SUNDAY SERVICE
28th July 2024

Talk by Peter Walley

‘I pray that [all of us], being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.’

Power and love are two very deeply held human drivers. We saw this over the Covid pandemic, as families struggled to cope with enforced isolation. ‘I can’t give my granny a hug’ or, ‘I can’t pick up my grandkids from school’. Love expressed as human touch and being present is basic to us as a species. We need that closeness.

Both power and love have good and bad sides. Power used in the right way can be seen when there is a clear choice between good and evil. Love can ‘love too much’ and become choking when combined with power, or love can be freeing.

However, God’s power is the polar opposite. When God’s power is seen in action, the hungry are fed, dead are raised, the blind receive their sight, people are released from demonic oppression, the prisoners are freed, and people find new hope and life in the midst of the darkness.

Some years ago, there was a discussion on the legacy of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. This may have been an attempt to re-write history, or a coming to terms with the fact that those who followed Mandela didn’t act with the same motives that drove him to let go of all bitterness and desire for revenge, when he left gaol.

What impressed everyone who met Mandela was his lack of bitterness.

At the moment of his release, Mandela remembered the importance of internal renewal ahead of external change. “As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.”

Nelson Mandela wasn’t perfect. He had his faults, but he realised that he needed the power of God to transform his own heart if South Africa was not to descend into a bloodbath. Above all, he recognised that fear was at the root of apartheid South Africa, fear which expressed itself in separating white and black. That fear needed to be addressed and named, hence the setting up of the truth and reconciliation commission under Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and I hope all of us understand that whatever our skin colour, in the Kingdom of God, we are united as one family.

And here, Paul starts his prayer by declaring that humankind’s origins lie in God himself: ^{Ge 1:26} Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

^{Ge 1:27} So God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

He then prays that God’s own life-giving creative power might dwell in us, through his Holy Spirit, in our inner being. Here is the image of the breath of God, breathing life into Adam as he was created out of the ground – the name Adam, meaning ‘out of the red earth’. Without the breath of God, Adam would have been lifeless.

When a baby is born, the thing that tells us that a baby is alive, is that first cry, that first breath. It’s an amazing moment. Spiritually, we need God’s breath, his life-giving Spirit, (Pneuma / breath) to renew us and bring us to Spiritual life. Note here, that it is out of his Spiritual riches that we are blessed with his presence.

But that power must find its expression in love. ‘I pray that [all of us], being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.’

Unbridled power is destructive but power that is informed and shaped by the Spirit of God and expressed in loving acts is life giving. One without the other is destructive, one with the other is transformational. And this is Paul’s longing for the Ephesians, and it is I hope every pastor’s longing for their congregation – that everyone that comes through that door, knows that they are loved unconditionally. No ‘ifs’, no ‘buts’, without conditions.

I do think that these verses are a timely reminder to us that we need to go on that journey of seeking to understand for ourselves what that love of Christ means for us. Nelson Mandela after all the years in prison, in forced labour camps being treated harshly by his gaolers realised that he had to forgive. And he could forgive, because he realised how much God loved him. You see if we hold unforgiveness in our hearts, the prime person that it affects is ourselves, not the other person. We get eaten up on the inside. So Jesus calls us to confess these things, and let his peace and his love transform us from the inside.

As the prophet Ezekiel prophesied many centuries before, the time in which we live now would be times when God did human heart transplants, replacing hearts of stone and giving us instead hearts of flesh. Only Jesus can do that for us. It is so important as Christian communities that we do not let disputes and bitterness drive wedges between us.

However, if we do instead focus on what is right and good, if we begin to ‘grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ’ then the transformation that we seek will come as the Spirit of God is welcome in our midst.

May you and I indeed grasp the overwhelming love of Christ and with that knowledge go out and give that love to others. Every blessing. Peter