Ephesians 3:14-21
August 25
Lauren J. McFeaters
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Some years ago when I was meeting with the Deacons, I asked the group about favorite childhood memories. Over and over again, what rose to the top were memories of visits to a family farm – usually small, contained, some  just getting by – but farms full of such goodness it took the breath away.

The best loved parts were learning to:

• feed the sheep,
• shell the snap peas,
• gather the corn,
• ride the tractor,
• can the beets,
• scatter the seed,
• and fill a trough.

For me, in Pickens Mississippi, was learning from my Aunt Hines, how to put kindling in a wood stove and make biscuits on top in an iron skillet. It was remarkable that out of 2 dozen Deacons, half had families that farmed.

Today, Paul gives us a prayer that says we are being rooted and grounded; burrowed and established in love. It is an agricultural metaphor isn’t it. Paul compares the Christian life to the experience of planting, nurturing, and harvesting –

• of canning the okra and putting up the huckleberries;
• of putting our hands to work and our hearts to God;
• of putting down the roots of faith that tunnel deep enough to spread to help other growing things to thrive, find it’s nourishment, and become securely anchored.
• To live, we must have roots. ^[ii] To live our faith, we must be rooted.

But here’s the thing. There will be constant moments throughout this day and week, when we’ll be tempted to unroot ourselves; to extricate and detach ourselves from our groundedness in faith. It often happens when we get distracted by the message that the core of our identity, underneath it all, comes not from God’s Spirit, but from what we can possess, own, acquire, control.

We can’t check Insta or TikTok or email without a link to what will fulfill and satisfy us.

• It’s the lure of iPhone 15 Pro in Barbie Pink.
• Mercedes Benz says you can have a “Season of Dreams” if you purchase the E 450 4MATIC All-Terrain.
• The HP Z Book Fury Laptop Workstation might set you back $9000, but it promises that in using it, you can “expand and evolve.”

Our daily lives are now defined by daily links. This morning I received my message from Starbucks. I have been invited to forget my troubles and luxuriate in the aroma of roasting beans while I indulge my whims in new coffee paraphernalia. It’s so tempting to believe that an iced oat-milk latte will give me their promise of a sanctuary of peace.

And somewhere out there today you’re going to find out there’s:

• a microbrewery offering you the fellowship of the pub;
• a yogurt that will cure your gut woes;
• a deodorant that is going to make you feel better about your body;
• and Macy’s who generously invites you start your Christmas shopping.

Paul, however, would like us to cease the nonsense that stands in the way of rootedness in God’s grace. And he’s so relentless about this one thing: Our foundation in Christ, does not to deny the existence of the things of the world, but gives those things the perspective they deserve.

We’re not created for the things we want, or own, or have to have, are we? We’re not created for the things we crave or desire. We’re not created to be seduced into purchases and possessions. We’re created for what we’re rooted in – and we are rooted in:

the breadth and length and height and depth, of the love of Christ –

so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God, which is love.

You. You are being rooted and grounded in love.

Here’s where Paul offers us equilibrium to stand in everyday faith with our feet on the ground, our eyes to one another, our hearts to our Lord – and it’s a prayer:

I pray, according to the riches of God’s glory,

God may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through God’s Spirit,

and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith– as you are being rooted and grounded in love.

You. You are being rooted and grounded in love.

One writer has called this prayer “the Holy of Holies in the Christian life.” Another writer called it “a prayer for the impossible.”  I’m very grateful there’s nothing timid about Paul’s prayer: nothing bashful; nothing retiring; nothing reserved. It’s simply one of scripture’s most powerful and commanding prayers, because it asks for everything: [iii]

• That the breadth, length, height, and depth of the love of Christ surpasses our fears and goes straight to our hearts;
• That we may be filled with all the fullness of God; filled – not with what we think we want and have to have – but filled with a prayer so potent that our very desires are embedded in acts of kindness and care;
• That we may be filled to brimming with all the completeness and wholeness of God;
• And that the Gift of Christ Jesus is a glory to all generations.

In these days of our world being shaken upside down and turned inside out, Paul comes to us with a prayer that convicts us to get down on our knees, asking God to fortify us. Root us. Ground us. And Love us into sanity.

I often tell couples who come to me for counseling, both the soon-to-be-married and decades-long-married that the most intimate moments in their life together – in any of our lives together – are the moments we are at prayer together.

• When was the last time you prayed with someone you love? It will change your life.
• When was the last time you sat beside a friend and laid a hand on them with a prayer for healing and comfort?  It will change both your lives.

• When was the last time you held a child’s hand and bowed your head and gave thanks? It will change a generation.

My friends, when you have experienced

the anchoring love of our God –

you can never be the same:

• that the breadth and length; height and depth

of that love will never leave your side;

• that you are bowled over in wonder,
• and that there is nothing left to do,

but to praise the Lord all your days.

Amen. And Amen.

ENDNOTES

[i] Ephesians 3:14-21:  For this reason, I bow my knees before the father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. 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 the 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. Now, to him, who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

[ii] Imagery inspired by a sermon by Cynthia M. Campbell. “Rooted and Grounded.” Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, IL, July 2003, www.fourthchurch.org.

[iii] Ronald Olsen. “Thinking and Practicing Reconciliation: The Ephesians Texts for Pentecost 8-14.” Word & World, 17/3. Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1997, 325.

Ephesians 4:25-5:2
August 18
Lauren J. McFeaters
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Eric Hobsbawm grew up as a Jewish orphan in Berlin and when he was 15 years old, he saw at a news stand, a headline that would change his life and change the world:  “Adolph Hitler Appointed Chancellor of Germany.” Years later, he reflected on that moment and said,

“It was as if we were all on the Titanic

and everyone knew it was going to hit the iceberg.”

It was difficult to describe what it meant to live in a world that was simply not expected to last.

It was like living between a dead past

and a future not yet born.[ii]

We learned in those years about God’s call upon us.

God’s call upon us was not to stay silent

or slink into oblivion.

How often, this week, have we wanted to stay silent; to slink into oblivion? I know I have. This week, for me, it’s been in seeing:

• Our family members, friends, co-workers, church visitors, unable to find consistent and dependable mental healthcare.
• Khaled Joudeh at a morgue in a hospital in central Gaza, having a last glimpse of his sister.
• The gateway from Chad into Darfur opens slightly to allow food and medical care for Sudanese people starving at record numbers, and closes shut once again.
• Wars raging in the Middle East and North Africa, Ukraine and Russia, Yemen and Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia, Tigray, Myanmar and Sudan, and the DRC.

And just as we’re ringing our hands and shaking our heads and crying out “What is happening to our world? There’s nothing I can do!” Paul comes to us with a hymn from the ancient church and won’t let us be silent or slink into oblivion.

In facing the world where we live; Paul doesn’t want us to dive into sympathy or pity. He wants our empathy and our kindness at the ready. He wants each of us, marked with a seal of the Holy Spirit, to love the world like we’ve never loved before.

You see once you’ve known the love of Christ you can never stay quiet, can you? You can never slink into oblivion, or pretend there’s nothing you can do – not when  you belong body and soul to the Lord of Salvation.

At this point, some of us may be taking out our phones and Googling for a moral primer in Christian living. Go ahead; let’s take out those phones, but we won’t find anything that matches Paul’s primer for the Ephesians. It’s all there in chapter 4, verses 25-32. To live as people of the Gospel is to:

To tell the truth.

To sustain one another.

Be angry – go ahead, you can be angry,

just don’t let the sun go down on your anger.

And forget about stealing, plagiarizing, thieving.

Speak only words that build up.

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit.  

Forget all bitterness, wrath, fury, slander and malice,

and anything that keeps you

from being in healthy relationships.

And with everything that you are:

 be kind to one another,

forgiving one another,

as God in Christ has forgiven you. 

 These are God’s commandments.

God’s Revelations for Living.

My pastor friends and I check in with one another about our upcoming sermons. This week, I’m still shaking my head when I said I was preaching from Ephesians. Not one, but two friends said

“Aren’t you tired of Paul?”

“Why would I be tired of Paul?” I asked.

“Well you know,” they said: “He’s so judgy and irritating. He’s so preachy, so annoying.

And anyway in the end, Paul’s not a very nice person.”

Mmmmm.

You know those times in your life, after someone says something like this, and you think of the perfect, ideal, and brilliant thing to say and it comes …… about four days later? That’s what happened to me.

“Paul’s not a very nice person.”  Well of course he’s not a very nice person. Niceness has never, ever concerned Paul at all. He could give two rips about being nice. Not a part of his DNA. No one ever taught him that, “if you can’t say something nice you shouldn’t say anything at all.”

Because Paul knows when we get together, we discover very big differences, huge disagreements, and we suffer very real discord. For Paul, it is not possible to love one another without knowing that you can also be furious with one another. And when anger comes, we are not to keep quiet, get nice, and slink into oblivion; we are to speak up, express honesty, declare ourselves with sincerity and to do it with kindness. [iii]

Kindness. It takes practice. A lot of practice.

It’s one of the most difficult lessons of the Christian life. It’s one of the most ambitious tasks of maturing in faith. It’s one of the most challenging spiritual disciplines for church folk. And it’s this:

We are not called to be nice.

We are always called to be kind.

And there are deep theological differences.

• Nice is shallow; kindness bares your soul.
• Nice is cautious; kindness has the courage to speak the truth in love.
• Nice takes zero imagination. Kindness is creative and resourceful.
• Nice lets us look away from the front page of the paper and go right to the comics. Kindness breaks our hearts because it’s a way for us to experience the desperation and anguish of others.
• Nice is a perpetual-Stepford-spouse smile. Kindness gives us wrinkles, it shapes us, it mends us, and it reforms us into something new every day.

Frederick Buechner says it best:

If you tell me that living as a Christian

is a kind of nice thing that happens to you

once and for all – like some kind of spiritual plastic surgery, I say, “go for it, go ahead,”

because you’re lying to yourself and lying to me.

Every morning, Buechner says, we should wake up and ask ourselves this:

“Can I believe the Gospel again today?”

No, better still, don’t ask it till after you’ve read the news, till after you’ve studied that daily record

of the world’s brokenness and corruption,

which should always be right next to your Bible.

Then ask yourself if you can believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ again for this particular day. If your answer is always Yes, then you probably don’t know what believing is all about.

At least five times out of ten days, he says, the answer should be No because the No is as important as the Yes, and maybe more so. The No is what proves you’re human – in case you should ever doubt it. And then if some morning the answer happens to be really, really Yes, it should be a Yes that’s choked with confession and tears and……great laughter. [iv] Yes!

My friends, when you have experienced

the Living and Loving God,

you can never keep quiet;

never slink into oblivion;

never shy away from the suffering

that tears humanity apart;

because you know in the depths of your soul

you are here to serve the One who has created you.

You are here to be responsible for the world.

And here to do that with one another.

And by the way,

what would we ever do without one another?

We love one another.

We cherish one another.

What would we ever do without one another?

What would we do?

I don’t even want to think about it.

ENDNOTES

[i]  Ephesians 4:25-5:2: So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

[ii] Thomas G. Long. Sermon: Called By Name. Broadcast on Day One from Alliance for Christian Media, Chicago, IL, January 11, 2004.

[iii] Barbara Brown Taylor. God in Pain: Teaching Sermons on Suffering. Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 1998, 33.

[iv] Frederick Buechner. The Return of Ansel Gibbs. New York: Knopf, 1958.

Ephesians 4:1-16
August 4
Jess Winderweedle
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