Sermon
of May 8, 2005
Presented by Rev. Chuck Ericson
Scripture lesson: Ephesians
1:15-2:10
“Power Search”
From time to time in the Thursday evening services that we have here twice a month, I mention that the music that I often get is from a website called ITunes which is associated with Apple. It’s a website where you can go and legally pay for songs to be downloaded to your computer that you can use and keep for yourself. I like it because you can find an artist you like and download portions of a whole CD so instead of buying the whole CD, where you may not like all the songs. You can just pick the ones you like and download those at 99 cents a piece. Pretty good deal, I think. And one of the features of ITunes is over in the left hand margin there is a little icon that says, “Power Search.” You can go to that place and you can click that – and then you can put in a word that you want to find…if there’s a song you want…and it will find a list of songs that all have that word or a phrase in it. Or you can put the singer’s or the composer’s name and it will give you a list of all that singer’s songs or composer’s songs. I don’t know really what makes that different from a regular search. It says, “Power Search,” but that’s really what a regular search does. I guess it just makes it sound better.
So as I was thinking of today’s sermon, and I want to preach about power, I was thinking, “Gee, that’s kind of what we do—we search for power in our lives sometimes.” I’m going to twist the idea a little bit, but in our homes if we search for power it invariably ends with Mother, doesn’t it? Mother’s the one who’s got all the power. Mother’s wisdom, and influence and persuasion can make anyone do almost anything they want most of the time, and make the right decisions and keep the rest of us out of the loop if our ideas are not deemed worthy of Mother’s wisdom and love. So the search for power in the house, not all the time but a lot of the time, will end with Mother.
One other twist in this is if you do a search for power in the Bible, there’s all kinds of places you’ll find it, but it’s really prominent in this passage we heard this morning and that’s really where the idea for my sermon began. As I was reading this passage over and over again I kept finding certain words recurring. The word “grace” recurs; the word “saved” recurs, “love” comes up again and again but no word is more prevalent in this passage than the word “power”. The power of God, the power of Christ that can work through us to do good as we are God’s people and we are the Church together. So this morning I wanted to take that concept of power that I have searched for and invite us to think for a little bit about how we find power in our lives when we need it.
How do we find power? I think one of the first places we find power in our lives is through giving compliments. Let me go through this passage a little bit at a time, and note that the first verse that we heard, where power is mentioned so many times in the whole passage, the first verse begins with a compliment: “For this reason because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love towards all the saints I do not cease to give thanks for you.” The writer, whether it’s Paul or one of Paul’s followers, begins this section with a compliment: “I’ve heard about your faith; your faith is renowned. I’ve heard about your love, that’s renowned too.” It begins with compliments which succeed, I believe, in engaging the readers in commanding their attention for the rest of the passage. Compliments often do that. When we compliment someone, they like what they hear and they keep listening – when we begin with a compliment. It really works. And I think the writer is sincere in what he’s writing, but I think he’s also trying to tell us that he wants us to read more: “I’ll give you these compliments and hope that you keep reading” …because he wants us to read about spiritual gifts. That’s later on in the chapter, there’s actually more about honoring your father and your mother, Chapter 6 of Ephesians begins, “Children, obey your parents and the Lord for this is right.” Honor your father and mother: a repeat of one of the Ten Commandments. There’s also a phrase later on that I have never used in all of 20 years of preaching, no, 25 years of preaching now, “wives submit yourselves to your husbands.” You know that’s in here, right? It’s in Ephesians. I’m staying away from that one. In any event, the writer is beginning with a compliment to engage the reader so they will read further and learn these things that they want to tell about relationships, about honoring one another, about learning about our spiritual gifts. It’s so true, isn’t it? The difference between insults and compliments: insults don’t usually work for us, compliments do. Compliments give us power to get someone else’s attention whereas insults wear us down. We insult someone and it might end up with a return insult and sort of a spiraling collection of back and forth insults that results in us being depleted of power and energy. When we get into that kind of a battle it does nothing but wear us down. Whereas compliments build us up. When you compliment someone it makes them feel good, it does get their attention for you, you empower the other person and you empower yourself when you compliment someone. It’s a mutual building up that takes place when compliments are given and received. We know that’s true, right?
I was in my favorite local coffee shop, the Mobil station, yesterday morning before the work day and saw a gentleman I hadn’t seen in some time. I said “hello” and he said back to me, “Hello young fellow.” He got me right away—I was listening to anything he wanted to say at that point. A compliment. It made me feel better, I was a little bit empowered, he had my attention. You know when people say things like that, or they say, “Gee you’re looking great. I haven’t seen you in a while, you look great”. That does that. There’s another one we like: “Have you lost weight?” That’s about 10 to 1 with me. I get, most of the time it’s 10 of, “Have you gained weight?” and once in a while somebody says, “Have you lost weight?” and I advise them that they should probably get glasses or something. The compliments they build us up, they fill us with power, they make us stronger. Compliments are a good thing, a good source of power to receive and to give to someone else.
Another source is to find power in the heavenly things. There are a couple places again in this passage where heavenly places or heavenly things are mentioned. One of them is in verse 20 where Paul or someone after Paul writes that “according to the working of God’s great might which He accomplished in Christ when he raised him from the dead and made him sit at His right hand in the heavenly places.” Focus on heavenly places happens again later on in the passage as well. When we connect ourselves with heavenly places and heavenly things rather than Earthly places and Earthly things, again we feel empowered and built up. In the Bible very often the distinction between heavenly things and Earthly things is really between spiritual things and material things. If something is mentioned that’s Earthly in the Bible it means it’s a material type of thing; if it’s something that’s heavenly it means it’s a spiritual thing. And again the heavenly things build us up; the Earthly things can wear us down and sap us, sap us of our energy.
Think of the Earthly things, the material things in your life that are important. Some of them we like, and we care a lot about: we care about our cars, we like to have nice cars with nice gadgets and things in them. I had one of the cars in my household in the shop twice in the past two weeks and it doesn’t give you any power or energy to do that. It’s bring the car there, have somebody else drive me home, wait for the call, find out, go back and get it later on, drive it back, and it takes a lot of energy. It happened twice. It doesn’t give me any power, it takes it away from me. The house. We like our houses. Mine has a leak in the basement. Sometime in the middle of winter when it rained really hard, the water went seeping through. I have a stone foundation and there’s a little piece of cement missing between some of the stones and a gushing stream came through. Fortunately it went right down a drain which is really good but it’s got to get fixed. This Earthly thing that I love that’s my house, it saps me of my power. But heavenly things, heavenly places, heavenly things, being connected with those they build us up, they strengthen us, they empower us. Love. Love is probably the most heavenly thing of all. We believe love comes from God, from heaven, and when we give it to each other and when we receive it, we’re built up. We’re empowered, the giver and the receiver both—when love is shared, and given, back and forth. When we go into times of prayer—another heavenly thing, prayer—we are strengthened, taking that time to tell God what we need, what’s on our mind, what we need to unburden ourselves of, it gets the weight of those worries off of our shoulders, off of our hearts, and we’re strong again after getting through a time of prayer. And forgiveness—perhaps the greatest heavenly gift of all, the gift that Christ came into our world to bring us, remind us about—it’s a wonderful source of power. The opposite of that – guilt and resentment – going both ways just, again, weakens us and makes us less strong. Forgiveness, and being forgiven and allowing another to forgive you gives you strength; it unburdens the guilt and the resentment, and makes you strong again. Being focused and connected with the heavenly things does more for us than the Earthly things. So, we find our power when we connect ourselves more with the heavenly things.
And one last source of power, I think, is grace. The word “grace” comes up again and again in this passage. I was thinking there are three meanings to the word grace that I can think of. One of them is the prayer you say at mealtime, grace, and I was trying to figure why that’s called “grace” and I don’t have any idea. There’s another meaning of “grace,” a second meaning of “grace” in Acts. It says, “Great grace was upon all the Apostles,” or the disciples, and in that place it means charisma: that their faces shone with God’s love and God’s spirit and when people saw them they thought these people were attractive, were full of grace and charisma because God’s wonder shone through them.
The third meaning of “grace” is an undeserved favor, something you don’t deserve but you get anyway, and that’s what the writer is writing about here in Ephesians, and it’s a tremendous source of power, grace. Grace, a great source of power. The center of the Gospel is that we don’t deserve all of God’s love, we don’t deserve heaven, we don’t deserve all the things that God gives us – but we get them anyway because of the grace of God that came to us in Jesus and in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. That’s the center of the Gospel. There are differences of opinion about how that’s all understood but it’s really all about God’s grace to us, God’s power for us to be alive instead of as Paul wrote, “Dead to our trespasses.” We’re alive because of God’s grace, because of God’s favor given to us that we don’t probably deserve. And we’re encouraged as God’s people to give it to one another—give grace to each other, be graceful to one another and build each other up and empower each other that way.
As I thought
of it there are a lot examples of grace out there but I’ve been thinking about
my neighbor recently who died a few weeks ago. I didn’t find out he died until
a couple of weeks afterwards – his obituary was not in the paper – and I was
very sad because my neighbor was a wonderful man. His property borders my
property at the place where there’s this immense hedge. If you’ve ever gone
by my house there’s this immense overgrown hedge that I don’t want to spend
the time managing. I remember when I first moved in this kindly gentlemen next
door came over and welcomed us to the neighborhood and said, “I hope you can
keep that hedge trimmed because the person before you didn’t do a very good
job of it.” It’s long, it’s really long, it goes all the way down the
whole property line just about, and up into
He asked something very reasonable. The hedge is on our property; it’s our responsibility He didn’t like it drooping it over on his land, but he just asked that I think that one time and I thought, “Gee, we’re not very good neighbors. We don’t deserve to be considered a good neighbor by him.” But you know all through the years he did nothing but kindness for us. He brought over vegetables from his garden in a big bag and left them on our back step when we weren’t home, he gave my daughter a laugh all the time at Halloween when she was little. She would go to the door and knock and he’d say, “Oh little girl, would you like a piece of candy or a boiled potato?” She’d come back and say, “He asked me if I wanted a boiled potato for Halloween.” Made her laugh and made us laugh, and a couple years ago, maybe two winters ago when it happened to us – what happens to many of us here in town – our mailbox went down during a snowstorm when the plow went by, and a day or so later he came over and he had a spare mailbox in his garage and he brought it over and gave it to us.
To me that is grace. We didn’t fulfill what he had asked. We didn’t deserve to be considered a good neighbor. He easily could have been mad and resented the fact that we didn’t take very good care of this lousy hedge. But he didn’t respond with unkindness, he responded with gift after gift after moment of laughter after more gifts, and that’s what grace is and we see it all the time, we experience it all the time and hopefully we do it all the time. We give somebody kindness who maybe doesn’t deserve it but we give it to them because God has given to us and we are told to give to one another in that same way. What a great power that is because I remember him now as a wonderful neighbor, not as somebody who I feel like, “Oh I let him down.” He didn’t make me feel that way. He made me feel like I was cared for and I was a recipient of grace. The power to make me have this wonderful memory of this kind man.
The good news today is... that if we seek power in our lives – once again I
will mention you can find it with your mother, or in your memories of your
mother (I have to get mothers in here somehow because it’s Mother’s Day) –
it’s around us everywhere in the simplest things and it’s so easy to find.
It is not in the material things, the Earthly things around us. It is in
something as simple as a compliment given or received, or some love passed back
and forth, or an act of forgiveness, or maybe especially an offering of grace,
underserved favor to one another. All those things are in abundance all around
us all the time, they’re right there. So when you need power, find it. Find it
in those ways and you will be blessed, and you will be revitalized and find new
life.