Center of Power

The scriptures referred to are Ephesians 3:14-21.

I'm a big Sherlock Holmes fan so you'd think I would be excited by all the new TV series inspired by him. There is a series about Dr. Watson, taking place during the 3 year period when Holmes was presumed dead. There is a series being developed about Holmes and his daughter, who is not in the original stories. There is a TV movie coming up, about Holmes' younger sister, Enola, who is also not in the original stories. And while I enjoyed the first two Enola Holmes movies, I am not sure about the others. I really hope they do not stray so far from the spirit of the original characters and stories that they end up like the series The Irregulars. That series focused on a group of children fighting supernatural threats while Holmes was depicted as a hopeless drug addict who was actually working against them. Unsurprisingly, it got cancelled. When you tune into a series that is about the world of Sherlock Holmes, you expect it to have the great detective front and center. And, despite his flaws, you expect him to be smart and on the side of good. If it's not about him, why not just invent your own original characters? His absence draws attention to itself.

We have a similar problem in the church today, by which I mean, the minimization of Jesus as the center of our faith. I was dismayed to see that someone made a version of the symbol of my denomination out of words but the names Jesus and the Holy Spirit were a lot smaller and harder to pick out than words like Tradition and Liturgy. It would be like doing a poster about a Sherlock Holmes movie and having words like Detection and Mystery very prominent and Holmes' name and likeness much smaller and confined to the background details so it's easily missed. Why would you diminish the role of the hero?

But other churches and denominations also make Jesus take a backseat to other less essential things. There are churches who pay much more attention to certain distinctive doctrines of theirs or specific practices or particular sins or to contemporary political policies or political leaders than they do to Jesus.

And there are some that, when they do pay attention to Jesus, try to make him over in their own image. They make him into a macho warrior, or a political reformer, or a nice but inoffensive guy. But if Jesus was a warrior, why did he say to Peter, “Put your sword back in its place! For all who take hold of the sword will die by the sword!” (Matthew 26:52)? If he was a political reformer, why did he say, “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's,” (Mark 12:17) or to Pilate, “My kingdom is not from this world.” (John 18:36)? If he was such a nice and inoffensive guy why did they bother to crucify him?

The problem is that certain people want to use Jesus as their mascot but don't want him as their master, which is what “Lord” literally means. They want to use him as a symbol; they don't want to deal with him as a real person, with his own ideas of how we should be Christians. Russell Moore of Christianity Today tells of how a pastor was preaching from the Sermon on the Mount. After the service a parishioner came up to him and asked him where he got those liberal talking points. The pastor said he was only quoting Jesus. The parishioner replied that the ideas were too soft and wouldn't work today! We want God to adapt himself to our ideas rather than conforming ourselves to his.

In our passage today, Paul tells the Ephesians of how he prays to God the Father “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.” The heart of Christianity is Christ in us. (Romans 8:10; Galatians 2:20; Colossians 1:27) It is Christ in us, through the presence of his Holy Spirit, that changes us and enables us to follow Jesus and become like him.

But the problem is that this takes time and Christians are at different points in the process. So some Christians have decided that the way to make people more godly faster is to take power and make laws that force people to act in what the leaders think is a Christian way. But laws and rules do not change people, or else everyone on US 1 would drive the speed limit and people who do so now wouldn't have to stay in the “slow” lane while other vehicles are attempting to make the jump to light speed.

Paul repeatedly makes this point about the inability of the law to save us in his letter to the Romans. The law is powerless to save us in the same way that an article telling you what a healthy blood pressure is will not actually lower your blood pressure. For that you need to see a doctor. In the same way, as Paul writes, “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:3-4) In other words, Jesus does in us what the law is unable to do: empower those who live by his Spirit to act in harmony with God's law.

This is only possible if we allow the Spirit of Christ to live in our hearts through faith. Jesus said it is out of the heart that evil comes. (Mark 7:21-23) So it's our heart, that is, our inner being, that needs to be cleaned up. It's easy to adopt rituals that appear to be godly: going to church, saying prayers, reading the Bible. But if we don't have a change of heart, those things won't magically make us Christians. Jesus said that at the last day “many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, didn't we prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons and do many powerful deeds?' Then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you. Go away from me, you lawbreakers!'” (Matthew 7:21-23) Why? Because as he said earlier, “Watch out for false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are voracious wolves. You will recognize them by their fruit.” (Matthew 7:15-16)

Fruit, in this sense, means what people produce in their lives. As with plants, good fruit nourishes life. Bad fruit harms life. Wikipedia has a whole page that lists inedible fruits, things that are poisonous to ingest. And Paul lists a lot of the poisonous things that humans without the Spirit of Christ produce: “sexual immorality, impurity, outrageous conduct, idolatry, sorcery, hostilities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, rivalries, divisions, factions, envyings, drunkenness, carousing and things like these.” (Galatians 5:19-21) These things are destructive. He then lists the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23) These are constructive. They make our lives livable and better.

They come from having the Spirit within you. Then you will be “rooted and grounded in love.” As it says in 1 John 4:8, God is love. God is the Father loving the Son who is loving the Father, in the unity of the Spirit. When we obey Jesus' word and trust him, that love between Father and Son enters us and becomes a part of us. (John 14:1, 23)

You don't have to become a good and perfect person first. You simply come to God, confess your sins and trust in his love and forgiveness. (Luke 18:10-14) Trust is the foundation of all relationships. When you trust in the God who is love, revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the seed is planted. And though it doesn't happen overnight, over time you should start to see the fruit of the Spirit beginning to grow in you. (Mark 4:26-29)

When you see the changes in your life, you will get an inkling of “what is the breadth and length and height and depth” of “the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.” There is public knowledge which you can find in books, in classes, in documentaries, and on reliable websites. And then there is knowledge of a person that surpasses what can be known about them from such things, the kind of knowledge which can only be discovered by getting to know that person well. This is what Paul is talking about. When the Spirit of Christ lives in our hearts we get to know him intimately.

When we were at Dinosaur National Monument, I wanted to get my granddaughter a souvenir. I was thinking of a cute plush dinosaur. But my son suggested a monocular with a laser pointer and a light and a compass. He knew what his daughter would really want.

In the same way, the more you get to know Jesus the more you know what he really wants. He wants us to be the best version of ourselves, the person he created us to be. He wants us to be loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle and have self-control. He wants you to use the gifts and abilities he's given you to help and heal others, to build up others in the faith. (1 Corinthians 12:4-7) He wants you to be the light of the world, reflecting the light of his love and truth. (Matthew 5:14-16; John 8:12) When his light fills us, we will “be filled with all the fullness of God.”

But we are not to do this as “Lone Ranger” Christians, riding off by ourselves to try to do these things. Jesus wants us to work together. Just a chapter earlier in Ephesians, Paul says, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows together into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you are also being built together in the Spirit into a dwelling place of God.” (Ephesians 2:19-22) 1 Peter echoes this, saying, “you yourselves as living stones, are built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood and to offer spiritual sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 2:5) And when Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 6:19, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you...” every instance of the Greek word for “you” is plural. He is not talking to the individual Christian but to all Christians together.

Later Paul uses a different metaphor: “Now you are the body of Christ and each of you is a member of it.” (1 Corinthians 12:27) We are all members of Christ's body, continuing his mission on earth. But by “member” Paul means a part of the body. Different body parts look different and have different functions but they should all work together for the good of the body. Individual Christians have different abilities and functions within the body. We can't all be an eye or a mouth or an ear. But we are all vital to the health of the body.

Believe it or not, there is a condition in which a person can lose his proprioception or sense of where the parts of his body are. If he wants to get out of bed, he can't just swing his legs over the edge of the bed and plant them on the floor without looking to see where they are and making sure they move to where he wants them. And yet in the body of Christ, we see members trying to go rogue and do things without consulting other members of the body, things that might go against what Jesus wants us to do. Sadly, we see in the news examples of people who say they are Christians doing and saying things that go against the Spirit of Christ or even against what Jesus explicitly said not to do.

When, however, we work together as the body of Christ, following the guidance of his Spirit, we can do marvelous things. Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, the person who trusts in me will also do the works that I do, and that person will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12) How is it possible to do greater works than Jesus did? When that person does them in concert with the body of Christ. The church, not one Christian alone, built hospitals and universities and homeless shelters and charities. One person may have gotten the idea but he or she needed other Christians to help with planning and building and organization and staffing. Florence Nightingale revolutionized nursing. But since she was sick in bed much of her life, possibly with ME/CSF, she had to find others who would see that the changes she envisioned were carried out. Even Jesus used his disciples to do things he couldn't, like go to many different towns at once, to heal people and preach the good news. He was able to multiply the effects of what he could do through others. (Mark 6:7; Luke 10:1)

When Christians work together as the body of Christ, listening to and following the Holy Spirit who lives in us, God “by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.” If we do not see this, it is because we have displaced Jesus from the center of our inner being, replacing him with something or someone else to which we give greater devotion, or by substituting our own version of Christ, one who always agrees with us and who always makes us feel good. We may have even replaced Jesus with a set of rules which, if we are not filled with the Spirit of Christ, we cannot hope to accomplish.

Kurt Vonnegut said, “For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. 'Blessed are the merciful' in a courtroom? 'Blessed are the peacemakers' in the Pentagon? Give me a break!” And if I might add to Vonnegut's observation, nor do people want to post what Jesus called the two greatest commandments: to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength and to love our neighbor as we do ourselves. (Mark 12:29-31) Nor do they want to post his commandment to love our enemies. (Matthew 5:44) Probably because positive commandments demand more than commandments that just say, “Don't do this.”

The real Jesus challenged people to change and become better. He did not say that people needed more laws or that leaders needed more power. He said that people needed to love and forgive and heal and help one another, especially those who were destitute, disabled, diseased and despised. He said God blessed those who were aware of their spiritual poverty, who mourned the way things are, who were humble, who hungered and thirsted for justice, who were merciful, who were peacemakers. (Matthew 5:3-9) He said that the way the world did things needed to be changed. That's why he was crucified. Those who were trying to rule the world didn't want to hear that.

We think that strength changes the world. And so it does...but rarely for the better. Dictators are powerful. They don't make things better for people. Weapons are powerful. And they bring millions of people nothing but grief and pain. When we thought the Nazis were working on an atomic bomb, we started working on one. When the Nazis were defeated, and we found out they weren't even close to making an atomic weapon, we didn't stop to think if we wanted to unleash that kind of power on the world. We continued. And so did our allies and our enemies. Now we have 12,100 nuclear weapons in the world which all sane people realize we must never use. The effects cannot be confined to our enemies. They would affect the entire world. They could even destroy it.

Jesus' ideas are powerful. But he never raised a sword, never shed the blood of anyone. He was killed by the most powerful empire the world had seen to that point. But it couldn't stop him from returning to life. And it couldn't stop his ideas. If the 2.4 billion people who call themselves Christians actually put Jesus at the center of their inner being and denied themselves, put down their weapons and took up their crosses and followed him—helping and healing and feeding the hungry and preaching the good news of God's love and forgiveness—what they could do would truly be far beyond all that we could ask for or imagine.