To Infinity ... and Beyond!

sermon by Torin Eikler
1st sermon in a seven week "Dwelling in the Word" series focusing on
Ephesians 3:7-21

Series Introduction
We are preparing for something different in worship in the next seven weeks.  Across the Mennonite Church USA, congregations are being invited into a process called “Dwelling in the Word.”  We, in this congregation, have been introduced to this through the process known as Lectio Divina, or divine reading.  But Dwelling in the Word is a bit different—one of the major differences is that the scriptures we are looking at are longer, and we are “dwelling” with them for a longer amount of time ... which I can admit, feels daunting, even perhaps boring. 

But Dwelling in the Word is a spiritual practice of reading and dwelling in the biblical text with an openness to be formed and transformed by the Living Word.  This practice is a unique way of allowing God to speak to us both individually and corporately.  Dwelling in the Word values listening deeply to God and to one another.  We read for spiritual formation by coming to the Word and patiently allowing the text to intrude into our lives—in this case for yes, seven whole weeks!—we open our selves to let the text address us, and to encounter God in new ways.

This is a formational reading and hearing, rather than an informational reading and hearing.  In the next seven Sundays, you will hear seven different perspectives on Pauls’ letter to the Ephesians 3:7-21, a scripture that appropriately calls us to be rooted and grounded in Love. 

By reading this text formationally

·         we dwell in God’s Word to gain new insights and understandings—not seeing only what we heard or read about a particular text, or what we think we know about it.
·         we read and listen to the scripture text aware of God’s presence—not reading through it quickly and unconsciously.
·         we read formationally with a desire to be shaped by God’s Word—not to control God’s Word based on our desires, wants, and needs.
·         and we become humble servants of the text—not masters of it.

We acknowledge that there is risk involved in doing things differently in worship.  This is not a routine we are used to.  We are used to hearing a variety of texts from week to week.   But we trust that God moves in our lives, illuminating to us newness each week—even with the same text.  We trust that the seven speakers have listened to the Spirit themselves and are each different people with different perspectives, and different ways of expressing the Good News.

And we know that we benefit from and need a variety of ways to study and read God’s Word.  The Spirit of God has the power to transform our souls and lives in whatever way we approach the Scripture.  Dwelling in the Word with the community invites the Living Word to penetrate to the innermost being of our lives—individually and together.  It is here that God desires to dwell.

Sermon
“I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

Some time ago, one of my sons asked me, “God loves me, right?”  (I think it was just after he had gotten into a lot of trouble for doing something very dangerous).  My response was, “Of course God loves you, and I do too.”  His next question was, “How much?” which surprised me because we have never played the kind of games that try to measure the limit of love.  (You know, the ones where a child says, “I love you to the moon,” and the parent responds, “I love you to the moon and back.”)  So, I said, “God loves you to infinity … and beyond!”

Some of you may not be familiar with that phrase.  So, I’ll give you some background.  “To infinity … and beyond!” is the catchy exclamation used by Buzz Lightyear in the “Toy Story” movies that have been popular among children for the last several years.  The movies tell the story of three of the great adventures shared by a group of toys who have come to life when their owner, Andy, is away.  They play games together, take care of each other, and generally do all the things that the rest of us do within the limitations of their own construction.

Buzz is one of the latest additions to Andy’s toy box, and in the first movie, it falls to the rest of the toys to help him understand that he is really just a toy and not an intergalactic space ranger whose mission is to save the universe from the predations of the evil Emperor Zogg.  But until they manage to convince him that he cannot actually shoot laser beams or contact galactic control, he repeatedly tries to use his little plastic wings to fly, shouting “To infinity … and beyond!” with each attempt.

Aside from being fairly high quality, entertaining movies in their own right, the Toy Story series has given birth to many interesting and entertaining conversations with my children….

“Where is infinity?” Sebastian asked me shortly after we watched the first movie for the third time. 

“Infinity isn’t really a place,” I answered after a little chuckle.
"But Buzz Lightyear said, ‘to infinity and beyond,’” he responded with the undeniable logic of a child who understands the word “where.”

Clearly there was more explaining to do.

 

I’ll save you the details of the rest of the conversation.  Suffice it to say that we still have conversations about what infinity means.  It seems that there are no end to Sebastian’s questions about the concept, and now that Alistair is in on the discussions, they promise to continue for a number of years.  I just don’t know how explain it so that a boy of 6 can comprehend let alone a 3-year-old.

In truth, I’m not sure I could explain infinity to a full-grown adult because … I don’t really comprehend it myself.  I can say that it’s the highest number there is, but it’s not really a number.  I can say that it means something so big that it has no end, but what does that actually mean?  I can say that if you were to start off in one direction and travel forever, you would never reach infinity, but that’s not much better.  What it comes down to is that I do not (maybe cannot) comprehend it.  I can only grasp enough of what it means to stand in awe of the mystery it represents and struggle to move deeper into that mystery as I try to help my sons.

 

“I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

 

The same thing is true about God.  When we talk about theology we use all sorts of words that defy comprehension.  God is omniscient and knows everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen, even if the future is yet to be determined.  God is omnipresent – in every place and time that exists simultaneously.  God is omnipotent which means that God both can and cannot create a rock that even God cannot move.  All of these words have definitions that we have made to speak of the infinite nature of God, and we can only grasp the smallest part of what they mean.

But love … love is something that we can understand.  In our lives we often feel powerless.  We often wish that we could be in more than one place at a time in order to get everything done.  We sometimes regret that we didn’t know or understand more of what was going on around us … of what our actions would mean.  Yet every day we know the power of love.  We know how it lives deep, deep within us.  We know the empathy and compassion that it inspires in us.  And, we know the lengths we will go to take care of those we hold dear.  We even have a sense of how broad love can be.

 

I remember asking my mother … (once or twice) … who she loved more, me or one of my brothers.  As all wise parents do, she told me told me that she didn’t love any of us more than the others.  She just loved us differently.  “You know,” she went on, “like you love me and your father and your brothers differently.”

That answer shut me up.  It didn’t relieve any of my fears or my desire to be the favorite son.  That wasn’t what ended the conversation.  No, … it was too complex and confusing for me.  Sure I loved my brothers and my parents differently, but at any given time, I could have told you who I loved more.  It was clear from more of that children’s logic that whoever had just given me what I asked for or let me do what I wanted was at the top of the list.

Eventually, I outgrew that limited understanding of love (or I hope I have), and now that I am older – now that I have children of my own, especially – I understand my mother’s answer, and I have used it myself the few times that my boys have posed the same question I did.  It’s not that I want to be confusing or misdirect them (although I do my share of that at other times).  It’s simply the truth, and what they have trouble understanding – what it took me years to learn myself – is that love is not a limited commodity.  We don’t have to share it out in portions that grow smaller with each person that we welcome into our heart because an endless supply of it wells up within us.  In fact, it often seems like the more we open our hearts to others, the more love flows into and through us.  We become fuller and more complete rather than stretched and divided.

That may be the closest any of us get to the infinite ... at least within ourselves, and that is something that we can hold on to as we struggle to comprehend who God is.  Yet even that – even the abundance of our love – is only a reflection of the love that God holds for all of us – the love that God revealed in Christ.  That is a love that is so broad … so deep that we humans rarely (if ever) comprehend.

 

I think that’s why the author of Ephesians phrased this particular part of the letter as a prayer rather than a theological treatise.  There is really no way for us to decipher the infinite nature of God since we are limited creatures.  Our intellect has amazing power to perceive, but there is a fullness in the infinite God that lies beyond mere knowing.

There is a love that reaches out to embrace all things and all people….  A love that knows everything – all the good and the bad together – knows it all and accepts it.  Knows it, accepts it, and lets it be despite the power to change it.  Lets it be … imperfect as it is and remains content with calling us all toward a more complete wholeness. 

That love comes to us borne on the wings of the Spirit from the heart of God into our own hearts.  It takes root there in the rich soil of our own love and sinks roots deep down into our beings, giving rather than taking nourishment.  It spreads its branches out to embrace our souls, rocks us into the infinite space of our dreams … and then beyond into the place of God’s dreams for us.

What a wonderful gift – a fullness and richness beyond anything we could create or even dream of ourselves.  It’s worth a prayer or two.  And so, I add my own voice to the prayer offered for the Ephesians and extend it for you … for all of us, knowing that the faithfulness of our God will make it so.  And so ...

“I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

Faithful Hearts

sermon by Torin Eikler
Mark 7:1-8, 14-23

I'm not sure how it is with you, but often when I read a scripture, it calls to mind others that I have read before.  I know that shouldn’t surprise me, but it does.  Maybe it’s just a hold over from a time when I felt like I didn’t know the bible very well, but I’m not really a biblical scholar, and the congregations I grew up in didn’t particularly encourage memorizing passages of scripture.  So, it still amazes me when connections come to mind … and especially when I actually know where to find the text that comes to mind.

This week was one of those times.  When I read the last three verses of the scripture from Mark, I immediately thought of Matthew, chapter 18, verses 8 and 9.  Those verses read:

            If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away;
                        it is better for you to enter life maimed or lame
                               than to have two hands or two feet and to be thrown into eternal fire.
            And if you eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away;
                        it is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes
                                and to be thrown into the hell of fire.

 

If you don’t see the link between the two texts, I don’t blame you.  It’s not the kind of connection that usually leads from one scripture to another, but I think that it does underscore what Jesus told his disciples as he explained his statement about what is clean and what is unclean.  I know that still doesn’t make the link clear.  So, let me do some explaining myself … and I should say that most of this comes from a lecture I had with Professor Jeff Bach rather than my own thinking.

 

Take a moment to think about those verses in Matthew.  “If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off ….  And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out….”  They sound horrible and inhumane … and impossible.  Even the most extreme zealots would have to think twice about doing that, though some have followed these instructions over the years.  But, even if you take the teachings literally, it make little sense to maim or blind yourself … because, after all, it is not your hand or your foot or your eye that causes you to sin.  All of those parts of your body are controlled by your brain.

And what controls your brain?  The answer to that is up for discussion.  You might say that it’s your spirit that holds those controls.  Or your conscience.  Or your will.  Or your sense of yourself – your ego.  But in the time when Jesus was teaching, the heart was the seat of all of those different pieces that make a person … a person.  So, one of the points that Jesus may have been trying to make was that sin and evil did not come from some outside source.  It came from the heart – from a heart that was not in tune with God.

But, if the heart is the seat of sinfulness and evil, it is also the seat of righteousness and good.  It is the place where our highest purposes are born and nurtured and brought to life.  It is dwelling place of our souls and the place where we connect most directly with the Spirit of the Divine.  It is the wellspring of the love and compassion, the mercy and justice, the hope and faith that inspire and empower our lives as children of God and followers of Christ.  And, … it is the arena in which our struggle to choose between right and wrong … to choose for or against God takes place … to embody a heart of faith or live with a heart of stone.

 

As far as I know, there is only one sin that the Bible tells us is unforgiveable – blaspheming against the Holy Spirit.  It’s not in the Ten Commandments.  It’s not part of the law taught by the priests or rabbis.  But it was condemned by Jesus a few chapters before this in Mark.  So, I think that we need to take that seriously.

At the same time, I think we need to take the spiritual condition of a hardened heart just as seriously.  It seems to come in a close second, and Jesus saves his harshest criticism for those in the religious community who demonstrate hard hearts.  That’s what this whole little tableau is about.  Earlier, some of these same people (or at least people with the same credentials) had incited a crowd to try and kill Jesus because he had healed a man’s hand on the Sabbath.  Now they are condemning the disciples for eating food without washing their hands first.  That was a rule originally meant for priests who were about to eat the sacrificial bread, but it had been transformed into a ritual practice for all upright and observant Jews.

The Pharisees and scribes had apparently missed the point the point the first time around.  So Jesus spelled it out, “there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”  It is the selfish actions that demean people, ignore or cause pain and suffering in others, or seek to elevate one person at the expense of a brother or sister that make a person unclean. 

The message seems clear, especially after Jesus explains further to the disciples.  In abandoning the commandment of God and holding to human tradition, the Pharisees had lost touch with the compassion at the heart of the law – a compassion for all people born of God’s great love.  If they had had faithful hearts, they would have been much less concerned with physical purity.  They would not have been pointing fingers.  Instead they would have been reaching out to people with open hands … helping hands … loving, compassionate hands.

 

We need to be careful too.  It’s easy to point fingers at the Pharisees and dismiss their “legalism,” but if we stop there, we, too, have missed the point.  The rules that they followed had been formed over generations by well-meaning people who were honestly trying to follow the commandments they had received from God.  They were just trying to make sure that they didn’t slip up – didn’t accidentally break those laws through ignorance.  But the hedge that they had built around the law had grown to obscure its meaning over time.  Little by little, they had wandered from the path.  Step by step, their hearts had become hardened even as they were trying to remain faithful.

That happens to us too.  We start off following Christ with good intentions … and end up far from the compassion that Jesus himself modeled.  Usually we aren’t even aware that we have strayed because the reasons that started our wandering have become such a part of us that we no longer question them until someone comes along and challenges us.

That has been my experience, at least.  When I was in High School, I went to Christian Citizenship Seminar in New York and Washington, DC.  CCS is a program offered by the Church of the Brethren to bring youth together once a year to learn about a particular social, spiritual, and political issue that is important in the life of our society.  They have focused on militarism, the environment, and racism among other things.  The one that I am remembering concentrated on poverty, and I came out of it with a conviction that I should do more to care for the hungry and homeless around me.

That sense conviction has stayed with me over the years, and I still feel a compulsion to help whenever someone asks me for some change.  But, I have learned a lot more about the complex reasons behind homelessness, and I have seen many, many hungry people who will take whatever money they get to buy drugs or alcohol rather than food.  And so I have generally stopped giving money.

It used to be that I would carry food with me to give to people instead of money.  After a while, I stopped doing that, but I would take the time to walk with someone into a nearby restaurant or convenience store and buy them something to eat … if they were willing to go along.  Eventually, though, I stopped doing that as well.  Now, I usually just walk on past.  Sometimes I will say hello.  Sometimes I don’t even afford them that little offering of humanity.  When I think about it (which isn’t too often since it makes me so uncomfortable), I feel a deep sadness that I seem to have lost touch with the power of that 17-year-old’s conviction … that I don’t know how to change the hardened defense that separates me from those who are suffering back into a softer more compassionate heart.

 

This week I remembered a story that I hadn’t thought of in years.  It was shared by David Radcliff during the week of that same Christian Citizenship Seminar, and I found it to be quite inspiring.  David’s job required him to visit Washington, DC regularly, and he spent quite a lot of time in and around Union Station where many of the homeless men and women of Capitol Hill hang out.  So, he was often asked to help out with some spare change.

At first he gave whatever change was in his pocket to people, but then the word spread and more people would ask him for money.  He began to make sure that he never carried change in his pocket so that he could honestly say that he had none to give, but that didn’t sit well with him.  So, he stopped speaking to people and, eventually, even started to walk with his eyes on the floor so that he wouldn’t make eye contact.

A few months later, he was outside Union Station waiting to meet someone, and a homeless man was standing nearby.  David tried to be polite but distant when the man greeted him, but as his short wait grew into a long one, he ended up having a conversation with the "Sam."  Over the next hour, he heard a bit about Sam’s history, and when it was time for him to leave, he gave Sam $5 even though he had never asked for it.

Over the course of the next several weeks, similar situations gave David and Sam a chance to get to know one another better, and David came to care about Sam and to see him as a unique individual.  Over the course of the year, they became what some might call friends, and David began to plan his schedule so that they could have lunch together once a week.  In that way, he was able to reach out to one person and help.

 

But, we all know it goes deeper and farther than just how we deal with the hungry or homeless, though it would go a long way if we could find a way to show them compassion at every turn.  Our human habits have taken us a long way from Jesus’ teachings about faithful living.  He taught us to forgive others, and we gladly accept forgiveness from others.  We live with the assurance that our all our sins are forgiven through the grace of God.  Yet, we often harbor long-term resentment toward those who have offended us.

Jesus also taught us to love our enemies and to refuse violence even in the most dire of circumstances, and when it is a far away thing – a war somewhere else – we can generally go along with that.  Yet, when we often respond with physical, verbal, or emotional violence when we feel personally threatened.

And what about welcoming the stranger or visiting those in prison?  We are a very hospitable congregation.  It’s one of our spiritual gifts as a community of faith to open our doors and our hearts to the people who walk through our open doors.  Yet, look around you.  We have our differences, but in the larger scheme of things, we are all pretty similar to each other.  I think part of that is because the people who seek this place out are looking for a church like this, but I know that we have difficulty reaching out to invite others to join us.  And, I wonder if it part of it is that we struggle to accept and welcome people who are really different from us – who stretch our comfort zone.  I wonder if the way that we “do” church is a barrier – if our religious traditions have taken the edge off of the welcome we want to offer.

 

It is not easy to meet the central challenge of the gospel.  It is hard to transform our hearts.  And even when we have made the effort - struggled to meet the challenge to best of our ability, trusting God to do the rest – it is so easy to give in to the habits of our past and the weight of our culture.  It is so easy to wander … little by little … step by step … to wander from the path of compassionate love that Jesus set out before us – to let our faithful hearts become callous and hard.

Maybe the answer lies in personal relationships like the one David developed.  It is harder to ignore people when you know them well.  Or maybe it’s as simple as practicing.  Using our physical muscles makes them stronger, and many people have found the same to be true with our spiritual muscles.  Or maybe we need something else altogether.  I’m sure it’s different for each one of us, but there is one thing that remains the same regardless of who we are … we need to keep working at it.  If we are too live up to our dreams of being followers of Christ in more than name alone, we need to nurture faithful hearts … loving hearts … hearts that reach out to others in gentleness and compassion.

 
May it be so.