1/5/20
(Jeremiah 31:7-14; Ps. 84; Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a; Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23)
The sports fans among you will probably recognize the name Pat Riley, from the world of professional basketball. Riley was a very successful coach and general manager for many years in the NBA, and I once read something he said which was apparently a guiding principle of his, which has stayed with me. He put it like this: “What’s the main thing? Because the main thing has to be the main thing.”
Which is to say: in any endeavor, once you’ve decided on what’s important about it, what you want to get done – you have to keep that firmly in front of you, firmly in mind, all the time. Because it’s easy to lose sight of the main thing -any main thing: through inattention, or laziness, or fatigue, or getting lost in the details. And just saying what the main thing is isn’t enough: if it’s the main thing, it has to be the main thing that you actually and consistently do.
Like a lot of sayings from sports figures, what this one may lack in elegance it makes up for in directness, and accuracy. And clearly it applies to a lot more than just sports. These words of Pat Riley are in my mind today for a couple of reasons. One is that, we’re still early in our church calendar, and we’re at the very beginning of the calendar year; and in something of the spirit of this time that encourages us to make resolutions, it feels natural to think about what the main thing is for us here in church.
The other reason is that, on this first Sunday of the new year, our lectionary has given us a reading from the letter to the Ephesians, which is preeminently, among the New Testament writings, the letter of the church: this letter celebrates the church, it’s something of a manual for the church, and it’s a call to the church. And the word “church” here, as it does throughout the New Testament, does not a building, or an organization. It means you and me: the people: the ekklesia: that’s the Greek word in the New Testament we translate into English as “church”, the literal meaning of which is “those who have been called out”. That’s the church: those who have heard, some way or other, and responded to, some way or other, the Word of God in Jesus Christ. Us: all of us: this impossibly motley crew, all over the world, coming from such different places, different lives, who all have this one thing in common, that we’ve heard this Word, each in our own way; and having heard it, are drawn together here. And whatever follows from that, that’s the church.
The passage from Ephesians which we heard today is from the very beginning of the letter, and the writer includes in it a prayer for the church: for us who are called out. He prays “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ may give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation” in order that we may know three things: “what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.” I’m going to talk very briefly about these three things, because they have to do with what we should be doing here: with letting the main thing being the main thing.
First, “the hope to which [God] has called [us].” This lifting up of hope is consistent with the famous verse in 1 Corinthians in which Paul puts hope in the same class as faith and love as fundamental to Christian faith (“And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three…”). Most people tend to think of hope as not particularly worth much attention: wishful thinking; passive at best. In the Christian understanding, this is wrong. For a Christian, hope is active. Hope is a stance – a proactive bearing on life: a mindset, that as Christians we are to live out of all day, every day. Christian hope is rooted in the knowledge that God is good; that God loves us and is with us, now and always; and that God can and does work in all things for good. There’s a verse in Paul’s letter to the Romans that, in a translation I like, puts this well. From Romans 8:28: “…every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.” Worked into something good: as we live in our love for God, things in this world change, for the better. Living in that knowledge – that expectation – is what we call hope. And this has entirely to do with why, for us Christians, the main thing has to be the main thing. That’s our mission
Second, the verse from Ephesians prays that we may know “what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints….” It’s necessary for us to understand here that when the New Testament writers talk about “the saints” they’re not talking about what we usually mean by that word: that is, people who’ve died and been canonized by the church because of all the holy things they did in their lives. In the New Testament, the word “saint” simply means a member of the Christian church. That’s it. It’s anyone and everyone who is trying to follow the way of Jesus Christ, to whatever degree of success: so that means folks with no more spiritual merit badges than you and me. And – as that people, as saints in that sense – we unquestionably have an inheritance: something that has been passed on to us by our forebears in the Spirit, and something that as people of the church we work to preserve, and to nurture and grow, for all those to whom we pass that inheritance along. And the substance of this inheritance is the gospel: the good news of God in Christ: the saving power of God’s love, present among us.
The writer of Ephesians prays that we may know the “riches” of this inheritance: because they are the richest riches there can possibly be. Jesus talks about that in a number of ways: lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, which moth and rust cannot consume nor thieves break in and steal;: we who drink of this water will never be thirsty. And truly to know the riches of this inheritance is to share them, and not just with those in church, but with anyone, and everyone. That’s certainly part of the main thing, that has to be the main thing.
And then the third and last thing for which the author prays, for the church – for us: that we may know “what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for those who believe.” Power: something that works – something that gets things done – in this life: that changes our lives, changes our world, to whatever degree: that’s power. But this is God’s power we’re talking about; and its “immeasurable greatness” is not just in its infinite capacity, that it’s the power that created the universe. Its greatness is in what it does: because it’s the power of God’s love, it heals, it saves, it makes whole, it restores us to whom God created us to be: it establishes God’s kingdom.
And finally: that we may know what is God’s power, in its immeasurable greatness, “for those who believe.” To say that the immeasurable greatness of God’s power is for us who believe is not an award; it’s not the conferral of a special status. To the contrary: these words are a challenge: they are a charge, to us as a church. They are the identification of our mission: a mission of the greatest joy. Because as we who believe truly come to know the greatness of God’s power, God calls us to become vessels of the Holy Spirit, through which God can pour God’s love out into the world. The letter to the Ephesians – the letter to the church, to us – states exactly this in one of its best-known passages: “Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
That’s faith, hope, and love all rolled into one: God’s power at work within us, able to accomplish far more than we can ask or imagine. To live that way, every day, is our call as Christians. For us as a church – for us saints, stumbling and confused though we be -that’s the main thing, which has to be the main thing. Through the immeasurable greatness of God’s power, may it be so for us in this new year, and always. Thanks be to God.