:Parikh Taliard Duchardin once said, Someday after we've mastered the winds and the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energy of love. And then for the second time in history of the world we will have discovered fire. And that seems very much in line with what Paul has in mind here. Everything you need already surrounds you. Everything you need is already within you if you can grab a hold of it.
Speaker 1:And then he adds, To Him be glory in the Church, in Christ Jesus, throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. So think about this today when it comes to your imagination. If God is really surrounding you and with you, above you and below you, filling you with the power to love in surprising ways right now, today, And if often the only limit to your ability to change the world for the better was your misconception of what that power really looked like, then what would you imagine for yourself tomorrow? Would it be a transformed status quo in your family?
Speaker 1:A more intentional, consistent investment every single day from you as a partner or spouse or both? Perhaps as a parent would it be a change in career or risk that you know that you're passionate about even in the midst of a season of economic uncertainty? Would you imagine yourself letting go of hurts that you've carried around for maybe a little bit too long, scars that have become part of your identity in ways that you really don't want them to be anymore? Maybe you imagine forgiveness in small steps finding its home in the core of your being. Because here's the thing, I think God imagines all of this for you.
Speaker 1:I think all of this becomes possible when you begin to grasp not for more power, but instead to grab a hold of the height and the width and the depth and the length of everything that surrounds you with God's love right now. Often the thing that stands between you and God's imagination for you is your imagination for yourself. And as you push back the boundaries, the height, the depth, the width, the breadth, and you begin to imagine God all around you all the time, all of the things that you have dreamt about will become possible imaginations for your tomorrow, things that with God's help and power in you, you can begin to work toward. Let us pray. God, for all the ways that our imaginations for our self fall short of yours, Would you, by your spirit, be present to each of us speaking to us possibility?
Speaker 1:May we become captured, not by the power we're able to grab a hold of, not by the coercion that we're able to exert on another, not by the ways that we can manipulate circumstances for our good, but by the love that floods into us, that surrounds us, that empowers us to love in new ways, to serve in unexpected ways, to participate with you in the creation of your kingdom and commonwealth here on earth as it already is in your imagination of heaven. God, may all of our choices be aligned with the way of Christ. And in that, may we come to know ourselves the way that you already know us. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.