Grow Deeply

Ephesians 3:14-19, NRSVUE

14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. 16 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 17 and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. 18 I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

INTRO

This week, we begin a new sermon series called: Wesleyan Rooted. Our denomination has been through a lot over the past few years. And even before all of that, I have found that so many of us who have been Methodist for a long time have lost touch with our roots. Others of us have been Methodist for a shorter time and might still be figuring out what it means to be Wesleyan. Regardless, as we grow together as a congregation and look to our future, it is important to work on our roots. Over the next five weeks, we will explore scripture through a Wesleyan lens, as we examine what it means to be a Wesleyan people. We will examine what it means to follow Jesus through the Wesylan tradition and explore what makes our tradition unique. In this, we hope to increase our understanding of how God’s grace is at work in our lives, work to restore the image of God in our lives and grow in our call to love God and our neighbors. This week, we begin with a call to grow deeply.

Our text this morning begins in the third chapter of Ephesians. The letter to the Ephesians begins by recounting and naming God’s plan of salvation and how it has unfolded in the world, but more specifically, how God’s work of salvation is continuing through the work of the Church. The first chapters begin by declaring that God has gathered all things up, all of creation, and offers forgiveness to all. Then Paul begins to transition from the first three Chapters of Ephesians to the next part of the letter. Here, in the 3rd chapter, we begin to see a shift from God’s actions in the world to God’s actions through the Church. After this Chapter, Paul begins to shift from the church to how we are called to respond as a church. In other words, our text this morning stands as an intersection of what God has done and how we are called to respond to God’s work. It is the space where we are mindful of what God is doing in and through the church as we strive to follow after the Savior.

In our text today, we are invited into a deep knowledge of God. We are invited to know God through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit so that we might know Christ’s love which surpasses knowledge. At first, this seems like an impossible task. How can we have a deep knowledge of God’s love if God’s love in Jesus Christ surpasses knowledge? But before we can answer that question, we must back up a step. We must ask ourselves, what is knowledge? The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines knowledge as “the circumstance or condition of apprehending truth or fact through reasoning.” If we define knowledge in this way, how can we possibly reason and know what is beyond what we can know? Yet knowledge is about more than reason. A more clear definition of Biblical knowledge is “the reflective assessment of information acquired either through sensory perception or by revelation.” It is to be noted that the limits of knowledge include death, the future, and God’s Divine activity. In other words, it is not just our brains that help us attain knowledge. Our hearts and experiences equally help us discern and understand knowledge. Knowledge is attained through our reasoning, our experiences, and our other senses.

John Wesley in the early days of Methodism founded a group called the Holy Club. At first, they spend time in rigid observance of their spiritual practices. They kept journals on how they spent their time, to hold one another accountable to where one might have stifled or wasted time not employed in the usages of God. They studied and translated the New Testament, they visited the sick and imprisoned, and they observed communion. They did this daily…and outsiders began to mock them for their methodology. Yet, even in all these things, Wesley did not feel secure in his own salvation.

I imagine that many of us find ourselves here as well. We go to church. Maybe we attend Bible study. We serve on leadership. We do all the things that “Christians” are supposed to do. Yet we are not secure in our own salvation. Or maybe in a season of doing weekly communion we just see it as doing that thing Jesus told us to do. We ask “Why are we doing this every week?” We think that communion is less special if we do it every week. In this surface-level understanding, we miss that God is truly present in the sacrament. We miss that Jesus Christ shows up and is present with us as we eat the bread and drink the juice. We don’t truly open ourselves up to what happens when we encounter the living Christ in our midst. The same was true for Wesley. While doing all these things: regularly reading scripture, constantly visiting the sick, and taking communion as often as they could, John Wesley missed the deeper presence of Christ around him.

One theologian reminds us that "Paul’s letters warn against relying on human knowledge and reasoning over faith in Christ. For example, he states, “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” For Paul, faith, hope, and love reflect Christian maturity, whereas intellect and reasoning reflect only a temporary and childish understanding of the world.”

There are many reasons why we might not be sure of our salvation and many reasons why we misunderstand God. Before one comes to a deeply rooted knowledge of God one must come before God with a correct attitude and a teachable spirit. God is the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. God, the ways of God, the one who created all of creation, surpasses all religious, political, ethnic, and spatial boundaries. Coming into God’s love takes not our earthly eyes but the work of the Holy Spirit. That’s why Paul writes that if we can prophecy and can have all knowledge and understand all mysteries, but do not love, then we have nothing. For if we do not allow the Holy Spirit to work in us, we cannot truly understand the love of God.

Over the years, John Wesley struggled. He continued to practice his faith, he even went on a mission trip to America where he preached the faith to unbelievers. Yet in all of the work, John Wesley knew something was missing. He had all the knowledge of God. He had an understanding of the scriptures and the theological training to back it up. But even this was not enough. He consulted different churches and learned from them. But it still wasn’t enough. Finally, one evening as he was at a Bible study and as someone was reading from Martin Luther’s commentary on Romans, John Wesley felt something. He didn’t hear a profound sermon. He didn’t learn something new about God. John Wesley describes it this way “I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

You see for Wesley and for us, it takes more than just one kind of knowledge. As one theologian reminds us, “It is in this sense that Christian knowledge is always something more than belief, something more than what the intellect can affirm. The heart has its reasons the mind does not fathom, or as Ephesians puts it, for those in whom Christ dwells there is a “power at work within us … able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine” (v. 20). It is in response to this One who is not only at work within us but also at work in the breadth and length and height and depth of creation, that Christians are driven to their knees in worship.” In other words, it is because the Holy Spirit is at work in us witnessing to us that we are children of God. God’s love surrounds us that we are able to live deeper into a life of discipleship.

John Welsey never veered away from the importance of reading scripture, visiting the sick and imprisoned, feeding the hungry, or taking communion often. Instead that became even more important! He would later write in his explanatory notes of Psalm 119:100 (I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts.) - “The practice of religion is the best way to understand it.” What changed was his expectations, it was no longer a checklist, or a self-assured route to holiness…rather, he began to participate in the means of grace expecting God’s love to be found in those activities.

I am a person who likes to make decisions, move forward, and have a direction, yet I am also very analytical. I will research, and research some more before making a decision. Sometimes, I research something so much that it drives my wife crazy. Yet, sometimes the church gets this way too, we get so caught up in “calculating the risks” that we end up doing church not out of love for God but for our self-preservation. We end up living life together that is rooted and grounded in self-preservation rather than in Christ. We want things done the way we have always done them and when it comes to taking risks we say “We have tried that before and it failed!” What we are really saying is that the “program or initiative” didn’t live up to our expectations. It wasn’t about sharing God’s love it was about increasing our membership.

You see, love should cause us to take risks whereby we are called to rely utterly on God. Once, I messaged a friend and asked them to pray for me. That I was doubting myself, doubting my leadership, doubting my ability to lead. My friend responded, “Isn’t doubt part of pastoral leadership?” Their point was…trust in God! If we aren’t asking….how can we do this? How are we going to make this work…then we aren’t risking for the sake of love. We are instead trying to control rather than rely on God.

Paul’s prayer found in our scriptures this morning longs for and hopes for something different: then “we have always done it that way.” He desires for Christ to take over the church, and strengthen its people by God's Spirit. He prays for both power and love: power to comprehend the depth, breadth, height, and length of Christ’s love and he wants us to be rooted and filled with love.

So how do we become rooted and grounded in God’s love? We pray not just for the Holy Spirit to move but we are called to practice faith, to practice love, and to take risks. To take part in the means of grace, to practice the disciplines of worship, take part in small groups, service, give financially with a generous heart, read scripture, visit those in need, and spend time in prayer. To expect to see God in those activities, and each other.

Love is a choice. It is a choice made over and over again. It is a life long choice to grow in grace. We have to be open to the Holy Spirit, to let Christ change us, to be rooted and grounded in love, and to become aware that love is beyond our ability to comprehend, and we are called to receive it without fully understanding it. May our disciplines lead us to a deeper faith that grounds us in love, and moves us to take risks as we share God’s love with others. May we be changed from the inside out. May our love for our neighbors grow as God’s love begins to reorient our hearts and our worldview.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit