A Sermon on Ephesians 1:15-23

Preached on Ascension, June 1, 2003

First Christian Church, Corpus Christi, Texas

By Donald M. Tuttle

Unless you have small children or grandchildren, you probably have not seen “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.” Believe me, you otherwise wouldn’t have a reason. While it is moderately cute and did spawn two sequels and a Saturday morning TV show, no one will confuse it for “Citizen Kane” or “Gone with the Wind.”

The story, of course, is about a bubbling inventor who is working on a machine capable of miniaturizing matter. Unfortunately, the machine accidentally goes off, shrinking the inventor’s two children as well as two neighbor boys. The rest of the film focuses on the challenges faced and the lessons learned in getting back to full size.

While the movie offers subtle commentary on issues of divorce, family estrangement, self-esteem and growing up, it also, for me, suggests what has happened to God. Somebody shrunk God.

I know that sounds strange. How can anyone shrink God? Of course, that’s true. But our perception of God can certainly shrink.

Before the late 1800s or early 1900s, ask just about any human being in the Western world from where the earth and all that is in it came and he or she would have said, “God, of course.” God was the Creator. The Scriptures told the story of God’s creative work. But then Charles Darwin came along, offering a theory of evolution and natural selection. Today most people, even most Christians, will stutter a bit when asked to attribute creation to God. Our perception of God has shrunk.

Or consider how our perception of the many great acts of God has changed.

Ÿ Today the parting of the Red Sea has been dismissed as legend or as a freak natural occurrence.

Ÿ The collapse of the walls of Jericho has been viewed as the result of seismic activity.

Ÿ The miracles of Jesus--the healings, exorcisms and resuscitations--have been downplayed as psychological experiences or cheap parlor tricks.

Ÿ His nature miracles--the calming of the sea, the cursing of fig tree and so on--are redefined as spiritual object lessons created by Jesus’ followers.

Even Jesus has experienced this shrinking. For nearly all but the last 50 years or so, Christians boldly proclaimed Jesus as the Son of the Living God, the very embodiment of the Divine. It did so back in the pluralistic days of the faith’s beginnings, back when Christianity was not just a minority religion but also a despised minority religion. It did so through the centuries, challenging those who found the thought of a Jewish carpenter from Galilee being the Son of God absurd. But in the last half-century, Jesus has shrunk. The Son of God gave way to being “a” child of God, right alongside Buddha, Mohammad, Gandhi, the Dalai Lama and other religious teachers. The one once proclaimed as The Way, the Truth and the Life has become “a way, a truth, a life.” Today, many people, if they see Jesus as somehow God, he is a smaller god than he used to be.

All of this is more than an intellectual note. A shrunken God has serious implications for the way people live.

Several years ago, a writer in the Atlantic Monthly posed the question: “Can We Be Good Without God?” He suggested that without some concept of God as being greater than ourselves, as being ultimately the one before all humanity is to be judged, there is little reason to be good, ethical or moral. Without God, or with a shrunken God, self-interest reigns supreme.

Consider what has happened in largely secular societies. Much is made about people “killing in the name of religion,” yet have you ever paused to consider the killing done by secular states, by those who claim no religious motivation?

Ÿ Lenin and Stalin killed millions of political opponents, religious believers, academicians, and ordinary citizens--and not a one in the name of God.

Ÿ Chairman Mao was, one author suggested, the most powerful man in the 20^th century. He controlled almost 9 billion people and ruled over 9 million square kilometers for a quarter of a century. He overthrew a 4 million-man army and killed maybe that many people, maybe more, as the ruler of China.

Ÿ Hitler exterminated 6 million Jews, but his motivation was not religious. It was secular power he sought.

Ÿ Pol Pot’s Cambodian killing fields were not the result of religious conviction. They were produced by a state and a leader committed to secularist convictions.

Ÿ Now we are beginning to grasp the brutality committed in what was one of the most secular states of the Middle East--Iraq.

While too many still kill and too many still die in the name of God, those places where God has been eliminated or shrunken to near nothing fare little better.

Look at our own culture. One could argue that as the perception of God has declined, as God has shrunk in our understanding, so has the moral climate of our culture. Oh, long before God was shrunk there were teen pregnancies, abortions, marital infidelities, divorces, personal and corporate dishonesty, crime and abuse. But virtually every indicator shows an increase in such tragedies over the last half century.

A small god is hardly a matter for discussion in the course of human affairs. A wimpy god isn’t of much concern for the way people live ethically and morally. A shrunken god has a shrunken influence.

Fortunately, despite such perceptions, God is still God, and that means God is still powerful. The author of Ephesians wants us to grasp that fact.

“I pray,” he writes, “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ…may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him so that…you may know…WHAT IS THE IMMEASURABLE GREATNESS OF HIS POWER FOR US WHO BELIEVE, ACCORDING TO THE WORKING OF HIS GREAT POWER.”

Biblical scholar Markus Barth points out that in this sentence the author uses four nearly synonymous words to describe the power of God.

Ÿ He uses “dynamis,” from which we get “dynamo” and “dynamite.” It means the power to accomplish what is promised.

Ÿ He uses “energeia,” as in “energy.” It means “inherent strength or brute force”; power that exists within.

Ÿ Then there is “kratos.” “Kratos” is a word for the power to resist or to overcome obstacles or obstructions.

Ÿ And finally there he uses “ischys” [is’ke s]. It is the actual exercise of power.

A paraphrase of verse 19 might read something life this: “so that you may know the incredible power God has to keep his promise to us, in accordance with his inherent strength as God which overcomes all obstacles and is being exercised for us who believe.”

The author of Ephesians wants to make it clear that God is not some small, wimpish, impotent being. God is power! And that power has been definitively revealed in the fact that God defeated the one reality humanity cannot--death. It has been revealed in the fact that God raised Jesus from the dead and seated him at his right hand, where he reigns over every other rule, authority, power or dominion, where his name, his authority, is recognized above that of anyone or anything else!

As Barth notes, the author of Ephesians testified to “the absolutely unique and superior power exerted by God in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

In short, God is, as the song says, “an awesome God, [who] reigns with power and might.”

The whole of Scripture testifies to that power.

Ÿ God, regardless of how, created the world and all that is in it.

Ÿ God, regardless of how, claimed the Hebrew people as his own. He freed them from slavery in Egypt. He led them across the Red Sea and through the wilderness and into a land of their own.

Ÿ God took a small confederacy of tribes and under David and Solomon created a great nation.

Ÿ God, when rejected by humanity refused to surrender them to their own evil, came to them as one of their own, a baby in a manager, a child in his father’s workshop, a student at the feet of his teachers, a slave to the needs of the people and a prophet confronting his elders. God came to us that in weakness he might die but in power might be raised from the dead so that humanity might be reconciled to its creator.

Ÿ God took a handful of disciples, gave them the Holy Spirit, sent them to testify to his power in Jesus Christ, and they turned the world upside down.

Through the years, God has continued to reveal God’s power in the witness of Christ’s body, the church. It has been seen in the commitment of God’s people to the widow and orphan, the ill and the dying. It has been seen in the power of those who educated the masses, freed the slaves, marched for civil rights, prayed down the Iron Curtain and outlasted the evil of apartheid. God’s power has continued to be revealed in the forgiveness of sins, the healing of the sick, and the transformation of lives.

No wimpy, little god could do that. Only a God as great as the one revealed in Jesus Christ could.

Years ago, J.B. Phillips wrote a wonderful little book called “Your God is Too Small.” I think of it as I observe the faith practiced by many people today. Too often we worship a small god, one that may have been powerful in the past but seems impotent today and powerless to control the future. We pray to a shrunken god, often reducing God to an opiate that will get us through the latest trauma rather than lead us in triumphant living. We often serve a wimpy god, refusing to believe that God will empower us to make disciples, confront injustice and conquer evil. Too often our God is too small.

The God of Scripture, the God of Jesus Christ, the God known by the author of Ephesians, the God proclaimed by our ancestors is power. And only those who grasp that reality are bold enough to capture God’s vision and live in God’s grace. Only those who understand just how big God is will dare to dream with and trust themselves to the one whose power has been revealed once and for all in Jesus Christ, risen Lord, reigning Sovereign.