Today’s Scripture Reading (March 1, 2018): Ephesians 3
I am not sure that we understand the purpose
of power. Maybe we never have. I mean, what does it mean to “Make America Great
Again?” Does that mean that the world will fear the United States and never
dare to tell her that she is wrong? (Don’t even get me started on the arrogance
of using the word “America” to describe one nation as opposed to the almost one
billion people who inhabit two continents in the Western hemisphere.) That kind
of power often comes at a high price, and usually,
it comes with many enemies who want nothing more than to compete and defeat the
power possessed by the one who is great.
The Church suffers through the same belief.
Power in Christianity means that we win and all others lose. Often when we pray
that the church would be made powerful, what we are asking for is that the
church would be made “Great Again” in a very worldly way. One Christian a few
years ago, made it her practice to phone me along with, I am sure, other
Christian leaders, to ask me to pray for her to be powerful. She would quote
Bible verses like Ephesians 3:20, along with a tagline
“I don’t know, Pastor. I have a pretty good imagination.” To her, the verse
promised a kind of earthly power, which she often interpreted to mean money,
with which she could rain down her own
style of divine vengeance on all those who had harmed her. She believed in a
God who would make her “Great Again.”
But I am fairly certain that that kind of
power is not what Paul intends in this
verse. After all, Jesus said that he had not come to be some sort of great and powerful military or
political leader, but rather to be a servant. What if being great meant
offering our lives freely as an offering of service? What if the “able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” had more
to do with making this world a better place, than it does about making our
lives an easy place.
I live in a world that seems to be dominated by “escape
theology.” When we look at our planet, when we see school shooting after school
shooting and rebellion after rebellion, and
when our news media seems to constantly remind us that the superpowers are on a
collision course, we know how bad our world can get. But what about the
question of how good our world can get? Often that question produces nothing
but blank stares. It is as if we believe deep down that there is no hope for
our world to get better, with the exception of
the second coming of Christ and the moment when we escape this world to get
caught up in the air with him.
What if, just for a moment, it is this kind of better
place that is exactly what we have
trouble imagining. We have no problem imaging great wealth or boundless power
with which we can bring down our enemies. What we struggle with is often the belief
that the love of God can make this world, this planet on which we live now, a
better place. I think this is exactly what Paul is indicating with these words.
Can you imagine a God who through his love can change this world in a place
where there is less of all of the negative that we imagine? What would happen
if this was the power that worked in, and through us? Maybe, with that kind of
power, we could really make America – and
the World – Great Again.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Ephesians 4
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