Let Us Bow To Our Father

This is my sermon for August 9, 2009.    

Text: Ephesians 3:14-21

Let Us Bow To Our Father

 

Why do you pray?  Why do you follow God?   Why do you bow before Him?  What is the secret to a life full of God?  

 

Every now and again I get pulled into discussions about heaven and hell.   It’s good for the soul, I think, to ponder our ultimate destiny or the telos of all things.   Most of us, myself included, if we are honest, go through life day by day without really asking the hard questions.   We don’t ask, “Where is this action, this thought, this deed, this lifestyle, this whatever, leading?  What is the telos, or aim, of it all?”   We don’t ask this question, or at least I don’t, because it is easier not to.   Ignorance is bliss, or so it would seem.   If I don’t ask I don’t need to face the reality that what I am doing is really leading to nothing.  Perhaps even death.   If I don’t ask the question I don’t have to own up to the fact that there are several things in my life that drain life rather than give it.   If I don’t ask I don’t have to come face to face with my own sinfulness and my own desperate need for a Savior.  

 

So discussions about heaven and hell and the life after this can be of great benefit.  As you will recall, up until this point in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, Paul has gone to great lengths to make these Gentiles realize that before Christ they were dead.  They were aliens, strangers, without hope, without God, without a telos.   They had only today to live for, for tomorrow they may die.   The good news, Paul says, is that they have now become partakers of a great inheritance and are now members of the household of God.   Just as Israel had always known that God was with them and was taking Creation towards Shalom, towards peace – they knew this even in the face of great adversity – now, also, the Gentiles can have this understanding for themselves.   They are being gathered up in Christ Jesus, just as all things are, and God’s telos for the world is now our telos.    We have not been left alone.

 

This brings me to the recent discussions I have had about hell.  I am always fascinated when I hear a person tell me that unless there is the consequence of a literal, eternal hell than no one will do what is right.  We will live as hedonists as though there were no God. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.    For many, many years this has been the mantra of the Church.   Many of you sitting here today may have first come to know God out of a fear of going to hell.   All the more proof that God can use any thing, even bad preaching, to wake us up to the salvation that is ours in Jesus.   

 

So while there is indeed a place and time to speak of hell, and make no mistake about it, all of us will face judgment before a holy and righteous God, I am not convinced that it does us any good when it comes to conforming us to the image of Jesus Christ, which ought to be the aim or telos of every Christian (Eph. 4:15).   It is not hell that motivates us to be better followers of Christ.   No, just the opposite.  It is love.  

 

Our text today is a prayer.  Here, in this prayer, Paul bows before the Father from whom every family in heaven and  on earth takes its name.  Did you hear that?  Every family.  Not just some.  Not just those who go to church.  Not just those who behave.   Every family on heaven and on earth.   If God is the Father of everyone than that makes everyone God’s child.   

Friends, you are a beloved child of God.   Friends, whether you know it or not, whether you have been running from it or not, whether you are even ready at this time to acknowledge it or not – you are a beloved child of God.   Nothing can change that fact about you.   No matter what the world has thrown at you you can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have a Father who loves you and longs to see you home.    

 

It is this Father, according to the riches of his glory, who gives us strength and power to grow in Christ as we are continually being rooted and grounded in love.   This Father does this.  No one else.  Nothing else.    This Father longs to resurrect new life in his children.  This Father has the capacity and the power to do so!   No one else.  Nothing else.    Friends, this is good news the world needs to hear again and again!  If we are not bowing our knees before this Father than we cannot and will not be rooted and grounded in love.  We cannot and will not be moving towards the Shalom, the peace, that God has in mind for us and for all of Creation.   If we bow before something else we will die.   Even those of us raised in the church all our lives need to hear this again and again – we cannot and must not bow to anything or anyone but our Father in heaven or we will die.   Some of us here today don’t need to hear about hell after death because we are already living it.   If that is you, let me ask simply:  Who or what are you bowing to?    

 

Paul goes on to pray that we may all comprehend, that we may all come to know with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ’s love – a love that surpasses all knowledge, so that we may be filled with the fullness of God.    Paul does not pray that we may be filled with fear of hell or the consequences of our actions.  He does not wish to scare anyone into a life with God.  No.  Paul prays that everyone would come to know just how much God loves us in Christ Jesus because Paul knows that when we can grasp the breadth and length and height and depth of this love we will be filled with the fullness of God himself.   

 

We don’t need to hear more about hell because some of us, if we are honest, already taste it.   Hell comes in all shapes and sizes.   It sucks the life out of our relationships.  It inhibits us from being real with others or from knowing true joy, hope, peace and love.  It robs us of the keen sense that what we are doing and living has a telos, a goal, and that it is one God calls good.   Hell for many of us looks like addictions or sickness or suffering or greed or abandonment or isolation or hunger or homelessness or inability to love or be loved or even our own self sufficiency.   It can feel at times as though we are wallowing with the pigs, up to our necks in mud, as though we have squandered everything.   Like the prodigal son did, Paul prays that we all would wake up and return home to the Father who is the Father of every one – a Father who has been keeping the light on all this time and longs to embrace us, love us and throw a big party to celebrate our homecoming.   

 

We don’t need to hear more about hell.  John tells us that Jesus came to the world not to condemn but to save.   In fact, those who do not know Jesus are already condemned. Without Jesus we are already in hell.   We need to hear more about the God who has defeated hell.  We need to hear more about God’s love for us that surpasses all understanding so that we may be filled with the fullness of God – with Shalom.

 

 

This past week for your pastor has been hell.   And yet, in the midst of it I have witnessed the hand of a God who sees fit to reach into the tombs of our lives and call forth new life.   I have witnessed first hand the breadth and length and height and depth of God’s love.  

I have seen grace.

I have seen love.

I have seen words of judgment and rebuke tethered by a God who wants to see a life changed for the purpose of bringing about healing, redemption, and salvation.

I have witnessed this first hand and I have seen the Spirit’s power at work in you and in others whom God has placed in my life.

Such people reminded me that the response of Christians when hell seems to be closing in us on all sides is to pray.  We, like Paul, bow our knees to our Father in heaven.  We pray not fully knowing what tomorrow may hold for us personally but convinced that tomorrow is empty and full of death if we do not draw our strength from the one who has defeated death.   And we pray also knowing that even what we ask may fall short of God’s greater plan.   We pray with confidence in the one whose power and work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or even imagine.   To him be all glory and honor to all generations, now and forever.    Amen.

 

Now, brothers and sisters, will you join me here at this altar as we bow our knees before our Father, and pray that we each may be filled with the fullness of God….