Ephesians 2:11-22
So we were shipwrecked
last week at Summer Celebration VBS on a deserted island where we learned about the
ways Jesus rescues us when we are lonely or struggling or powerless. And, as
you can see, it was an immersive, sensory experience, with videos projected onto
the sail of our ship, craft projects, games, participatory Bible lessons,
creative snacks, and lots of singing and dancing. And it will be an experience
that many of those children will always remember. I know this because I can
still vividly recall the first VBS I ever went to, the summer after second
grade. It was not nearly as elaborate as ours, but it was still tactile and
engaging. And in particular I remember playing with a model of Jerusalem
and eating figs. I had never had a fig before, and Fig Newtons had not prepared
me for the real thing. And it was all so real and so cool. Arriving there in
the morning felt like that moment in the Wizard of Oz when the movie switches
from black and white to color. Or maybe a better way to put it was that my
sense of God and faith went from being a flat, two-dimensional picture to being
a full, three-dimensional reality.
We want that for our
children, of course, but we need that for ourselves as well. It is easy to
settle for a flat, two-dimensional faith. One way that some people do that is
to treat religion essentially as a system of rules, with rewards and
punishments. In that system, we have the rules spelled out. If we obey them, we
get rewarded; if we break them, we get punished. And in that system, Jesus
becomes the chief law enforcer, the one who will judge how well we follow the
rules. And, of course, rules have their place: religious laws at least give us
an idea of what is good and wholesome, and what is wrong and destructive. And,
what’s more, we know the rules: the basic rules have been remarkably consistent
down through the ages and around the world. We know we’re not supposed to lie
and steal and kill. We know we’re supposed to behave well: some version of the
Golden Rule (Do to others what you would want them to do to you.) can be found
in every major religious tradition. And we don’t even need Jesus to tell us
what the rules are: when he sums up the law in the two great commandments to
love God and love others, he’s just quoting the Old Testament. If religion is
just about knowing and following the rules . . . well, we have all the
information we need. We don’t need Jesus or the Holy Spirit; we certainly don’t
need to be here now.
But such a flat,
two-dimensional approach to faith fails miserably. Obeying religious rules is
merely a first step. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul describes the Law as
our paidagogos, our babysitter, whose purpose is to watch over us until
we are ready for the Real Thing. You’ll notice that in the Gospels, Jesus is
often a rule-breaker: he heals on the Sabbath, he eats unclean foods, he hangs
out with notorious sinners. His major issue with the religious authorities of
his day was that they used religious laws to oppress people and to actually
hide from God. So Jesus didn’t come to replace one set of rules with another.
He came to set us free and give us abundant life, to help us move from black
and white to color, from two-dimensional surviving to three-dimensional living.
All of this helps
prepare us to understand the passage from Ephesians we heard today. Ephesians
is a remarkable letter which focuses on new life and transformation. It
includes one of the greatest prayers found anywhere in the Bible: 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, and that Christ
may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in
love. I pray that you may have power to comprehend, with all the saints, what
is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ
that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of
God (3:16-19). The letter goes on to exhort us to always be filled with the
Spirit. And from that same letter, this is what we hear today: [Christ] has
abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he night create in
himself one new humanity.
If that doesn’t shake
the dust off our spiritual rafters and inspire us, then we’re just not hearing
the message. God has huge plans for us, beyond what we can even imagine, Jesus
didn’t die and rise again to create a bunch of passive rule followers: he died
and rose to create a transformed humanity — women, men, and children filled
with the Spirit of God. Now the particular transformation addressed in this
passage concerns the relationship between Jews and Gentiles: some Jewish
Christians were using the rules to keep themselves separate from Gentile
believers, but the Apostle Paul would have none of that: the cross of Christ
blows all such distinctions away. All walls crumble before the love of God, who
calls us to embrace all people. That was the transformation those early Jewish
believers had to go through, and that is still a pertinent message for us. We
live in an increasingly polarized, tribal society, with a lot of “us versus
them” thinking. Learning to reach out and love beyond racial, ethnic,
political, national, and religious lines is no doubt one way the Holy Spirit is
seeking to change people and give them fuller life.
But it’s not the only
way. How is the Spirit seeking to transform us, to move us beyond a flat,
two-dimensional religion to a vibrant, three-dimensional faith? What is the
Spirit trying to do in your life? Even to ask that question is a step forward
into transformed living. Not long ago, after one of our Bible studies, someone
wrote to me and told me she had never done anything like that before, and that
she was enjoying it and it was really making a positive difference in her life.
Now, participating in a Bible study may not seem like a big deal, but for that
person, it was a big step forward. And I hear things like that regularly from
people taking risks and trying new things: taking on leadership roles they
hadn’t had before, trying new ways of praying, volunteering to help out at
Summer Celebration or with other ministries, putting their faith into action.
For all of us, the question is, “What is the next step for me?” The goal is not
to be transformed overnight: we are on a journey that will last for eternity.
We simply need to be open to what the Spirit is doing in our lives today, how
She is seeking right now to expand our faith and enlarge our hearts and make us
more open to God, more open to each other, and more fully alive. I suppose we
could settle for black and white rule following, just as I suppose we could
refuse to grow up. But why would we do that, when there is such an amazing
reality for us to experience and rejoice in? So let’s experience it and rejoice
in it. I can’t think of any other reason for us to be here right now.
No comments:
Post a Comment