"Tight lines" is a blessing fishermen offer each other, a wish for lines taut with the weight of good fish. May God grant that the lines written here be taut with His blessings.
Tuesday, 21 July 2009 | |||
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The Measure of Love | |||
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I always carry a small tape measure in my pocket. My family
and friends are occasionally amused when I whip it out to see if a piece
of furniture will fit through a door or if an envelope I'm mailing meets
the new Post Office guidelines. It's probably just a sign of mild OCD,
but I like being able to measure the world around me when the occasion
demands it. Measurement is a way to get a handle on things, to understand
how they might fit into one's life and activities. As we move on in Ephesians this coming Sunday to the beautiful prayer recorded in Ephesians 3:14-21, we hear Paul inviting us to consider "the width and length and height and depth" of something much grander and glorious than a mailing parcel or a wastepaper basket we want to fit under the sink. In the end, he wants us to grasp, to get a handle on the love of Christ in such a way that we comprehend how it actually takes hold of us, how we fit into His life. I use my tape measure on some very fine things. Getting ready to hang a lovely picture of a flower painted for my wife by a dear friend, I might apply my tape to the frame. I haul it out when I hook a big, beautiful fish and want to to know its length. I've run it up the wall to pencil lines marking the heights of our daughters. It's a good thing, even a very good thing, to know those dimensions. Yet I would never imagine that I could, in terms of inches or feet, know all there was to know about the subjects of my measurement. Paul has this wonderful phrase "to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge" (a better translation than the NIV/TNIV which ties "love of Christ" directly to the 4 dimensions). Though the divine love goes far beyond our knowledge, we are still invited to know it, to plumb its dimensions and explore its depths with our minds. So here is the correction of a very common spiritual mistake. Just because God and His attributes are beyond our total comprehension does not mean that we simply quit trying to understand and know about God. Far from it. It means we have a marvelous, infinite intellectual playground in which to frolic for eternity, using our minds to their utmost as we seek to know more and more of that which ultimately surpasses all our knowing. And of course in our text the focus is Christ's love, which also surpasses knowing in that the dimensions of understanding love go beyond the intellectual and take up all our emotions and morality and daily living. To know love is to put it into practice. I may have measured how tall my daughters were, but I also found out who they were by living with and caring for them and loving them in dozens of other ways. Verse 21 says, "to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus. . ." We may begin taking the measure of Christ's love with our minds, but that quickly turns to discovering its dimensions in worship and service, as we find that the measurements of Christ's love are best learned in the community of His Church. | |||
Wednesday, 15 July 2009 | |||
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Get It Together | |||
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It will be a short sermon on Sunday as I preach from
Ephesians 2:11-22. This text is a wonderful celebration of the unity
of the Church as it is based in the reconciling death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ. As I reflect on verse 13 about those who were far away being brought near and on verse 16 about Christ reconciling the Jews and Gentiles through the Cross, "putting to death their hostility," I'm reminded again of one my favorite images from Athanasius. In De incarnatione verbi dei Athanasius writes a kind of apologetic for the physical form of Christ's crucifixion: "we see the fitness of his death and of those outstretched arms: it was the He might draw His ancient people with the one and the Gentiles with the other, and join both together in Himself." Christ reached out in opposite directions as He hung on the Cross so that He could bridge and bring together races and peoples who are estranged from each other across great gulfs. Our text concludes with another image of the Church as a building, a temple, built up on the foundation of the prophets and apostles with Christ as cornerstone. All in all, we are meant to be together, to get "it" together, by which "it" I mean the blessings of grace and forgiveness and joy in the Lord. We were not meant to get it alone, to enjoy a merely private and individual experience with God. The very nature of our salvation is to be drawn into the community which God is building in Christ. So most of the preaching time this Sunday will be turned over to our young people returning from CHIC (Covenant High in Christ), a huge youth gathering going on this week in Tennessee. We will remember that they got "it" by being together with us and now with other young Christians, and that we continue to get "it" together by the sharing of Jesus is doing among us as we live and serve Him together. | |||
Friday, 10 July 2009 | |||
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Your Destiny | |||
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"Who would have known?" That's what my wife keeps
saying as our youngest daughter is travelling half-way across the world
on a mission trip. What she means is, who would have known, when this
young woman was only a squalling, puking, pooping little bundle of joys
(my description, not my wife's), that she would one day be having such an
adventure? Of course, a simple Christian answer might me that God would have known. I'm one of those traditional theists who still believe that God has known all the future in detail from eternity, including everything you and I and everyone does freely. In some complicated sense, I would even maintain that He has planned it all and that it is all working out according to His will. Such a traditional view of God's foreknowledge and divine plan is certainly implied in our text for this week, Ephesians 1:3-14, especially in verse 11. Yet the focus of this great passage is not so much God's pre-planning of every minute detail of our lives. Instead Paul is talking more about God's foreordaining of our inclusion in salvation and grace through His Son. What we are especially and clearly "predestined" to, according to Paul, is the "spiritual blessings" of being in Christ: holiness, adoption, redemption, forgiveness, and the lavish richness of grace. So when Paul speaks about God revealing to us the mystery of his will (verse 9), it's not a revelation of the future minute details of our lives as we would so much like to know. Christian faith does not provide a clear, marked pathway into the days, weeks or years ahead. Just as the unfolding of our baby daughter's life was, like the course of every human life, including one's own, remains mostly a mystery. What we are given, what is revealed, is a clear and beautiful image of our destiny to be in Christ, to enter into His Father's great unification of all creation in Him (verse 10), and to be made people who will always live "unto the praise of his glory" (a phrase appearing both in verse 12 and in verse 14). One detail of God's plan to unify His creation is clearly revealed in His intent to bring together all people in Christ. This comes more into focus next week as we then move into chapter 2. But we still see it here as Paul considers first God's plan to redeem his own Jewish people as they receive Christ and then to also bring into His plan all others who, like the Ephesians, believe in Jesus. So we have a grand destiny. It's not laid out for us in clear steps like a journey planned on Mapquest. But it's guaranteed by God's own Spirit, as Paul assures us in verses 13 and 14. May we live in this larger sense of destiny, though the details and events of our lives fall where they may. | |||
Wednesday, 01 July 2009 | |||
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Thrills and Thorns | |||
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Yesterday was our thirtieth anniversary. Beth and I were
deeply grateful to be celebrating three decades of good marriage. Much of
our joy revolves around two grown daughters who are becoming strong and
faithful Christian young women. It might be easy to be a little smug about our family happiness. In fact, yesterday I filled out yet again an annual report for a sociological study in which we and our youngest daughter have been participating since she was a baby. It seems to center around life success in relation to family relations and the presence or absence of some destructive behaviors. So once again I sat and marked "No" to a long list of questions about smoking, excessive alcohol consumption and use of illegal drugs. I also indicated, as usual, that our family regularly eats meals together, talks about what is happening in our daughters' lives, and enjoys a pretty peaceful atmosphere. Working through the study questionnaire and recalling all the ways families can go wrong might contribute to some smugness. It might be easy to think that our good behavior is the reason we've been able to stick together and raise two good kids. We might very well fall into thinking about married life the way Paul carefully avoided thinking about spiritual life in II Corinthians 12:2-10. Just as Paul made sure to refrain from boasting about his own deep spiritual experience, Beth and I must make sure to give God all the credit for any marital success we've enjoyed. Just for myself, I know that my own flaws make me far from the ideal husband or father. In our text for this week, even Paul recalls an ecstatic spiritual experience far beyond any of which his Corinthian critics might boast. Yet he refuses to boast and also recalls that God gave him a constant reminder of his spiritual and bodily weakness, a "thorn in my flesh." So all that Paul cares to boast about is his weakness, because God's power is made perfect in Paul's weakness. That is what we all ought to say about our own successes, whether marital or financial or athletic or spiritual. God displays His power in our weakness and the glory is all His. One of the perennial questions of Scripture is the nature of Paul's "thorn." Suggestions include epilepsy, poor eyesight, some physical pain, or difficult temptations. One commentator suggests that we're not told the exact nature of the affliction so that more of us might readily identify with the apostle, seeing our own trials in his. That means each of us could well discern our own "thorns," painful gifts from God to keep us humble, even when enjoying worldly or spiritual blessings for a season. | |||
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I am the pastor of Valley Covenant Church in Eugene, Oregon. I love to flyfish and hike along the beautiful rivers in our area. I welcome your comments as I share sermon work in progress and occasional other thoughts.
Thank you for visiting this blog. I invite you also to visit my web page.
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