Sermon 20th October 2013

Today, Simon Brindley, one of our Lay Readers, continues our study of Paul’s letter to Ephesus. 

The reading is from Ephesians 4: 17-32

New Life in Christ

I have very occasionally heard people say that the only future for sport is to allow all athletes to take whatever drugs they want, that are otherwise legal to use, and then everyone will be on a level playing field (if you will pardon the deliberate pun) and cyclists, runners, weightlifters and others can just get on with seeing who can be the most professional in their chosen discipline. These are the same people who tend to say you can’t stop doping anyway, the chemists are always going to be at least one step ahead of the testers and there are always going to be some who will use performance-enhancing drugs. So why hinder the others who don’t currently take the drugs? They will simply try to win the medals and titles but fail because the dopers will always find a way to win…

Even if you do not follow sport very closely I am sure you will know something of the way this whole debate has gone in recent years. There was a time a few years ago when the use of performance-enhancing drugs in competitive road cycling was so prevalent that all the professionals knew the only way you were going to get anywhere in that sport was to join in. In fact the demands of long distance cycling on the human body were so great that taking drugs had a long history of being the only way some could even get around the Tour de France, it is such a tough event.

(By the way, don’t worry, on the Parish of Herne Hill Whoosh cycle rides we use only alcohol and then only occasionally at lunchtimes and slightly more often in the evenings and then only in appropriate moderation….well…nearly always in appropriate moderation!).

But for now at least that whole recent era of doping in professional road cycling seems to have been put in the past and endless famous cyclists have been exposed or admitted illegal drug use. Not just the infamous Lance Armstrong but a whole string of riders including some you may just have heard of: Marco Pantani, Floyd Landis, David Millar, Alberto Contador, Jan Ulrich. If you ever want to read a tragic account of the impact of drugs on a talented professional road cyclist read, “The death of Marco Pantani” by Matt Rendell.

And we seem to be entering an era with first Sir Bradley Wiggins and then Chris Froome (co-incidentally, I am sure, both competing as British athletes!) where cycling at the top has, we sincerely hope and believe, largely cleaned itself up. I don’t know about you but I now feel I can start watching the Tour de France again without thinking I was just witnessing an elaborate chemistry experiment. Long may it continue!

And, continuing this theme briefly, thank goodness the Olympics last year were largely drug-free although then by the time of the World Athletics Championships in Moscow in August of this year, sadly, we faced yet again widespread allegations, against some of the long-standing sprinters like Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay, to say nothing of large swathes of the Turkish team and others.

But we are at least in a place, it seems to me, where the drug cheats are seriously on the defensive and the moral war is being won, in the sense that the public mood remains firmly set against the cheats.

Two things stand out for me in this whole debate. The first is the abiding sense that using performance-enhancing drugs to succeed and gain an unfair advantage is just, plainly, wrong. The vast majority of people simply do not want to see it. No, no and no again says the public. Keep it clean, whatever the temptations to you as the individual sportsperson. I would rather watch a clean race than see my favourite win unfairly.

And the second abiding sense for me is that for those who are caught it is impossible to see their unfair victories as anything other than shameful personal defeats to be wiped from the record books and leave an indelible stain over a career and a life that, to be honest, is highly unlikely ever to be fully erased.

In the end the golden vision of glorious victory and a career at the top just turns almost literally to dust. As much as anyone the athlete themselves has been completely deceived. Even if they are never caught they must know later in life that their victory was tarnished and their name in the record books and the medals on their mantelpiece are really just fake and hollow trophies.

St Paul could have been writing to the entire world of competitive sport when he said to the Ephesians,

“Put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; [and] be made new in the attitude of your minds; and put on the new self.”

St Paul goes on to link this expressly to faith in a loving Creator when he adds that you are to put on the new self because you are “created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” God did not make you for falseness and cheating. He made you to live a better life than that. Trust Him and you will find that it is better in the end, whatever the temptations; in the case of competitive sport, the temptations of false and vain and deceitful victory.

So, in competitive sport at least, it does appear compelling, to me, to suggest that all this rings very true. The public just about everywhere say, “Don’t cheat!” The Christian adds, “Don’t cheat! You were not made to cheat. You were made for better than that.” There are plenty of Christians in the sporting world and I am sure this is how they will understand all this. God made me fast but God did not make me to be a drugs cheat.

Pause…

You could summarise Paul’s letter to the Ephesians as follows. God’s plan for his people has been gloriously revealed in Jesus Christ, raised from the dead and now completely glorified in heaven. In this big context, each one of us was dead in our wrongdoing, following the ways of the world, following our sinful natures. But now through faith we have been made alive in Christ. But we are not saved by any good deeds. In fact we are saved for good deeds.

The Jews and Gentiles can at last therefore be seen as exactly the same. All can approach God with confidence, not guilt, freed from the burden of failure and created to do good things. This seismic change is all summed up in the glorious picture set out in Ephesians 3 vv 14-21: the love of God that surpasses knowledge, the God who is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine.

Pause again..

And then Paul begins to hit home the implications for our lives, our new lives in Christ, of this message. If this is your glorious calling, he says from Chapter 4 onwards, then I urge you to live a life worthy of it.

If this is your glorious calling, then I urge you to live a life worthy of it…

Live in unity he says first. Then, he says, you should understand your different roles in the church and so the context for your life of service. Then, he says, you should be grown up in your understanding of your faith, not tossed around by every whim of teaching or doctrine.

And then he comes to our passage for today. If, says Paul, the new freedom from sin and death achieved by Jesus Christ is your glorious calling, then I insist, in the Lord, that – as the Good News Bible puts it, you must “Live in the light”. The New International Version of the Bible heads this section, “Living as children of light”.

My example of drugs in sport was just one illustration. So what, when we stand back and look at this for the whole of our lives, might God - through Paul’s letter -be saying to us this morning?

Well first, it seems to me at least, at various points in today’s passage, Paul sets out some good, solid, pretty practical advice. For example, we all get angry. Things and people annoy us, we get frustrated when things do not go our own way, we get tired, we get irritable. But here’s the advice. Do not go to sleep without letting go of your anger or as Paul puts it, don’t let the sun go down on your anger. Let it go, say sorry to those closest to you if you need to. Or the danger is it that that anger will carry into the night and disturb your sleep and then carry into the next day and wrongly disturb your life and the lives of those around you…or as Paul puts that, it will give the Devil a foothold, the Devil who loves to disrupt and destroy.

Good, sound and very practical advice.

And another one, potentially perhaps more serious? If you are in the habit of lying to those around you says Paul, whatever that might be about – your job, your assets, your plans, your relationships, your past  - then stop that way of life and just start speaking the truth to those around you: in your home, in your community, in your work. I remember as a 19 year old going to live in a completely new town for me, near Birmingham, working in a youth project run by a priest. There were a few of us youngsters and as impressionable 19 year olds we were really pretty impressed by one lad called Trevor who had grown up locally. Goodness he had had a lot of girlfriends he very convincingly told us night after night after we had finished our work for the day……at least until an older man from the same community let us know that he had never actually had a girlfriend yet and was just sadly trying to impress.  You may not have lied to try to impress in quite that way… but in other ways perhaps? A very successful City lawyer in London was very recently exposed as having completely made up a degree from Oxbridge and another from Harvard in his applications for senior posts. He claimed he had an Oxford scholarship called an Eldon scholarship and it was only when interviewed by someone who had actually had an Eldon scholarship in the same year as this lawyer claimed for himself that the sham was actually exposed……..and tragically in his case. There were colleagues who said he was in fact actually really good at what he did.

Just think for a moment …..where might be the deceit in all this……we lie or mislead because we think it will do us good but actually either the lie catches up with us in the end or we get tangled up in a web of lies or we may never get caught but the gains are false and hollow. Our gains or our successes are built on sand…… 

And deceit is likely to impact not just on you but on those around you. “Speak truthfully” says Paul “because we are all members of one body.” I remember when I was 18, growing up in an army environment in Germany, and hearing a young soldier on a school expedition we did to Norway say that when he was away from home he did not worry too much about what he got up to. “What the wife don’t know won’t hurt her,” he said. Oh yeah! Does anyone really believe that key emotional relationships are not damaged by the unseen serious misbehaviour of one party?

“Don’t damage your life by falling for the real deceitfulness that can come with your desires,” Paul might say……You were not created to be damaged in yourself and your relationships by anger continuing to eat away at you. You were not created to build false relationships, false impressions, false success on lies, whatever subtle forms those lies might take for you. You were created for better than this…..

Who says Christian faith is just about God wanting to stop you enjoying yourself? I am one of those who is convinced there is a strong case to be made that Christian faith in this regard is rather about God simply wanting what really is best for you!

And Paul gives other really practical examples. Don’t go round slagging other people off all the time he says. Try and build them up instead. Everyone has their needs and needs to improve. Focus on that and helping them get there and everyone who hears you speaking will benefit more in the end. Gossip and constantly putting people down can be destructive…..it can eat into the fabric of our communities..

And stealing…an obvious one perhaps?  You may think what you are getting through stealing is good but can it ever really lead to a good and wholesome self -respect if the things you have, have been gained dishonestly? Do something useful with your hands instead, says Paul. You may even find that not only do you have what you need but you might have something to share with others. 

In this sort of territory I heard the Labour MP for Birkenhead and veteran welfare campaigner Frank Field speak in a church on Friday just gone. He described young men in his constituency who say why bother going to work for anything less than £300 a week when you can get that easily from benefits and a bit of petty crime and drugs. Frank Field, who is as passionate about a fair welfare state as anyone, is also passionate in his rebuttal of this attitude. And why? Because where is the true self respect and what is the future for your children and what is the hope in your community if you just fall for that one…

So, first, plenty of sound practical advice from St Paul about things that all of us must come across from time to time: anger, the temptation to lie or mislead, the temptation to talk others down and the temptation to take things that do not belong to us.

But secondly I do think there are hints in this passage of the risk of even more serious temptation and conduct and for me those hints are present at the beginning and the end of the passage for today.  At the beginning Paul urges his readers not to live without any understanding and in ignorance of God, with hardened hearts. Don’t live like those, he says, who have lost all sensitivity but indulge all kinds of impurity with a continual lust for more.  I wonder if here Paul is talking about conduct that can, if we are not careful, powerfully take over our lives and lead us to have to harden our hearts and become insensitive to those around us – whether that is greed perhaps, or selfish ambition or sexual misconduct – or any other thing that risks taking hold of our lives and will not let us go. I wonder if here Paul is thinking about things that can lead to addiction.

Why might it be that what you could call addictions, whatever form they might take: material personal, sexual or whatever do - it would appear - from all we read about and all we hear and all we know in your own hearts and minds uniformly in the end, lead people really… nowhere. Why might they uniformly fail, in the long run, to deliver? Why might they uniformly deceive? Might it be again that we were made for better things than these?

At the end of the passage for today Paul urges his readers not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God. Can you imagine God our Creator hurting for us, grieving over us if he sees our lives dominated by behaviour that he knows and longs for us to understand is actually wrong because it is not what is best for us? It is not the life for which we were created?

I had a picture in my mind as I was preparing the sermon for this morning and it was of a wine glass. Have you ever tried to make a wine glass sing, you know where you dip your finger in water and rub it round and round the top rim of the glass till a fine high note comes out of the glass. But if the glass is cracked or damaged there is no way any note will emerge. I wonder if God longs to make our lives sing because he knows what we were made for.

There are of course, in the Christian story, other critically important elements that must come into this, but the detail of those is for another day. Thank God that he is the great glassmaker,  that any crack can be repaired and the glass can sing again. And thank God that he is the great winemaker,  that he longs to fill our lives with the good things he has for us.

But for today I think the message from Paul’s letter is that we urged not to be deceived. Don’t break the wineglass that is the life God gives you, Paul might say. I urge you, indeed I insist on it in the Lord. Live as children of light, not of darkness. This is what you were made for.

Amen

Sermon 13th October 2013

Today, our Honorary Assistant Minister, Gill Tayleur, continues our study of Paul's letter to Ephesus.  Her sermon is based upon the reading from Ephesians 4: 1-16 

UNITY OF THE BODY

A man stopped at a local petrol station and after filling his tank, he paid the bill and bought a soft drink.

He stood by his car to drink his Diet Coke and watched a couple of men working along the roadside. One man would dig a hole two or three feet deep and then move on. The other man came along behind him and filled in the hole. While one was digging a new hole, the other was 25 feet behind filling in the hole. The men worked right past the man with the soft drink and went on down the road.

“I can’t stand this,” said the man tossing the can into a recycling bin and heading down the road toward the men. “Excuse me,” he said to the men. “Can you tell me what’s going on here with all this digging and refilling?”

“Well, we work for the council and we’re just doing our job,” one of the men said.

“But one of you is digging a hole and the other fills it up. You’re not accomplishing anything. Aren’t you wasting the taxpayers’ money?”

“You don’t understand, mister,” one of the men said, leaning on his shovel and wiping his brow. “Normally there’s three of us: me, Greg and Matt. We work in a team. I dig the hole, Greg sticks in the tree, and Matt here puts the dirt back. Greg’s off sick so today it’s just me an’ Matt.”

Working as a team can only be effective if every member of the team plays their part!

The Unity of the body is the heading of the Bible passage we’re looking at this morning.

But what exactly is this unity that Paul says Christians have? In these verses we’ve read this morning, Paul says we are one in body, Spirit, hope, Lord, faith, baptism and God!

One in body – Christian believers together make up a body, an entity, a community, that is the church. And we’re to function like a body, with different parts having different roles. More about that in a moment.

We’re one in Spirit – that is to say, all Christian believers have the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, living within them, his power enabling us to live for God, to become more like him, to play our part in his body the church.

We have one hope – that glorious future to which we are all called; the future of living under God’s loving and just kingdom rule, partially now, and fully for all eternity.

One Lord – the Lord Jesus Christ, the only son of the Father, God incarnate, God made man, the one Lord to whom we all belong, and who we all follow.

We have one Faith – our shared commitment and allegiance to that Lord Jesus Christ.

One baptism – the sign of our entry into the deeply caring community that is the church.

And one God – our Father, who loves us for all eternity.

So, there is one body, Spirit, hope, Lord, faith, baptism and God! This is the truth, but how do we experience, live in and build, this unity that we have in theory?

Let’s look at the reality of this unity in the universal church, unity in the local church, and

unity between individuals.

Christian unity on the global scale is a very mixed picture. [As Tom Wright says,]

We have grown accustomed to so many divisions within the worldwide church: Orthodox and Roman, Catholic and Protestant, the dozens of churches that began a distinct life after the sixteenth century Reformation and the thousands that have sprung up in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Sometimes customs and practices have grown up in these churches which are so different that members of one have difficulty recognising members of another as fellow Christians. Sometimes, indeed the boundaries are blurred, and it may be possible for a church to wander off course so much that its claim to be loyal to Jesus Christ is seriously called into question.

But Paul here, and Jesus himself, clearly taught that we should live in the unity that we have as his fellow believers and followers. In John 17 we read that Jesus prayed: “I pray that they might be one as you and I are one... may they be brought to complete unity so that the world might believe...”

Unity among his followers mattered to Jesus, so it must matter to us as those followers. And so we need to work to maintain, defend and develop the unity we already enjoy with other Christians around the world. And we need to work to overcome, demolish and put behind us the disunity we still find ourselves in. Otherwise, we can scarcely claim to follow Paul’s – or Christ’s – teaching.

So what do we need to do about this? We can pray for Christian unity, pray for our fellow Christian believers in other places, as we often do together on a Sunday morning. We can support them practically and financially as needed.

We can join in local efforts to express the unity we have in Christ – such as in our own local ecumenical body, Churches Together in South Southwark. Churches Together in South Southwark is the group of 23 churches from a wide range of different denominations, including Baptist, Roman Catholic, Salvation Army and Pentecostal churches. We meet a few times a year, at some weekday meetings, some weekends and evenings, and our aim is to “grow in friendship and to work together to be signs of God’s kingdom in the midst of urban South London.”

On the first Friday in March each year, local churches come together to worship for the Women’s World Day of Prayer, using a format designed each year by a different country, next year Egypt, to help us to learn about and share in their joys and pains.

And this very week I heard that we need someone to represent our parish in organising that event. (That only involves a planning meeting and being there on the day, not a big job. See me for details after the service.)

What about unity in our own church St Saviour’s/St Paul’s? And in our own parish, with St Paul’s/ St Saviour’s?

The picture of the church as a body with different parts, each part with a function and gift to be used for the benefit of the whole body, is used in several places in the New Testament. Each gives a different list of the gifts we have from God, so they’re obviously meant to be examples. This one has apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. Other lists include administration, acts of mercy and encouraging others. The point is that every member of the church has a gift to be used for the benefit of all.

As Paul wrote to the church in Corinth (1 Corinthians 12)

¹² Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.  For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body - whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free - and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.  Even so the body is not made up of one part, but of many.

 Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.  And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?  But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.  If they were all one part, where would the body be?  As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

And then a few verses later,

There should be no division in the body, but its parts should have equal concern for each other.  If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it.

So the obvious question is, which part of the body are you? And are you playing your part for the benefit of all? Are you using your gifts, your time, abilities and money, to build up the whole church body? Many of us are, in many ways. But let’s all think about it again, not least in the light of the areas of our church life where we are lacking.

Here at St Saviour’s, we need more parts of the body to be on the Welcome Team, to help with Children’s Church, to man the OHP screen or the sound deck at the back of church. They are all on rotas, only needing your contribution once every few weeks.

Or maybe you’ll be the representative for us in the Women’s World Day of Prayer service?

Here at St Paul’s, we need more parts of the body to help setting things out for worship here in the hall week by week, to help with Children’s Church, Or maybe you’ll be the representative for us in the Women’s World Day of Prayer service?

Paul says something fabulous about what happens when all God’s people work in Christian service to build up the body of Christ. He says we become mature people,

reaching to the very height of Christ’s stature  (because Christ is the perfect example of humanity, mature and Godly in every way) no longer children, but are growing up.

 “So when each separate part works as it should, the whole body grows and builds itself up through love.”

We become mature together! Babies are great, we love them, but no one wants to stay a baby. Babies need to grow and grow up. Paul says there are three ways in which we shouldn’t be like babies.

First, babies aren’t discerning. They eat anything – they can’t tell what’s good for them and what’s poisonous. They don’t know that if they roll around they might fall off the bed. Or the danger of fire or knives or anything else.

Similarly, Paul says, if we are mature, we won’t be taken in by the teaching of deceitful men, who lead others into error by the tricks they invent.

As we mature in our faith, we’ll grow in our understanding of our faith, know our way around the Bible, become theologically more astute, and be able to spot the teaching and tricks of deceitful men.

Second, Paul says as we grow to maturity we’ll become more steady. Babies and young children aren’t steady! They laugh and cry at a moment’s notice, their attention span is very short, they swing all over the place and keep changing their minds and their feelings. Paul says they’re “carried by the waves and blown about by every  shifting wind”

Are we spiritually steady? Are we faithful even in difficult times? Do we follow through when we come to see our sin, follow through on obedience and endurance?

We grow into maturity through the unity we have in the church – in other words, through our deep involvement in the Christian community. Which brings us to the unity we have between individuals.

Babies and young children are self centred. They want things now! They have to learn to wait for things, to share things, to take turns, be polite, help others.

And spiritual babies are self centred too. Are you – and I – always thinking about yourself? Conscious of how other people are looking at you, or treating you? Can’t take criticism, or admit when you’re wrong? Absorbed in yourself, not thinking about others? Often getting your feelings hurt? Feeling slighted, taking offence?

A few years ago, at Daisy Dixon’s funeral, her dear friend Freda Champion quoted  Daisy, that she used to say, "It's not Christian to take offence". Freda said that her first instinct had been to counter that it's not Christian to give offence, but she came to see that Daisy was actually more right, because offence does in fact have to be taken ...

How quickly do we take offence?!

Listen again to the first few and last few verses of today’s reading: Be always humble, gentle and patient. Show your love by being tolerant with one another.

Speak the truth in a spirit of love.

Be humble, gentle and patient, be tolerant, or bear with one another.

Does that describe you and me?!

Being humble, gentle and bearing with others only applies when we’re with others that hurt us, irritate us, or let us down in some way – you can’t be humble, gentle and forbearing by yourself!

So, who annoys you or has hurt you or let you down, in the church?................

And if your answer is no-one, I’d suggest you don’t know the others around you in the church well enough!!

And Paul said to Speak the truth in love.

We won’t grow into maturity unless there are people who are prepared to speak the truth to us, about our weaknesses and sin, in love.

BUT the two, truth and love, have to be in perfect balance. Absolute honesty has to be saturated with the sweetness and tenderness of love.

Truth on its own will simply be hurtful. Love on its own will not lead us to change and grow.

We probably all have a preference, temperamentally, for truth or love – but both are needed. And we see both in perfection, in Jesus Christ and his death on the cross. The truth is, we are sinners, living for self and not God, and needed Christ to die for us, to put us right with God. And God/Christ loves us so much that he did it! Truth and love, perfectly combined at the cross.

Do we speak the truth in love? Dare we?!

And so it is in unity that we grow. And as we grow, we grow in unity! The unity of the church, locally, wider and worldwide, and unity between me and the person sitting next to me.

I finish with a quote from John Sentamu, Archbishop of York:

“There is such a thing as society, and we all have our small part to play in making things better. We are interdependent beings living in community. If we do not dare to contribute our talents to help the flourishing of the common good, who will?  Stop moaning and start doing something positive.”

And so let’s pray...

Sermon 6th October 2013

Today, Trevor Tayleur, one of our Lay Readers, preaches based on the reading from Ephesians 3:1-21

The Love of Christ

The following are taken from official court records in the USA. They are actual examples of lawyers cross-examining witnesses.

• Lawyer: "She had three children, right?"
• Witness: "Yes."
• Lawyer: "How many were boys?"
• Witness: "None."
• Lawyer: "Were there any girls?"

Another lawyer didn’t do much better.

• Lawyer: "Now, Mrs Johnson, how was your first marriage terminated?"
• Witness: "By death."
• Lawyer: "And by whose death was it terminated?"

In the passage from Ephesians we’ve just read, Paul writes that that God has revealed his secret plan and has made it known to him. I’m glad we don’t have to rely on these lawyers and their cross-examination skills to discover God’s secret plan! Instead we can rely on Paul himself.

Two weeks Gill spoke to us about Ephesians 2 and explained how Christ’s death on the Cross had broken down the barriers that had existed between Jews and non-Jews, the Gentiles. In Jesus we can find shalom, true peace, with God and with each other. But now, in verses 2-13 Paul goes on a bit of a digression. He breaks off in mid-sentence. In the GNB version it’s not that clear, but in other versions such as the NIV it’s clearer; there’s a dash at the end of verse 1. Paul does indeed get side-tracked. So why does he do this – why does he go on a digression? The answer is in verse 13, “I beg you, then, not to be discouraged because I am suffering for you; it is all for your benefit.”

Paul knew that his being in prison was a huge discouragement to his friends, so right in the middle of a sentence he breaks off as he engages with this and helps them. The Bible is realistic about the hardness of life and the reality of suffering. Life’s hard, and it’s not just hard for bad people. Good people, the best people, suffer huge disappointments and tragedies as well, as we know from experience.   Paul doesn’t ignore their suffering; he doesn’t tell them to get over it and to move on. He engages with their suffering and he encourages them.

It is vital to acknowledge the reality of suffering, because suffering does shake our faith. In Matthew 11, John the Baptist is in prison. In his ministry John had been very forthright, declaring that Jesus is the Messiah. But when he was in prison and facing execution, he sent some of own followers to ask Jesus; “Are you the one John said was going to come, or should we expect someone else?”

Even John the Baptist, it seems, was experiencing doubt. John seems to be in effect saying, “If you are the Messiah, why is your servant in this situation. If you are the Son of God, why is my life falling apart?”

And here we have Paul’s friends feeling the same way about his suffering. “If you are really the servant of God, why are all these bad things happening to you? If God is with you, why are you in prison?”

It can also be very difficult to watch someone you love suffering. There’s a feeling of helplessness; it’s very easy to be discouraged, as Paul acknowledges in verse 13; “I beg you, then, not to be discouraged because I am suffering for you…” It’s very easy to become bitter and to doubt the reality of God’s love. Paul acknowledges this; he knows life is hard and he wants to help them.

Yes, life is hard, suffering is real - but Paul also points us to the wonders of God’s grace.  One word that comes up a lot in this passage is “secret”; God had his secret plan which has now been revealed.  As Paul explains in verse 6, ^“The secret is that by means of the gospel the Gentiles have a part with the Jews in God's blessings; they are members of the same body and share in the promise that God made through Christ Jesus.”

Paul is continuing from where he left off in Chapter 2 and he spells out what it means now that the wall of hostility between Jewish people and the Gentiles has been broken down. The secret plan is that God always intended this, to bring everyone into fellowship with himself on equal terms. And Paul goes on to describe the privileges of what it means to be a Christian.

First, they are to “share in the promise that God made through Christ Jesus”; they are to share in the inheritance. Tom Wright, in his commentary, gives the following illustration. “Fancy hearing the news that a family down the street has come into a large and wealthy inheritance – and then being told that you are to become full members of that family, with instant privileges identical to theirs! That’s the situation Gentile Christians now find themselves in.”

In the OT God had made a covenant with his people. God made extraordinary promises to his people, and everyone is now able to share in those promises. Whatever our background, we are all fellow members of one body, the church; there are no second class citizens in the church. We all have an equal share in God’s promises. And that’s not because of our own goodness or because of anything we have done, but entirely as a result of God’s grace.

And that’s only part of God’s secret plan. In Chapter 1 verse 10 Paul tells us that God’s secret plan is to bring all creation together, everything in heaven and on earth, with Christ as head. The world in St Paul’s time had many similarities to today’s world. Of course there are huge differences as well, but back in the First Century AD the world suffered from violence, from wars, from racism and from hunger, disease and death. People were often at each other’s throats and at times it must have seemed that everything was falling apart. Sooner or later everyone dies. But it wasn’t supposed to be like that.

Genesis Chapters 1, 2 and 3 tell us that God created the world for everything to be together, for everything to be in eternal harmony, for our bodies to stay together and for our relationships to stay together. But because sin came in things fall apart. But God in Christ will one day bring us to the place where these things are brought together – forever. There will be no more suffering, tears, death, disease, no more injustice; there will instead be peace on earth.

Life is hard; suffering is an ever present reality. But we also know that we share in God’s plan to break down human barriers and to restore creation.

That’s God’s purpose – to break down human barriers and to restore creation. And how will God reveal his purpose to the world? The answer is in verse 10, “…by means of the church.” It is “by means of the church…that the angelic rulers and powers in the heavenly world might learn of his wisdom in all its different forms”.

It is by means of the church that God’s great purpose, his great wisdom will become known. And that’s rather awesome in the true sense of the word. It is through the church that God’s great wisdom will become known. It is through us here at St Paul’s and St Saviour’s in Herne Hill, and through our brothers and sisters in Christ in London and through our brothers and sisters in the rest of the UK and the wider world that God’s great wisdom will become known. The church is the witness to God’s wisdom.

This is breath-taking, and also, at least for me, rather daunting, but we aren’t on our own. It is through the community and not through any one individual that the church bears witness to God’s wisdom. It is through the Christian community, through healed relationships and through genuine love that the world will see God’s wisdom. F.F. Bruce, a well-known theologian, wrote in his commentary; “The church here appears as God’s pilot plant for the reconciled universe of the future. The church is to be a new society, where the world can see what family life, what business practices, what race relationships, what all of life will be under the healing kingship of Jesus Christ.” 

God’s purpose is to heal all the effects of sin – psychological, social and physical, and the place where people should clearly see this is the church. And this new society can be seen in the church in a way no individual person can show it. Some people say that they can be a good Christian without going to church. Now there may be times when it is appropriate to step back from church life, but it is clear from what Paul is saying that this can’t be the general rule. The church is indispensable if the world is to understand the wisdom of the Gospel.

Is Paul being unrealistic in his vision of what the church can do? No, he was fully aware what a mess all churches are to some degree. Look at his writing to the Corinthians and the Colossians; those churches were riddled with problems.

If you want to grow as a Christian, you can’t do it in on your own. You need a family, a culture and community to challenge you in good times and to support you when times are tough. That’s how the Gospel works; indeed that’s how human beings work.

And it’s not just the world that will understand the Gospel through the church. Paul writes in verse 10 that so too will the “angelic rulers and powers in the heavenly world…” In some way that I don’t claim to understand, what we do has an impact not only in the visible world, but also in the invisible world. What we do may sometimes go unnoticed in this world, but that doesn’t mean it has no impact; in some mysterious way what we do can also show God’s power to these shadowy authorities.

In June we had a special service on “Celebration” and one of the activities we did was to write down on a piece of paper what we liked about our church. I preached the following Sunday and said that one of the things that came out from that was that many of us felt tremendously supported and loved. We are doing a lot that is right already, but we do face challenges in the future. Next year at St Paul’s the Building Project will be completed; that will provide us with a tremendous opportunity as a Parish to bring Jesus to the heart of our community. The Milkwood Working Party are working hard and the time will come when we move into the “action phase”. That will be another opportunity to bring Jesus to the heart of the community. Let’s be willing to seize these opportunities.

Life is hard; suffering is very real. But God’s purpose is to bring everything together. And we in the church show God’s purpose to the world. And this Chapter ends with Paul’s magnificent prayer, a passionate prayer for the Ephesians. He prays the following things for them:

·      That God may strengthen them with power through his Spirit in their inner being

·      That Christ may have his home in their hearts 

·      That they may know the love of Christ, and

·      That they be filled with the nature of God.

Actually, at one level we already have these things.  As Christians we know that God does strengthen us and fill us; that Christ does live in our hearts and we do know that Christ loves us. So why is Paul praying this? I think that Paul is talking about the difference between knowing something in our heads and experiencing it in our inner being. It is possible for a real Christian to live a superficial life – to believe in the right things, indeed to try hard to follow Christ but not to fully experience the reality in our lives. Paul is praying that we will know in our hearts what we know in our heads. If we truly grasp how broad and long and how high and deep Christ's love for us is, it will be mind-blowing.

Verses 20 and 21 are often used as a blessing and they are good words to end with:

 “To him who by means of his power working in us is able to do so much more than we can ever ask for, or even think of:  to God be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus for all time, forever and ever!”

Let’s pray: Lord, through your power working in us you can do so much more than we can ever ask for, or even think of.  Give us a vision of your love, the vastness of which we cannot grasp, and of your power, and give us a vision of what you can accomplish here in Herne Hill. Amen.