Ephesians 3:14-21
14For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. 16I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, 17and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. 18I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 20Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Rooted and grounded. Solid. Secure.
We live in an area that is pretty familiar with the destructive power of weather. Most of us have been affected by the frequent tornadoes that seem to descend on this area every year; if not directly then a family member or a friend or a neighbor. And most of us have seen the damage inflicted on trees during violent storms. Sometimes, especially when there has been a lot of rain and the earth has become saturated, you might see a tree fully uprooted and fallen. But mostly, we tend to see branches broken and even tree trunks split or sheared.
When I was a kid we lived in a double wide trailer with a huge cedar tree in the back yard. One morning, after a terrible storm the night before, I opened the door to head for the bus stop and found the door blocked by this very same cedar tree. The storm had taken in down in the night – somehow without waking anyone in the house. The tree looked like it had exploded, debris everywhere; all of it destroyed except to two or three feet of jagged stump still held in place by the tree’s deep roots.
It today’s passage, Paul prays for his sisters and brothers in Ephesus. His prayer comes following some discussion of his call to bring the gospel to the gentiles and to see Jews and gentiles reconciled because of Christ.
Ephesus was in what is now Turkey. The people of Ephesus had been under Greek and now Roman rule and were heavily influenced by the pagan cultures of each empire. And in Ephesus and among the gentiles there, a Christian community was established that would become a key church in the early Christian movement. Paul lived several years in Ephesus as did the apostle John. Legend even holds that Jesus’ mother Mary spent the latter years of her life in Ephesus. Even so, the Ephesian church still carried the early shadow of being the “red-headed step child” to the Jewish church. And they lived under that stigma. The entire letter Paul writes to the church in Ephesus addresses this issue throughout, and the prayer in today’s reading is best understood in that context.
“I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name.”
Every family… Every family in heaven… Every family on earth.
Paul reminds his friends of their place in the kingdom. He reminds them that they share the name of their father in heaven and that they bear his name in the same way as their Jewish sisters and brothers. They are not step children who do not wear the name and hold the honor of a step father. They are the children of God and they bear his name and all that is attached to his name. They are part of his family. And they are connected, through Him, with every family in heaven and on earth. They all take their name from him.
And then Paul prays… prays for the church in Ephesus… prays for the outsiders who still question their right to sit at God’s table.
Close your eyes and hear this prayer. Hear this prayer and find that place inside yourself where you have felt outside, other, less… find that feeling and hear Paul’s words again:
16I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, 17and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. 18I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 20Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Rooted and grounded.
The step child has no history… no past with a new family. Memories are built and history happens but, for any of us who have lived that story, we know that we begin with deep doubts as to whether we belong or will every really belong to this new family.
Rooted and grounded… roots speak of history. Roots speak of connection to place. Roots allow the tree to grow and roots also grow with the tree, deepening as the tree grows taller; reaching further into the soil and spreading below the earth as the branches spread above.
Rooted and grounded in LOVE.
The church in Ephesus was added to a family with a deep, deep history; generations of Jews who knew the stories of Abraham and Moses and David by heart. They were grafted into a family who shared common struggle and identity and faith. They joined this family and immediately felt those same doubts… that fear that they really did not belong… that they would never really belong. And Paul speaks a prayer and begins to change the story.
Paul prays for roots – for connection. He prays that these new children of God would be rooted and grounded in the fact that they are loved… have always been loved. They are rooted and grounded in love because they are not really new children but, instead, have always been the children of their creator. Though their stories are different, their histories different; they are rooted in the same earth – the same created earth – as Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Their roots search for and find the same waters that Moses drew from a rock in the desert; the same waters where John baptized his cousin and began the final act in the story of the earth’s redemption. The same waters that fed a garden at the beginning of humanity’s story.
Humanity’s story, the root of our story, is not found in an orchard filled with row after row of virtually identical trees. It is not found in a farm with endless acres of cultivated produce of like kind. Instead, our story begins in a garden… A garden filled with every kind of tree, every kind of plant, every kind of animal… all of them rooted and grounded in common soil. All of them rooted and grounded in common earth. Gardens are beautiful, not because of their order or their sameness; a garden is beautiful because of its diversity, its variety, and because of the way that all its diversity remains connected. The flowers and trees need bees to carry pollen. The grass on the surface protects the soil from erosion and allows the tree’s roots to grow deep and strong. They beauty of a garden lies in its ability to produce beauty from chaos… from random pairings of color and size and fragrance. The most beautiful gardens celebrate the mystery of great, great diversity born out of common ground; ground that holds the roots of every living thing in the garden.
16I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, 17and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.
The trees trunk and branches are made strong by their roots and we are strengthened in our “inner being” when we are rooted and grounded in love.
Have you ever felt “other”? Have you ever felt that you did not belong? Have you ever seen yourself as a beggar at someone else’s table? Close your eyes and listen again as I pray Paul’s words over you:
I pray that you may be strengthened in your inner being… and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. 18I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 20Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
May we find our roots to be deep and may we by them drink from the waters of grace and mercy and love. May we be rooted and grounded in love alone. And may we come to know how wide, how long, how high, and how deep is the love of our creator.
His kingdom come.
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