How Much Love is Enough?
Text: Ephesians 3:14-21
October 24, 2004, Dave Philips
Life is uncertain, so we should -- finish the sentence for me -- EAT DESSERT FIRST!
I’m afraid I’ve always been a person inclined to eat dessert first, even before there was any philosophical justification for it (like the uncertainty of life). When I was a teenager one of my buddies after eating a huge breakfast with me admitted to me with awe in his trembling voice, "Dave, you’re the only person I ever met in my whole life who could out-eat me!" And I realized at that moment that I was destined for greatness! So, have you gotten the impression that when I come to the table, I like to eat the appetizer, the main course, the salad, the dessert, and sometimes even the table decorations if they’re edible?
Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher and theologian, advised people who were bored with life to try to be cool and vary their routines by attending only the first couple of acts of stage plays and leaving before the conclusion. I have to agree, that’s really unusual, really cool. But how in the world could anyone do it? I can’t imagine being so bored with life that I wouldn’t want to see how the darn play ended! Why watch the World Series through the eighth inning with the score tied and not stay around for the ninth? Why read all chapters of a mystery novel except the last one where the mystery gets solved? Why wrap gifts and put them under the Christmas tree but never open them?
Do you get my drift?
So, I find it hard to understand Christians who, as they come to the wonderful feast God has laid on the table, will settle for the appetizer, and maybe a few bites of the main course, but don’t even eat dessert! It’s hard for me to understand how a Christian can be content with a few little bits of Christianity -- and frequently the least attractive parts of the Christian religion -- and not take the whole thing. The beer commercial of a few years back advised us, since we only go around once, to go for the gusto. But Jesus tells us that the gusto is for both time and eternity. In one of the summarizing statements about his ministry, Jesus said to his disciples, "I have told you these things so that my gusto may be in you, and that your gusto may be full, full clear up to the top!"1 All right, he didn’t use the word "gusto," he said "joy." But trust me, gusto is closer to Jesus’ meaning than our English word joy.
Paul in our scripture lesson shows that he understands Christian life and ministry as a 100 percent affair. He says to the Ephesian Christians, and to us Grants First Presbyterian Christians, "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, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."2
How much does love want? 100 per cent. Nothing less.
I see in Paul’s words a premise, a paradigm, and a possibility.
A PREMISE
First, the premise. Ask yourself: what are the premises for modern secularism? Why does the secularist who has no belief in God get up in the morning and go to work? To make money? Okay -- but for what reason? Well, to enjoy life -- but why? So he or she can have maximum pleasure and minimum pain -- all right, but to what end? What’s it all about, Alfie? What’s the point of it all?
Robert Coles, professor of psychiatry at Harvard University, had a young woman as a student who came from a working-class background. To help pay her way through Harvard, she cleaned the rooms of her more privileged fellow students. She reported to Coles that these kids from wealthy families, some of whom were in the same classes she took, repeatedly treated her with disrespect because of her role as a cleaning woman. One of the young men regularly propositioned her for sex. She had been in two classes on moral reasoning with this guy. He got A’s in these courses. And yet he treated her like dirt.
This young woman said to Professor Coles: "I’ve been taking all these philosophy courses, and we talk about what’s true, what’s important, what’s good. Well, how do you teach people to be good? What’s the point of knowing good if you don’t keep trying to become a good person?" Eventually this young woman left Harvard. She couldn’t live with the incongruity of people being awarded A’s for knowing what was good but demonstrating by their behavior that they didn’t care about being good or doing good. And Robert Coles, as a professor at Harvard, could give her no assurances that things would change, because Harvard as an institution is secular and unwilling to take a position that says that the behavior of this young man is either right or wrong.3
One of the major premises of modern secularism is that knowledge is power. It’s good to know a lot about a lot of things. If you know lots and lots, if you’re very smart, you get ahead. But while we agree that knowledge is indeed power, stop and ask yourself: power for what purpose? Power to be a better person? Power to do good for the human race? Power to extend justice to those who are being badly treated?
Or power to do something else? Power to please yourself. Power to put down your neighbor. Power to do what you want and go where you want no matter if the rest of the world is powerless and miserable. Some people think this is the American Dream. God help us if that’s what the American Dream has become!
Paul’s premise is very different. Paul’s premise in the Ephesian letter is that the most important thing in life is understanding God’s grace and living in it. Because God is good, we human beings who are created in God’s image are called to be good like God. Human life is not about acquiring knowledge or money or power as ends in themselves. Human life is about worshiping God and walking in the Way of Jesus.
Come back to the questions posed to Professor Coles by his student: "How do you teach people to be good? What’s the point of knowing good if you don’t keep trying to become a good person?"
And think about the behavior of the spoiled brat who treated this young woman with disdain and insulted her constantly by soliciting her for sex. How would that young man’s behavior change if his premises changed? If he believed, as most educated young men believed a hundred years ago, that there is a God of grace who requires of his creatures that they treat each other with grace and respect, would his behavior toward his fellow student continue to be demeaning and insulting? And would he be a better and more productive human being if he believed in a good God who required him to be good as well?
Our premises are important! And if the cynical selfishness we see running rampant in our world is going to change, our premises are going to have to change as well.
A PARADIGM
With this radical new premise for human life, Paul also shows us a paradigm. Paul’s paradigm is Jesus. Think about Jesus as a paradigm shift for the 21st century! What would change in our world if Jesus were our paradigm?
Jesus, as John tells us in his gospel, is God incarnate.4 But Jesus is also our human brother, born of a human mother,5 living in humble and very difficult circumstances throughout his short life, but transcending those circumstances to live the greatest life ever lived. The New Testament writers show us the paradigm of Jesus repeatedly, because they believe that the life Jesus lived is one that we all can imitate successfully.
We can’t imitate this life successfully without help, of course. But we have abundant help from Christ himself. "I pray," Paul says to us, "that out of [God’s] 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."6
Just for the moment, imagine yourself a complete cynic. You don’t believe in God, you don’t believe in morality, you’re in the game only for you can get out of it. You will lie and cheat and steal in order to get what you want out of life. If you, the total cynic, had the choice of surrounding yourself with people like you who also went through life lying, cheating, and stealing, or surrounding yourself with people who were serious followers of Jesus Christ, which would you choose? Would it be easier to be a robber baron in a world filled with other robber barons, or would it be easier to be a robber baron in the midst of a world filled with people who were honest, hard-working, conscientious, and compassionate? In fact, wouldn’t any robber baron with any brains at all prefer to live in a society ordered by the love of Christ than in a society where those in charge were all robber barons?
At the very least, if I were a robber baron, I’d prefer having Christians around me that I could then try to rob and cheat instead of other robber barons who were doing their best to knife me in the back. Most people, I think, would make this choice if they could. Especially poor people. Especially sick people. Especially people going through tragedy. Robber barons can cut a wide swath when they do their robber baron thing, but the world needs people like Jesus to pick up the pieces and heal the wounds of those who have been run over by the robber barons, wouldn’t you agree?
This is the paradigm shift Jesus introduced to the first century. This is the paradigm shift the Church continues to hold up to our generation. The spoiled brats, the robber barons, the people who believe that there is no God and Donald Trump is his prophet, cannot heal our wounded world. We need Jesus as our paradigm.
A POSSIBILITY.
But how realistic is this? Is it even a possibility? Yes, says Paul. He is living proof that people can change. Paul, a religious robber baron, a fanatic who persecuted Christ and his Church, met that new paradigm on the road to Damascus, and his life changed forever. So Paul knows, and countless Christians through the ages can testify, that it is entirely possible for people, and sometimes whole families, and villages, and even nations to change.
England changed. In the midst of the industrial revolution when there was great social chaos as England made a huge leap from an agrarian to an industrial society, when there were robber barons aplenty taking advantage of the rural poor who flocked to the cities for jobs, when wealthy plantation owners justified keeping slaves by quoting passages from the Bible, a handful of Anglican laymen set out to change England. They were called the Clapham Sect. Their most famous member was William Wilberforce. In 1797 Wilberforce wrote a book entitled, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes in This Country Contrasted with Real Christianity. Wow! That title is practically a book in itself! But people read the title and went on to read the book. Most people in the upper classes of England hated it! It meant a paradigm shift for them! It demanded that they examine their selfish lives in light of the life of Jesus Christ.
But the Clapham Sect hung in there, and in the end England changed! Victorian England was a far cry from the England of the eighteenth century. Victorian England had huge flaws, admittedly: Victorians were all hung up on sex as every high school humanities text book is only too glad to remind us; and the Victorians turned hypocrisy into an art form; and Victorians were way too class conscious; but immense social good was done by the Christians of Victorian England, and we shouldn’t forget it. For one thing, the Clapham Sect put an end to slavery in the British Empire. No one in his or her right mind would choose to live in the chaos of 18th century England if they could choose to live in the ordered society of Victorian England in the 19th century.
People can change! Paul says in our scripture lesson, "Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen." People can change because God is able to do far more then we can even imagine. A new premise, plus a paradigm shift, plus the power of God can cause immense change IF we’re open to it!
It seems to me as I look at the Church in the United States that we are afflicted with a low-grade infection. We believe that God is. The large majority of people in and out of the Church in this country believe that there is a God. We just don’t believe that God is able. And we don’t believe that we are able. We think that the faith of the New Testament worked for New Testament people, but we don’t believe it can work for us. So the low grade infection damages two things: our faith in God and our confidence in ourselves as God’s people.
You remember that I recently mentioned the famous 80/20 rule applied to the church, where 20 percent of the people in a congregation do 80 percent of the work, make 80 percent of the contributions, and exercise 80 percent of the influence. It’s a fact of life in organizations. It’s a fact of life in churches.
But do you think we ought to accept it because it’s a fact of life? Are you content with an 80/20 Christianity where you’re 20 percent committed and 80 percent uncommitted? Are you willing to settle for an 80/20 church?
When Cathy and I got married a few years back our wedding day was not absolute perfection. The day was very hot and very humid, and the church was not air conditioned. I discovered with about an hour to go till the ceremony that my tuxedo pants didn’t match my jacket. Furthermore, there was a rip in the seat of the pants about six inches long, and for most of the ceremony that six inch rip would be facing the congregation. We got the jacket changed and the rip fixed with about ten minutes to go until the wedding march sounded. In the service, I tried my best to put the wedding ring on Cathy’s right hand. When the reception was over and we pulled out of the parking lot, we nearly had a wreck.
But then we were off to begin our life together as man and wife. I drove Cathy across town to my house. I said to her, "Honey, there’s food in the fridge. The sheets haven’t been changed, but there are clean sheets in the closet. I forgot to tell you, but I’m the scheduled speaker at a youth conference in California, so, I’ll see you in a couple of weeks."
Right? Wrong! The day was imperfect, we were both imperfect human beings, but we weren’t about to get married and not go on the honeymoon! How much does love want? 100%, nothing less. 20% Christianity – even 80% Christianity -- is the way to frustration and burnout. But Jesus says, "I have told you these things that my gusto may be in you, and that your gusto may be full."