Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Ephesians 3:14-21, John 6:1-21.
In most of the world throughout human history, “power” refers to political power, wealth, or both. It is the ability to do as you please, and to force others to do what you want them to do. For centuries now, Christian church structures have been caught up in secular power as well. In the time after the fall of the Roman Empire, the Roman Catholic Church wielded power and influence throughout Europe, choosing and guiding rulers. The Reformation disrupted this arrangement, and a wider range of church leaders sought political power. Here in America, some traditions rejected involvement in politics, notably the Mennonites and similar Anabaptists, where others openly embraced theocracy, notably the Puritans. Early in the 20th century, Christian fundamentalism arose in response to modernism. The Scopes Monkey Trial is perhaps the best-known example of fundamentalist striving for power. Fundamentalist William Jennings Bryant won the trial, but fundamentalism lost public support. Not long afterwards, the movement disavowed political ambitions, turning instead towards cultural institutions like colleges.
Then in the 1970s, a new generation of evangelical leaders built a political movement on the established fundamentalist cultural structures. The Christian Right emerged to support politicians who would enact the laws that aligned with their religious beliefs. This has been an amazingly successful strategy. Unfortunately, any striving after political power ultimately involves compromises, which have sullied the name of Christianity in the public consciousness. It is probably not coincidental that the white evangelical church has been in decline for a while now, with a rising average membership age due to a dearth of young adults.
Over the past few years, a new movement has emerged, the Christian Left. The reality is that there are a similar number of practicing Christians on both ends of the political spectrum, but they are better organized on the right. The Christian Left seeks to build coalitions to enact their vision of public Christianity. Unfortunately, this movement too is destined to run into the compromises and hypocrisies that arise when striving for worldly power. I have seen some Christian Left memes and Facebook posts that are clearly political but not so clearly Christian. So begins the road that leads to elevating worldly goals above our commitment to God.
Jesus lived in a time of great political turmoil. There were many Jewish leaders that were working to overturn the existing power structures, to expel the Roman occupiers, to establish a new nation devoted to worshipping God. Jesus was not that kind of Messiah, though. After the feeding of the five thousand, when the crowd sought to make him a king, he withdrew to place where he could be in private communion with God. Jesus preached and taught that the kingdom of God, or kin-dom of God, was already at hand, and is not of this world. The good news was and is the in-breaking of God’s power to all of us. What power did he mean? What gospel did Paul write about to his Gentile audience?
Let’s remember that Paul did much of his writing in prison. He knew worldly power from both sides. In his younger days, he persecuted Christians under authority from the Jewish leaders. After his conversion, he ended up as one persecuted, receiving floggings in synagogues, being cast out, being arrested by Roman authorities in cities around the empire. Yet he wrote about a greater power. God’s power didn’t free him from prison, but instead gave him the ability to endure prison and punishment. God’s power is love: love of your family, love of your friends, love of your enemies, love of those who persecute you and revile you. Paul experienced God’s love in a personal way, and it empowered him to spread the Gospel to Gentiles around the Near East.
God’s love is still at work today. It enables us to grow into the people that Christ desires as his body, which is the church. God’s love heals broken hearts, broken relationships, broken communities. God’s love is here today, and will go with us when we leave this sanctuary.
Paul prays that we will know the length, breadth, height, and depth of God’s love. Now, I’m an engineer, and I can see right away that there is redundancy in this list. We have three dimensions, X, Y, and Z. X and Y are the length and breadth. Why does Paul use two words for the Z dimension: height and depth? Well, let’s set aside our modern perspective and go back to an ancient worldview. In ancient Near Eastern cosmology, there was the surface of the land and sea where we live, the “waters above,” that is, the heavens, and the “waters below,” that is, the underworld. The “height” was the heavens where God resides. The “depth” was the underworld. In the Greek tradition, the underworld was Hades, where the dead were punished, I suppose just because they were dead. In the Jewish tradition, the underworld was Sheol, where the dead would rest. Some Jewish thought picked up the Greek perspective and imagined Sheol as the place where the wicked dead were punished. Paul is picking up a theme, though, from Psalm 139:
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
Psalm 139:7-8
God is everywhere. This is sometimes called “panentheism.” “Pantheism” is a belief that all things are God, but “panentheism” is a belief that God is in all things. Like the psalmist, Paul is saying that God is not only in the highest heavens, but also in the depths among the dead.
I believe in universal salvation. I believe that in Christ, God was reconciling all things. Not some people, not all people, but everything. God is in all. God is everywhere. What is missing in our lives is not God’s presence, but our awareness.
There are challenges ahead of us in this church. No doubt about that. But churches have always struggled to live up to our calling. When we were persecuted, we struggled to remain faithful and true. When we were powerful, we struggled to resist the temptations of worldly wealth and often claimed credit for the work God was doing. Today, in this congregation, we need to be renewed and revitalized. The good news, the Gospel, is that the kingdom of God is at hand, and is indeed here, right here, today. The kingdom of God is a state of being where God’s love is flowing in us, through us, and among us.
Paul prays that we would “know” the love of Christ. The word he used is an experiential knowledge, not just intellectual. He prays that the Ephesians, and all of God’s people throughout history, would feel and experience the love of Christ. I mostly feel that love through God’s people. I feel it each Sunday morning when we gather for worship and when we gather afterwards for fellowship. I feel it in committee meetings, when we are trying to discern God’s will for our congregation and how each committee can help the congregation along the path God has laid out for us. I feel it at church picnics, at potlucks, on float trips. I feel it each time I am in the presence of God’s people.
But God’s people extend far beyond this congregation. All people are part of God’s family. Paul uses a little play on words as he prays to God the Father, Patera, from whom every family, patria, takes its name. God is not just working in this room this morning. God is at work all around our community, state, nation, and world. Where have you seen God at work? Where have you felt God’s love?
Let me tell you a few places I have experienced God’s love. The first is The Rolla Mission. Many of you have volunteered at the Mission and know what I’m talking about. It’s a wonderful place where everyone is striving to become a better person, and to help each other grow. Now, there are failures, of course, but plenty of successes as well. I feel so much love when I’m there, love from the patrons, love from the staff like Ashley and Brandy, love from the other volunteers.
I felt God’s love at our Pride Picnic last month. About a year ago, I started LGBTQ+ Rolla with a mission of providing visibility, education, and connections for LGBTQ+ individuals in Rolla. We sputtered along through the pandemic, and eventually had enough people engaged that we formed a board of directors, who then planned a social gathering. It was wildly successful. Not only did lots of people show up—83, by Jesse’s count—but also lots of people really engaged with each other, shared in fellowship. It definitely was not a religious gathering, but it definitely was alive with the Holy Spirit.
Here’s an odd way I experience God. I am the chair of a search committee seeking a founding director for a research center on campus. The position is a little bit unusual for academia, so instead of just advertising and hoping for the best, we are doing some outreach to identify good candidates. I started out with just some cold emails to people who seemed appropriate. One professor responded that he was not personally interested, but wanted to discuss the position anyway. We probably talked for close to an hour about the position, the university, and our future. He ultimately connected me with two good candidates and several more individuals who, like him, are not personally interested but are willing to chat with me and connect me with other candidates. These are people who have no special connection to Missouri S&T, no personal career interest, and plenty of other demands on their time. And yet, they are willing to give me some of their precious time to help me, to help my university, and to help their colleagues who are seeking growth.
Here’s another one. I have two students from India, one from near Hyderabad in the south and one from the eastern state of Assam. I was in the lab recently meeting with another student and heard them talking in a foreign language. As I walked over to them, they shifted to English. I asked them if they shared a language, and they explained that they both speak three languages: their mother tongues (which are different), Hindi, and English. They speak Hindi together because it feels more like “home.” They’re far from their birth culture, but they are able to connect to each other through this shared language. We had a great chat about languages, such as the relationships between their mother tongues, Hindi, and Sanskrit. It was a wonderful window into their lives, a lowering of barriers between us.
There are many other places I have experienced God’s love, and many other places where I see God at work. God is not just in this place during this time when we are together. God is out there, too. We never lack for God’s presence, only for awareness of it.
As I said, I believe in universal salvation. There are two extreme schools of thought. On the one end is universalism, the belief that all people will be saved. This can be de-motivating, since salvation is in God’s hands and there doesn’t seem to be anything for us to do. On the other end is the belief that only the elect, a select few, will be saved, only those who accept Jesus into their heart, who say the sinner’s prayer. Many people on that far end believe that’s all you have to do. Say the prayer, you’re saved. Job done. Don’t say the prayer, you’re damned. That’s wonderful motivation to spread the Gospel, but not to change the world. Universal salvation means, to me, that all people will reach God eventually. Our job, then, is not a one-off, please say this prayer, but neither is it to step away from the world and let God take care of it. No, our job is to walk with each other on our path towards God. God is in all things, but what is lacking is awareness. Our job is to help people to see God at work and to know, to feel, God’s love.
We all take different paths, different trails. Some of us need more help than others. Some of us feel like we are in the wilderness without a map, while others seem to have a GPS leading them straight to God. Regardless, we all need each other for guidance and encouragement. God is working through us, loving us individually and collectively. God is working throughout our community. Let’s open our eyes to God’s work in the world, joining in and helping to build God’s kingdom, welcoming everyone into God’s family, God’s kin-dom, and walking together towards a future where nothing is certain except for the length, the breadth, the height, and the depth of God’s love. Amen.
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