Be a Part of Something Bigger: The Little Dash
Ephesians 3:17b-19
I’ve been thinking about my father over the past week. He passed away just over a year ago with this inscribed on his gravestone: Charles Richard Waybright, December 20, 1922 – December 31, 2014.
I want you to notice the little dash between my father’s birth and his death. It’s something that the Rev. Otis Moss from Cleveland, Ohio made note of when he he preached at the funeral service for Dr. Martin Luther King’s mother. Reverend Moss said he didn’t want to talk about the day Mrs. King was born or about the day she died. He wanted to talk about that little dash. He said, that little dash was where the meaning of Mrs. King’s life was to be found.
“What do we do,” Rev. Moss asked, “with that little dash that is our life?”
So, let me ask you today: “What are you going to do with that little dash that is your life?”
That is the question that has led us to our current preaching series entitled, “Be Part of Something Bigger”. We know that God is involved in doing something big in our world. He is, according to Rev. 21 & 22, making all things new. And, he gives us the privilege to play a part in what he is doing in his world. We are his witnesses. We are God’s ambassadors of reconciliation. The point of this sermon series is that “the little dash” that we call our lives can be a part of God’s something bigger.
I believe all this. I have been preaching to you about this privilege that we have to have our lives make a difference for the building of God’s eternal kingdom. However, today, I want to pull back a bit -- and give you a warning. This matter of thinking about our lives being a part of something bigger can easily lead us to thinking that what God most desires is that we accomplish huge things with our lives (as the world considers “huge things”) and that we have to prove our value to God by our efforts in having an impact in this world. So, let me tell you today that there is nothing less “Christian” than thinking that God’s love for you is dependent on what you accomplish in the world’s eyes. God loves you! He knows everything about you – all your accomplishments and failures, all your joys and grief – and he loves you.
So, today, near the end of our current series on that “little dash” of your life being a part of something bigger, I want to remind you of 2 ½ verses that have become my prayer for all who are part of Lake Avenue Church. I often tell you how much I love you in this church. But, my love is nothing compared to God’s.
Listen to this wonderful prayer that the Apostle Paul prayed for church people in Ephesians 3:17b-19:
I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all God’s people, 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.
The Power to Know You Are Loved – “I pray that you have power…”
There is something in this prayer that is heard too rarely even in church: This prayer is a prayer for power – but not for power in the way we usually pray for it. Most of our prayers are for power -- power to make it through a difficult situation, power to overcome an addiction, or power to be able to have boldness in witness for Jesus Christ.
Paul’s prayer is that you will have power for one thing: to grasp and to experience how much Jesus loves you. I must say it clearly: This is not a prayer for you to love Christ more. Preachers, teachers and Christian parents often call church people to love Christ more – and it’s right to do so. But do not miss this today: This prayer is that you will grasp and know more about Christ’s love for you.
Notice the two words he uses: to grasp the love of Christ” and “to knowthe love of Christ.” “Grasp” (katalabesthai) speaks about understanding something with our minds. Our minds are very important gifts from God. Living for Jesus instead of being conformed the the way we would otherwise live in the world begins, according to Romans 12:1-2, with “the renewing of our minds.” So, there is an important place for learning, i.e., “grasping”, what God has revealed about Himself in His Word. When you grasp what God has revealed about himself in Scripture, you discover that a foundational truth about God is that “God is love.” My prayer for you today is that you will grasp that the loving Maker of the universe loves you personally.
But Paul will not leave his prayer simply with wanting you to “grasp” something intellectually about Christ’s love for you. Paul’s prayer is not just for the head but also for your heart – for your whole being. He prays also that you will “know” (gnonai). This is word that includes personal experience. You may grasp what people mean when they say they love you and still not experience it in your inner being. But Jesus does love you! Sometimes, you need God’s power to help what you grasp with your mind to move deeply into all that you are. Paul’s prayer – and my prayer – is that you may both grasp and know that Jesus loves you.
And, one of the exciting things about being a follower of Jesus is that there is always more to grasp and to know about Jesus’ love for you. No matter how long you have been a Christian and no matter how much you have studied, there is always more to learn. See how the Apostle Paul searches for ways to tell us how beautiful this is. He doesn’t just speak of 3 dimensions – Jesus’ love for you is too big for that. Paul, in his wonder, speaks of four: Jesus’ love for you is “wide and long and high and deep”.
I’m sure you know that the man who wrote this had once been involved personally in the murder of Christians. Then, Jesus met him – and forgave him. Jesus took the “little dash” of Paul’s life and redirected everything. Paul could never get over the fact that while he was a sinner, Jesus loved him and died for him!
This is the main thing that sets our Christian faith apart for other religions. Our faith is all about a God who loves us in spite of ourselves. We do not earn God’s love. When we “grasp” that God loves us in spite of our failures, the only appropriate thing we can do is say, “In view of your mercy, I offer my body – indeed, all that I am -- to you, Loving Lord Jesus, as my act of worship.” (See Rom 12:1-2.) Because of that, before Paul tells you how to live in response to the love of Christ (which he will do in Ephesians 4-6), he first prays that you will have power, power to grasp and know the love of Christ.
So, here’s a big question: Why do we need power for that? Paul knew why! Paul, who even at the end of his life considered himself the “worst of all sinners” (1 Tim 1:15), knew you would need power to believe what God has said about his love for you. You and I seem always to revert to the thought that, “I have to live well enough to maintain someone’s love.” Many of us have lived our whole lives trying to be worthy of someone else’s respect and love. We sometimes feel we have to be perfect for another person to value us. And, that kind of perfectionism is thoroughly destructive – because we all know that we are not perfect.
In our spiritual lives, we know that God is perfect and holy – and we all know that we are not! Furthermore, I think, most of us believe that God knows we are not perfect. So, we find it so hard to grasp that the God who knows all about us still loves us.
I remember many of my meetings as a university president with student leaders. I found so many of our wonderful students would open up their lives to me. They would speak to me of their genuine desires to walk with God – but also of the many scars in their pasts. Some continued to failed with ongoing struggles with addictions – sometimes sexual addictions and sometimes chemical addictions. They knew they had fallen short of what God would have them to be. They wondered if it was truly possible that God, knowing everything about them, could love them.
What they needed was power -- power to grasp that what God has said is true: that God loved them and would never give up on them. And, I’m telling you that the same thing is true of us in church today – whether you are a child, a student, or a great-great-grandparent. And, my prayer for you this morning at the Lake Avenue Church is the same prayer that Paul had for the Ephesians, i.e., that you will have the power to grasp and know how much Jesus loves you.
The Love that Changes Your Life -- “…that you may be filled the measure of all the fullness of God”.
This is remarkable language – among the most majestic language in the entire Bible. And notice: what the Bible says is that when you live a life in response to the love of Christ, what will happen to you is that you, yes you, will “be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God!”
What does this mean? It’s similar to Paul’s promise in Romans 8 that our destiny as followers of Jesus is that someday, through the work of God’s Spirit, we will be conformed to the image of Christ. Here in Eph 3, the idea is that when you – through faith -- truly grasp and know how much Christ loves you, will become complete as God is complete, mature as God is mature. We human beings were made in God’s image but but sin has distorted us – ruined us. Now, we human beings usually have a deep inner longing to be what God created us to be. I find that most people live with an intuition that something is missing in their lives. Human beings need forgiveness for things done in the past. That’s what Christ made available on the cross. But, we also need ongoing growth – what theologians have called sanctification. In Eph 3, it’s quite clear that we will never have any hope to be what God made us to be unless we grasp and know the love of Christ.
Of course, through the study of the social sciences, the truth of this biblical teaching is being proven to be true. There are many studies that show that unless we live in the context of loving relationships, we will find it difficult to grow, i.e., to become emotionally and relationally strong. Of course, with the breakdown of many families and institutions in our Western world, it is likely that many, many people will live their lives without ever truly experiencing unconditional love. But, what the world does not offer, God does. “Jesus loves you. This I know for the Bible tells us so!”
I need to illustrate this for you. In the mid-1970s, I spent a part of the Christmas season in Duisburg, a city situated in Germany’s famous industrial area. Once it had been a quite beautiful city. But, by the time I visited, what I saw was a bizarre landscape of smokestacks, slag heaps, polluted soils, industrial ruins, and filthy waterways. Let me show you an example what I saw in Duisburg. PUT IMAGES HERE.
When my German friends heard I would be doing concerts in Duisburg on my first Christmas, they said, “Oh, no! Don’t go there. It doesn’t reflect well on the beauty of our country.” And it certainly didn’t.
Some of you know that my artist son, Brandon, has made me aware of a global movement called reclamation art. Artists in many urban areas around the world are seeking to reclaim some of the beauty of areas devastated by decades of industrial pollution. The artists in those projects talk about a vision to restore their communities from the affects of pollution to the beauty and usefulness that they believed was possible.
Let’s go back to Duisburg now. In the 1990s, Latz & Partners decided to focus on one devastated section of Duisburg. These reclamation artists and teams hoped to have the economy begin to flourish again while, at the same time, reestablishing its beauty. Let me show you how it looks now: PUT IMAGES HERE.
You and I have the opportunity to be part of God work of reclamation art. Earlier in Eph 2:10, Paul said, “You are God’s work of art – God’s masterpiece.” Jesus loves you and, when you follow him, he promises to change your life into something that reflects his glory. Jesus loves you so much that he died to forgive your sins. He loves you too much to leave you in your sins too. So, look at the “little dash” of your life. You cannot remake yourself. You must let Jesus enter in, cleanse your past and then remake your future through the power of the Holy Spirit. And, it all begins by grasping and knowing personally the love that Jesus has for you. So, I pray today that you will grasp and know more of Christ’s love for you “so that you may be filled to the measure of the fullness of God.”
The Divine Answer to This PrayerRooted and establish in love… together with all God’s people…
The thought that we are loved while we are sinners (rom 5:8) – that we can be loved to this extent even while we are thoroughly unworthy of it is -- is counter-cultural and completely counter-intuitive. People from every culture in the world naturally think that we have to show ourselves to be worthy of love. So, what we do is that we try to hide our imperfections. We try to pretend that we’re more perfect than we are. And, it all leaves us drained – and hopeless – because we keep falling short of the glory of the God in whose image we are made. Where is there hope for people like us?
Answer #1: But here is a wonderful part of the Good News, i.e., God offers you the most important thing in the world (His love) – even if you’ve never experienced a community of love in this world before. He does so, first, by telling you over and over in his Word that he loves you.
. God declares to you that nothing in or outside this world can ever separate you from his love that comes in Christ Jesus. Do you grasp what God says? Do you believe him?
Answer #2: If you have never experienced anything like God love in your family or in your community, God has chosen to plant local churches in places like Pasadena made up of people who are commanded to love one another as Jesus loves us. Jesus said we are to be a family of love to one another in such a way that a person who has never really experienced love should come to a church where Jesus is Lord and find Christ-like love among his people. How did Jesus put it to the rich young ruler in Mark 10? “If you leave everything behind and follow me, I know you will have nothing. On your own you will be destitute. But, when you follow me, you will have 100-fold houses and lands, mothers, brothers and sisters.” The point is that Jesus often enables us to experience his love through his people.
So, here in Ephesians 3, Paul wants us to know that we are to experience Christ’s love through life in the family of God we call the church. He uses two important phrases: He says that we’ve been “rooted and established in love.” This is what God has done for us. He has lavished His love on us and, then has rooted us in this world into a church with many different kinds people who are to love as Jesus loves.
And do not miss that phrase in our text, “Together with all the God’s people? It is very emphatic! The Bible is saying that we can experience the otherwise unknowable love of God in the community of people who have experienced God grace, mercy and love through faith in Jesus.
It’s supposed to work this way: As we experience the unity and love of people in a local church we otherwise would never love except that we’ve all been rescued by Jesus, we begin to grasp and know the love of God and we grow to be what God would have us be.
I need to experience God’s love here at LAC! I know you need that too! We grasp and know the love of Jesus in many ways – but one of the main gifts God gives us is one another. In experiencing the love of Jesus through faith, that “little dash” that is our lives can grow and bring glory to God.
And that brings us to communion today. In John 14, Jesus declared, “Greater love has no human being than this – to lay down your life for a friend… and you are my friends…” Jesus not only taught this. He did it. To help us never to forget how much he loves us, he told us that when we gather together, we are to remember that he loves us so much that he gave his body and blood for our rescue and remaking…
I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the God’s people, 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.