Contemporary English Version (CEV)
Paul’s Mission to the Gentiles
3 Christ Jesus made me his prisoner, so that I could help you Gentiles. 2 You have surely heard about God’s kindness in choosing me to help you. 3 In fact, this letter tells you a little about how God has shown me his mysterious ways. 4 As you read the letter, you will also find out how well I really do understand the mystery about Christ. 5 No one knew about this mystery until God’s Spirit told it to his holy apostles and prophets. 6 And the mystery is this: Because of Christ Jesus, the good news has given the Gentiles a share in the promises that God gave to the Jews. God has also let the Gentiles be part of the same body.
7 God treated me with kindness. His power worked in me, and it became my job to spread the good news. 8 I am the least important of all God’s people. But God was kind and chose me to tell the Gentiles that because of Christ there are blessings that cannot be measured. 9 God, who created everything, wanted me to help everyone understand the mysterious plan that had always been hidden in his mind. 10 Then God would use the church to show the powers and authorities in the spiritual world that he has many different kinds of wisdom.
11 God did this according to his eternal plan. And he was able to do what he had planned because of all that Christ Jesus our Lord had done. 12 Christ now gives us courage and confidence, so that we can come to God by faith. 13 That’s why you should not be discouraged when I suffer for you. After all, it will bring honor to you.
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I love puzzles. I love them so much that I actually cannot do them anymore. I came to realize this some years ago around 3:30 in the morning. I had been telling myself I would only do one more piece for about 4 hours, promising myself I would go to bed if I could just finish this part or that part. The problem was, I would become so completely absorbed in the puzzle that I would lose track of everything else in the world. My wife certainly didn’t wait up for me- she knew as soon as I started working on a puzzle that it would be a late night.
The other night, my son had some
300 piece Disney puzzle. He’s not old
enough to do puzzles like that yet, so I was working on it, and my wife was
trying to put him to bed but the puzzle was in his room and I was almost
finished and didn’t want her to turn the lights off yet because I was so close
to being done. It was so hard for me to
leave that puzzle unfinished, despite the fact that my son clearly needed to go
to bed. My tunnel vision closed in, and
I finished it first thing the next morning, as soon as he woke up. I clearly have a problem.
Tunnel vision is not just a problem
when I’m working on puzzles. I love to
get absorbed in things, be it a good book or some other riveting story. I’m not the only one, as binge-watching
entire series on Netflix over a weekend has become increasingly common. We get lost in a story and watch one episode
after another, losing track of whatever else is going on in the world.
This happens with our work, too,
except it isn’t always for fun that we get lost in something. Last fall I started the MBA program at Ohio
State, and there were so many times where I thought to myself, “If I can just
get through today, I’ll be okay.” I did
the same thing with weeks, with semesters, with the first year. It was really hard to be in the program with
two young children, because I would get lost in an assignment or studying for a
test, and the rest of the world would fade away a bit as this problem
completely absorbed my attention. I was
just getting through this one thing, and then inevitably something else would come
along and snatch my attention away. When
I finished my first year of the program I started my internship at an
investment bank in Columbus, and I’ve been working 12 and 13 hour days, and
while I enjoy the work, often it feels like I just have to get through this one
problem, this one assignment, this one day, this one week. I lose track of the outside world and grow
completely absorbed.
Have any of you ever felt that
way? Do you ever get absorbed in what
you’re working on? Do you become so immersed
in your work that it’s hard to pull away and refocus on family? Do you get lost in an assignment, so that the
other duties and responsibilities you have begin to fade away? Do problems in your life ever loom so large
that you can’t focus on anything other than them, to the point that you’re just
trying to endure, just trying to make it through one hour, one day, one week,
one month? Does pain or tragedy barge
into your life, so completely overwhelming you that you can’t imagine what it’s
like to focus on anything else? I’ve
struggled a lot with anxiety in my life, and I know how crippling it can be –
your mind cannot wander anywhere other than the focus of your anxieties, and it
seems like fear is all you have and will ever know. It’s difficult to think of anything else.
I believe this is a problem that
affects us all, in some way, shape or form.
I believe that, as Christians, it
affects our spiritual lives as well.
Because what happens is that the
tunnel vision that affects our lives affects our faith. We find ourselves in the midst of a
situation, a project or an overwhelming situation and it becomes all we focus
upon. In the midst of it, we wonder
where God is, but we haven’t lifted our head up to see anything beyond our
immediate situation. We aren’t
considering what God has done in the past or what God has promised to do in the
future. We aren’t considering the many
and various ways God may be at work in our lives – in the midst of the our
current situation, we want an immediate understanding as to how God is at work
in relation to that particular problem at that particular moment. And if it isn’t
immediately clear, we start to question God’s provisions for us, and we wonder
if God’s attention isn’t focused on the other pressing problems in the world,
and sometimes, if we’re really honest with ourselves, we start to question God’s
love for us. If you’re sick, or dealing
with relationship problems, or wrestling with financial difficulties – if you’re
dealing with hard times and it feels like you’re in the valley of the shadow of
death, if you’re at a place that causes lament, an emotion we see so often in
the Psalms, we can recognize that Scripture often points to times of endurance
in our lives, times when figures of the faith wrestled, often for a long time,
and only came to understand later on just what God was doing, and how God’s
previous faithfulness and the richness of his promises informed their
situation. But growing to such a
maturity takes time, and if we allow ourselves to have tunnel vision, we miss
the opportunity to step back and see our current situation in the grand scope
of God’s redemptive work.
That’s what Paul is trying to
do. Here in Ephesians 3, Paul is calling
the church to help the world take one large step back, to let current and
pressing problems be seen in light of God’s overarching narrative, which is a
story of love and overwhelming mercy and grace that starts before Genesis and
continues forward well beyond the timeline of our earthly lives. As a child of God, baptized into the covenant
of grace and sealed by the Holy Spirit, your story is not defined by your
current circumstances, and so to allow your vision to be narrowed to the
immediate is to cut yourself off from the reality that your overall story is
one of a grand victory that Christ has achieved and invites you to share in the
glory.
Paul is talking here in Scripture
about the unsearchable riches of Christ, and he is speaking of his desire to
bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in
God, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made
known.
In summary, the church has a role
to play – and that is to tell the story of the riches of Christ and the wonder
of God. You, as a part of the church,
have a role to play – you are charged with telling the story of grace. And to tell the story to others, you have to
first hear it for yourself.
So what is our story? Our story is that we were dead, and we were
brought to life. It’s not that we were
kinda bad people whom God made good. We
were dead in our sin, and the sacrifice of Christ on the cross has brought us
to life, not because we deserved it or earned it in any way, but because God
loves you so much that he was willing to pay whatever price was necessary to
redeem you from the clutches of sin and death.
In Christ, you have been set free, washed in the waters of baptism and
charged to go and tell this story, to let the grace of God define you. You are free in Christ, and whatever
threatens you, it cannot defeat you, for you have been eternally claimed by
Christ.
When we get absorbed in our
situations, whatever they may be, we lose track of this larger story. We forget about the overwhelming love of God
and his endless power and grace, and all we wonder is whether we will make it
through today. And it’s important for us
to be assured that the power and love of God will guide us as we go about
today, and that the Holy Spirit will sustain us in whatever challenges we
face.
But let us not forget the bigger
story. Let us take a step back, catch a
deep breath, and be in awe of what God has done. You have been claimed by his love, washed of
your sin, and marked as Christ’s own forever.
You shall pass through the veil of death and live forever in the glory
of the unapproachable light of God’s throne.
You are beloved by God Almighty, who knit you together in your mother’s
womb and calls you by name, and he will pursue you at great cost, because he
loves you.
Never forget that. Do not lose sight of that, because that
should be a constant reminder to us, because it changes the way we see the
world. Rather than becoming overwhelmed
by whatever we face, we are encouraged and empowered, because we return to
worship and awe on a daily basis, thankful for what God has done and excited to
share the Good News with others. We grow
in confidence, and we are defined by gratitude.
Remembering the bigger story has the power to transform the way we see
ourselves, and to remember our charge to go forth and share the light of Christ
with all.
Let us pray
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