“Whad’ya Know IV: Hearsay and Hope”

September 13, 209

Isaiah 40:28-31

Ephesians 1:15-23

My friend Allen Happe, the late minister of the First Congregational Church in Cambridge, MA, once preached a series of sermon from Ephesians, and while I don’t remember much of what he said, his opening words of the first sermon have stayed with me.

“The Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians,” Allen said, “Is neither an epistle, nor is it from Paul, nor is it to the Ephesians.” He was pointing to the conclusion of many contemporary biblical scholars.

This is not an epistle, or letter, as Paul’s authentic writings are—correspondence that address specific situations and problems in a specific church. Instead this document follows an ancient literary form that offers both celebration and exhortation in a more general way.

The identifying phrase “in Ephesus” is missing in many of the earliest manuscripts of this document. Many suggest that this was written to several early Christian churches in the area, rather than to the congregation in Ephesus, where Paul had worked extensively.

And when we compare Ephesians to the authentic letters of Paul, we start to notice differences in style, in vocabulary, and in thought that suggest a different author. Most likely the author was a disciple of Paul who used his letters to compose a new letter of instruction. This was not a fraudulent attempt to deceive. Rather it was an accepted and common practice in the ancient world.

So here in our New Testament, we find this non-epistle from someone other than Paul to people somewhere around Ephesus. But we call it the Letter of Paul to the Ephesians for short.

We need to continue to read it and hear it and study it and preach from it because, as one person puts it, no part of the New Testament has a more contemporary relevance than the Letter to the Ephesians. It speaks to people in a world of racial, ethnic, and religious tension. It addresses human beings who are menaced by fear of the unknown and uncertain future. It speaks to the challenges that people have as they live together before God. That is to say, it speaks to us. And if we will listen for it, we might still hear the word of God for our time in these words.[1]

The lesson that we heard this morning takes us in a new direction as we consider our question for these weeks: “Whad’ya Know?” We don’t hear, as we did last Sunday, words of a knowledge that is certain. Instead of proof we have prayer. We have hearsay and hope.

“I have heard,” the author writes, “I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints.”

In his book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell writes about the 1996 publication of The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. It was not a major literary event. When the author gave a reading in Greenwich, CT, shortly after the book was published, seven people showed up.

The following year, the book came out in paperback. Suddenly there were seven or eight hundred people at the readings. By 1998 the Ya-Ya Sisterhood was on the bestseller list. And it stayed there through 48 printings and 2.5 million copies.

The reason for this slow building success? People were talking about this novel in book discussion groups. And after talking about the book, they’d buy copies for friends, who would repeat the pattern. Word-of-mouth, what one person told another, made all the difference.

“I have heard,” the author writes. Reputation makes a difference. What people hear about a congregation matters to both people on the outside and those on the inside.

Reflecting on these words, Pheme Perkins, who teaches at Boston College asks: “How does ‘the buzz’ get going around a particular church? Not by advertising. When people come to our worship, our study groups, our church school, [our Homecoming celebration] and all the other things we do, they have to feel that special spirit. And Ephesians reminds us that the source of the energy, power, and spirit at work in the church is ultimately God.”

Ephesians leads us to ask: What’s the buzz around Congregational UCC?

This is not simply a matter of asking if those of us on the inside are happy with what’s going on within our four walls. It’s not really about what we think. Far more important is what other people hear about us. What do they hear about how we behave toward one another? What do they hear about how we act toward our wider community, toward the rest of the world? What do they hear about our faith and love?

Do they hear of our support for the education of children and youth through programs at Grant Wood, Horace Mann, and City High Schools? Do they hear of our support for innovative health care through the Healthy Kids Initiative and the Suite Sounds Project at UIHC? Do they hear of our making a significant contribution to the budget of the Crisis Center Food Pantry each month? Do they hear of our Community Arts Program that offers performances here throughout the year?

What’s the buzz? Do people hear of our faith and our love?

Some do. I get called quite often asking if I will officiate at a wedding for non-members. When I ask the couple why they chose Congregational UCC, time after time the response is that they had heard we were a congregation that welcomed all people, that we were an open and affirming congregation. Even if they didn’t know about our work in Iowa City, they’d heard of our faith and our love.

Such a report leads, in the case of the Christians at Ephesus, to prayers of thanksgiving; prayers that God might give that congregation a “spirit of wisdom.”

You know, those words are the ones that convince me that the author of this “letter,” while probably not Paul, was someone who cared deeply about these people and desired to see their faith lived actively in the world. It’s probably true for all members of a church, but speaking as someone with that strange calling to pastoral leadership, I find my prayers to be a mixture of thanksgiving and hope—hope that all of us individually and as a community might both know God and show God to the world.

My prayer is that the “buzz” about this congregation would be that it is a place where all people are welcome, the worship is joyful, the relationships are honest, and the commitment to our neighborhood and our city is deep and abiding.

Now the author of this letter continues by expressing an even greater desire: “I pray…that you may know what is

the hope to which God has called you,

what are the riches of God’s glorious inheritance among the saints,

and what is the immeasurable greatness of God’s power for us who believe.”

Whad’ya know? The prayer is that these Christians might know hope, riches, and power.

Those words pile on top of each other, building to a crescendo that has been echoing in my mind all week.

These is not empty hope, greedy wealth, and blind power.

These are the hope of the resurrection, the riches of the resurrection, and the power of the resurrection. The prayer is that we might come to know, day by day, in this life, that the way in which God acted in raising Christ from death is the way in which God continues to act in the world—bringing new life to us, bringing new life through us.

What does that mean? What does it mean for us to know the hope, the riches, and the great power that is there for us?

So often congregations live in despair, complaining of poverty, seeming to have little power, if any. You know what I mean. Churches all around this state, all around this nation are dying—becoming irrelevant because they have turned in on themselves and their own problems, concerns, and complaints. The buzz on such places is that there is no buzz any more.

“Have you not heard?” the prophet Isaiah asks. “Have you not heard? God gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless.”

Along with the words of the prophet, the words from Ephesians that we heard this morning speak of life, and powerful life. “God put this power to work in Christ when God raised him from the dead and seated him at God’s right hand in the heavenly places.” That is religious language. But with the ears of our hearts open we can hear those words as an amazing affirmation of the mighty power of God to bring new life to any situation, any life, any congregation.

Power is the ability to act. And each one of us is given that ability. God provides the strength and the power that allow us to act in the world.

Together we are invited to see how we can act, to discover what we can do. And through our efforts God is able to accomplish far more than we can imagine.

The power in the universe wants to do more. That power wants to work through you. That power wants to work through this congregation. And somewhere you knew this before you came here today.  You did not come here this morning to be told to be an idle spectator. You came because you sense your ability and want to use it. You came here because you wanted to hear again the good news that there is a powerful and forgiving love that will sustain you through all the discouragement and opposition and failure as you act in the world.

Like all power, it is somewhat frightening. Because this is “holy power” it borders on the terrifying. But it also speaks to us of great possibilities.

The ability to act for the benefit of self and others is nothing less than the strength of God acting through us. Just think of what might be accomplished through you by that power.

How might your life make a difference in the world?

As we come to know the power of God, we also begin to know the hope to which God has called us. Yes, it is the hope of the resurrection, but that is not an otherworldly hope for an afterlife. God calls us to a hope that can see beyond the shadows and the resistance that we sometimes encounter as we follow in the way of Christ. Because we can see by hope resurrection beyond death, we can dare by hope to act for the good even when confronted by all that disheartens and discourages.

You see, hope is that vision of the future that allows us to act in the present.

It is not, “I hope that I’ll pass this test.” Rather, the hope of developing an educated mind, or scientific skill, or artistic talent is what propels us to study for the test.

It is not, “I hope I don’t get caught.” Rather, the hope for a good relationship, a good society is what encourages us to act in ways that are honest and honorable.

A popular question these days is “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” It’s a question that gets at what great thing we want to attempt—and would if success was guaranteed. What career would you choose? What would you create? What good would you bring into the world? How would you raise your children? What would the work of this congregation be?

Hope invites us to look beyond failure, beyond despair, beyond fear and death to what might be—and to start moving toward what we see.

This hope is a confidence in the God who “fills all in all.” It is the confidence that the goodness of God pervades all of creation. Yes, the evidence for such goodness sometimes seems skimpy at best, but as David Wilder told me this past week: “Absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence.” Engineers do make wonderful theologians.

In the hope that grows from a sense of God’s power in our lives, we come to know the abundance of resources that are at our disposal.

We are fortunate. A congregation such as this one, so filled with ability, so rich in all good gifts, so flush with a wealth of talent, is to me an instance of the providence of God. With the eyes of our hearts enlightened, we see that we have no cause to beg or cajole or plead. All that we need—and all that we would want to share with the rest of the world—we have. Let us keep that awareness always before us.

In the ancient letter to the Ephesians we hear a prayer for our time, a prayer for what we might know: hope, riches, power.

Hope, riches, power. Lots of people want just those things. And God has made them all available—here and now.

We know the hope that gives us a horizon, we know the power that allows us to move toward that horizon, and we know the riches that can be used on that journey.

Let us take all of this and use what we have received.

We might be a little less scared, a little more open to the new places that God is calling us.

Then others will say: “I have heard of your faith . . . and your love.”