Abundant Accomplishments and Bountiful Blessings

Psalm 116

I love the LORD, because he has heard

                  my voice and my supplications.

         Because he inclined his ear to me,

                  therefore I will call on him as long as I live.

         The snares of death encompassed me;

                  the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me;

                  I suffered distress and anguish.

         Then I called on the name of the LORD:

                  “O LORD, I pray, save my life!”

 

Gracious is the LORD, and righteous;

                  our God is merciful.

         The LORD protects the simple;

                  when I was brought low, he saved me.

         Return, O my soul, to your rest,

                  for the LORD has dealt bountifully with you.

 

For you have delivered my soul from death,

                  my eyes from tears,

                  my feet from stumbling.

         I walk before the LORD

                  in the land of the living.

         I kept my faith, even when I said,

                  “I am greatly afflicted”;

         I said in my consternation,

                  “Everyone is a liar.”

 

What shall I return to the LORD

                  for all his bounty to me?

         I will lift up the cup of salvation

                  and call on the name of the LORD,

         I will pay my vows to the LORD

                  in the presence of all his people.

         Precious in the sight of the LORD

                  is the death of his faithful ones.

         O LORD, I am your servant;

                  I am your servant, the child of your serving girl.

                  You have loosed my bonds.

         I will offer to you a thanksgiving sacrifice

                  and call on the name of the LORD.

         I will pay my vows to the LORD

                  in the presence of all his people,

         in the courts of the house of the LORD,

                  in your midst, O Jerusalem.

         Praise the LORD!

 

Ephesians 3:14-21

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,

from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name.

I pray that, according to the riches of his glory,

he may grant that you may be strengthened

in your inner being with power through his Spirit,

and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith,

as you are being rooted and grounded in love.

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.

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 to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

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As Christians, we have claimed our allegiance to the God Paul describes as “able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.”

We have placed our faith in the God who the Psalmist tells us has dealt bountifully with us.

We bow our knees before the Father God from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name.

Every family.

Accomplishments more abundant than we can imagine, more bountiful than we can ask.

These are the resources and the potential of the Lord God.

Does anyone here really doubt or question this?

But on the other hand, do any of us really live our lives as if this were true, as if we completely trust this?

Does the church of Jesus Christ behave as if the power it possesses is as abundant, as deep and wide and broad and high as we know God to be?

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Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is a letter that pairs together Christ and the church. Eugene Peterson, in his book, Practice Resurrection, says that Ephesians does this more so than any other text, anywhere in scripture. In this brief letter, only six short chapters, Paul sets Christ and the church alongside one another eleven times as intertwined and inseparable.

So if the church is inseparable with Jesus Christ, then what are we afraid of? If Christ has conquered death, then why do we fear the demise of the church?

The Ephesians text we heard today is a prayer that Paul is praying for his congregation, for the church in Ephesis. It is an exuberant prayer, filled with praise for the extravagant nature of God!

for

…the riches of his glory….

…power through his Spirit….

…our being rooted and grounded in love….

….the power to comprehend…

…the breadth and length and height and depth…

…the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge…

…that we are filled with all the fullness…

….a God who can accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine….

Paul’s prayer flows out of a huge reservoir of plenty, a knowledge beyond knowing of the abundant love of God in Christ. 

And Paul trusts in this abundance, this boundless love, and prays that we may comprehend its utter magnitude and power, its breadth and length and height and depth, that we may know this love that surpasses knowledge.

But we live our lives as a church and as individuals from a foundation of scarcity and caution, behaving as if our resources will run out if we are not exceedingly careful.

We focus our attention and energy less on loving our neighbors, and more on trying to eke out just a few more members, on trying to commit or raise just a few more hours or dollars to the cause, fearing all the while that our days are numbered, and limiting our imagination and our requests accordingly, not as if we were in partnership with a God who can accomplish abundantly more than all we can ask or accomplish, a God who is boundless in love and capability and a God who dwells in the hearts of every family in heaven and on earth.

Eugene Peterson tells a story of two friends of his, Fred and Cheryl, who adopted a five year old child from Haiti, joining her to their family which also included two teenage sons waiting back at home for her in Arizona.

Their first night back after going to Haiti to pick Addie up, they sat down to dinner together. There was a platter of pork chops and a bowl of mashed potatoes on the table. After the first serving, the two teenage boys kept refilling their plates, until they eventually finished off the pork chops on the plate and the potatoes in the bowl.

Meantime, little Addie, on her first night away from Haiti, was becoming very quiet and seeming quite anxious, fearful, bewildered. Her mom, Cheryl, appropriately guessed that it had to do with the disappearing food. Addie had grown up hungry. She had likely never seen so much food on one table in her life, and she had never seen so much food disappear so fast. Perhaps she was thinking that when the food was gone from the table it could be a day or more before there was more to eat.

So Cheryl took Addie’s hand and led her to the bread drawer and pulled it out, showing her a backup supply of three loaves. She opened the refrigerator drawer and showed her the bottles of milk and orange juice, the vegetables, the jelly and peanut butter, the eggs and bacon. She opened the pantry and showed her bins with potatoes, onions and squash, and shelves filled with canned goods. All the time she was reassuring Addie that there was lots of food in the house, and that no matter how much her brothers ate and how fast they ate it, there was a lot more where that came from. She both told and showed Addie that she would never go hungry again; that she was home.

This prayer from Paul is much like the act of Cheryl leading Addie gently through a food tour of the kitchen, reminding her of the “boundless riches”, “all the fullness”, and the “abundant accomplishments” that are part of the household in which she now lives. God’s kingdom is like that, and that is where we now live.

We have been assured that we have received the grace and Spirit of God long before we even come to ask God for them. We can be confident of our access to this God who is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine. These are words that only begin to give us a glimpse of the power of God’s boundless love.

And, oh, what that power, that has been unleashed in the church, can do in the world. Writer Annie Dillard, in her book, Teaching a Stone to Talk, expresses it in this way:

“Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we Christians so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. ” 

The power we wield as Christians is the power of love, and it is not our own doing; it is Christ who dwells within us who makes it all happen, makes it possible. It is up to us to not turn away, to not shut our doors to the love that dwells within us.

My friend Hugh Hollowell, who runs Love Wins Ministries in Raleigh, North Carolina and who considers himself a “pastor of last resort” for those who have nowhere else to turn, likes to say that “God has a plan, and the plan is us.”

God has abundant supplies, unlimited resources, and boundless potential – all through us.

What if God has given us clear instructions through Christ, through the great commandments to love God and love our neighbors, but we are not taking them seriously? What if Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is what God is waiting for us to live out? What if we are enough, even as we are waiting for everyone else to get on the bandwagon?

What if God sees Memorial Day as our opportunity to remember the peace beyond understanding that Christ has freely given us? What if God is waiting for us to shut down our departments of war and establish departments of peace? What if God’s heart is breaking as we continue to make plans to kill one another, to risk the lives of the young and the elders, the men and women of all nations, the children of God all over the world, rather than putting all our energy and talent and imagination into seeking ways to live in peace?

What if God has a plan, and the plan is us, and the abundant resources and boundless potential all lies in our ability to trust that God is with us, and God can truly accomplish far more than all we can ask or imagine?

May the church of Jesus Christ, around the world and here on this corner, live out its calling with the confidence and assurance of the New Life we have received in Christ, and the abundant potential of God’s plans, waiting to be accomplished in and through us, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.