There Can Be Only One

Ephesians (especially 4:4-6)

Desperate for Simplicity

Today we start a new series in the book of Ephesians. Now when we start a new series, there is a whole lot of work that goes in at the beginning. Almost the first half of all the commentaries are filled with these fascinating arguments about authorship and audience, genre and style, translation issues, when it was written, why it was written, purpose. And I dove in… and I loved it.

But about mid-week I had a growing sense of panic. How does this turn into a sermon? I don’t know. Tell me after the sermon if it worked out! Well, whenever I have a “growing sense of panic” I have to ask… is my sense of panic the sermon? Is whatever is uneasy or disquiet within me… am I supposed to share that and preach out of that. And usually, the answer is Yes.

I have shared before all the craziness going on at AlphaTRAC.

There is chaos and complexity at AlphaTRAC. A dozen active projects working. In all the chaos and upheaval, somehow Jono became my boss. So we can all blame Jono, now. Jono keeps giving me more stuff to work on, moving from one to another. Actually, he is filtering down from a hundred things to only give me a few things… so he is doing the Lord’s work ;)…

But let’s still blame him anyway. Work is crazy.

There is chaos and complexity at home. Everyone has their plans and their ideas… and the kids are home all day! There is tension, there is anarchy, Anna is very glad to see me when I get home. And I always calm everything down and never rile the kids up! ;-)

And it comes time to be a Pastor… and I love it. I love it. But I find myself so torn and frazzled, so pulled in so many different directions.

And I ask “Can I just do one thing?” “Can I just be one thing?”

And I love all the things. I have prayed, I have reflected, I have been called to all the things I am presently doing. I have said “no” to many other things, but just with the things that I know I am supposed to be doing, the chaos and complexity of just those things.

So I go on a long walk Wednesday night, wrestling with God over this, and all the details of Ephesians, all the study, and these two questions came together?

Can I just do one thing? And what is the one thing I’ll be preaching on?

Chaos in the Church

Here is what I know about you: Your life is crazy too!

Your lives are chaotic.

Our universe is chaotic. From the moment of singularity, the Big Bang, the moment God said “Let there be light…” it has all been disassociation, it has been growing complexity, more and more moving parts and pieces. More and more people, more and more universe, and it’s all expanding.

And chaos increases. It’s a “law” of our Universe, everything is trending towards entropy.

Take our church.

How many of you were here before this building? How many started coming since then?

How many have roots with Seventh Day Baptists?

Many of you are convicted of the Sabbath… some of you wish I would stop saying words like “Sabbath” and just get to the Scripture for the morning.

We have differing convictions, we have some different beliefs, we certainly have different ideas about who God is and how he is working. All of us have different histories with this church and, when we close our eyes and imagine the next 10 years, we have different visions of where and what we will be.

A few weeks ago we had our “Next Step Surge” – 30 different Next Steps, all heading in different directions?

The fact that we are all sitting in a room together is a miracle.

The idea that we will continue to do so is expecting a miracle.

Let’s turn to God and ask for a miracle. That is sort of His move.

The Story of Ephesians

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God,

To God’s holy people in Ephesus,[a] the faithful in Christ Jesus:

2 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Written by Paul from prison, probably in Rome around AD 62. There is some controversy around this, but there is no great argument that overturns the claim of verse 1 and the very strong early church tradition that this is Paul.

Most likely he wrote Ephesus around the same time as he wrote Colossians, and we will see the same thoughts, the same ideas, and he probably wrote both from prison in Rome. Some people even envision him sending both letters, and the letter to Philemon, with Tychicus (who is thanked in both letters) and Onesimus, a slave of Philemon. And Onesimus may have been the same Onesimus who became leader of the church in Ephesus after Timothy.

Written to churches in and around Ephesus. Likely, in most translations, in verse 1 it will have a little note after, noting that the earlies manuscripts of the Bible did not have “in Ephesians” in it. Without that it reads “To God’s hoy people, the faithful in Christ Jesus.

If that is the case, this is a circular letter to the churches likely in the nearby area of Asia Minor, all around Ephesus. But it certainly included Ephesus and the church at Ephesus hung on to the letter. So we are going to focus on Ephesus as the audience, mainly because I think we have so much in common with the church in Ephesus.

Ephesus alone probably had ¼ million people. An economic center, a powerful spiritual center, home to the Temple of Artemis, one of the 7 wonders of the world.

Likely there wasn’t one mega-church but small churches, house churches even, scattered throughout the city. So we might picture a small church like ours, perhaps on the outskirts of the big city. And they are trying to figure what it means to follow Christ and be His church surrounded by the chaos and pull of life around them.

The people in that church had families. They had jobs. They had civic responsibilities. They had social engagements. They had friends who were in the church and friends who were outside the church. They were a minority of believers overwhelmed by a mass of pagans. And their society, their city, was spiritually dark and oppressive, they were in the midst of spiritual warfare.

They certainly came from different social classes, different racial categories, they represented the diversity of the city they were in. They had different backgrounds, and without the Scripture to at least center the discussions of and understanding of Jesus, imagine how the different ideas and theology and teaching being thrown around.

A place to get lost. A place to get divided. A place for chaos and complexity.

And Paul writes this. It is a powerful letter to all the churches in the area. I think because he wasn’t dealing with a particular conflict, we get the best picture of his overall theology of salvation and the church, his understanding of who Jesus was and is and what it means for us.

And if Ephesians has a Purpose statement, I think this is it.

Ephesians 4:4

4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

One, one, one, one.

You are in a place where things can get crazy and chaotic. Let me simplify. Or rather, let me point at the underlying simplicity. It is One. Let me read that passage again, this time in the Message.

4-6 You were all called to travel on the same road and in the same direction, so stay together, both outwardly and inwardly. You have one Master, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who rules over all, works through all, and is present in all. Everything you are and think and do is permeated with Oneness.

There can only be One.

This is theologically profound.

Our God is complex from eternity. 3 persons, that is bizarre. It is relational, but our experience tells us that relationships are complex and chaotic. But somehow, from eternity, those 3 persons are one substance, one being, One.

And everything else that follows that pattern, miraculously bringing together what seems impossibly separated, together into One.

Jew and Gentile. Man and Woman. Slave and Free. Different paths, different stories, different gifts, different sins. Miraculously: One church.

Sinful humanity and Holy God. One.

Heavenly things and earthly things, heaven and earth. One.

Imagine this on the most practical level!

My crazy life, with all its competing chaos and complexity, miraculously, mysteriously gets summed up into One, and that life lived for the One. Jesus.

Your crazy life. All of us then, crazy, summed up together into Next Step church. One.

Now I know my life, you know your life, that sounds impossible. That sounds crazy.

Orchestrated Beauty

My life is like a guy surrounded by drums, smashing one after another in sequence, one thing to the next, only with another guy next to me crashing symbols in my ear.

At home, the five of us, sometimes it’s like we are strings stretched to the point of breaking… then someone is pulling at us, smashing us together. And my family is like that, your family can be like that too. Strings pulled to breaking then plucked and prodded and smashed by hammers, or dragged back and forth.

At times you even feel spit upon. Like a tube of metal and someone is just going PFFFFTTTT inside. All of this noise. All of this chaos. All of it straining and stretching and vibrating and making… something.

Now it would take a miracle. It would take a brilliant mind, artistic talent, vision. But what if a Someone could take all of that and bring it together and Create One thing.

What if the Artist could Orchestrate my chaos together with your chaos and create beauty.

We Should Be One?

There can be only one.

We enroll in the school of Oneness. That isn’t mystical New Age mumbo-jumbo because that Oneness isn’t some non-personal, to-be-determined emergent awareness. The One has a name. It’s Jesus. And He is “over all, in all, through all.”

And do we get consumed or subsumed in this One-ness? Look, God already knows how to do the “multiple persons in One being” thing. Nothing in Scripture says we get subsumed into the God-head, but the whole Universe somehow gets summed up and united and perfected in Jesus, and in the process we only become more ourselves, the persons God created us to be.

But the largest amount of focus of this One-ness is on the church. We are to be One. We are to lead this charge.

Where are we going? What is our vision for the future?

We enroll in the school of One-ness.

Can we do that together?

It starts with this. This week, let’s read our textbook. Last time we started a series in Colossians, I read through the whole thing for you. This one is a bit longer, I didn’t do that. Would you do that with me this week?

In one sitting, it takes maybe 15-20 minutes... and longer if you get stuck thinking about what is being said. Sit down and read straight through.

God is orchestrating us together, taking our individual chaos and making it make sense. And making us make sense together. I don’t know what He is going to do with us… but I am excited to find out.

Let us live One life. As One church. Following One God. There can be only One.

4-6 You were all called to travel on the same road and in the same direction, so stay together, both outwardly and inwardly. You have one Master, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who rules over all, works through all, and is present in all. Everything you are and think and do is permeated with Oneness.