Ephesians
1:15-23
Christ
the King
November
26, 2017
William G. Carter
I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus
and your love toward all the saints,
and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember
you in my prayers. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to
know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know
what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious
inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of
his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great
power. God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the
dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and
dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in
the age to come. And he has put all
things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of
him who fills all in all.
That’s
a mouthful, isn’t it? At the heart of it are long run-on sentences. Our
teachers told us to avoid them. When you write a sentence, they taught, make it
a single thought. Don’t skitter sideways and add a lot of extras. But whoever
wrote this passage can’t hold back. There’s a lot to say, and it all forth pours
like a gushing stream. The language is generous, the tone is enthusiastic, and
the pacing is feverish.
And
why? Because Ephesians is a love letter written to the church on a very good
day. There isn’t a document in the New Testament that better describes who we are as “church” and
what we are doing for this hour of worship.
It
offers a good reminder to those of us who make going to church our habit. We see
the same old people and Ephesians says, “Chosen of the Lord and precious.” We
look around and see the visitors, returned exiles, and the curious, and declare,
“I pray Christ will show you the great hope we share and the immeasurable
riches of the Gospel.” This is a document that declares there is always more
going on than we first perceive.
Ephesians
points to the cross of a dying man and says, “Salvation by reconciliation!” The
letter points to the empty tomb and declares, “Seated at the right hand of
power in the heavenly places!” The writer points to the sky and says, “Far
above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that
is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.”
This
is Ephesians. Most of the text can be sung. The words are lyrical, the mood is
positive, and everything is caught up in joy.
The
poet who composes this love letter, St. Paul or whoever it was, sees a church
“without blemish.” He doesn’t notice the clueless congregation where the
treasurer had his hand in the offering plate. He looks beyond the gossip in the
parish parking lot and the ineptness of the preachers. For him, there is
something more at stake.
This
is the most curious detail of the letter for me. Either this guy is walking
around with his head in the clouds, unable to notice the potholes that will
make him stumble. Or he knows all about the potholes but refuses to let them
win, because he knows something bigger is afoot. I think it’s the latter. For
Ephesians sees a world where Christ rules over all things. Not merely a world,
but a whole universe. Christ is the king. He rules over all.
On
a hunch, I did a quick word search in the letter. I wanted to see how many
times the word “all” appears. In the English translation that we use in
worship, “all” appears thirty-three times. Listen to the occurrences, just in
our text: “all the saints,” “all rule and authority and power and dominion,”
“head over all things in the church,” and he “fills all in all.”
We
are talking about a Savior with some size. He has deep regard for “all the
saints,” not merely those who perpetually show up with a casserole for
fellowship dinners, but all of them.
Christ
the King exercises “All rule and authority and power and dominion.” I suppose
you can pray to him to give you good weather for a baseball game or family
picnic, but this is the Lord of heaven and earth who sets the stars in their
courses and hurls the comets across the galaxy.
This
is his church, of course, so he is “head over all things.” It is his Word that
speaks, it is his will that is done, and it is his agenda that redefines all
our agendas. He fills “all in all.”
There’s
a statue of Jesus out in our narthex. I brought it back from a wood carver in
Haiti many years ago. We were coming through customs in Kennedy Airport. In
front of me, our mission trip leader carried a similar wood carving, also a
portrayal of the Lord. He had acquired it as a gift for Tony Campolo, the great
Baptist preacher who created the literacy mission that we had gone to visit.
Sam
carried his wood carving to the man at customs. He asked a couple of questions,
took a quick look, then stamped the passport and motioned him through.
I
was next in line. To protect the wood carving from getting chipped, I had
wrapped it in a bath towel and a bit of duct tape. The towel was coming undone,
so that you could see the Lord’s eye peeking through. The guy at customs took
one look at me, took a look at the statue, and then asked the immortal question
in a Brooklyn accent: “Alright, how big is your Jesus?” I still chuckle to think
about it.
How
big, indeed? Is he truly the Savior of all things, or merely a personal good
luck charm? Does he care about all people or only about us? If he is the
Creator through whom all things are made, is he mightier than your cancer
scare? If he “has broken down the wall of hostility” between Jew and Gentile,
is he greater than the racism that still tears this nation apart as well as the
arguments that splinter our families? How big of a Savior do we have?
The
first chapter of Ephesians says there isn’t anybody any bigger. Jesus is older
than Moses, wiser than Socrates, and by the looks of it, in much better
physical shape than Buddha. They’re all dead; he’s been raised from the dead.
They all came and went; Jesus is still with us. And not just with us; he is
with us; yet so far beyond us.
The
problem, it seems, is that we lose track of what Ephesians calls “the
immeasurable greatness of his power.” Or to quote the title of an old classic
by J. B. Phillips, “Your God is Too Small.” Phillips wrote as a British
clergyman in the middle of the last century. He took on some of the prevailing
views of God and Christ that kept recurring in British society, which he calls
the Resident Policeman, the Parental Hangover, the Grand Old Man, the Meek-and-Mild
Milquetoast, the Heavenly Bosom, and the Managing Director. None of these
notions are big enough for God, he argued.
And
then, in a most quotable quote, Phillip says, “God will inevitably disappoint
the [person] who is attempting to use [God] as a convenience, a prop, or a
comfort, for his own plans. (But) God has never been known to disappoint the
[one] who is sincerely wanting to cooperate with [God’s] own purposes.”[1]
And
what is God’s grand purpose, according to the letter to the Ephesians? Nothing
less than to reconcile heaven and earth, to bring together everything that would
otherwise be torn asunder. It will involve the saving of everything that God
loves. This is what God is up to, this is what Jesus Christ has been sent to
do, and this is what the Holy Spirit continues to stir up. And it’s big, really
big.
Years
ago, someone asked a question to Will Willimon, the Methodist preacher.
Willimon is quite a character. He’s a wonderful preacher; Baylor University once
named him as one of the twelve best in the English- speaking world. Will said he
loved the parish, but then he took a university chaplaincy job. He also said he
never wanted to become a United Methodist bishop, but when the United
Methodists elected him a bishop, he didn’t turn down the job.
You
never know quite what he’s going to say. His most recent blog posting, mind you
as a retired Methodist bishop in Alabama, is titled, “Roy Moore Can Never Be
Ordained in the United Methodist Church.” It’s a sassy little article, and
Willimon doesn’t care if you agree with him at all.[2]
He’s simply stating the case.
So
anyway, one day when Dr. Willimon was the chaplain at Duke University, he’s
shaking hands after worship at the door of the university chapel, an enormous structure
in the middle of the campus. A man shakes his hands and says, “Well, that was a
bit unreal, don’t you think?” Willimon said, “What? The pipe organ music? The grandeur
of the liturgy? The extraordinary preaching? What was so unreal?”
The
critic said, “All of it. It’s like we are escaping the real world by coming in
this cloistered tower, like we’re getting away from it all.”
Willimon
raised one eyebrow and said, “Au contraire! You’ve got it all backwards. Sunday
worship is when actually move into the real world, where we are given eyes to
see and ears to hear the advent of a Kingdom that the world has taught us to
regard as only fantasy.”[3]
There’s nothing more real than this.
Do
you ever think what we do when we worship on Sunday mornings? We pray our
prayers, sing our hymns, offer our gifts, and listen for God speak in scripture
and sermon – all for the greater purpose of getting our hearts aligned, our
heads screwed on straight, and our hands extended to those in need. This is
where and when we are reminded that God is saving the world and Christ has come
to rule over all.
That’s
why we are here - to affirm that there is no greater power than the saving love
of God in Jesus Christ. And we keep singing this truth until “the eyes of the heart
are enlightened” and everybody knows that Jesus Christ is Lord.
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