We return for the last time in this series to the book of Ephesians where Paul calls the church to an experience of true community rooted and grounded in Jesus Christ. We have seen how Paul gropes for metaphors and pictures to describe this faith community that God has redeemed and exalted – it is the Body of Christ, the bride of Christ, the likeness of Christ, the community where walls come down. It is a community that is chosen, that ministers, that welcomes strangers, that tells the truth, that submits mutually to each other. Today, we finally discover that the church is a community empowered by prayer.

Prayer

The church community is a community of prayer and not power, of people on their knees and not on their thrones. Throughout this whole letter, the writer continually reminds us that it is Jesus and Jesus alone whom God has exalted to the highest place, it is Jesus who reigns, it is Jesus who has been given all power in heaven and in earth. The church ministers and serves in the power and Name of Jesus, but does not seek power or authority for itself. If the church is to accomplish what God intends for it to be in the world, it will not come primarily by winning seats in the legislature, passing a bill, or by assuring that judicial nominees respect Christian values. Those may all be good things for Christians to do, but they are not how Christians will do the unimaginable things that God dreams. They will do those things, Paul says, by grace, by gifts, by humble submission, and by spending time on their knees.

I could think of several more comfortable positions for prayer than kneeling. Knees are not necessarily the most attractive part of our anatomy, and they are easily injured as our Brittany discovered this past week. Maybe that is why the Jews of Paul’s day, and the early church probably, prayed standing up rather than kneeling down. However, there are a few times in Scripture when people get on their knees. In those days, kneeling demonstrated in a visible way that you were in the presence of someone far greater than yourself. It is an act of humility, a way of showing reverence. Praying on your knees shows that you are serious about your prayers, and that you pray before One that you take seriously.

In this passage, Paul drops to his knees to pray for the church (Ephesians 3:14). And it is a serious, passionate prayer. It demands some time on the floor. He is praying for the church, the people he already has said have received every spiritual gift there is to receive (Ephesians 1:3), who are the Body and Bride of Christ, who are the fullness of God in the world (Ephesians chapter 1). You can’t get much better than that, but still Paul prays for more. The first request is a mouthful, and of course, it’s just one sentence long. He prays for you – the one already following Jesus – the one who thought you knew most of what there is to know and experience of Him. He prays that: a) You may be strengthened in the deepest parts by God’s Spirit, b) that Christ may dwell in your hearts, and c) that you may be rooted and grounded in love. (Ephesians 3:16-17)

Paul prays that the church will experience a durable and lasting strength that will propel her into the future. This is not an appeal for a Band-Aid, or for “just enough” strength to make it through the week. Paul prays for strength deep down, in the darkest cresses of your heart and mind, in the places that motivate you and energize you, in the places where fear, pain and discouragement grip your heart. He prays that you will be strengthened in those places by God’s Holy Spirit. Even on the days when you are tired of teaching Sunday School one more Sunday, or you grow weary of one more worship song that you don’t like, or you think that you are about to throw in the towel because this church thing is too hard – it’s then that Paul prays that God will send His Spirit to capture and energize you again at the deepest places of your existence.

And then He prays that Christ Himself will dwell in your hearts. Yes, you heard it right. His prayer is not that you will be like Jesus. But that Jesus will dwell in you. And with that Jesus living in you, the one who God has raised from the dead and exalted and given Him the Name above all living in you … that is a dynamic and powerful energy that should radiate and empower you at your very core. Paul chooses his words carefully here. There are two words in Greek which may be translated “dwell.” One has to do with inhabiting a place temporarily, or like a stranger. The other one has to do with settling down, permanence, a home. Paul uses the second word. He’s not just trying to get them enough strength to make it through the day. He is praying for a strength that will be for a lifetime, a strength that won’t abandon you when life gets hard. It is the kind of strength that can root and ground your life in something lasting and good.

“Rooted and grounded in love.” That means that the most fundamental identity of your life, the most fundamental experience of your life, the thing that most defines how you live – is love. It is not fear, or anger, or victim hood, or abandonment, or confusion, or grief that grounds your life once Christ dwells in you and The Spirit empowers you. Because of what Jesus has done for you, your life is rooted and grounded in love. And because of that, it is a fundamentally different life set free from searching for love and by being animated by a Love that found you.

You have the indwelling Spirit; you have the continuing presence of Jesus Christ in you; but Paul doesn’t stop there. He prays for even more. Can God really give us a strength that is great and longer-lasting than what we seem to have? Yes, because He has the resources. “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.”

This prayer isn’t just for power, but for understanding. It is an understanding to know the unbelievable breadth, the incredible length, the towering heights, the deepest depth, of Christ’s love. We tend to put fences around the love of God, first for ourselves and then for others. On some days, it is difficult to imagine that God can actually love me. But it’s sometimes even harder for us to imagine that God can love those that I find difficult to love. God loves the Catholic and the Jew. God loves Iraqis as much as He loves Americans. God loves gay people as much as He loves straight people. God loves people in the ACLU as much as He loves people who listen to Focus on the Family. You can’t meet anyone that God did not die to save. There is no one He is not pursuing, no one that He will not welcome into His sacred family, no one that is beyond the border of His love. In other words, never think that your life has taken you somewhere that God cannot love you. His love is higher, deeper and wider than you ever dreamed or thought imaginable.

The most decisive and important moment of your life will be the moment you understand the breadth and depth and width of the love of God. Once His love grabs you, you will no longer live as a person hurt, angry or fearful but most fundamentally as loved. You won’t resort to control and power but to service and submission to make your way in the world. A life that has been grumpy, and closed, and petty, and small, and judgmental will give way to a great openness to the world and a love for all the creatures that God made and loves. Walls will fall. Bridges will be built. Strangers – even scandalous ones -- will be welcomed. That is what happens when you just begin to comprehend the love of God.

And that is just the quantifiable love that exists within a very high height, a very wide width, and very deep depth. Then there is that unquantifiable love, “the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.” (Ephesians 3:19) God’s power can raise up your life so that you can know the measure of God’s love for you, and the immeasurable extent of how Christ loves you and the world He created.

Finally, Paul prays something so unbelievable, so unfathomable – “that you will be filled with all the fullness of God.” It is a prayer that there will be no area in your life that remains untouched by the life of God in you. That all that He is may fill up your life. If you were a glass, your glass would be running over with the goodness of God. It is a prayer that the fullness of God will so overpower all the hurt, and the addictions, and all the sin so that it is God that fills you and not your sins. This is a prayer to God for everything God has to give. It is a longing for God to let it all break out and rush over a broken world. It is the prayer that we sing in that song, “New Anointing”: “Let your glory fill the earth.” “Come, Lord Jesus. We want more. We want everything you have to give. We long for you.”

Then Paul prays his benediction, which summarizes the first three chapters and sets the stage for the moral exhortations to truthfulness, to love and to submission in the chapters after it. It is good news for people wondering how they will ever attain to the calling which they have received, or for people struggling to break free of their immoral past. It is Gospel for hurried mothers wondering how they can fit a stranger into their lives, it is good news for a man who bottles his emotions deep within himself and wonders how he will ever tell anyone in his life the truth. It is Gospel for people bent on lording it over people rather than serving them. It is good news for people struggling to love. It is especially good news for a church desperately desiring community but so often coming up short.

“Now to Him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus for all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

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