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January 11, 2014
Ephesians 4.1-7
I have a friend (Winn Collier) who wrote this recently: “It’s become too easy a thing
for us to appeal to the great outlier, to ‘mystery.’ Mystery is a word that should be
spoken (if it must be uttered at all) with gravity, with at least the hint of tremor. An
appeal to mystery does not relieve us of hard thinking. God knows it does not relieve
us of the need for steely-eyed courage. It’s a mystery should never be the tagline
diffusing all the tension, but rather the invitation to gather up all the fortitude we
can muster and walk deeper into the mercy that perplexes and astounds us.”
A sense of mystery around us is the birth of joyful humility. We hear of the baptism
of Jesus by John in the Jordan River and remember the humility with which Jesus
asked to be lowered into the water. We also remember John’s humility as he at first
begged off Jesus’ request and then agreed to do it even while insisting he was not
qualified to untie Jesus’ sandals.
Humility is all wrapped up in baptism, for everyone, both the church who baptizes
and the person being baptized. We are not proud of ourselves when we are
baptized. We are more deeply humbled that this gift has been given to us. Baptism
is a gift, certainly, a gift given by God through the church for each person who
professes faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. It is initiation into the
congregation of Christ-followers, and moment of unity with the all of those who
believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that his life, death, and resurrection is the
way by which God may be known and by which God recreates our lives in His image.
Baptism by immersion is a sign that the person being baptized willing and by faith
submits themselves to immersion in the spirit and way of Jesus Christ.
We first profess faith in Christ and then come to baptism as a hugely significant step
in our faith, witness, community participation, and spiritual formation. It can be
challenging to know when you’re ready to be baptized. Do I believe enough? What
about my doubts? Do I know enough? These are the same kinds of questions people
ask when they get married too—in both cases, baptism and marriage, we don’t
really know what we’re getting into until we’ve gotten into it. Both gifts of the
church—baptism and the wedding—are teachers that ask us if we are ready to
make the vows we feel called to make trusting that the church is going to help us
grow in the love that has hold of us and is calling us to this outward sign of an
inward reality.
That’s what gets said about baptism from time to time—it’s an outward sign of an
inward reality. Usually when people say that they mean that it’s an outward sign of
the inward reality of the salvation of the person being baptized. And that’s true. But
what if it’s even more than that? Baptism is a visible sign of an inward reality of the
individual, and the inward reality of water itself, and the inward reality of all
creation as a witness beckoning us to know and love our Creator who is above and
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beyond, invisible. God is in all of this, inhabiting his people, inhabiting the waters of
baptism, inhabiting all of creation. What to say of all of this? it’s a mystery.
Is there humility before such a mystery, when we inhabit such sacred space? For
sure. Enough to shape our whole lives, and draw us deeper into this astounding and
perplexing mercy. Humility is one of the virtues encouraged of the church in
Ephesians 4. Humiliy, along with gentleness, patience, love, and peace—these are
the pillars of the life of the church.
Then immediately following these good words to the church to basically act like
Christians, act like Jesus . . Immediately following this, the language soars, drawing
us deeper into the mystery. Church is not just an ongoing experiment in human
relationships but a journey upward. The church fathers talked about the cloud that
surrounded Moses on Mt. Sinai; in the middle ages it was called the Cloud of
Unknowing. In Ephesians we read a Trinitarian journey, but not like we usually
hear it. Usually when we hear Trinity, like in baptism, we hear of Father, Son, Spirit.
In Ephesians, it’s reversed, Spirit, Son (or Lord), Father.
Let’s hear it again, “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the
one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and
Father of us all, who is over all and through all and in all.” We can hear it now, right?
Spirit, Son, Father.
It’s been called the experiential ordering vs the metaphysical ordering of the Trinity.
This has been called the order of experience—We journey upward from the present
experience of the gifts of the spirit to the Lord whose coming made it possible to the
ultimate origin of all divine power and all things, the creative power of God.
We may further notice when we read this carefully that
Spirit is linked with body—which means the church, and with hope and calling.
Lord is linked with faith and baptism.
God is said to be over all and through all and in all.
We are moved (there’s this movement), there’s this sacred Trinitarian movement,
from the church body, to hope and calling, to faith and baptism, into the mystery of
the one God who is both beyond and over all things and though and in all things.
Church is about a lot of things, a lot of good things that happen in and through
church life: baptism and communion, hymns and sermons, pot-luck breakfasts and
mission trips, Sunday school discussions and choir rehearsals, baby dedications and
hospital visits. It’s sometimes about budgets and buildings; sometimes its about
cleaning bathrooms and visiting the homebound. Church life can be about a lot of
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things, but if it’s about one thing and one thing only, it’s where, in all these things,
we come attuned to the mystery beyond us, and move into the life of the Trinity.
We ought to speak softly and with humility when invoking mystery beyond us. Yet
the Christian experience is always one of graceful convergence between God’s
activity and our response to it. It begins with God and then we are invited into an
eternal movement (Burt Burleson). That’s what Burt, our former pastor, said in a
sermon once and that’s so well said. There’s a convergence between what is and
what is beyond, between what we can see and touch and taste, and that which is
beyond our senses and our knowledge.
Church is about finding that convergence. Where heaven meets earth. And earth
becomes more like heaven. Where the work of the spirit who helps us to pray when
we don’t know how takes our prayers to the Father, and takes us too. Athanasius
when he wrote On the Incarnation was troubled by the question of how we can
know an unknowable God and said this is one of the main reasons why the
incarnation was vital. Without God becoming human we could never know God.
Jesus is the way to know God, even if what it means to know God is a lot more like
love than intellectual achievement. Without Jesus how can we know or love the one
who is otherwise unknowable? He writes, “So the Word came himself, in order that
he being the image of the Father, human beings made ‘in the image’ might be
recreated. Jesus Christ, the image of the Father, came that we, also made in God’s
image, may have new life.”
That brings us back to baptism. Baptism sits, as you may have noticed, right in the
middle of this passage. Spirit, Lord, Father . . “One Lord, one faith, one baptism”
There are some people, many really, who hold to an understanding of the world that
doesn’t deny that God exists, but that God exists outside of and removed from the
material world—the stuff we can see, touch, taste, hear. We’re down here; God’s up
there. There’s no mystery in the stuff.
And so baptism becomes just an exercise in rehearsing the old ordinance to lower a
new convert into water. Or baptism is this special exception where God does
something to this water in this moment, but this is so unusual that it must have a
special category, like sacrament. But let us say this: Baptism, and communion too,
are the kinds of sacred acts and moments that help us remember that all is holy; God
is in all. And let us say this with a whisper of wonder: all things can be a sacrament.
Father Stephen Freeman, an Orthodox priest in Tennessee writes: “In the classical
Christian worldview, everything that exists does so because it was ultimately
brought into being out of nothing. It does not have self-existence but is maintained
in existence purely by the gift of God who alone has true, self-existence. Existence is
a gift, sustained by the goodness of God. Existence is a gift—you and I, and the
church, and the waters of baptism and the water we drink, the wine and bread of
communion, and all the bread we break at dinner—it’s all a gift. Even more than
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this, the world as it exists is more than material. It is an icon. Everything reflects
greater and more eternal realities. “ (Father Stephen Freeman) All creation is full of
sacramental possibility; all is thin space: the waters of baptism, the church, all the
world.
That’s kind of a lot to take in, so maybe we can sit with it like this: the universe was
created be sacramental: all things sacred, all holy, all created by God who is over all
and through all and in all. And it all has a Christ shape to it. All water tends toward
baptismal waters, all bread tends toward the eucharist. All trees tend toward the
cross. All wilderness tends toward prayer. All meals tend toward communion. All
creation leans forward into it’s God-shaped purpose that men and women may lean
into the grace and love of Christ, and walk in his ways, and love His Father.
Richard Rohr: “To live in such a way is to live inside of an unexplainable hope,
because your life will now feel much larger than your own. In fact, it is not your life,
and yet, paradoxically, you are more ‘you’ than ever before. That is the constant and
consistent experience of the mystics—their vision can also be your own. “God you
were here all along, and I never knew you. (Gen 28.16) (Naked Now, 22)
Church isn’t an attempt to manufacture experiences of the mysterious great beyond
or to bring God down to manageable size. Church is a participation with the great
mystery though the Spirit in the Son toward the Father.
And it begins with baptism.
CS Lewis’ The Dawn Treader begins with something of a baptism. It actually begins
like this, “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved
it. His parents called him Eustance Clarence and masters called his Scurbb. I can’t
tell you how his friends spoke to him, for he had none.” The story tells about how his
parents were ‘very up-to-date and advanced kind of people”. They were people
whose vision of the world was limited to the material world with no room for
wonder, mystery, or the presence of the divine. Young readers today will recognize
them as early Muggles. Eustace was growing up to be the kind of person whose
view of the world was limited and restricted to fact and figures and dead beetles
pinned to cards. It was making him an ornery kid.
While visiting his cousins, the ones made famous by their visit to Narnia through a
mysterious wardrobe, he went into to Lucy’s room and asked her if she liked the
painting hanging on her wall supposedly of a Narnian ship, intending to mock her
painting and her for liking it and pretending about Narnia. “I do, she said, “I like it
because the ship looks like it’s really moving. And the water looks as if it was really
wet. And the waves look as if they were really going up and down.”
Of course Eustace knew lots of answers to this, but he didn’t say anything because at
that moment he looked at the waves and saw they did look like they were going up
and down. The children looked with gaped mouths as the ship in the picture did
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start to move up and down and the waves did start to move. The wind started
blowing in the bedroom. And then a great, cold salt splash broke right out of the
frame and they were breathless from the smack of it, besides being wet through.
In the next a moment, in all the confusion, a great blue roller surged up round them,
swept them off their feet, and drew them down into the sea. Eustace’s despairing
cry suddenly ended as the water got into his mouth.
Before they knew it, they were deep under water, in the sea, holding their breaths,
struggling for life, kicking off shoes, until someone, whose face was vaguely familiar,
slipped an arm under the children and brought them up to safety in a new, strange
world.
Eustace had his first wet, salty taste of mystery. He didn’t change over night. He
was still the same uptight, bossy, fussy boy, but eventually living in the mystery of a
world in which there is a talking mouse, and a gentle but not tame lion, and power
he cannot reduce by mocking it, and joy through humility he never knew before, it
changed him. It softened him, gave him courage, and opened his heart to the Great
One who he had never known though he was with him all the time, he never knew it.
As we are changed too; as those who learn to believe as the faithful, and see as the
mystics see; and walk as disciples, and have love to know the living God. Even if all
we do is peek into the cloud just once in our lives, it is enough to change the way we
see everything.