Continuing with Ephesians: Week 3 [Ephesians 3:14-21]

The following introduction and invitation to reflect comes from www.umcdiscipleship.org.

You are encouraged to meditate and pray with this week’s lectionary text throughout the coming week.

Today’s selected reading from Ephesians really does need to be expanded, to include verses 1-13. Verse 14 begins “For this reason…” It is the previous verses that supply the reason and the chapter before that which supply the reason.

Through Christ, God has broken down the dividing wall of hostility separating Jew and Gentile, and by the power of Christ’s love and the work of the Spirit, God is making one new humanity in place of the divided two.
 

God is busy making one new humanity, including especially in their midst, in their Christian communities that bring together both Jewish and Gentile people as one body in Christ.

And God’s strategy for doing this is nothing other than filling people with and spreading abroad the abundance of love God has for the world, ultimately expressed in Jesus Christ.

That’s why Paul prays what he prays in today’s reading.

His hope and prayer is the people in the Ephesus circuit may become so rooted and grounded in the love of God which knows no breadth, width, depth or height, that they may become so filled with the knowledge and love of God by which God continues to break down these barriers and build new community everywhere, starting where they are.

And Paul is aware this is a big ask. That’s why he concludes this reading as he does, because he knows God can accomplish far more that even the biggest thing we can ask to accomplish God’s purposes.

 

Whenever we hear someone praying over us, our first response should be gratitude that someone is praying and for the Spirit empowering that prayer. Our second response should be our own prayer seeking how we may participate in fulfilling what is being prayed over us.

How shall we be strengthened in our innermost selves with the power of the Holy Spirit?

How shall we allow Christ to dwell in our hearts through faith, more and more?

How shall we allow ourselves to be rooted and grounded in love?

How shall we open our awareness truly to comprehend, more and more, the breadths and length and height and depth of God’s love in Jesus Christ, a love that truly surpasses all human knowing?

How shall we become persons and a people, within and across our congregations, who are filled with all the fullness of God?
How do all and each of these become concrete, lived and living realities and not just eloquent wishes for us?