When the King Has Got Your Back

Paul was a pain in the rear end. Yes, I'm talking about the Apostle Paul. Yes, I'm talking about the Paul who is credited as the author of the book of Ephesians which we read this morning. Yes, I'm talking about the Paul who was knocked off his donkey by a blinding revelation of Jesus, who started churches all over Asia Minor and Greece, who wrote the letters that formed the nucleus of our New Testament. That Paul was a pain in the rear end. If you don't believe me just ask the other disciples. I mean, they had been with Jesus. They had travelled with Jesus. They had seen the arrest and the trial and the death and the resurrection. If anybody knew Jesus, they knew Jesus. Paul had not been there. In fact, Paul had been trained as a Pharisee. Paul had been standing by when Stephen, a deacon in the new Church, was stoned to death. Paul was holding the cloaks of the people throwing the stones. He was a coat clerk at the first Christian martyrdom. He persecuted Christians. Then he got converted and you know that there is nothing more annoying than a new convert. They think they know it all. They think nobody ever had an experience like theirs. And they want to tell you how you've got it wrong. Even if you're one of the original twelve disciples! That's what it was like with Paul. He was not from Jerusalem. He had been born up in what is now Turkey. A tentmaker by trade, but trained in the traditions of the Jewish law. Then he had that conversion experience on the Damascus Road and he suddenly saw something that the original group of disciples was having difficulty acknowledging. Paul could see that Jesus of Nazareth was not just a Jewish Messiah but the Savior of the whole world. If it was good news for the Jews it was also good news for the Greeks, the Romans, the Cretes, and the Gauls. It was a hard thing for good Jews to hear. Peter had to have a vision from heaven to tell him that it was OK to go baptize a Roman centurian named Cornelius and his family. But it was just obvious to Paul. So they finally had a conference in Jerusalem somewhere around 50 AD, some 17 years after Jesus' crucifixion. Paul met with Peter and James, the brother of Jesus, who had become a leader of the Jerusalem church. You can read about it in Acts chapter 15. The Jerusalem Council was tense. There were many Christians in Jerusalem who still believed that Jewish rites like circumcision would be required even for new converts. But Paul was convinced that God would not burden new Christians with unnecessary rules. In the end they agreed to endorse Paul's mission and they sent him out with some representatives from their group. Things were still tense though and about 8 years later Paul had to come back. Simon Montefiore describes the scene in his new book, Jerusalem: A Biography: By now James and the elders in Jerusalem disapproved of Paul. They had known the real Jesus, yet Paul insisted: "I have been crucified with Christ. The life I live now is not my life but the life Christ lives in me." He claimed, "I bear the marks of Jesus branded on my body." James, that respected holy man, accused him of rejecting Judaism. Even Paul could not ignore Jesus' own brother.* So he came back to Jerusalem and went to the Temple with James to pray as a Jew. In the process he created such an uproar that he was arrested. When he demanded a trial as a Roman citizen he was shipped off to Rome. There, according to tradition, he was executed. But what he did before dying was to open the door for all of us to follow. The Church that was born at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came upon all those Jews gathered from all those nations would now go to all those nations with good news for everyone. I think it's kind of comforting to know that the early Church had its fights and conflicts, too. And I think it's kind of comforting to know that God can work through people like Paul, who was a pain in the rear end for the people around him. Paul could see what others had a hard time seeing - that Jesus was the King and that changed everything. We live with so many flawed kings and queens these days. We have always lived with so many flawed rulers. They are vulnerable to corruption, hopelessly weak or dangerously dictatorial, too enslaved to public opinion or too unmoved by it. We need our leaders to be the best we have to offer but they always turn out to be...human. So what was so compelling about Paul's vision of Jesus that made him such a pain? The passage from Ephesians gives us a glimpse. Verse 15 of chapter 1 says, and I'm reading from the New English translation here, "For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you when I remember you in my prayers." Paul is writing to a community that has caught the vision, that has seen Jesus for who he was. Paul is giving thanks as he starts and he is encouraging this community. The next verse he starts laying out what he is praying for on behalf of these new Christians, "I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you spiritual wisdom and revelation in your growing knowledge of him, – since the eyes of your heart have been enlightened – so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what is the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the incomparable greatness of his power toward us who believe, as displayed in the exercise of his immense strength." So what is he saying here? He wants them to burn like he is burning. He wants them to get the big picture because it is so easy to get swallowed up in the day to day. He wants them to see with the "eyes of their heart" and not just with their physical eyes. Because you know what you see when you just look with your physical eyes? You see a world that is falling apart. You see life as a slow progression of loss and disintegration. You see disease winning. You see poverty winning. You see injustice winning. You see the powers and principalities getting a chokehold on our institutions. You see your bad habits and your addictions and your wounds and your failures and your sin beginning to define your life. And that is not the truth. What do we sing in that praise song, "Open the eyes of my heart, Lord, I want to see you." That's the prayer Paul has here for the Ephesians. He wants them to see a greater reality breaking into this one. There's more though. He goes on...and I hate to say it but Paul, in addition to being a pain is also a difficult writer to comprehend...he gets too excited and just starts piling on the clauses...but he goes on to say that he wants them to know "the hope of Jesus' calling" - that he wants them to know that their reality starts in Jesus' calling them to be a set apart people. They have a particular mission on earth and that is to be witnesses to hope. They are to be hope. So that's one thing he wants to remind them of. Secondly, he wants them to know "the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints." Christians aren't known for their great wealth in this world. Joel Osteen not withstanding, the primary witness to Christ is the message of sacrifice and service. Right living is the mark of the Christian. The wealth Paul is talking about is in the people - the saints - who have responded to Jesus' call and who are now living in the wealth of God's kingdom. The Crystal Cathedral in California, this great marvel of glass and architecture, was sold this week because the ministry that built it failed. This week we sent 127 shoeboxes with the good news of Jesus around the world and we distributed 267 bags of food to people in our community. I believe God appreciates beauty but when it is disconnected from the needs of the world, where is our true wealth. Paul wants us to see it ahead of us. Finally, Paul wants the Ephesians to know "the incomparable greatness of his power toward us who believe." They may be poor and persecuted. They may be on the margins of the society. But the Christians Paul was talking to, like us, should never believe that they have no power. If God could raise Jesus from the dead in this world, God can do greater things yet. So when we believe that all our good efforts have come to naught. When we believe that bad things will always happen to good people. When we believe that we can't make a difference or that things have always been this way and always will be. When we believe these things we make the mistake of believing we have no power. But God knows that King has got our back. Paul has talked about the past, present and future. He has talked about our calling in the past that has set us on a different journey. He has talked about the riches of the saints in glory who tell us about our destiny. And he has talked about the power that God exhibits in the here and now to be what God knows we can be. One thing great kings and queens can do is to inspire us to be like them. How else do you explain the thousands of Elvis impersonators in this world? Everybody wants to be the King. But King Jesus came to us in a very particular way. His life revealed that the way of kingship was through humility. The way of glory came through suffering. The way of community was through love. And only through death with a crown made of thorns on his head could he then take his place at the right hand of God. We are getting ready to enter a very special season of the year. In a lot of ways it's our season. The world is putting on bright lights and its shiny best because we have a message of light and life. The world is celebrating because we have told the world there is a reason to celebrate. But we will also be challenged. We will be challenged by the messages we hear to spend too much, to do too much, to eat too much, and to listen for God too little. Don't forget who you are. You were called by the King. You are meant for the King. And the King has got your back. Thanks be to God. *Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography, [Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2011], p. 212 (electronic edition)