Ephesians 3:1-13
January 6, 2013
This is the reason that I Paul am a
prisoner for Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles—for surely you have
already heard of the commission of God’s grace that was given to me for you,
and how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I wrote above in a
few words, a reading of which will enable you to perceive my understanding of
the mystery of Christ. In former generations this mystery was not made known to
humankind, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the
Spirit: that is, the Gentiles have become fellow-heirs, members of the same
body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
Of this gospel I have become a servant
according to the gift of God’s grace that was given to me by the working of his
power. Although I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to
me to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ, and to
make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who
created all things; so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich
variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly
places. This was in accordance with the eternal purpose that he has carried out
in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have access to God in boldness and
confidence through faith in him. I pray therefore that you may not lose heart
over my sufferings for you; they are your glory.
A number of years
ago there was a mother who volunteered a lot in her church. And when she did
she would bring her young daughter with her. The daughter loved being in the large,
stately sanctuary of the church. She especially liked to study the stained
glass windows. One day, while her mother was doing something to set up the
front of the church for communion, her daughter pointed to the windows and asked,
“Mom, who’s that?” “That’s St. Peter,” her mother replied. “And that?” “That’s
St. Paul.” “And that, and that, and that, and that?” “That’s St. Matthew, St. Mark,
St. Luke, and St. John.” The girl continued to study the windows for a long
time. The next Sunday in worship, as they were singing a hymn, the girl tugged
on her mom’s sleeve and said, “Mom, Mom. I know what a saint is. A saint is
someone the light shines through.”
A saint is someone the light shines through. That little
girl captured the essence of who we are called to be as Christians. When you think of a saint,
what do you think of? Most of us are used to thinking of them in the way the
Roman Catholic Church sees saints. They believe that saints are those who have
been truly great Christians who exceeded, and transcended, normal life. Many of
them did miraculous things during their lives. Others were incredible teachers.
Others lived exemplary lives. While these are people truly to be admired and
held up as examplars on how to live the Christian life, the Bible has a
different definition for what a saint is. In the New Testament, a saint is simply
someone who has faith. Literally, it is someone God has made sacred through
faith and grace. You are a saint already, if you are a person of faith. You
don’t have to die to be a saint. And as saints, we are called to be people
through whom God’s light shines through.
What really binds us together as Christians is our
willingness to let God’s light shine through us. And what harms us as Christians
are those times when we unplug from God, turning off our lights. I believe in
this idea so much that you’ll notice that at the end of the worship services,
during my closing prayer, I often ask God to help us to be light-bearers and
Christ-bearers to the world. We are called to be people through whom God’s
light shines through.
Jesus said that we are called to be light in his Sermon
on the Mount: “You are the light of the world. A city built
on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the
bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In
the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your
good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:14-16).
The more I study the Bible, theology, spirituality,
history, and human nature, the less confident I’ve become that anyone has the
right answers. We’re all so divided by our theologies and beliefs, and yet
we’re all so convinced that it’s we who have the right answers. I’ve seen this
early on in my adulthood in the division between Catholics and Protestants.
Having married a Roman Catholic, who’s family is VERY Irish Catholic, and
having gone to a Catholic university for my Ph.D., I’ve spent a lot of time
around Catholics who are so very sure that the only true way to God is through
Roman Catholicism. And I’ve been around just as many Protestants, if not more
(because I AM Protestant), who are so very sure that to be Protestant, or a
strain of it (Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Lutheran, etc…), is the only true way
to God. I’ve also come across conservative and liberal, evangelical and
progressive, Protestants who are all so certain that their understanding of
God, Christ, the Bible, and life is the only true belief. How can each one be
absolutely right and the other so wrong?
For a long time I’ve been fascinated by how we form
opinions, and the certainty we have about truth. A significant influence in
this has been my interest in Near Death Experiences, or NDEs. I don’t read as
much about them as I used to in my 20s and 30s, but periodically I’ll read a
new book, or look online for NDEs. One of the things that has been consistent
among virtually all those who’ve experienced NDEs is how they feel like they
entered a heaven, a dimension, a… something, where they were able to access
instantaneous answers on the truth of everything. They consistently say that
the beliefs and truths they thought mattered so much didn’t. They discovered
that what they thought was true wasn’t. At the same time, they all emphasize
learning the lesson that what matters is love, being light to others, and being
a positive, compassionate presence in life. In other words, it didn’t matter so
much what they believed as it did how they lived.
In our Science and Spirituality group, we are about to
start studying a book by a Harvard-trained neurosurgeon who worked both at the
Harvard University and University of Virginia medical centers. His name is Eben
Alexander, M.D. He describes himself as having been a typical
rationally-minded, scientifically-oriented doctor who believed in the here and
now. He went to church, but only on Christmas and Easter, and mainly out of
obligation. His belief about NDEs was that they were simply the musings or
hallucinations of an oxygen starved brain. His belief was that the brain did
this to comfort someone who was dying.
That all changed when he contracted a certain strain of
bacterial, e. coli., meningitis that put him in a seven-day coma. He literally
had no brain activity other than his brainstem for seven days. He came out of
it after being on the point of death. When he got better, he studied his
seven-day EEGs, and realized that there was no way his brain could have
conjured up hallucinations. There was no activity there to conjure anything. But
during those seven days he had intense experiences of heaven, experiences he
said were more real than what we experience now. Like other NDE experiences, he
received instantaneous answers. And like so many others, he said that what
seemed to matter was not beliefs about economics, politics, theology, or the
rest, but how we live and care about others.
He also had another interesting experience. He said that
the whole time he was in heaven (or whatever it was), he kept hearing this
incredible music. It had a melody that was both incredibly simple and complex.
He couldn’t remember the tune, but it haunted him. Then, the first Sunday he
went to church after coming out of his coma he heard that music in every hymn
and anthem. He said that it wasn’t the tune that was the same, but the spirit
of the music. He could hear heaven in them. And when he sang, which he hadn’t
done much of previously, he felt as though he was singing the holy
What I have become confident of is that what matters is
not so much the purity of our belief, but the brightness of our light. I think
that in the end, Christian faith comes down to the simplest thing, which is to
what extent are we light to the world, radiating God’s love and grace?
Do our small actions throughout the day—how we treat co-workers,
how we treat family members, how we treat people who struggle, and even how we
treat people who bug us—shine with love and light? No matter what we do, does
is reflect God’s light? If we are a teacher, an accountant, a writer, a nurse,
a store owner, a computer programmer, a student, a secretary, a plant manager,
an architect, an engineer, or a pastor, do we shine through with God’s light?
It’s not the rightness of your opinions, or the purity of
your belief, that matter. It’s the ability of your words and actions to bring
light to other people’s lives. I believe that how brightly we shine all has to
do with the extent to which we are able to pause spiritually long enough to be
light-bearers and Christ-bearers.
As a final thought, I want to share some musings on
phrases. I’ve been captured by how some phrases that seem so certain can be
changed if we just pause for the Spirit. For example, look at this phrase
below, which reflects the beliefs of so many atheists:
GOD IS NOWHERE
If we take that phrase and pause with it, we can discover
in it a whole different idea:
GOD IS NOW HERE
Many agnostics, and those who are religious, often
believe that God is not part of this world, and that God is up in heaven,
watching and waiting for us to die in order to judge us. They are like the
Deists, the movement that held many of our founding fathers, believing that once
God created the world, then God stopped being part of the world. So they would
believe in the phrase below,
GOD IS APART
Again, if you pause for the Spirit, you can discover
another message:
GOD IS A PART
In other words, God is a part of our lives, not apart
from our lives.
Each of us is called to be like stained-glass—to shine
with God’s light so that we brighten people’s lives. Look at your life and ask
yourself one simple question: “With what kind of light do I shine?”
Amen.
