Do you remember what it was like when you, or someone close to you, brought your new-born on or daughter home from the hospital? How many pictures or videos you took? How little they did – but how long you could just gaze on them, your heart bursting with love? I remember one of the first videos we took of our first child consisted of five minutes focused only on her hands. Paul says here in Ephesians 3 that is an inkling of how God loves us.
Do you remember when those babies were much older, had gone off to school or taken a job in a far-away city and were returning home for a visit? How light your step was, how much you found yourself humming along to a song in your head as you joyfully anticipated their homecoming visit? That is something like how, in Jesus Christ, God wants to welcome us home, Paul tells us here in Ephesians 3.
Or to turn the image around, do you recall a time when you were scared or overwhelmed and how much better you felt when a parent showed up at your bedside – or a long-time friend showed up at your front door? Or the time you were hugged or received a call or note of support from someone who cared deeply about your wellbeing? This is what Paul wants us to experience through the power of the Spirit strengthening our inner being.
This is what Paul prays for – for the church in Ephesus: “I pray that, according to the riches of God’s glory, God may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through the Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.”
But it is not just a prayer for the church in Ephesus; it is a prayer for every family on earth and in heaven, Paul says. “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 filed with the fullness of God.” That is Paul’s prayer for us.
God loves us – in some ways this is the most basic of propositions. Who here hasn’t heard that? There seldom will be a children’s sermon, a song or hymn, a sermon or prayer when that is not proclaimed. And yet, do we believe that we are loved by God – not just in our heads, but in our hearts? Do we trust in God’s love for us, not just when times are good and the light is shining, but also when times are hard and we feel lost in the darkness? Or to ask the question in another way, what gets in the way of us knowing God’s love for us – not just as an idea but as a feeling, as a foundation on which we can build our lives?
Sometimes what gets in the way is the image of God that we carry around deep within us. Perhaps you think or picture God as something like the school principal or courtroom judge – the authority figure you would just as soon keep your distance from – because to be called in front of them is always a response to getting in trouble. Or do you picture God as something like an emergency room physician – someone who can save you in an emergency, when things are really bad, but who otherwise is not part of your everyday life.
This is not the image of God that Paul is picturing here. Paul knows God is not merely a judge and authority figure: God delights in us and wants to have a relationship with us. Not because God is needy, but because God truly loves and cherishes us. So, Paul prays that we will know “the breadth and length and height and depth” of God’s love for us.
And God does not want us to reach out only when we are facing a crisis. Instead, God hopes we will let Christ dwell in our hearts and live in us, day by day, week by week. Through the Holy Spirit, Paul reminds us, God will give us strength in our inner being for facing what has to be faced. God is not “out there,” waiting for us to find God. God is “in here” waiting for us to recognize that God has already found us.
Do you picture God as a parent? To be sure, for some of us that may give us a real image of sustaining love in action. But not all of us are so lucky and we may be reminded of parents who have been more intimidating than intimate, or whose love has been too controlling or erratic.
In any case, all human love is but a pale reflection of the love that God has for us. Even the best of parents loses patience or gets distracted. But God never loses patience and is never distracted from loving us as we need to be loved. Sometimes parental love can be controlling – but without exception God preserves and protects our freedom even as God seeks to transform us into the people we are meant to be.
In Jesus Christ, we see that there is no length to which God will not go in pursuit of us, but God loves us too much to bully or coerce us into trust and faith. As Gerald May writes about the image of God as parent, “God is far more intimate to us than human parents ever could be, even closer than a pregnant woman is to her unborn child. God’s love pervades us, flows through every molecule, vibrates every particle of our being.”[i]
Sometimes what gets in the way of our knowing in our hearts the depth and breadth of God’s love for us is the image we carry around of ourselves. In his recently published memoir, There’s Always This Year, poet, essayist, MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” winner – and ex-convict, Hanif Abdurraqib, writes about the time when his older brother first visited him in jail: “Have you…ever had to look in the eyes of someone who was taking you in for the first time behind a pane of glass?…There is no language I have, even now, for what happens to the eyes of someone you love in a moment when they are both ashamed of you and afraid for you all at once. There is something lost there, an incalculable loss.”[ii]
In a study that was published several years ago, people who did not attend church were asked to explain the reasons why they did not. High on the list? A sense of shame. Sometimes people feel that they are not good enough or don’t have their lives together enough to be here among God’s people. They may hear that God loves, but they somehow feel that love is for other people, people already in the church. But not for them.
How little they know us right? And, how little they know God. There is no one – no one – who falls beyond the grasp of God’s love.
That includes you. Because a subtle thing can happen in our minds and hearts when we go to church, try to fulfill our duties, try to do the right thing. Over time, we can think that it is our good deeds, our dutiful faithfulness, which keeps us on God’s good list. But if we fail and fall? Then we may feel like God’s love is on loan – and the loan has just been called in. We may know in our heads that God’s love is unconditional. But in our hearts, we may feel like that love depends on our continued good behavior.
Bill Ogilvie was a great teacher at the seminary that Kerry and I attended at different times and we were both lucky to have him. He had a great way of weaving together psychological theories, Biblical stories, and everyday examples, all told with a twinkle in his eyes and a strong Arkansas drawl. I will never forget a story he told about the graduation of his older daughter, one I have already shared with a few of you.
She was a top student, a leader in high school and college in Christian fellowship groups, a girl-turned-young woman who never really had strayed from the straight and narrow. She was also the oldest grandchild and so when it came time for her to graduate from college, everyone n the family gathered to see it – not just her parents and sister, but also her grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.
But, the day before graduation, after everyone had arrived in town for the festivities, she found out that she was not going to be able to walk in the graduation procession. Somehow she had flunked a final exam and would have to attend summer school to get her degree. Can you imagine what it felt like to learn that – and go to tell your family?
Dr. Ogilvie looked at our class when he told that story and then told us – “you know that is one of the best things that could have happened to her in her life. Do you know why? Because she learned that weekend that the celebration could happen anyway. She learned that her parents and sister, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins loved her not just when she was doing well but also when she messed up. It is good to learn that you can fail and still be loved.”
God’s grace is not a loan that can be called in if we fall behind on the payments. God’s love is never a loan; it is always a gift. We gather here together as a church – to remind ourselves and to remind each other of this fact. Fact. Not hope. Fact:.God’s bottomless love for each one of us.
Forget quarks and black holes, the greatest mystery of the universe, the great discovery that should leave us breathless with astonishment, is the breadth and length and height and depth of God’s love. The fullness of God’s grace and love “can be received, but it cannot be fully understood.”[iii] It is just too much for our puny minds and hearts to absorb.
All we can do is receive such a love – again and again, and then let it overflow the cup of our life into other lives.
Father Gregory Boyle, “Father G,” is a Jesuit Priest who for more than 30 years has run Homeboy Industries, a gang-intervention program located in a poor neighborhood in Los Angeles, the “gang capital of the world.” In his remarkable book, Tattoos on the Heart, he writes about that ministry and about people like Cesar, a 25 year-old young man, Father Boyle had known since Cesar was a little boy.
On the outside, Cesar looked like a menacing figure – heavily tattooed and with a body that showed the effects of several years of body building while in prison. But on the inside, he was in many ways a scared kid who had suffered a traumatic childhood. When he got out of the county jail, the first person he called was Father G – and Father G took him to get some clothes since he was released with only the clothes on his back.
Father G writes about what happened next: “At three o’clock in the morning, the phone rings. It’s Cesar. He says what every homie says when they call in the middle of the night, ‘did I wake you?’ I always think Why no, I was just waiting and hoping [at 3 a.m.] that you’d call.
Cesar is sober and its urgent that he talk to me.
‘I gotta ask you a question, Father G. You know how I’ve always seen you as my father – ever since I was a little kid? Well, I hafta ask you a question’.
Now Cesar pauses, and the gravity of it all makes his voice waver and crumble, ‘Have I…been…your son?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ I say
‘Whew,’ Cesar exhales, ‘I thought so.’ Now his voice becomes enmeshed in a cadence of gentle sobbing,” Father Boyle writes. Then Cesar says, “’Then…I will be…your son. And you…will be my father. And nothing will separate us, right?’
‘That’s right,’ I reply.”
Father Boyle continues, “In this early morning call, Cesar did not discover that he has a father. He discovered that he is a son worth having. The voice broke through the clouds of his terror and the crippling mess of his own history, and he felt himself beloved. God, wonderfully pleased in him, wanted [Cesar to rest in that love].”[iv]
Friends, God, wonderfully pleased in us, wants us to rest in that love. To know the love of God in Christ “that surpasses knowledge, so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Amen.
[i] Gerald Mays, Addiction and Grace (San Francisco: Harper, 1988), 122.
[ii] Hanif Abdurraqib, There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension (New York: Random House, 2024), 220-221.
[iii] Paul J. Achtemeier, “Ephesians 3:14-21: Exegetical Perspective,” in Feasting on the Word: Presching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B, Vol. 3, David L Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylo, eds. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 283.
[iv] Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion (New York: Free Press, 2010), 30-31.
