Ephesians 1:15-23
“I’ve Heard About Ya’ll”
By: Rev. Kenneth Sauer, Pastor of Parkview United Methodist Church, Newport News, VA
www.parkview-umc.org
This week our District Superintendent, Myrtle Francis Hatcher, called and asked me to write a tribute to Walter Goode which will be printed in the Virginia United Methodist Advocate that will come out during this years Annual Conference.
In order to find out how to go about this I called an editor of the Advocate who told me that they don’t get a lot of requests for these things…
…but that it will cost 60 cents a word and can be no longer than 200 words.
Myrtle informed me that the Peninsula District will be more than willing to pay the bill…
…so I wrote it and sent it in.
A Tribute in the Advocate is quite a high honor.
In essence, the church, or in this case the district, is saying we have a pretty good feeling that a number of folks from around this state of Virginia who will be congregating, once again, this year in the Hampton Coliseum will have heard about Walter Goode.
Many of them will have seen him, over the years, attending every session of the conference, smiling in his gracious and humble way, walking and looking at the various booths, and engaging other Virginia United Methodists in conversation.
They will know that someone is missing this year…
…someone very important…
…someone very dedicated…
…and for those who know Walter, conference will be a little haunting without him.
I know that we, here at Parkview still miss Walter’s presence in so many ways.
I miss him at Bible study.
I miss being able to walk over to the church on Sunday mornings knowing that the coffee has already been brewing for a good hour, the doors have been unlocked, the lights have been turned on, the bulletins have been laid out….
…and all I have to do is come into the office, sit down, and have a nice half hour conversation with a spiritual friend as we wait for other folks to arrive.
I learned a lot from Walter Goode during the three years that I knew him.
He told me a lot of stories, he talked to me a lot about God, about his relationship with Jesus, about what he thought God was up to in the here and now.
Walter led our Sunday morning prayer gathering at 9 a.m.
And, we still meet. Jerry has taken over the leading of it…I would encourage everyone to get up just a bit earlier to come join us for singing and prayer before the Sunday School hour begins…
…what a way to start the day!
I know that so many of you, as well, still miss Walter Goode.
It’s interesting, in the months before Walter passed away…
…I can’t exactly explain it…
…but he and I were really starting to bond.
We were really starting to become extra close.
I’m so thankful for Walter Goode and for people like him.
What would this world be like, if it were not for folks like Walter?
And the Peninsula District is thankful as well…
…and so is the conference.
Some of the folks who read Walter’s Tribute this year, may not have known him, but many will have heard about him….
…because good news travels fast!
The author of our Epistle Lesson for this morning is writing a very upbeat letter.
This is, no doubt, one of the more upbeat letters in the Bible.
Things are going well at the church in Ephesus.
Good stuff is happening.
These new Christians, these babes in Christ, have been lit aflame by the spark of faith and people are talking about it!
“ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers,” we read in verses 15 and 16!
Wow!
To be thought of so highly that word gets around and a letter is written giving thanks!
I bet many of us have written letters of thanks this week, as well…
…letters of thanks to our mothers/for our mothers.
What is it or was it about your mother that makes you most thankful?
Did she share her faith in Christ with you?
Was it from her lips and through her actions that you first formed the impression that God is Love?
Did you pray for her?
Did she pray for you?
Is she still praying for you?
The author of Ephesians writes a beautiful prayer for this young church that has been filled with so much faith and so much love.
“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.”
The prayer of this author is that what this body of believers already has—a love and faith in God—will be enhanced.
He uses the words “wisdom” and “revelation”.
He’s saying to them, “I’ve heard about your faith and your love…and I’m praying that you will come to understand more and more about God, and that you will get to know Him more and more—because there is so much to know!!!
We should never think we’ve ‘arrived’…
…we should be always seeking to know God more!
That’s one of the things that makes being a Christian so exciting!!!
It’s a journey…not a destination!
We can never know it all and we can never know enough!
I can’t remember the exact statistics, but a very large majority of Christians learn all they will ever know or think about God as children in Sunday school…and then their learning and knowing stops!
If we were to do this in any other area of our lives, we sure wouldn’t get very far…
…and when we do this in our spiritual lives we remain, well, spiritual infants.
And spiritual infants often don’t have the equipment or the power to be able to rely on God to help them in their daily lives, to discern the complexities of right and wrong in more than a shallow way, and to live lives that work toward righting the wrongs of society the way Jesus has called us to do this.
And so the author of Ephesians continues: “I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.”
What is this power?
And how powerful is this power?
The author of Ephesians tells us that this power is like the power that God used when He raised Christ from the dead “and seated him at his right hand…”
What great power did it take to raise Christ from the dead?
It took the power of a God who was willing to come to this broken planet, become one of us, endure the hardships of this life, the trials and temptations of this life…and overcome them…overcome them all!!!
The power of God, which God so generously offers all of us…if we would only take a hold of it…
…enables us to be a transformed people!
It enables us to begin the journey of becoming…becoming unbroken…
…it enables us to get busy, to stir us up to proclaim the message of reconciliation and to minister to the desperate needs of a world which is lost and reeling under the weight of sin, darkness, starvation, disease and suffering.
This power enables us to get beyond ourselves…
…beyond our own fears and insecurities so that we can focus on others…
…so that we can make a difference in this world…
…so that we can love God and love neighbor…
…so that we can be members of Christ’s Body—the Church—one body, one community under the guidance and love of God that lifts one another up, prays for one another, and reaches out to our community in love.
We are to be a team.
A winning team.
The championship team.
And a championship team works together for the good of the whole.
When one part rejoices, all the other parts rejoice with it.
When one part is suffering, all the other parts suffer with it.
And all the parts, together, have the mission to work for the good of the entire earth!
In order to do this, we must continually seek the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so that we may know what God is doing, and wants us to do in the here and now.
A faith that stops when one is no longer a child in Sunday school just won’t cut it!
By continually coming to know God better, we are given the strength to live, to follow and obey, to believe, to trust, to serve, to give!
We are given the power to say “Good morning Lord!” instead of “Good Lord, it’s morning.”
We are given the power to live well, and when the time comes, to die well.
I was asked by the Peninsula District of the United Methodist Church to, in essence, give thanks for the life of Walter Goode.
I had known, and you all had known that Walter was always seeking to know God better.
Walter did not consider that he had yet ‘arrived’.
The day after Walter’s death I went to his home and found so many things left behind…things that Walter had used on a daily basis…things that had guided him and directed him…
…things that had given him power to make it through this life as a conqueror through Christ.
Bibles and Bible commentaries were strewn all about the floor next to his favorite chair.
Books related to the Christian life were found all through his home.
And of course, since Walter was planning to preach for us the Sunday before he died, the outline for his sermon was sitting, neatly typed on his dining room table.
It was entitled, aptly enough, “Christ in our Future.”
What does our future hold, yours and mine?
Have folks heard about our faith, and does this cause them to want to either give thanks or know more about us?
Are the eyes of our hearts being enlightened in order that we might know the hope to which God in Christ has called us?
Do we know, do we experience the “incomparably great power”…the power which “is like the working of” God’s “mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms”?
In the vastness of an Almighty, limitless God, we believe that He cares about what happens to one little being on one little planet in one little solar system in one little galaxy.
Yep, that’s what we believe, and that’s the core of Christianity.
And so He sent His Son, Jesus, into our little world to live as we do.
Jesus, just as powerful and just as mighty, sent here to try and teach us something about God’s wonder.
Jesus, sent here to live and to die so that one day we might be able to join Him in another place.
Jesus, just passing through to show us that there is more than meets the eye, even the eye of our hearts.
In the 1800s there was a well-known Polish rabbi.
An American tourist visited him and was astonished to see that the rabbi’s home was only a simple room filled with books, with only a table and a cot to live on. The tourist asked, “Rabbi, where is your furniture?”
The rabbi replied, “Where is yours?”
The puzzled American asked, “Mine? But I’m only a visitor here. I’m only passing through.”
The rabbi replied, “So am I.”
As we pass through, may we pray for one another and give thanks for one another’s faith and love.
And may we know the hope to which God has called us, the riches of God’s glorious inheritance among the saints and the immeasurable greatness of His power.
Amen.
