Pentecost +10 – Teaching Toward Christ

Sermons – St. Brendan's Anglican Church

Christ Pantocrator. Church of the Monastery of St Anthony the Great.
Unknown Artist. Coptic. (12th century)

Pentecost +10 2024
Rev. Dr Les Martin
Ephesians 3:8-21

In the name God the Father, the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Well, we’re continuing our study of Ephesians.

But if you’re like me, when we study a book, we sometimes need to refresh before moving on. I’m going to back up a little real quickly. Looking back, in what we’ve read so far, Paul has been addressing the vertical dimension of the Christian life, the third dimension. In chapter one, we talked about how the most important thing in all of Ephesians is being “in Christ.” In chapter two, Paul applies this to the emerging Christian community, and their most pressing concern about being in Christ is how Jews and Gentiles relate because heretofore Jews have been separated from the rest of the world. In Christ, Jew and Gentile are raised together: the dividing wall has been removed.

Now we look ahead to chapter four. Paul moves from the vertical relationship with God to the horizontal relationship with others. The Christian life brings the vertical relation and the horizontal relation together in him, and it’s kind of nice because these form a cross. We go from the vertical to the horizontal. Here in chapter three chapter four 16, we have an interlude. A pause unnecessarily is from the vertical to the horizontal that if you don’t study the book as a whole, it seems kind of odd.

Paul is talking about himself. He is always injecting himself into his letters. The only reason I like it is because I inject myself into my sermons.

Paul writes,

⁷ Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power. ⁸ To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, ⁹ and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, ¹⁰ so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. ¹¹ This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, ¹² in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. ¹³ So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.

¹⁴ For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, ¹⁶ that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸ may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

²⁰ Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. ^[1]

He is grounding us in chapter one, this Christ, who does everything, and he’s hinting about what’s going to come, but he is also focusing on himself.

Why? Well, as you’re going to see next week, when Paul says that,

¹¹ And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, ¹² to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, ¹³ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, ¹⁴ so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.^[2]

As I argued in the first sermon on the series, Paul lays out ethical and practical implications for the Christian community. Why does Paul have authority to do this? To answer this, means we’ve got to talk about apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers.

I did not come to the Christian faith from the womb. For my first 17 years, I attended church about three times. I didn’t attend Awana Camp, RCIA, or Vacation Bible School. When I came to faith by the grace of God, I didn’t like Christians, so I studied the Bible on my own for about three years. But there were things I didn’t understand, so I eventually needed help beyond myself.

We this pattern throughout Scripture. We see it with Ethiopian eunuch, who Philip approaches. “So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. (Acts 8:30-31)

We see a similar pattern in our reading from Second Kings.

You know the story you just heard it. There is a lot of humor in it, but we don’t necessarily also get the added costs of Elisha. Everything he knows about how to be a man of God and the time of Israel, comes from Elijah.

And it’s time for Elijah to go.

Now, like I said, the greatest prophet, the greatest interpreter of what it means to be a faithful man in that age, and I suspect the schools of the prophets are both saddened that Elijah is leaving but not too sad since the shining star has moved on.

As Elisha follows Elijah, the sons of the prophets come out in each town., They say to him, “Do you know that today the Lord will take away your master from over you?” And he said, “Yes, I know it; keep quiet.”

We can read it mockingly or we can hear his anguish. This happens three times. Then Elijah strikes the Jordan with his cloak, and the cross on dry land. Then there’s a chariot of fire and a whirlwind take Elijah up into the heavens.

If we stopped there, it would not connect to what we’re talking about in Ephesians at all. But it doesn’t stop.

He turns around. Not uncertain, not broken. Grieving certainly as human being. But he is well-trained.

He understands what’s just happened, even if he doesn’t understand it God details. He understands that God will not leave the people without a teaching authority. And he’s now it.

He has asked for a double portion of Elijah’s anointing. Twice the authority, twice the miracles. To make this point he himself strikes the Jordan and it parts. He comes back into the land, in the midst of people not standing in his own strength. He now stands in the place of Elijah. He stands in strength of the God lie due to formation. Its formation. Elisha is able to be who he is, because of who Elijah was.

Let’s turn back to Ephesians.

One of the problems we have in our modern age is our smorgasbord faith. I’ve said something similar before but you know, if you want a heart surgeon, you don’t want me. I am not trained in that. If you want a pilot to fly a plane, well, my wife, not me. No, no, we’re just saying, Hey, you can’t find them in the supermarket. One of the problems and one of the benefits of our hybrid liberal culture around religion is there’s no state church, no official voice.

I think a lot of the problems has come with it. And with the abundance publishing anything under the sun: TV, and radio preachers is when it comes to formation in Christianity, it’s a free-for-all. There is no guidance in the tradition. It’s like the book of Judges. By the time of death, it’s so often we have done what seems right in our own lives, in our own eyes, in our pursuit.

But Elisha went to school. The Ephesians went to school under someone who was trained and authorized. It’s going be interesting as we peek ahead at this next week: Unity comes through unity in faith. It comes through apostles and prophets, and evangelists and teachers and pastors. In other words, it comes from someone like Paul saying, “We are are talking about how Christ is all in all. I’m going to tell you how to live. But to do that, built into this is what I’m going to tell you about my own life.

So much of modern Christianity is us kind of rummaging around and trying to figure out what works for us. And although a great diversity of riches has been released, and that really is a good thing. There is also great confusion about what we’re doing and why.

It is the roll of Paul not just in Ephesians, not just for the Romans, not just for the Corinthians but for us to say, “Wait a minute, this is who Jesus is. This is what he did; this is what it means.”

And that role is also in the role of Elisha. For good or evil, that role is also in people like me and Fr. Doug today. It’s not so much a free-for-all as it is a long obedience in the same direction.

You see, what I do and what Fr. Doug does is not maybe what you think we do. We have a very circumscribed role. And that’s good. It’s teaching what Paul’s teaching. And again, we’ll make it more clear next week. And providing the sacraments. And helping people come back to the truth. That’s it.

That’s it, the rest of the ministry, that’s what you do. What we do is work to be a foundation that you can build on, not us so much all of it, except that one of the reasons we go through this is not just for tradition.

There is a uniformity to the tradition. There’s a uniformity, that gives us access to the vertical in front of the vertical to the horizontal. Still may seem vague. Let’s go to our Gospel today and see what happens. We’re in chapter six; it’s a boat trip. And he said that in context for you, what’s happened before us, they just fed 5000,

Jesus has called the disciples to go on ahead. They get in the boat and the waves are beginning to be hard to pull. It’s a struggle.

If this is the the story we find in other gospels, the water is filling the boat.

In the midst of their work, they’re struggling. Then Jesus comes walking on the water. And they’re afraid. Are they afraid of the water? They are fishermen. Or are they afraid of Jesus walking on the water because you don’t want to see people walking on the water. But either way, they’re afraid.

They’re afraid. It says they cried out and were terrified, but immediately Jesus spoke to them, “Have courage. It is I. Do not be afraid.” He got into the boat with them and the winds ceased. They were completely astonished. Here’s the key part because they did not understand about the loaves and their hearts were hardened.

I like to say that I would have understood the loaves. You just can’t feed five thousand out of five loaves and two fish.

What I know is that they the disciples are struggling. They are disciples, not yet apostles. They’re struggling with the wind and the rain and this crazy walking ghost of Jesus. They misunderstand about the loaves, because their hearts are hardened. They’re afraid. We’re catching them in their first year of seminary.

The good news is they will come to understand about the loaves. They will cease being tossed around in every wave of doctrine, and disciples will become apostles and their little boat will become the Ark of the church. And there will be a unity of confession. And the truth of that confession, the truth of the vertical will work out into the horizontal and transform the world.

I don’t know what Elisha was like before he started working with Elijah. But I imagine there are many things he didn’t get.

Whenever he says Paul is writing this way, there’s there are many things that the Ephesians don’t know about how to live in unity with Jews and Gentiles.

It’s never been done.

Paul turns to himself not in a self-centered or self-serving life, he says, “I get that you don’t get how this equals this. Don’t worry. Listen. One of the reasons I came to the church all those years ago was that’s what I desperately needed. Jesus has come to me and I love all for about three years just reading the Bible not going to church. There’s no way because I didn’t like Christians particularly, sorry.

But I did not understand what I was reading. There was no one to interpret. We don’t understand on our own, and particularly with this the myriad of social media offerings, curriculum offerings, radio, TV preachers, the books you can buy, we don’t know how to understand the loaves.

Paul says, “I was called to explain to you.”

Elisha even in his grief, can nonetheless ask for a double portion and part of that same river and do twice the number of miracles that Elijah did.

In the little bit that Doug and I can do is point to Christ. These vestments are supposed to represent Christ not us. We say that Christ that warms your heart. Heres that Christ that you heard about yourself. Here’s that Christ that gives you hope. And here’s this community that you have to live with.

Understand how can you believe in this? And how can we hear it is there someone to preach to us? That’s the connection from the vertical to the horizontal. It’s the ministry, the Ministry of Paul and chapter for the ministry of apostles, prophets, evangelists and teacher and pastors. It’s the ministry is saying, here are the common needs, but not what you do. And that’s the ministry that turns you from fear to harvest.

Paul’s role as apostle is crucial to the Ephesians and us. The continuing ministry is crucial, so that we can figure out how to live in the love and power of the God who is reconciling all things to himself.

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^[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 3:7–21.

^[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 4:11–14.