When we started this series in Ephesians two weeks ago we looked at this line from 2 Corinthians 4:16 – “So we do not lose heart.”  In our service, I said we might even take up a chant together (if we were given to chanting) that went something like “We’re not losing heart!  We’re not losing heart!” We’re not losing heart.  Why is this?  Paul is writing to followers of Jesus.  Paul is writing to the church in Ephesus, and when we say “the church” it’s really more a collection of churches meeting in houses in those days.  At the same time, he’s writing to us and he’s saying “I pray that you may not lose heart.”  We know what circumstances can get discouraging.  Personal circumstances.  Church circumstances.  We find out at this point in Paul’s letter that Paul is in prison.  Outwardly speaking, Paul is in the hands of and at the mercy of the Roman Empire.  I say outwardly because Paul knew well that he was actually in someone else’s hands.  He’s writing to a handful of people who are meeting in scattered locations in this great city of Ephesus – a city whose very architecture made known where real power and importance lay.  He’s writing to a group of people who were regarded by the surrounding culture with suspicion and hostility at worst, or in some cases complete and utter indifference.

I pray therefore that you may not lose heart.  We know what kind of things discourage us as followers of Christ.  I don’t have to list them.  How can we say that we’re not going to lose heart?  Paul has good things for us here this morning, let’s ask for God’s help as we hear them.

If you’ve heard me in a non-sermon setting for any length of time, you may know that I like digressions.  Usually, I’ll say something like “I’m all over the place here!”  Digressions within digressions.  Usually, I come back to where I started.  I don’t feel too badly about this, as we see in Ephesians 3 that Paul liked a good digression.  “This is the reason” is how Paul starts v1.  He goes off on a digression from vv 2-13.  This digression is all about purpose.  Paul then returns to his original thought in v 14 (“For this reason”) and writes of his prayer.

We heard Paul mention purpose and prayer in his introduction, and he comes back to these matters in chapter 3.  Before we begin with purpose, let us remember what we heard last week.  Paul wrote of the riches of God’s mercy and God’s great love for us, by which we have been brought from death to life in Christ.  This is God’s grace, God’s unmerited favour.  We didn’t look at the second half of chapter 2.  In it, Paul writes of how in the 1^st century church, the dividing wall between Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus had been broken down.  Chapter 2 ends with this description of the church – “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.” Eph 2:19-22)

This is who the church is in Christ Jesus.  You may know I like to say that the church is not simply a collection of people with similar interests.  We’re not even simply a collection of people who believe the same thing or things.    The church is the body of Christ.  Remember those words we’ve heard – “You have the power that raised Jesus from the dead and seated him at God’s right hand in the heavenly places in you!”  Remember “In Christ you have been brought from death to life.”  Add this from Chapter 2- “He is our peace.”  Consider the polarization of our world today.  Consider the categories that divide people and set people against one another.  Here’s the truth for the church in the midst of rampant polarization.  Christ Jesus is our pole.  Christ Jesus is the still point of the turning world.  Christ in me.  Christ in you, the hope of glory.  We in Christ.  The church needs to be the place where differences that would divide around ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, immigration status, are erased in Christ. 

There is a divine plan in place, and we have a role to play in the divine plan.  The divine endgame is the gathering up of all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.  The renewal of all things.  Renewal.  Restoration.  The new heaven and the new earth.  The end of brokenness, injustice, mourning, crying, pain.  Paul has largely been talking about us as people who receive God’s grace in the opening part of his letter.  Now he speaks of the church as active participants in God’s plan.

Paul starts by talking about his own role in God’s plan.  A commission was given to Paul, but even the commission was of God’s grace.  God’s plan to unite people in Christ. – people who had been divided.  The plan was hidden until it was made known in Jesus.  The plan was made known by revelation to Paul on the road to Damascus.  Paul has become a servant of the good news of Jesus, again according to the gift of God’s grace.  All is grace.  “Although I am the very least of all the saints,” writes Paul, “this grace was given to me to bring the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ.” (8)  Saul was the one who Luke describes like this – “Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.” Acts 9:1  A hatchet man for the Pharisees. The one who held the cloaks as Stephen was murdered.  Look what the grace of God did in him and through him.  It wasn’t all about looking back at who he had been for Paul.  As someone has said,  “The more he meditated on the blessings of God in Christ, and the infinite grace of his gifts, the more he realized that in himself there was nothing to make him deserve such mercy. He knew that he had no standing, no personal worthiness, no claim, no natural position or gifts, that he should receive the grace of reconciliation, and become a preacher of it. He was the very least of all. The gospel was everything…”

I know we’re not Paul but… How has God’s grace changed us?   How has a deeper understanding of the wideness of God’s mercy changed us?  How might it change us?  Paul is not telling his story simply for the sake of telling his story.  His story is a model for each and every one of us and the service to which we are called as the church.  How we do feel about the local church?  How do we not get discouraged?  Why do we continue to gather and to recall those simple but profound words “life together”?  Life in Christ together.  These are important questions, I believe, in a day when some of fallen out of the practice of “life together” in the local church.  I’m not talking about people who can’t come to church because of health or lack or mobility or other circumstances that keep us from gathering.  I’ve called this sermon “Church – Who Needs It?”  Paul does not want us to lose heart, and he reminds his readers here about the purpose of the church.  It’s not something that you’ll see written on the mission statements of many churches.  It might not even have been an answer we would have given had someone asked us “What is the purpose of the church?”

Listen this wild purpose of God for his church!

“… so that through the church, the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” (v 10)  This is God’s purpose for the church.  These rulers and authorities in the heavenly places are hostile.  We’ve already heard Paul write of the ruler of the power of the air.  In 6:12 Paul will be more pointed – “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of the present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”   In the midst of these, the church is an outpost.  Lord do not let us fall away, and if we’ve fallen away may we come back.  In the midst of forces that would preach greed, fear, hate, division, oppression, gods of money/power/fame/influence/recognition, the kingdom of the self – we stand as an outpost and preach the kingdom of God.  Christ reveals God’s glory.  Christ is in you.  Christ is in us to reveal God’s glory.  It’s not just in our proclamation and praise of God.  By its very existence in Christ, the church stands as a new humanity (in Christ) in which divisions are overcome (in Christ), thus signalling to the heavenly powers that the gathering of all things in Christ has already begun and will one day be completed! And so we say “Amen.  Come, Lord Jesus!”  We can pray like that as we have access to God and boldness and confidence through faith in Christ.  And so Paul prays.  The digression is over.  “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven on in earth takes its name.” (14-15)  Paul had prayed at the beginning of his letter that his readers would be given a spirit of wisdom and revelation as they came to know Christ.   This second prayer is that we might comprehend or grasp divine love.  We learn to pray through scripture so let’s hear the prayer again:

“I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, that he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being (your heart/soul/inner essence) with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell (not simply reside but settle in) in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted (like a plant) and grounded (like a building) in love.  I pray that you may have the power to comprehend (to grasp, to take hold of), with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (16-19)

We’re in the realm of the inexpressible.  We’re asking for help with grasping the ungraspable.  We do so knowing that God is able to accomplish far more than we could ask or even imagine.  We’re thankful for songs that help us to get our hearts around the breadth and length and height and depth of God’s love for us.  “How Deep the Father’s Love For Us”.  “And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Saviour’s love?”  Tis mercy all immense and free, for O my God it found out me! 

This was Paul’s prayer for the people of Ephesus and by extension the Church.  I’ve called this sermon “Church – Who Needs It?” because we need it.  Transformative heart knowledge of the love of God is something that we share.  It is in the community of his people that God makes himself known to us.  It is in the community of his people that we grow in understanding of the height, width, breadth and depth of God’s love.    When mutual love is demonstrated in the community of God’s people, God’s love is seen.  To truly grasp or take hold of the love of God is to experience it in practical ways in the body of Christ that is the church.

Let us not be satisfied with shallow understanding of God’s love for us or memories of times past in which we experienced God’s love in some profound way.  May we be praying as a church that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit may be at home in us as individuals and in our church as a body.  I came across a paraphrase of Paul’s prayer.   May we make it our own:

“Father, all of creation in heaven and on earth owes its existence to you. Strengthen struggling Christians through your Spirit already living within them. Make them stronger daily in proportion to your unlimited supply of power. May Christ be permanently at home in their inner lives as they sustain their trust in you. Their roots already grow deep in your love for them. They have a firm foundation. Grant them, along with all your people, the power to grasp how infinitely and unconditionally Christ loves them. Fill them so completely with yourself that they will daily become increasingly more like you. We give to you alone all the credit for who they are and for what they will become. We know you are able to do infinitely more than all we can pray for or ever imagine possible. Your power at work within us has already proven that. May Christ’s church speak and live in ways that prove how worthy you are of praise, now and forever! Amen.”  (George Lyons in Ephesians Philemon Colossians: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition)