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SERMON
Chapter 2 ended, you'll remember, with a marvelous picture of the
church – with Jesus Christ the capstone "in whom the whole building is
joined together." With the "dividing wall of hostility" now demolished
in Jesus, Jews and Gentiles alike "are being built together to become a
dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit." Paul says that the church is
like a building – as yet unfinished, with much work still to be done.
And yet, paradoxically, it is incredibly strong because, like an arch,
it is two weaknesses leaning on each other and supported at the top.
At this point Paul begins one of the most eloquent prayers you will find
anywhere. But he doesn't get very far. In fact, he doesn't complete the
first sentence before he interrupts himself. Now, in defense of Paul,
this is rather typical. You'll find him inserting parenthetical remarks
in several of his letters. (This one happens to run on from verse 2
through verse 13 before he gets back to his prayer.) But I wouldn't take
it as an interruption or the disjointed ramblings of an old man.
No, I suspect Paul knew exactly what he was doing. Reading this is
rather like listening to a symphony. The composer will be carrying on a
particular theme. And then, without warning, a solo instrument will
introduce a new melody, and the whole orchestra is set off on a tangent.
Eventually they'll return to the basic theme, only now it will have been
made all the richer by the introduction of this new strain into the
whole work. I think that's what Paul is doing here with this passage.
What was it that set Paul off on this tangent? He wrote in verse 1,
"For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of
you Gentiles – " The Emperor may have thought Paul was his
prisoner, but Paul knew better. His body may have been chained to a
Roman guard 24/7, but his heart and soul were captive to the risen Lord
Jesus.
But what about the rest of that phrase: "…for the sake of you
Gentiles?" Well, it was literally true. If you recall the incident
in Acts 21, you'll remember that an angry mob in Jerusalem had been
ready to lynch Paul for associating with Gentiles. To save his neck,
being a Roman citizen, he had appealed his case to Rome, and so he had
been shipped there to await trial. So when he wrote this letter, he was
quite literally in chains because of his commitment to that vision of
Jews and Gentiles being one in Christ – a vision that he had just been
spelling out in this letter. And I suspect it was mentioning his
imprisonment because of that vision that triggered this "digression" in
verses 2-13.
He begins by writing, "Surely you have heard about me…" Now, if
Paul had written this letter strictly for the Ephesians, that statement
would make no sense at all. After all, he had spent three years
preaching in Ephesus. Of course they had heard about him. They knew
first hand about his passion for preaching the good news to the
Gentiles. So, if we assume Paul wrote this letter, that phrase by itself
is telling evidence that he intended this letter to be circulated to a
much wider audience.
And what was it that he was so passionate about sharing? In verse 3 he
says that it is "the mystery made known to me by revelation." The word
"mystery" in English, suggests something hidden or perhaps even
incomprehensible. We'll say, "It's a mystery to me." But in
Greek, the word
musterion means something that is beyond the capacity of human
reason to figure out. Ah, but once the mystery is revealed by
God, it's as plain as day.
I remember Stuart Briscoe talking about two distinct schools of thought:
speculative philosophy and revealed theology. He said that speculative
philosophy works something like this. A philosopher will ask questions
such as: Who am I? – Where did I come from? – Where am I going?
And after speculating for a while, the philosopher will come up with a
set of answers called a "philosophy of life." Now, I suppose that would
be fine if philosophers were content to mind their own business.
Unfortunately, other philosophers invariably begin speculating on the
speculations of the earlier philosophers. And it goes on until we become
inundated with myriad conflicting philosophies between which we are
obliged to choose, and none of which is entirely satisfactory.
There is, however, an alternative to speculative philosophy. It is
revealed theology, and it works like this. God says to us, "Excuse
me, but if you will be still and stop speculating for a while, I will
tell you who you are, where you came from, and where you are going. Not
only that; I will also tell you why you are here what I expect of you."
Paul says here that the divine "mystery" has been revealed. Paul didn't
figure it out. A committee of theologians didn't discover the mystery.
It was God's gift. Paul goes on to say, in effect, "In fact, there's
nothing new here. I already briefed you back in chapter 1, verse 10,
that the big mystery is that God is going to bring all things in heaven
and earth together under the lordship of Jesus Christ."
Paul goes on at verse 4 to say, "In reading this, then, you will be
able to understand… the mystery." In other words, this letter is
Paul's attempt to explain God's revealed mystery in such a way that we
will not only be able to comprehend it, but also apply it to our lives.
So verse 4 serves as a kind of "statement of intent" for this letter.
Then in verse 5 Paul makes the categorical claim that this mystery
remained a mystery until the coming of Christ. True, there were some big
clues earlier. For example, there was the promise in the covenant with
Abraham that all peoples of the earth would somehow be blessed through
Abraham's "seed" – but it wasn't clear how that would happen. Later, the
hope of a Messiah certainly pointed to the One who would some day come.
But still the hope was vague. It was only after Jesus lived and died and
rose again and gave the Great Commission and sent Paul and Barnabas and
the others to spread the Gospel, only then did it dawn on us that
God's plan was to bring everyone to himself through Christ. And,
as Paul has already said here, one of the clearest signs that this is
God's plan and not some human notion, is that the long-standing walls of
hostility between Jew and Gentile have come crashing down.
And what is the mystery? At verse 6 he says, "This mystery is that
through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members
together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ
Jesus." That's a lot of togetherness. I think it's noteworthy that
when Paul says we are "members together of one body" he had to
coin a new word,
susswma, because there was evidently no word in the Greek
language to adequately denote the utter equality of membership in
Christ's body. Paul says here that there is no room in the church for a
kind of "first-class/second-class Christian" mentality. Granted,
different people assume different functions in the body of Christ. We're
not all wired the same. But is one person worth more or less than any
other person in the body? Never!
There is a profound lesson here for any church in any place and at any
time. There's a strong warning against the sin of self-preservation at
the expense of another. It's a reminder to all of us to afford everyone
else in the church the same dignity and respect you think you deserve.
Let me ask you this: Is there anyone in this church whom you see as less
valuable than anyone else? Let me put the question this way: Do you
withhold from anyone in this church the same grace that God has extended
to you? I know I'm getting very personal. The point is: that kind of
thinking does not belong in the body of Christ.
And Paul will take the lead in modeling that kind of right thinking.
When he begins to talk about his role as one of the apostles in verse 7,
notice what he says. He calls himself a "servant of the gospel by the
gift of God's grace…" Paul calls himself a servant, and he gives God
credit not only for the content of his preaching, but also for his
ability to preach. Then he says that this gift was "…given me through
the working of his power." He knew that only God's power
could have transformed him from Saul the killer of Christians into Paul
the caller of Christians.
Then in verse 8 Paul calls himself "less than the least of all
God's people." That self-imposed epithet may not seem particularly
striking to you. But there's more to it. I suspect that, for much of his
life, Paul had a running battle with his ego. He was certainly aware of
how intelligent and articulate and persuasive he was. But this
intellectual giant had been given the name Paulus, which means "small."
Do you see the irony? Here was a small man with a big ego – a kind of
first century Danny DeVito. But Christ had captured his heart and had
nurtured in him a healthy (and more humble) self-image. So here, late in
his career, the Apostle Paul could use this play on words to poke fun at
himself. He calls himself "less than the least" – as if to say, "Ok,
so I'm short. Hey, you think that's funny? When it comes to my stature
as a Christian, I'm even smaller than I look! – I'm less than the
least." That's modeling a healthy attitude.
I see a remarkable balance in the self-portrait that he paints in this
passage. On the one hand, his words in verse 4 about "my insight into
the mystery of Christ" seem to border on arrogance. And yet in verse 8,
calling himself "less than the least," sounds rather like unhealthy
self-deprecation. But, taken together, they're true-to-life – at least
my life. I find there's a constant rhythm to my Christian life, trying
to maintain a balance between confidence and humility. Now, confidence
taken to an unhealthy extreme becomes egotism. Humility in the unhealthy
extreme becomes dangerously depressive. But neither confidence nor
humility is inherently bad. In fact, a healthy confidence that God has
gifted us with everything we need – coupled with a healthy humility that
recognizes our limitations – that's a powerful combination.
William Barclay describes this balance in an incident involving Arturo
Toscanini. The great maestro was talking to the orchestra in a rehearsal
of a Beethoven symphony. He said: "Ladies and gentlemen, I am nothing
– you are nothing – Beethoven is everything." Saying that didn't
diminish their skills or their confidence in the least. He simply
reminded them that their responsibility was not to draw attention to
themselves, but to let Beethoven flow through them. Paul says the same
thing here. "I'm nothing. The Lord is everything. I simply want God
to use me to make plain his great mystery."
Then at verse 10, Paul lays out our marching orders. He writes: "His
(God's) intent was that now, through the church, the manifold
(literally: "multi-colored") wisdom of God should be made known to the
rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms…" Loosely translated,
it comes out something like this: God's plan is to use the church, with
its rich and diverse fellowship, to demonstrate to those who think
they're in charge of the world that God's multi-colored way of doing
things makes their black-and-white policies look sick – and they're
going down!
Do you understand what that means? God intends to use the likes of us,
despite all our differences, to do two things: 1) to stand up to the
powers-that-be in this world as a living model of the perfect unity that
everything will one day have in Christ; and 2) to be a staging ground
for a campaign to draw all people to Christ. In a word – he's talking
about evangelism.
Archbishop William Temple rightly reminded us that the church is the
only institution that exists for the sake of non-members. So our job as
members of the body of Christ is to let non-members in on the secret
(the mystery) that God is creating a new forever-family, and they can be
a part of it. That's evangelism – telling people the good news that,
because of what Christ has done for them, they can come to God just as
they are, with freedom and confidence that they will find welcome.
Let me close today just as Paul ends his "digression" – with one final
request in verse 13. He says, "Don't be discouraged because of my
sufferings…." That could be taken two ways. We could take it to
mean, "Don't let my troubles keep you from being an outspoken
Christian because you fear that you might suffer a similar fate."
But he might also be saying, "Don't use my troubles as an excuse for
hiding your Christianity because you think there's no way you could ever
match my devotion."
For many of us, I suspect, that second interpretation hits closer to
home. It's so easy to play that comparison game. It's tempting to say,
"Who am I? He's in full-time Christian work and I'm just a
part-time volunteer. I don't have his credentials. Who would listen to
me?" -or- "Look at her – she's investing her life in people
halfway around the world, and here I am shuffling around Medford.
Compared to her I'm nothing. So why bother?"
I plead with you: Don't play that game – don't do it – just as Paul says
here, "Don't use my experience as your excuse." Whether you're
talking about the office you work in, or the school you attend, or the
retirement home where you live, or the boards and committees and clubs
you're a part of – everywhere you turn, there are people who need to
hear the good news that they are loved and will find welcome in God's
family. We say that one of the core values that define Westminster
Church is a pervasive desire to introduce others to Christ. Paul closes
his thoughts here by saying, in effect, "God has entrusted you with
the greatest mystery in the world. Don't keep it a secret. Share it.
Just do it. And remember, I'll be praying for you." Next week we'll
look at that prayer – the last half of chapter 3.
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