Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen (Ephesians 3:20-21).

This doxology circles us back to the beginning of Ephesians: giving praise to God. Doxologies, "glory to God", are scattered liberally throughout the New Testament. And the word glory even more abundantly: God is a God of glory (1:17), his glory reveals who he is (John 1:14), God gives glory to Christ (1 Peter 1:21) and his people (Romans 2:10); Christians are transformed from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18); we are to do everything for God's glory (1 Corinthians 10:31) and give glory back to God (Ephesians 1:6). The new creation will reveal even more glory (Romans 8:18). "Glory" is one of those words that encompasses the whole of Christianity.

But the focus here is on the praise and honor that should be given God for his saving work. What is striking is the assertion that glory is given to God "in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever." No other passage mentions the church explicitly in a doxology in this manner.

It is not that the church and Christ are of equal status. Rather, Paul assumes an unending relation between God, his people, and Christ. The presence of the church with God, which Jesus made possible, will be a cause for eternal praise. Yesterday's prayer immersed us in the love of Christ, which is beyond understanding. Here the activity of God is beyond expectation or thought.

All along we have noted the intense language showing the depth of Paul's emotion. There has been a preponderance of words for God's activity right from the beginning. This doxology sums all that up. We should praise God for his astounding work in Christ Jesus. God is not only able to do beyond what we expect, his power is already at work in us. God is not limited to our expectations. Again, like yesterday, he is able and eager to redeem those we think irredeemable. And maybe even more unbelievable, some day we will give God glory hand in hand with them, and we will be happy to do it. He is eagerly at work in us to achieve this redeemed community.

One implication stands out: the church is not an optional part of Christianity. Rather, it is the community now and throughout eternity where God is given honor and glory. Just as Christ is the evidence of God's redeeming love, the church is the evidence of God's transforming and uniting power. God is glorified, not the church, except that we receive God's love. Unfortunately, church history is marred by too many times and places where the church thought it was exalted.

Whenever the church feels it has power, it is most in danger. The church exists for worship and service and must perform those acts with the same humility with which Jesus traversed the dusty paths of Palestine. Then God is given honor and glory. Sadly, the church often shows more evidence of human depravity than of God's transforming and uniting power.

All Christians need to protest the arrogance, superficiality, and division that mark our churches. We do not have to agree on all points. But we must respect each other, and we must be driven by God's love to exhibit life in Christ and to worship God together.

No quick fix exists for the failure of the church. We must develop a better understanding of God, of faith in Christ, and of unity, and then put that understanding into practice. No doubt the biggest obstacle is the human ego, but that ego shrivels as we gather around an empty cross. And at that cross we prayer,

God our Father, we acknowledge that we and every other person has their origin in you. We owe you our lives. Forgive us for the arrogance of thinking we are better or more important than other people. Let your Spirit work in us to strengthen us. We want your Spirit to merge with ours. Make the presence of Christ so real that we sense your love and live from your love. Help us understand how deep your love is so that it changes us into your very image. You who are all powerful beyond anything we can conceive, we praise you. Every accolade of worth we throw at your feet. You alone are God. From your worth all other worth is determined. For the gift of life in Christ we and all your people worship you. Together and forever, we will sing your praise. Amen.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17b-19)

What roots and establishes us in love? If you recall from yesterday, it is the phrase that comes just before: Christ dwelling in our hearts through faith by the gift and power of the Spirit. This is our rooting and establishing in love. It is Christ's love that grounds us, embeds us firmly in the soil of reality, and enables us to grow.

Having been so established in the love of Christ, the journey of our lives now follows the trajectory of Paul's prayer: discovering more deeply what God has already given, namely, this love of Christ. Interestingly enough, it is a work that we can only do through the power of the Triune God and the work of the Christian community.

It can be said at times, in rather trite ways, that it's all about love. Just love. Yet, trite though it may seem—it is also true. The love of God in Christ is everything.

Discipleship is a work of discovering this love more fully. It is a work of knowing Christ's love. Knowing not in a head-knowledge sort of way, but more in the way of the Hebrew understanding of the term. Paul is asking that we might know the love of Christ in an intimate sort of way—the kind of knowing that comes through an unconditionally loving, committed, long-term relationship, like a really good marriage. The work of discipleship across our Christian lives is to tangibly experience Christ's way of keeping this relationship of love with us, through things like his forgiveness for our failures, his commitment to us despite our foibles, his bearing with us in all situations, and his limitless gifts.

But of course, our knowing of this love doesn't only come from our own experience of the relationship with Christ. It comes also through the "manifold wisdom of God" that places us in a church—a church full of diverse, divided, disagreeable folks—people from all walks of life, all different ethnicities, all different personalities, all different opinions, and social classes. To really capture this idea, you have to picture the most abhorrent caricature of a Christian person that you have ever experienced or heard of.

To fully grasp the width, length, height, and depth of Christ's love—we have to know that he also loves these people. Forgives them. Is committed to them and gives his gifts also to them. Even though we may not see how to be reconciled with these strangers who we are told are fellow Christians—we must confront the fact that they too are rooted and established in Christ's love. We must confront the fact that they too have been reconciled to God and to us in the church! There are no longer any dividing walls that separate us for Jesus removed them all in his cross. In order to grasp the expansive love of Christ, we must confront this reality of Christ's love for those Christians we deem unlovable. This recognition demands of us an ever deeper conversion to Christ: an ever deeper knowing of his infinitely expansive, unconditional agape love.

Paul leaves us with a paradox here: he prays for a knowledge that surpasses knowledge. He asks that we might know something that is ultimately unknowable, or at least ungraspable by us finite human creatures here and now. Yet in this journey of seeking to know the love of Christ that holds us and the church, the fullness of God slowly fills us up as we discover how truly established and enfolded in love we really are.

I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith (Ephesians 3:16-17).

The letter to the Ephesians is prayer. Paul begins with prayer, ends by calling the church to join him in prayer and here in the middle, prays. We talk much about prayer. Probably, we should do less of that and more of it, that is, praying. Like many of us were taught, but don't practice much, at least not publicly, we find Paul on his knees. It's a posture of humility, recognizing that God has what we need, and that God is the primary actor in the Christian life, and we are not. Not that its difficult to get things from God, but that Jesus said, "ask and you will receive." So, Paul is asking.

But what is he asking? What does he want? Well, it's the end, the doxology that we have been offering at the end of these devotions that tells us what Paul desires, "to [God] be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus" always. Years ago, a book called, Your God is too Small, created quite a buzz in the church. According to Amazon, there are several books with that title. I suspect that the size of our prayers corresponds with the size of our god.

The God Paul writes about really has no limits. That is what he has been writing about. He began with all those explosive verbs describing God's actions, summarized first with this phrase, "to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ" (1:10). Later, he expands with this, "And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way" (1:22-23).

After reflecting on our spiritual deadness, he trumpets God's grace, "And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus" (2:6). God was not content with just making us alive again. There is much more in store for us. "And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit" (2:22).

We need to read and reread these opening chapters so that we can understand the magnitude of Paul's prayers. His is no small God. He prays that this powerful, eternal God, out of all his glorious resources, will through the self-same Spirit by which he raised Christ from the dead, that this God will strengthen us in our inner beings.

His prayer is that God will be gloried in the church and in Christ Jesus forever. These are not two separate things. No, Christ Jesus and the church are intimated tied together. He is the head; the church is the body. They can no longer be seen as separate. For God to be gloried, Christ needs to dwell in us through faith so that we are saturated, filled up and overflowing with the gracious life of Christ.

Jesus said, "It is from within, out of a person's heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly" (Mark 7:21). But Paul understands that this is the old heart. God promised new hearts to his people. "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws" (Ezekiel 36:26-27).

Again, notice who is doing all the work. God is. Paul was an Old Testament scholar. He understood that only the God who was powerful enough to create in the beginning, could do this new thing in Christ. Paul prays what God is doing, making people who are dead alive. Cleaning us up happens by degrees. Getting filled up with Christ happens bit by bit.

So, let's join Paul, on his knees, recognizing that we cannot do this thing, not for ourselves, nor for others; let us pray that God will dwell in our inner beings, so that we may live for his glory.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:20-21).

Eph 3: 14-15

14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family[a] in heaven and on earth derives its name.

Upon reading this passage what came to mind was a question from Anne of Green Gables: "Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray, I'll tell you what I'd do. I'd go out into a great big field all alone or in the deep, deep woods and I'd look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I'd just feel a prayer." L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

A posture of prayer can take many forms, looking up into the sky, raising our hands, bowing heads, and kneeling. God wants to hear from us no matter what form our prayer posture is. Conversation with God is how we build our trust and relationship with him. Paul starts his letter by saying "For this reason…" He is acknowledging that God has a purpose and a plan for his life and the lives of those around him. He is praying with confidence acknowledging that it is God's will that is being done on earth.

When Paul writes "I kneel before the Father…", he is approaching with a posture of humility, understanding that it is God's great plan that is at work even while he is in prison. God's work is unstoppable. Paul's prayer is directed to the Father, through the Son, by the empowering and direction of the Holy Spirit. The Trinity is at work together.

All of God's family is called after His name. We can understand this by going back to Genesis and the covenant made with Abraham, "2 "I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.[a]3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."[b] (Genesis 12:2-3) Everything starts and ends with God. God's plan for our lives. This is essential in the unity of the church being the Body of Christ, One in Christ. We are one with our brothers and sisters in heaven and on earth. We are all part of one family and community of believers.

We can have the same confidence in praying to God as Paul does knowing that we are loved deeply by a Father who cares for us. God calls us each his own no matter where we are.

20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

A Sunday Sermon edition of Wilderness Wanderings! The text is 1 Samuel 28:3-25 from the New International Version of the Bible. Dive In discussion questions are below for further reflection!

To see this sermon in the context of the worship service it comes from, find it here on YouTube. Or, head to our website to connect with the worshiping community of Immanuel CRC: immanuelministries.ca

1. Do you believe in the 'paranormal'? Do you believe that God still speaks to his people?
2. Why does the Bible forbid practicing divination, sorcery, fortune-telling, witchery, casting spells, holding séances, or channeling with the dead, etc.? Consider your practice of spiritual disciplines (prayer, scripture, worship). What do you hope to gain from them?
3. Why does Saul search for this woman? What do you do when you are desperate?
4. What warning does this story bring us? In what ways do you need to heed it?
5. How does God speak to us today? How do we test what we perceive?

Eph 3: 12-13

12 In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence. 13 I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory.

In one of my classes at school we are reading "Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good" by Steven Garber. We recently finished reading the last chapter called "Learning to Live Proximately." The chapter focused on a strong theme of how we must learn to live incarnationally to particular people and particular places. We are called to live in long obedience, keeping at the tasks that we are given.

Garber writes, "The Hebrew vision that echoes across the centuries and through cultures offers a different way to be human, where knowing becomes doing. And the Christian vision incarnates this conviction, telling the story of the Word becoming flesh, and of words becoming flesh in and through our vocations."

Paul writes in verse 13 "I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory." It is important to look at the context of where and why Paul's letter was being written. Paul was writing from prison. Why was he in prison? For bringing the good news of Jesus to the Gentiles. Paul knew that he was being used for a purpose. He was living out what he was chosen to do, and what he was called to do: preaching the gospel, the good news of Jesus. Paul suffered for others just like Jesus.

Paul acknowledges the wisdom and grace that God gave to him throughout his letter. He recognized his responsibility in bringing the good news to others. Paul's knowing of Jesus became doing, traveling to bring the good news to the unreached. In a way this can be related to vocation. As Garber writes it's "that to which I am called as a human being, living my life before the face of God." It is bringing together all of life, wholeness in the responsibilities and relationships that we encounter in our days, living for Jesus.

Paul knew he was being used for a greater purpose because of his trust and confidence in Jesus. In verse 12 he writes "In him and through faith in him we way approach God with freedom and confidence." This is good news for us. We can have trust and confidence in Jesus, knowing what Jesus has done for us. Through Jesus we have access to God. The whole church, united in identical boldness, has access to God with no fear or shame.

By faith in what God has done and is doing, we can trust and know that each of us has a place in the service of God's eternal plan.

20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord (Ephesians 3:10-11).

For many of us, when we think of Christ's work of salvation, we think of individual souls being saved. We think of personal conversion stories. But when Paul writes about the mystery of gospel, he expounds on the church. The result of the preaching of Christ's unsearchable riches and the mystery is the birth and growth of the church. Gentiles and Jews embraced the gospel, were converted, and found themselves joint members of the family of God and the body of Christ. The church is central to the redemption project of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

It was happening as Paul wrote. The mystery that God revealed to him was taking concrete shape before people's eyes. And in this new community, this new multi-racial humanity, the wisdom of God was being displayed. People could see it with their eyes. Indeed, the coming into existence of the church as a community of saved and reconciled people is a public demonstration of God's power, grace, and wisdom.

God's mighty resurrection power, his immeasurable grace and kindness, and his manifold wisdom were on display as people once separated by language, custom, politics and religion were forged into a new community through the anvil of the cross. The word for manifold means many-coloured, and was used to describe flowers, crowns, embroidered clothe and woven carpets. The church as a multi-racial, multi-cultural community is like a beautiful tapestry. Its members come from a wide range of colourful backgrounds. No other human community resembles it. Its diversity and harmony are unique. It is God's new society. And the many-coloured fellowship of the church reflects the many-coloured wisdom of God.

So then, as the gospel spreads throughout the world, this new and variegated Christian community blossoms. It is as if a great drama is being enacted. History is the theatre, the world is the stage, and the church members in every land are the actors. God himself has written the play and he directs and produces it. Act by act, scene by scene the story continues to unfold.

But where is the audience? The audience are the cosmic intelligences, the principalities, and powers in the heavenly places. We are to think of them as spectators of the drama of salvation. Thus, the history of the Christian church becomes a graduate school for these spiritual beings.

Beyond this we cannot say much about what these spiritual beings are. We just don't know. As the creation reveals God's glory to humans, the church reveals God's glory to these beings. We cannot see them, but they can see us. They watch fascinated as they see Gentiles and Jews being incorporated in the new society as equals. Indeed, they learn from the composition of the church not only the manifold wisdom of God but also his eternal purposes. This purpose he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in the arena of history, through his death and resurrection, the gift of His Spirit, the preaching of the gospel and the emergence of the church.

Who these beings are is not important. What is important is that we understand what God is doing. We must recon with the truth that the church is central to God's grand design for history. God has a purpose for the church, she is the showpiece through which he reveals his power, grace, and wisdom. And all who believe in Jesus Christ become part of this great intergalactic drama.

It may not always appear that there is much power, grace, or wisdom in the church. But know this, God has no other plan. And he will work until all those rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms have bent the knee before the Son and declared him, Lord.

Then this doxology will be complete:

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:17-21).

I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God's grace given me through the working of his power. Although I am less than the least of all the Lord's people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things (Ephesians 3:7-9).

This passage undermines a common misunderstanding of grace in the Christian church. In fact, it reveals, that we have shrunk grace down to something that we can manage. But it does not belong to us. Since, it belongs to God, we must allow him to define what grace is and means and does.

For many Christians, we understand grace simply and only as something that we receive from God. It is limited to the forgiveness of sins and the 'get out of jail' free card, that is, escape from this world into heaven. Its like there is a hole inside of us which God fills with his grace and by it we eventually float away into heaven. Or its like a beautiful plate we get at Christmas. We love it but not wanting to damage it, we hang it on the wall. Occasionally, we stop to admire it and think to ourselves, some day I should eat from it.

God's grace is much more than that. The revelation of the gospel is not only that we will understand it and receive it, but it enlists us in the service of the Revealer. Paul was made a servant because of "the gift of God's grace." The gift obligates. Grace in this verse does not relate to Paul's salvation, but to his ministry. Through grace he became a servant of the gospel. Grace connects us to God and Christ and to each other, and it also enlists and empowers us.

The gift always comes as a task. Grace always brings responsibility. Paul alluded to this earlier, "For [God] chose us in [Christ] before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight" (1:4). In our text, we are told how it worked in Paul's life. Paul viewed himself as a manager of grace. His ministry to the Gentiles was unique, but all Christians are to be managers of grace. All who have received grace should extend it to others.

This becomes the main theme in chapter 4, where Paul writes, "But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it" (7). Peter puts it rather bluntly, "Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God's grace in its various forms" (1 Peter 4:10). To receive grace is to be taken into its service. Grace connects, enlists, and empowers. It will not allow us to be passive, for it is God's power at work in us.

This is the theology of grace Christians must recover, which means that preachers must preach it. This is by no means a salvation by works theology. It is a much fuller, richer, more Biblical understanding of grace. If we can get past the militaristic overtones of the hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers", we must admit that the poet had a more robust understanding of grace than many of us today have. Grace enlists in the service of the gospel. There is just no other way to read the Bible.

By now, you are likely objecting, "But who am I"? What can I possible do in service to the gospel? Paul anticipates the objection. "Although I am less than the least of all the Lord's people", I was entrusted as the first to bring the gospel to the gentiles. For all his sense of the privilege of being an apostle, Paul had no great sense of his ability or of a high rank. He felt he should have been rejected because he persecuted the church, but he was chosen—a choice not based on his ability, but on God's grace. Anything he accomplished was a result of the power of God at work in him.

Not everyone is called to the public proclamation of the gospel. But as Eugene Peterson keeps reminding us, we are all called to "practice resurrection." We put off the old self and put on the new self. We let go of the practices of sin and selfishness and actively engage in the practices of grace and love. We stop drawing attention to ourselves and point people to Christ. So, as you head off into a new day, whether now or tomorrow morning, take time to ask God to reveal how you should steward his grace.

Because of this understanding of grace, Paul ends his prayer with this doxology:

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:17-21).

For this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles— Surely you have heard about the administration of God's grace that was given to me for you, that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly. In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to people in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets. This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:1-6).

Most Bible scholars believe that, with verse 1, Paul intended to begin his prayer which concludes the chapter. But he interrupts himself to write about the role he has been given in the grand narrative of the work of God in Christ Jesus, the vast cosmic redemptive story, with the church as its focus. Because of his part, he has become a prisoner in a Roman jail. Imprisonment is no big deal for him, it simply offers a different venue by which to carry out the mission he has been given.

And this undertaking is his concern in these verses. He calls it "the mystery of Christ" (4). Mystery here, is not something that is still hidden. Rather, it was hidden but has now been revealed by God himself. It is something that could not have been known if God had not told someone about it, and in this case, that someone, is Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles.

This 'mystery of Christ' has to do with these Gentiles (non-Israelites). What God has revealed is that in Christ these Gentiles are now included in the great work that God was doing in and through Israel as recorded in the Old Testament. For those of you who struggle to find value in the Old Testament, let this mystery focus your reading and study of it, "What was God up to?" "What promises did he make to Israel?" To know what God is doing in Christ, we need to be familiar with that story.

But, of course, the fact that the Gentiles were going to benefit was already known long ago. God had promised Abraham, "all peoples on earth will be blessed through you" (Genesis 12:3). So, what is it that Paul learned?

Two things, that, through faith, the Gentiles would be joined to Christ. And, that through faith in Christ, and because they are now united with Christ, they are united with the Israelites as well. They are not second-class citizens, like the god-fearers, but first-class citizens with Abraham's descendants. Since Abraham's time, Israel had recognized only two people groups in the world: his descendants and those who were not.

When Christ tore down the 'dividing wall of hostility' with his blood, he was overcoming that great division. The mystery now revealed is that this 'new Israel', composed of both Abraham's descendants and those others, would come to be known by a new name, 'the church'. Within the church, all are saved by grace, all our children of God. Everything God promised to Israel is now given to all Christians.

In an age in which division perforates the church, it is so important for us to hear this message of the gospel. Our divisions are not between Jew and Greek, but both our divisions and our individualism are challenged by the gospel of grace. To be in Christ is to be made one with all who are in him.

The gospel is not merely about getting to heaven; it is about life now as well. It is as much about discipleship as about initial conversion, as much about unity as about individual faith, and as much about new life as about forgiveness from God.

We are to live unity. We are not asked to like other Christians, to be like them, or agree with them, but to recognize that we are one with them and share the same Lord and the same benefits. We may not write people off any more than one part of the body can dismiss another part. Unity is not some nonessential, some afterthought, or some by-product of the faith, but it is at the heart of Christianity. The revelation that came in Christ was a revelation about unity. If we do not proclaim unity, we have not proclaimed the gospel. If we do not live unity, we have missed the gospel's impact.

With that challenge, we declare with all those in Christ,

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:17-21).

In Christ Jesus the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit (Ephesians 2:21-22).

What images come to mind when you hear the word 'church'? For many, it's a building, such as the one at 61 Mohawk Road West, Hamilton, the one we gather in to worship God on Sundays, where we go for mid-week ministries and meetings. After all, we often refer to such a building as 'our church'. We invest ourselves into that building and the things that happen there. Time, money, talents are all committed to ensure that things continue to run as smoothly as possible.

For others, the word church summons up images of people. The ones who sit around us on Sundays. Those that we have become friends with over the years, maybe some we grew up with. Some have walked with us in tough times. Others were our teachers in spiritual things. They nurtured our faith; they helped us grow as Christians.

Yet for others, church conjures up difficult images. Disappointment from being neglected in a time of need. Rejected because we walked away at one time. Shame for not measuring up. Or deep hurt from being used or abused by those in authority. Though it may seem all put together on the outside, often the church has dark stains hiding underneath the carpet.

Such are the things that the word church suggests to us. Yet in today's text we are invited to view the church from a different perspective. To see what lies behind the building, beyond the people, deeper than the dark stains that deeply damage the church's witness.

We are often tempted to believe that our time, talent, and treasure are what hold the church together and keeps her going. As useful and necessary as these are, it is Christ Jesus that binds and sustains the church. It is not primarily the preachers that bring in the people, it is Jesus. It is Jesus who builds his church. Even though we will continue to say, 'my church', and 'your church', we must recognize that these phrases are inaccurate. The church, the congregation, does not belong to us, nor to the pastors. People may come and go from our fellowship and church buildings will continue to be built and sold for other purposes. Despite the apparent transitory nature of things, Christ holds his church together.

As the old hymn goes, "the church is not a building, the church is not a steeple, the church is a people". Here the song gets it right, but I think the refrain is slightly off balance, "I am the church! You are the church! We are the church together! All who follow Jesus, all around the world! Yes, we're the church together!" The emphasis is too much on the human dimension and on our ability to follow Jesus. It places the onus on us to be the church.

In our text, we Christians are not doing anything. All the action belongs to Christ, and to God. The church is not primarily what we do, but what God does to us and for us, she is the grand work of God. Five passive verbs are used to tell us how we get included in the action: we are brought near (13), the Spirit gives us access (18), we are built upon the foundation (20), we are joined together (21), we are built together (22). When we are pulled into the action, it is God who pulls us in. Already now, despite all our imperfections and distorted power plays and wrangling over the most minor issues, we are being gathered as the temple of God; the Holy Spirit already lives within the church.

The church is much more than what meets the eye, it is more than the building and more than the people. It is the work of Christ, who is 'growing up' a people who worship him, a people who are learning to follow his Word and Spirit, a people who increasingly live under the sway of his kingdom. People who are not static, but people who are maturing, who begin as acorns and grow to be oak trees.

It is not our actions but God's that are most important in the church. There is far more to the church then what we see. Like an iceberg, we only see the tip. We see the people, the buildings, the programs, but underneath, far larger and for more important and influential is the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The church is not a building. Rather, we are the building material Christ is using to build his church. It is the place where God welcomes us home. Next time you hear the word church, imagine that.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:17-21).