Community Church Sermons

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Year B - July 30, 2000

"Y'all's God Is Too Small"

Ephesians 3:14-21

During our Community Church Conference this past week, I was seeking some insight into our Scripture text from Paul's letter to the Ephesians. Perhaps some speaker would reveal some new twist on the original Greek text that would help me better understand how we can live faithfully as followers of Christ in these confusing times. Perhaps someone would tell a striking story, or develop some theology, or provide a detailed doctrinal delineation of chapter three, verses fourteen through twenty-one in the letter to the Ephesians.

Now, it took a while, but the breakthrough finally came. Our wonderful Bible study leader, the Rev. Racquel St. Clair who is a fifth year PhD. Candidate in New Testament Studies up at Princeton, came up with what I can only describe as a fantastic insight into better understanding our text for today. And even though Rev. St. Clair was teaching from the Gospel of John, and not from Ephesians, the point she made can, and ought to be, applied to almost everything we read in the Bible.

And here it is. If you want to understand what Paul is saying about the nature of God, and the work of the Church, and the power of salvation, you need to learn to incorporate a certain word into your vocabulary. You have to learn to say, "Y'all!"

I have discovered that the word "Y'all" is usually the first little inroad of Southern culture into the language of us Northerners. Oh, some of us resist it for a while, but sooner or later, we all get bit by the y'all bug. You're talking on the phone with your relatives back in Michigan and suddenly you hear yourself saying, "We'd love to have y'all come down and visit!" I mean, it's like a contagious disease that takes a while to be incubated, but given time, it finds its way to the lips of everyone. "Y'all know what I'm sayin'?"

Although most of us don't go all the way to the pure "Y'all" at first. The real "Y'all" , of course, is one word, spoken as one syllable. We Northerners usually start with a y'all that has two syllables. We say, "You-all", and later we graduate to "yuhALL", and maybe even a few variations of that until we have perfected the word by reducing it to one syllable and one syllable only. "Yall".

Now Rev. St. Clair, hanging around for so long with those Yankees up in Princeton, NJ has lost the purity of her native "y'all", and now blatantly says "You all." And we must forgive her for that. But the way she says "you all" can help us better understand Paul's teachings in the letter to the Ephesians.

Put quite simply, Rev. St. Clair reminded us that most of the you's we read in the text of the Bible are plural you's. They are not singular you's, as though God's Word is addressing you as an individual. In most cases, they refer not to the one, but to the many. Not to you, but to you ALL!

And let me start this morning simply by saying that, to truly live the life of grace, you have to learn to add the all to you.

J.B. Phillips, the famous Bible scholar once wrote a book entitled "Your God Is Too Small". In the book, Phillips discusses several misconceptions that people have about God. For instance, some people see God as a kind of divine policeman who is interested only in whether you keep the law and - if you don't - will pounce on you and throw you in the heavenly slammer. Or worse. For these people, God gets people to love him by threatening to kill them, and to obey him through fear. And J.B. Phillips points out that the Bible shows us that, if this your idea of God, then your concept of God is too small.

Others see God as a doting father. You know, much of our adult understandings of God derive from our childhood experiences with our own dads. A number of years ago, some Christians trying to reach out to kids living in some of the seamier neighborhoods of Chicago tried to re-word the Bible into street language. Interestingly, the concept of God as "father" proved almost impossible to convey in a positive way. Which father were these Christians talking about? The unknown biological father? The man who stays over on weekends? The man who lives with mom today? Is God the father like the father who abused the mother, and introduced the kids to their first experience with drugs? These young people weren't sure they wanted a father-God. That concept was just too small.

Still others see God as a grand old man - nice, gentle, sweet, lovable - sort of over-the-hill. Not a God who understands nuclear fission, or the intricacies of computer science and the internet. Not a God who could hold his own discussing the theory of relativity with Albert Einstein, or sharing ideas with researchers working on the human genome project. There are not all that many people among us today who think of God as the smartest Being alive, whose thoughts are the most relevant ideas in play in the world here at the start of the new millennium. Oh, if you think of God as a grand old man sitting around on the porch, watching his children do all the work, your God is much too small.

And similarly, if you think of God as having only a singular interest in you - what you do, in what you think, in what you experience, in what you need - your God is way too small!!

Our God is not the God of you, but the God of YOU ALL!!'

Come back with me to the beautiful hymn Paul is singing in the first chapter of Ephesians. We heard two Sundays ago that the life of grace is a life lived out in love to others and, in fact, that loving others is what makes us blameless in God's sight! If you seek to be holy and blameless before God, you'll probably need to stop studying the Bible for awhile. Or going to prayer groups. Or even coming to worship. You see, nowhere in the Bible does it say that these are the defining behaviors of living holy and blamelessly before God. Instead, Ephesians teaches that God measures holiness in terms of how well you love others! God evaluates blamelessness not by your believing the right things, nor by adopting some lifestyle of moral integrity. It is love that is the standard for blamelessness. So go out and start loving! Love lavishly like Jesus loved, love generously like Jesus loved, and take risks with your love like Jesus took risks with his love! Because, you see, when you go out and actually love people like Jesus loved, then you'll discover what you need to study in the Bible! Then you'll find out what you need to be praying for! Then you'll have something to sing about and to praise God for when you come to worship! God calls us holy and blameless when we move from you to you all! That’s the first stanza of Paul’s hymn.

Then last week, we heard from Steve Nash that the life of grace is a life lived out as adopted sons and daughters - the family of God - that exists to nurture, support and care for each other and to help each other grow as Christian people. This can happen through things like ChristCare groups and other settings where we can apply the gift of love to one another in real and personal ways. You see, we are not allowed to be singular Christians. It's not about you, but about you all. And that’s the second verse of Paul’s great hymn.

And now today, Paul's hymn builds into a mighty crescendo. In the third stanza, he reaches the highest notes that can be sung about God. Paul sings:

"With all wisdom and insight, he has made known to us the mystery of his will…according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ…as a plan for the fullness of time…to unite ALL THINGS in him…things in heaven…and things on earth!"

Now, notice what Paul declares. God is not going to unite some things in Christ, but ALL things! Not a few things, but ALL things in Christ! Not just some people, but ALL people in Christ! Not just Presbyterians…not just Episcopalians…not even just Christians!

You see, God's plan is not to unite you with Jesus. God's plan is to unite you all in Christ!

And here's where I want to bring you into our text for today. Paul’s hymn about God’s amazing grace now becomes a prayer for you and me.

"I pray that YOU ALL may have the power to grasp how wide, and long, and high, and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that is….immeasurable…"

When I was a child, my sister, brother and I used to fight over who got the most. My mother had to take extreme care when doling out things like ice cream. She had to divide it in exactly the same amounts for all three of us. Or there would be hell to pay. She had to carefully measure every spoonful.

But God is not like my mother, and grace is not like ice cream. And the Bible tells us that, if we want to be people of grace, we’re going to have to stop measuring it! We have to stop thinking that God has enough grace to forgive me, but not enough grace to forgive you; that God has more love for our group, than for that group; that God is more interested in innocent children than in hardened criminals; that God has some special love for our country that he withholds from other countries; that God prefers Christians to Jews, or Muslims, or Branch Davidians, or even atheists; that God feels more comfortable in the liturgy of Catholicism than he does in the speaking in tongues of the Pentecostals.

One of the greatest sins in the Church today is the sin of trying to measure God’s love. Trying to take God’s you all and reduce it to something that includes you, but excludes others. And so Paul prays for us to receive a gift. The gift of understanding how BIG God is! The gift of grasping a love that cannot be measured, and of living in a spirit of grace that seeks to unite you ALL in Christ.

As I’ve been thinking about what it means to practice this life of immeasurable grace, it strikes me that there are some practical things that we need to do.

First, we Christians need to stop assigning people to hell, and start surrounding people with heaven! One of the saddest moments in my ministry came one night at a funeral home. The visiting hours were over, and the guests had all gone home. The only ones left besides me were the widow and her two grown children. We formed a circle and had a prayer, and we commended the life of the woman’s husband, and the children’s father, to God. And then we walked out into the cold winter night. As I was getting into my car, the son suddenly appeared at my side. I could tell he was troubled, and I thought I detected a tear. And then he said something very sad. He said, “You were wrong in your prayer. My father did not go to heaven. My father went to hell.” And then he explained how his father had never evidenced what the son believed was any true manifestation of faith as the son defined it, and why he had come to that tragic conclusion.

One of the great scandals among Christians today is that we place more faith in what we see as the failures of people to be reconciled to God than we do in God’s ability to reconcile people to himself! We believe more in the power of sin than in the power of grace to overcome sin. We think God is incapable of overcoming unbelief, and wrong belief, and unrighteous living. And yet, the story of the Bible is the very story of this amazing God of ours whose powers of persuasion, and inspiration, and transformation are beyond anything we can even imagine!

Do you really think you can measure the immeasurable grace of God!

We are all going to be surprised when we get to heaven! Not only will there be people there at the table that you, in your own mind, wrote off a long time ago, but there will be many more trillions of people than you ever imagined! Why? Because God is GOOD at saving people! Because God is GOOD at his job!

Why, how surprised Jehovah’s Witnesses will be when they see that 144,000 is not even close to the size of God’s family! How surprised Baptists will be that some are there who were baptized as babies, and Presbyterians over the fact that some of the people in heaven are folks who have no appreciation at all for doing things decently and in order! Why, many will be shocked to find that God was able to find ways beyond our comprehension of leading to Christ people who knew nothing of Christ. And we will be shocked to see how many unseemly people are there. People who, in our eyes, were deserving of hell, but in whose hearts God was quietly and invisibly at work, leading them home. And some of those will probably be surprised to see us there!

You cannot measure the grace of God. You cannot underestimate the ability of God to accomplish things that are impossible in our eyes.

So the Bible essentially says to stop assigning people to hell unless you want to receive the same judgment. And start surrounding people with heaven.

You and I are called to be the light of the world. We are to model the life of the Kingdom for all to see. And so we never give up on anyone. We refuse to measure the grace of God and reduce you all to you.

And, if this is true, then there's a second thing we need to do. We need to become friends with others. I believe that, far more important than any holy rite is the act of making friends with others in Jesus' name.

On Friday morning, the youth of our I.C.C.C. presented the best youth worship service I've ever experienced. Several of the young people spoke about their experience at the conference, and how it changed their lives. One young man's testimony touched my heart in a special way. He was, interestingly enough, from Michigan. He is an African-American young man. And he was there at the Conference for the first time.

He talked about how moved he was by the love expressed toward him by people he didn't even know. They asked him how he was, and took the time to learn his name. He ran into them in the elevator, and in the corridors, and their friendliness filled his cup.

But most especially, said this young black man from Michigan, he was grateful for the young people of one of our other churches. These kids, Caucasians from Massachusetts, had seen that he was all alone, and invited him to come and eat with them. And during the week, they opened their circle to include him in all that they did. He said he experienced God through them.

What are Christians supposed to do? How are we supposed to live? Oh, it's so much simpler and more practical than we often think!

We are to work at becoming friends with other people! We are to endeavor to build relationships with other churches, other religions, other groups, other nations. For through the gift of Christian friendship, God's grace gains entrance into peoples' lives. And the persuasive, reconciling, transforming power of this God whose grace is immeasurable, goes to work.

If you are like me, your god may be much too small!

Which is why Jesus Christ invites us to come and discover a different God. The true God. The God whose love for his children and his world cannot be measured. The God who, given enough time, can talk anyone into trusting him! The God who has never met a sinner he can't forgive, or a sin he can't overcome. The God who never gives up on anyone.

And today, this God comes before you and me. And he calls to us.

"Y'all come and follow me!"