So let us pray.
God, we know that your love poured out for the world through the ministry,
life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
So in our time together, may we develop deep roots in the ways of Christ so we can be nourished by
God's love and then be God's love for the world.
Amen.
So this series is going to essentially... Exegete two different texts every week.
We're going to work our way through, and exegete just means like unpack. What does the text mean?
This is what I get for using fancy words, right?
And so we'll have a piece of Ephesians. We're going to work our way through the letter of
Ephesians. And we're going to have one part of our baptismal vows.
Because if we're rooted in Christ, it's the waters of our baptism that are the first thing that
nourish the ground that we're setting roots in.
And so at the end of this series, which conveniently will end on that first weekend in September,
which I'm pretty sure is Labor Day weekend. Is that what that is? All right, good. I always get
Labor Day and Memorial Day mixed up. And so I'm just always assuming I'm wrong.
It's easier.
We'll have communion and we'll also have the opportunity to remember our baptism. That means I'm
going to preach very shortly that Sunday so that we can actually remember. And I'll invite anyone
who feels like things have changed substantially for them to just publicly remember it.
And whenever I let people remember their baptism, like if they're joining the church, like you can
do whatever you want. You can dip your hand in the water. Take a breath with the water. Have the
water poured over you. Or if you're feeling really fancy, we can go to old-fashioned immersion.
And so as I was thinking about, like, if anybody wants to be immersed as a way of remembering their
baptism, surely Craig won't let me do that in the sanctuary. So I'll have to get something big to
do outside, right?
I will make a mess if I do it in the sanctuary. All right.
It's only Susan that will kill me. That's different. Yep. That's very different.
You won't let me burn stuff. You're right. That's fair. And so I
was hanging out with my friend, Ryan. He was one of the pastors this past week at camp. And I did
like a video interview of him, but like the mic was really crunchy because we held it a little too
close to our mouth. So, and I probably won't release it, but I'm like, okay, so I saw that you did
like an immersive baptism recently at your church. Like, can I borrow your tub? And he was like,
oh, actually we borrowed it from. the Baptist church down the street.
And I was like, well, so if you want to get immersed, we'll figure it out. And I've got to keep
asking.
And so this is a two fold series between our baptismal vows, but also this,
this book of Ephesians.
And so have any of you tried to write something in the style of someone else,
just kind of like in show of hands, like you were like, I want to try to like mimic that style.
Yeah. Just a few of us. For a season in my life, I was obsessed with the pastor Rob Bell.
And he did like the NUMA video series, which were really popular at one point. I think the first
time I really got to know Rob Bell was like the one time I accidentally went to an annual
conference when I worked for a church when I was like in my 20s. And I just became obsessed with
the way that he has this slow way of talking and the way he writes. Each paragraph is a sentence or
each thought is a paragraph kind of thing. So you could read it and you could hear his voice as you
read it.
And I probably tried to mimic his style an embarrassing amount of times.
But it's just because of the way that he talked about things really connected with me.
Did you all know that... Many of the work, well, I'm assuming at least one person here knows that
many of the works that are attributed to Shakespeare were written anonymously and attributed to
like the school of Shakespeare.
Does that sound familiar to anyone beyond the person who studied Latin?
Okay, a couple. So... What we call Shakespeare isn't necessarily like the guy William Shakespeare
writing, but instead it was a common practice to mimic the style of someone and publish things in
the style of someone in order for it to be respected and to allow that style to continue.
Now this was a common practice during William Shakespeare's time, but also a common practice of the
time that the New Testament was formed. So the letter... to the Ephesians,
was not likely written by Paul, but was written in a way that mimics Paul's style.
Early versions of the text weren't specifically written for a particular church in Ephesus,
but instead the text seems to be written as general knowledge consistent with Paul's letter to the
Colossians so that it could speak to multiple congregations as they shape their shared identity in
Christ.
Now, this is an interesting time period because tensions were on the rise between Jewish Christians
and Gentile Christians, specifically because of the violence of the Jewish rebellion and then the
following aftermath because Rome didn't like that much. So this author is speaking to a divided
church across multiple cities to lean into their shared identity in Christ and thus offer us great
wisdom.
And this is probably why, so Rich read, I think that's NRSV.
The Common English Bible Translation has the one part where it says that every ethnic group in
heaven or on earth is recognized by him. So this is why the text is saying that,
to kind of bring these Gentile Christians and Jewish Christians back together. Every single ethnic
group is represented by him in heaven, or at least recognized by God.
Verses 16 through 19 are interesting, and I want to... briefly offer a retranslation of it.
I'm taking the Common English Bible, and then I looked at the y'all version,
which translates the you plural to y'all, so that we can hear what this text is telling us.
It writes, I ask that he will strengthen y'all in y'all's inner selves from the riches of his
glory through the Spirit. I ask that Christ will live in y'all's hearts through faith.
As a result of having strong roots in love, I ask that y'all will have the power to grasp love's
width and length, height and depth, together with all believers.
I ask that y'all will know the love of Christ that is beyond knowledge, so that y'all will be
filled entirely with the fullness of God. This text is not an individualistic text.
This text is a text written to communities to be brought together in their shared identity in
Christ, which means... We develop these roots together.
Thinking about all the things that Jesus did is overwhelming to think that we would have to do all
of that stuff.
Previous years when I was at camp, I was with a cabin of, I think the most was 19 teenagers.
And most of the time it was under 16 because I only needed two adults in cabin.
Last week, I was the director of a high school camp with 43 registered high schoolers across two
cabins with six adult volunteer counselors.
I tried to do everything that I used to be able to do with a group of less than 20 with 40-some
kids in a week. And then finally midweek, because I was freaking out because I was like, I don't
know anything about this kid. Like these kids I haven't been able to talk to at all. And then I
took a step back and just realized that my team saw them and was taking care of them.
Like every kid there had an adult that cared about them. And it didn't have to be me.
So the more we realize that this work of following Christ and being rooted in Christ is a team job,
that we get to do this in community, the better.
If we notice in verses 14 through 17, this idea of rooted in Christ, the common English Bible
translation says, God chooses to ground us in love and glory. So all of what we can do with our
roots, any roots that we get at all, is because God chose to ground us there.
Everything we do begins with the grace of God.
Which is why, if we think about what's the beginning of our journey with God, it's our baptismal
vows. Whether that it was taken on our behalf by adults in our lives,
or ones that we professed ourselves when we were old enough, when we got baptized later in life,
or ones that we reprofessed ourselves when we became members of the church. in order to have that
beginning place that we can always return to.
Later in the text, the author invites us to know the fullness of God's love.
And let's just say that's the only purpose of camp at West River.
Because a friend of mine on my team, he takes his church to Camp Joy or Camp Hope.
I forgot what it's called. One of them closed. The other one still exists. And they're missions
camps where the kids go and they do good work and then they just kind of like pass out at the end
of the day. And so my friend Ryan realized the biggest difference about camp at West River and a
missions camp is that a missions camp, the work is about the missions. And at West River, the camp
is about the kid knowing the fullness of God's love for them.
And so if we're talking about knowing the fullness of God's love, It's just like knowing the
fullness of someone's love at all. It begins with honesty. It begins with being open and
transparent with one another, which is why our first baptismal vow is, do you renounce?
Do you give up? Do you let go of? Do you say they don't get to win the spiritual forces of
wickedness? Do you reject the evil powers of this world and repent of your sins?
The Greek word for repentance, which I'm not going to pronounce because I didn't figure it out,
means to grow a bigger mind or to change one's mind.
So if we're repenting, of our sins. We're choosing to expand our mind to see the world,
to see one another, to see the powers of wickedness and evil powers of this world in the way that
God does.
To see the world in the same way that God does.
And if we remember from our journey in John, John keeps calling things sin frequently.
And sin for John were the things that got in the way of relationship, the barriers to relationship.
And the things that are barriers to relationship that shows up all the time is not being honest
with one another.
Connor and I were chatting about camp before worship started and talked about how like midweek is
like when everything changes. People start to let their guard down because they realize they can
trust the other people. And because we had that trust finally,
there was... late nights, Wednesday and Thursday.
So Wednesday night at the campfire, I had told them, like, if you needed prayer because the theme
was healing, like, you should just come and let me know. Like, the team will step back and then you
can be prayed over by any of the team. And I forgot I said that by the time we finally got the
campfire going. But I remembered I said that when I had a line with kids bringing their friends to
get prayer. And the most powerful one was when the three of them that were all close friends just
each shared the thing that had been weighing them down, that was making it hard to connect with one
another this week. And then we just prayed together in a nice long group hug.
But if we're not honest with one another, we cannot enter into the depths of that love. And in the
same sense, if we're not honest with ourselves and one another and with God, we're cutting
ourselves off from that relationship where we can develop those deep roots.
So this letter invites us to step away from the things that separate us, that keep us from knowing
the fullness of God's love so that we can enter into the vast possibilities of life with Christ.
And this repentance, this changing one's mind is not done just like internally,
but it's done in the context of community because of the fact that sin is inherently relational.
So repenting is just the beginning of seeking repair.
A lot of times when it comes to the issues that we keep bottled up in us, we're no better than
cats. If you ever have a cat, if you have two cats,
and you really annoy one of them and then sit it back down, what is it going to do?
Has anybody figured this out yet? Are you kinder to your cats than my roommate used to be?
It takes it out on the other one, right? And like we see this with teenagers,
but we do this as adults too because we hold things in too long. And so we lash out on one another.
There's all kinds of great phrases about the hurt people hurt people. If we don't transform our
pain, then our pain gets transmitted.
Bleeding people bleed on others.
We know these things to be true. And so repentance is just the beginning of stepping into that
repair.
And so this letter ends with, Glory to God who is able to do far beyond all that we could ask or
imagine by his power at work within us. Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus for all
generations forever and always.
Amen. Now because of God's love for us, we can change our ways. We can make amends.
We can live in renewed ways with one another. Because repentance is relational.
When we open our hearts up to one another and we understand where each other's coming from, we no
longer see someone who's a jerk, but we see someone who's hurt and has been hurting other people
because of it and is desperate need of healing.
And so entering into this work of repentance and repair with the Spirit of God
means that we're releasing trust in the ways of God that are far greater.
than we can ask or imagine. And we all know that if we've been hurt,
what our capability of imagining is already limited.
So we have that God's love is just that transformative.
God's love is that powerful. God's love is that forgiving. And that...
is the love that we become saturated in, that we become rooted in, in order to then be able to love
boldly.
And so,
let us pray.
God, we are so grateful for all of the ways that our hearts have been broken open for one another
and with one another.
May your Spirit work with us to help us grow deep roots in your love,
so that we can be your people, empowered by your Spirit, to love boldly,
serve joyfully. and lead courageously. Amen.