Saturday, July 29, 2006

B, Pent 8 Proper 12 - Ephesians 3:14-21 "Inner Being" (Part 1 of 5)

What would be the most important word in the bible? Love, faith, hope, joy, blessedness, forgiveness, death, life? There are so many words from which to choose; all of them important. But there is one little word that stands at the centre for a Christian as one lives their life as a Christian. What could it be?

In fact there is another little word that often confuses our focus of who we are called to be. Every Christian struggles in their faith because in our efforts to be who God has called us to be, we often do something different, taking our focus off this important little word.

(Lay readers may leave out this paragraph) Today we look at the Ephesians 3:14-21 text as an introduction to the John six discourse, which we have just heard, as Jesus fed the five thousand and walked on water. Today our primary concern is to look at ourselves in relation to the most important little word in the bible and the other little word which often confuses us and clouds our view of the important word. The words from Ephesians do this best! Once we have looked at ourselves, having been focused by this important little word, in following weeks we will look at Jesus’ proclamation of himself as the bread of life in John 6, in the wake of his feeding the five thousand and walking on water.

But before this important little word is revealed, let’s hear the text from Ephesians 3:14-21, 14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. 20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Previously we have heard how Jesus called his disciples to rest in him, and he too calls us to rest in him each week as we Sabbath in church, as we rest in his presence, as he first came to us in his gift of word together with water, and as he continues to come to us in his gifts of word, body, and blood.

We have also heard in recent weeks how although Jesus was the same he was different. He was crucified for us because he was the same but also because he was different. And we have heard that we too are called to be the same and be different when most of the time we would rather be seen as the same as the world and not different. There’s no doubt we humans are complex beings.

In Ephesians 3:16 Saint Paul says, I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being. Here he talks about our inner being. What is he talking about? What is the “inner being”?

In 2 Corinthians Paul alludes to this inner being when he says, ‘…we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. (2 Corinthians 4:16) There is an inner being that is being renewed day by day, yet there is also something else that is wasting away.

In Romans 7 Paul speaks honestly and bluntly about this inner being and the other which is wasting away; and one of the two little words, which are important for us to hear and get in context, come to the fore in this text.

Paul says, 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. 21 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:15-25a)

So what is the little word in this text? The little word is “DO”! It goes hand in hand with the enemy of our inner being — the “sinful nature”, the “old Adam”, our “human nature”, and it loves doing the deeds of evil and sin. Saint Paul says “the inner being delights in God’s Law”. However, for all of Paul’s doing, for all the churning of his emotions, his mental gymnastics, and efforts to “do” what God’s good and holy Law calls him to “do”, he fails and exclaims, What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

Our doing, even our best doing, reveals our human nature as wretched. My being is wretched! I am doing wretched things even when I seek to do the best I can. I do and then I die; our doing ends in death. When we place doing at the centre of our being, without Christ’s being moving us and willing us in our inner being, our doing is doomed! We are doomed!

But in the midst of the busyness of our sin laden doing, and wretchedness, Saint Paul looks away from himself to Jesus Christ and says, Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! He looks to the great, “I AM”, to the Son of God eternally begotten of the Father, he looks to the being of Jesus, the same Jesus who is, who was, who will be; and the same Jesus who calls us to be in him, to rest in his being with us. This is the Son of God who came and made his being in the sinful flesh of humanity and perfected the doing we could never do, and by ourselves will never do! This is the Son of God, our saviour who wants to be with us so we can be in him!

As Christians we are called to “BE”! This is the most important word in the bible! It’s as simple as that, and it’s as difficult and profound as that! When we rest in God allowing him to form our BEing, and forgive our sinful DOing with the deeds of Christ’s sinless DOing and death on the cross, we are in him. I am, you are, we are — eternally saved. You have BEen saved, you are BEing saved, and you will BE saved, by BEing in Christ. You have been BEgotten by God when you were born anew in baptism, and now you are called to BEleive, having BEcome a child of God. BElief is being in a state of lief — in a state of willingness or gladness. So to believe is where one is willing or glad to BE!

The true BElief of a Christian is not in that of DOing but rather it is one of resting in God’s BEing. We are called to BE; to BE with Christ who gives us our inner BEing, who calls us and saves us from the fruitlessness of our DOing, so that we walk and rest in him. We DO the things of God only because he has chosen to BE with us and has given us the Holy Spirit to BE our counsellor and to powerfully DO things from within our inner BEing. It’s because of Christ’s BEing that our sin-tainted DOing has any skerrick of sanctity about it. Anything more or less than BE-Lief in Christ alone is a BIG-Lie.

So let’s look at Ephesians 3 in the light of God’s call for us to BE in Christ. Paul says, I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. We get our identity, our BEing from God the Father. Our being as children, comes only because God has chosen to DO so. We came to BE humans and BE Christians, humans being with Christ-like inner beings, only because of God!

Paul then says, I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. Our inner being comes into existence, it is made to be, by Christ dwelling or being in our hearts. And having come to be in us he also gives us the Holy Spirit who lives in us too and opens our being to God so we receive faith. This is from where we get our ability to believe; given by and only by the being of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in our hearts through the graciousness of God the Father who wants us for himself.

Paul goes on to pray, that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

We do not, in fact we cannot, root or establish ourselves in love or have the ability or power to keep ourselves in it. But we HAVE BEEN rooted and established in love. Christ has implanted and BEgun our being in him and him in us, so our inner being exists, it is, and continues to be! And the Holy Spirit continues to give us power to know what Jesus does and continues to do.

So as we come to a deeper and deeper realisation of our wretched sinful nature and its hopeless doing, as the Holy Spirit DOes his work in us, he also fills us more and more with faith — which is belief in the being and doing of God in Christ on the cross. This faith is one which enables us to know and believe the love which comes from God and dwells in our weakness and fills us to the measure of all the fullness of God for Christ’s sake. And having had this done for us we become beings of thankfulness as we begin to grasp how wide and long and high and deep the love of Christ actually is in us — how eternal Christ’s being is in us who struggle with the doings of sin.

Now we can join in with Paul in praise of God as he rejoices to the Ephesians, Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Lay readers may finish here)

In the coming weeks we will examine Jesus’ call in John 6 to see in his signs, not so much his DOING, but rather, his BEING. He calls us to believe and rest in him whose being is with us and whose being is before our Father in heaven. He calls us to willingly be who he has created us to be, rather than use him as a means to do and justify our doing. Next week will look at the most important work God has set for us to do, now that our being is in him.

(In preparation for next time read John 6:1-35 especially in the context of what you have just heard, focusing on the words believe, “to be” (is, are, was, been, being, etc.) and “to do” and their derivatives.)