John 17:6-19; 1 John 5:9-13; Acts 1:15-17, 21-26
Do you ever have times when nothing is going right, the whole world seems against you, and all you want to do is jump in a hole and pull it in after you? If there was a theme song for that it would be one which Eddie Arnold, Elvis Presley and Martina McBride have all sung: “Make the world go away, get it off my shoulders....” Even extroverts have their rare and brief moments when they want everything to come to a screeching halt and silence to prevail.
I think that Jesus had times like that. The gospel writers record a number of times when Jesus went off to be by himself. And of course his solitude was interrupted by the disciples, either seeking for him because the crowds were looking for him or because they were afraid or helpless. And there was the time in Gethsemane when the disciples were all asleep and the Temple guards came looking for Jesus.
After his alone times Jesus always returned to the public eye. He and the three disciples couldn’t stay on the mountain of the Transfiguration because he still had work to do. Out of a resting sleep he stilled the roiling storm that riled the disciples. And Mark noted that after one such time by himself Jesus told the disciples, “Let’s head in the other direction, to the nearby villages, so that I can preach there too. That’s why I’ve come” (Mark 2:37).
After lingering on the news of Lazarus’ death, Jesus headed to Bethany. Thomas probably summed up the disciples’ expectation, “Let us go too so that we may die with Jesus” (John 11:16). A while later Jesus went from Bethany down the Mount of Olives and into Jerusalem, into the very heart of the institutional opposition which had been mounting. Four days later the religious authorities grabbed him and turned him over to the military officials for execution.
In those last days, even hours, Jesus spoke to his disciples and tried to prepare them for the time that was coming – a time which would include his absence. Jesus tried to impress upon the disciples that they would need their wits about them, that their very mettle will be tried. They will need their strength, their memory of his teaching, and their faith. In spite of all his work of preparing them, even stating bluntly that he was going to be executed, his death came like a full force blow to their guts.
The disciples holed up in a room somewhere following his death. That was mostly for fear that the authorities would come after them as well. That intensified when the women told them that the tomb was empty and that Jesus had risen. The locked door couldn’t keep the risen Lord out. He wasn’t going to hide in the tomb, nor was he going to hide from the disciples.
In the space of forty days, the risen Jesus managed to change the eleven disciples and other supporters from frightened rabbits into strong, perceptive, fearless leaders. After Jesus departed from them for the final time – his ascension to be with God the Father – the eleven got their act together, believed that they had been called as the New Israel, decided that they needed to be twelve in number, and chose the twelfth apostle, a sort of fourth round draft pick. We never heard of Matthias before or since, but he filled the empty stool at the table. Obviously there were hangers on beyond the twelve that got top billing.
Jesus had told them to wait for the coming of the Spirit, and when it came they were ready. We will celebrate that event next week.
How were they able to accomplish that feat, and then to move out into the world? Why did they choose to go out into the crowd and the world rather than staying inside? It would have been quite easy for them to live to themselves and avoid much of the world around them and the pain and hassle which that involved. The history of Christianity is filled with stories of faith communities which have done just that. They sought to create a space which was unencumbered by the world and in which the faithful could fully realize the peace and grace of a faithful, holy life.
John records Jesus’ thoughts on this in the great prayer which Jesus offered sometime between Palm Sunday and Good Friday. Jesus knows that the disciples and others will want to stay off by themselves. Jesus provides an alternative to that. They don’t have to give in to the pressures of the world. Again and again Jesus reminded hearers that they don’t belong to the world, that is to say that the claims of the world do not shape their essential identity, values, and faith. The faith that Jesus sought to instill in believers was anything but an escape from the world. “I say these things while I’m in the world so that they can share completely in my joy.” Christ spoke to them in the same world there they live and where they will find joy. “They don’t belong to this world, just as I don’t belong to this world.” They can be a community – one filled with joy – but without abandoning the world.
Jesus then goes on to pray more fervently for the disciples, the hangers on, and even those who will come later. “I’m not asking that you take them out of this world but that you keep them safe from the evil one. They don’t belong to this world.” The believers are to stay in the world under the protective care of God. They are to live amidst all the thorny complexities of the world without themselves getting entangled and impaled.
Any holiness they thought they might find in seclusion will actually be found in the action of God and in immersion in God’s word. “Make them holy in the truth; your word is truth.” God’s truth will be revealed in the crucible of the world, not the serenity of escapism. “As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” That is the exact opposite of getting out of the world. Yes, the world has already beaten them down in many ways, not the least of which was the public execution of their teacher, master, lord.
Jesus told them, even before it happened, that the answer will not be to run away, but to go back into the world. They will have to pick themselves up, dust themselves off and start all over again. They can’t do that on their own. But they can do it because Jesus has invoked the shield of his and God’s love to protect them. And he will give them his Spirit which will empower them.
We could call that the original solar power – they will be powered by the Son (with an “o” rather than a “u”). The Spirit for whom they are to wait will guide them and sustain them. God’s love will be a force shield deflecting the evil of the world which would separate them from God. That doesn’t mean they won’t be unscathed, or that they won’t die for the faith. It means that they are securely in God’s care for ever.
The shield of God’s love might not be the same thing as a force field around the Starship Enterprise or Dr. Who’s Tardis, but it is a description of the love which God has shown and will continue to show. We who are the friends – not servants or slaves, but friends – of Jesus have the full attention of God’s care, because we are Jesus’ friends. That eternal love is the sure sense of Christ’s presence which will allow us to live vitally and faithfully in the world. We will not be owned the by world. We will not hide from the world. We will engage the world with all its needs – spiritual, physical, emotional – and its wounds and scars. That engagement will be energized by the truth of God’s word, and by the Word made flesh, who came that we might have life and have it abundantly.
The shield of God’s love is the source of our strength. Thanks be to God.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Sunday, May 17, 2015
Sunday, May 10, 2015
The Topography of Love
John 15:9-17; Acts 10:44-48; 1 John 5:1-6
We have heard two readings from John. In 1 John, we heard the word “love” (verb or noun) five times. In the gospel, we heard the word “love” nine times. John owns the word “love.” In the gospel he uses the noun six times and the verb a whopping 31 times. That is half again more than the combined use of both noun and verb by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In John’s three letters, the noun shows up 18 times and the verb 24 times. If John is the disciple that Jesus loved (John 21:20), he radiates that love and all that it stands for through his writing. The emphasis in John’s writing, and in today’s readings particularly, is on God’s love for us and our love for one another.
Last Sunday we looked at the geometry of God’s love – width and length, depth and height – and said that God’s love was infinite in every imaginable direction. Today, let’s look at God’s love – and the love that we have which results from God’s loving us – from a different vantage point: topography.
Harken back to your days in school and those wonderful window-shade pull-down maps. There were political maps showing states or countries. There were maps showing battles in wars. Other maps showed natural resources or population density. And then there were the ones that showed the world in relief. You could see the mammoth Himalayan mountains that shook a couple of weeks ago. You could see the snow on Mt. Kilimanjaro and the Alps. You could see the mighty rivers – Mississippi, Nile, Amazon, Indus, Ganges, Yellow. You could see Death Valley and the Dead Sea, both below sea level. Since our time in school, digital mapping by satellites have mapped the mountains and valleys under the oceans. I don’t know about you, but these were my favorite maps and I would study them at length when I could.
The United States Geological Survey publishes topographical maps of our nation. They are extremely detailed and were the best resource available until space-based mapping and Google Earth came around. There’s a sample on the cover of the bulletin. This is the map that includes Waverly, which is on the center of the left edge. Sorry, Lake White folks, you live on the next map over.
Topography is fun. Bill Bryson wrote A Walk in the Woods to describe his adventures of walking the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. It starts out rough for him and his friend at the southern terminus:
Philip Yancey, in What’s So Amazing About Grace? tells the following:
Jesus said, “You didn’t choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you could go and produce fruit.” We can’t produce fruit if we are not connected to Jesus. He is the one who connects us to himself. Jesus further said, “I have said these things to you so that my joy will be in you and your joy will be complete. This is my commandment: love each other just as I have loved you. No one has greater love than to give up one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.”
Jesus embraces us. Jesus connects with us. Just before today’s reading, Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches....Without me you can’t do anything.” Jesus will go on to talk about the length to which he will go for those whom he claims as his own, calls his friends, and loves: he will die for them.
There is an Irish blessing which says, “May the road rise to meet you.” That means that it touches you, that it is foundational for you, supportive of you, sustaining for you.
Google Earth is wonderful to look at, but we don’t hover over the world like some robotic drone. We are of the earth – that’s what the creation story tells us.
Eighty-three year old Nobel Peace Laureate Mother Teresa addressed the National Prayer Breakfast. Her frail body and thick accent did not blunt her message: America has become a selfish nation, in danger of losing the proper meaning of love: “giving until it hurts.”(5)
Have you ever heard love defined that way? I hadn’t. We talk about love as the warm feelings inside when we are with a special person – or even thinking about that person. We talk about “making love” to refer to sexual activities. We talk about loving a car or some other object, meaning that we really like it, really want it, or spend all our extra time working on it. We often think of love as getting or having someone or something.
However, Mother Teresa says that love is giving – giving until it hurts. That’s what Jesus does. In fact, he not only gives until it hurts; he will continue giving until he dies. That’s how much pain he will suffer on behalf of those he loves. That’s also the lifestyle that Mother Teresa lived.
The “Americans with Disabilities Act” (ADA) provides that as street corners are built and rebuilt, special pads are placed at the crossing points for sight-impaired people to recognize when they have reached the street’s edge. The raised buttons on the embedded pads can be felt through just about any shoe sole except combat boots. You feel them, you feel the topography of the street’s edge.
The topography of love is the same. We feel it. It hurts. It hurts because we are in contact with the world and with each other. The topography of living has the same extremes as the surface of the earth. Mountains and valleys, joys and distresses, vistas and eyesores, rough places and plains, moments of solidarity and moments of conflict.
But Jesus says to each one of us, you are the one I love. You are the friend for whom I am willing to die. I am the one who shapes you into the person you are called to be. I am the one who is closest to you. Whatever the topography of your life, feel me and know my love. Only as you know my love can you love others until it hurts, until you die for them culturally, socially, economically, philosophically, religiously.
Jesus invites you to feel the hills and valleys, the rough and smooth of love. If love has no topography, it is not life as he offers it to us. He gave you these commandments “so that you can love each other.”
May it be so.
(1) Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods, (New York: Random House,1998). Transcribed from audio book, compact disc 1.
(2) Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997) 68-69.
(3) Ibid., 69.
(4) Ibid.
(5) Ibid., 244.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
We have heard two readings from John. In 1 John, we heard the word “love” (verb or noun) five times. In the gospel, we heard the word “love” nine times. John owns the word “love.” In the gospel he uses the noun six times and the verb a whopping 31 times. That is half again more than the combined use of both noun and verb by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In John’s three letters, the noun shows up 18 times and the verb 24 times. If John is the disciple that Jesus loved (John 21:20), he radiates that love and all that it stands for through his writing. The emphasis in John’s writing, and in today’s readings particularly, is on God’s love for us and our love for one another.
Last Sunday we looked at the geometry of God’s love – width and length, depth and height – and said that God’s love was infinite in every imaginable direction. Today, let’s look at God’s love – and the love that we have which results from God’s loving us – from a different vantage point: topography.
Harken back to your days in school and those wonderful window-shade pull-down maps. There were political maps showing states or countries. There were maps showing battles in wars. Other maps showed natural resources or population density. And then there were the ones that showed the world in relief. You could see the mammoth Himalayan mountains that shook a couple of weeks ago. You could see the snow on Mt. Kilimanjaro and the Alps. You could see the mighty rivers – Mississippi, Nile, Amazon, Indus, Ganges, Yellow. You could see Death Valley and the Dead Sea, both below sea level. Since our time in school, digital mapping by satellites have mapped the mountains and valleys under the oceans. I don’t know about you, but these were my favorite maps and I would study them at length when I could.
The United States Geological Survey publishes topographical maps of our nation. They are extremely detailed and were the best resource available until space-based mapping and Google Earth came around. There’s a sample on the cover of the bulletin. This is the map that includes Waverly, which is on the center of the left edge. Sorry, Lake White folks, you live on the next map over.
Topography is fun. Bill Bryson wrote A Walk in the Woods to describe his adventures of walking the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. It starts out rough for him and his friend at the southern terminus:
“Each time you haul yourself up to what you think must surely be the crest, you find that there is more hill beyond, sloped at an angle that kept it from view before, and that beyond that slope is another and beyond that another. And beyond those more still until it seems impossible that any hill could run on this long. Eventually you reach the height where you can see the top of the topmost trees with nothing but clear sky beyond....Finally, you...realize...that the view is sensational, a boundless vista of wooded mountains, unmarked by human hand, marching off in every direction.”(1)If we think about life, that is an apt description of how much of our living goes – uphill all the way. But we get those brief moments when the vistas of joy are sensational, jaw-dropping and speech-silencing. But they are brief, because the path heads down to get us ready for another arduous uphill climb.
Philip Yancey, in What’s So Amazing About Grace? tells the following:
“Not long ago I received in the mail a postcard from a friend that had on it only six words, ‘I am the one Jesus loves.’ I smiled when I saw the return address, for my strange friend excels at these pious slogans. When I called him, though, he told me the slogan came from the author and speaker Brennan Manning. At a seminar, Manning referred to Jesus’ closest friend on earth, the disciple named John, identified in the Gospels as ‘the one Jesus loved.’ Manning said, ‘If John were to be asked, “What is your primary identity in life?” he would not reply, “I am a disciple, an apostle, an evangelist, an author of one of the four Gospels,” but rather, “I am the one Jesus loves.” ’ ” (2)Manning tells another story.
“An Irish priest who, on a walking tour of a rural parish, sees an old peasant kneeling by the side of the road, praying. Impressed, the priest says to the man, ‘You must be very close to God.’ The peasant looks up from his prayers, thinks a moment, and then smiles, ‘Yes, he’s very fond of me.’ ” (3)Jesus calls us friends, not servants. What does it mean to be a friend of Jesus? What does it mean to have Jesus very fond of us? Yancey notes that sociologists have a theory of the “looking-glass self”: you become what the most important person in your life (wife, father, boss, etc.) thinks you are. Yancey then asks the question, “How would my life change if I truly believed the Bible’s astounding words about God’s love for me, if I looked in the mirror and saw what God sees?” (4)
Jesus said, “You didn’t choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you could go and produce fruit.” We can’t produce fruit if we are not connected to Jesus. He is the one who connects us to himself. Jesus further said, “I have said these things to you so that my joy will be in you and your joy will be complete. This is my commandment: love each other just as I have loved you. No one has greater love than to give up one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.”
Jesus embraces us. Jesus connects with us. Just before today’s reading, Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches....Without me you can’t do anything.” Jesus will go on to talk about the length to which he will go for those whom he claims as his own, calls his friends, and loves: he will die for them.
There is an Irish blessing which says, “May the road rise to meet you.” That means that it touches you, that it is foundational for you, supportive of you, sustaining for you.
Google Earth is wonderful to look at, but we don’t hover over the world like some robotic drone. We are of the earth – that’s what the creation story tells us.
Eighty-three year old Nobel Peace Laureate Mother Teresa addressed the National Prayer Breakfast. Her frail body and thick accent did not blunt her message: America has become a selfish nation, in danger of losing the proper meaning of love: “giving until it hurts.”(5)
Have you ever heard love defined that way? I hadn’t. We talk about love as the warm feelings inside when we are with a special person – or even thinking about that person. We talk about “making love” to refer to sexual activities. We talk about loving a car or some other object, meaning that we really like it, really want it, or spend all our extra time working on it. We often think of love as getting or having someone or something.
However, Mother Teresa says that love is giving – giving until it hurts. That’s what Jesus does. In fact, he not only gives until it hurts; he will continue giving until he dies. That’s how much pain he will suffer on behalf of those he loves. That’s also the lifestyle that Mother Teresa lived.
The “Americans with Disabilities Act” (ADA) provides that as street corners are built and rebuilt, special pads are placed at the crossing points for sight-impaired people to recognize when they have reached the street’s edge. The raised buttons on the embedded pads can be felt through just about any shoe sole except combat boots. You feel them, you feel the topography of the street’s edge.
The topography of love is the same. We feel it. It hurts. It hurts because we are in contact with the world and with each other. The topography of living has the same extremes as the surface of the earth. Mountains and valleys, joys and distresses, vistas and eyesores, rough places and plains, moments of solidarity and moments of conflict.
But Jesus says to each one of us, you are the one I love. You are the friend for whom I am willing to die. I am the one who shapes you into the person you are called to be. I am the one who is closest to you. Whatever the topography of your life, feel me and know my love. Only as you know my love can you love others until it hurts, until you die for them culturally, socially, economically, philosophically, religiously.
Jesus invites you to feel the hills and valleys, the rough and smooth of love. If love has no topography, it is not life as he offers it to us. He gave you these commandments “so that you can love each other.”
May it be so.
(1) Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods, (New York: Random House,1998). Transcribed from audio book, compact disc 1.
(2) Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997) 68-69.
(3) Ibid., 69.
(4) Ibid.
(5) Ibid., 244.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Sunday, May 3, 2015
The Geometry of Love
1 John 4:7-21; Acts 8:26-40; John 15:1-8
A few weeks ago I used the word “truncated” in an online comment. A college classmate responded to say that that was a geology term. He should know, that’s his profession. I said that I had only been in the geology building a couple of times in four years and that I had learned the term in solid geometry. If you take a cone- or pyramid-shaped solid and lop off the pointy end, you can say that it is truncated solid. It is shortened.
As I was reading today’s portion of John’s letter, it occurred to me that we could think of God’s love in terms solid geometry. God’s love is three-dimensional. We are so used to thinking of love in abstract terms, as if it were some sort of calculus, that perhaps simple Euclidian geometry can help us.
So, just to refresh, two dimensions deal with area, length times width, such as how many square feet are in a room that 40 feet by 45 feet. Three dimensions deal with solids. Volume is length times width times height. How many cubic feet are in a room 40 feet by 45 feet by 11 feet high.
Sometimes we think of love in two-dimensional terms: I love you and you love me. The relationship may sound simple, but we both know that it is more complex. If you think our relationship is complex, let your mind be boggled by how complex our love relationship with God is.
Paul prays for the Ephesian believers in chapter 3:
Paul uses the word “grasp” in its military definition, that is to capture, wrestle, overpower, take command of. Paul is really praying that the Ephesian believers will work hard at meditating and pondering the gospel until the point that they break through into the true meaning of it. This is the work of the Spirit. Paul is proposing this three-dimensional approach to wrestling with God’s love as a way of finally breaking through into its core.
God’s love is foundational. John tells us that:
How long is God’s love? In John Jesus says, “My sheep listen to my voice. I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life. They will never die, and no one will snatch them from my hand” (John 10:27-28) Paul wrote the Philippians, “I’m sure about this: the one who started a good work in you will stay with you to complete the job by the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6). Note that the operative verb is “will stay.” There is certainty there. It isn’t “may” or maybe.” God’s love is infinitely long. That’s what John is addressing when he says, “This is how we know we remain in him and he remains in us, because he has given us a measure of his Spirit.” The Spirit seals this in us. As Jesus told his hearers, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, then you will produce much fruit. Without me, you can’t do anything” (John 15:5).
The visionary John who wrote the Book of Revelation notes that the first beast was allowed to make war on the saints and gain victory over them. All who worshiped the beast “from the time the earth was made” didn’t have their names written “in the scroll of life of the Lamb who was slain” (Revelation 13:8). What this tells us is that God has put the divine love on us in the very depths of time. The vine has been pruned and the branches that have been kept will remain because the God – Father, Son, and Spirit – will remain in the very life juices that keep the vine flourishing to produce good fruit. God will not remove his love. Salvation is by grace, not works. God’s grace to us has nothing to do with what we do. It can’t be earned, it can’t be manufactured. It is a gift which began in the depths of time and will last into eternity, from forever ago to forever from now.
The reason that the love of God in Christ is infinitely wide and infinitely long is because it is infinitely deep. Jesus is the proof the depth of God’s love. Without Christ, any talk about the depth of God’s love would be simply abstraction. A picture is supposedly worth a thousand words. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is worth a billion words, a million volumes. Jesus felt the distance between heaven and hell. “My God, my God, why have you left me?” (Mark 15:34). Jesus was thrown into the deepest pit anyone could ever find themselves. And he went voluntarily. God’s love is infinitely deep to match its infinite wideness and length.
If God’s love is deep, it is also high. In his priestly prayer in John 17, Jesus prays, “Father, I want those you gave me to be with me where I am. Then they can see my glory, which you gave because you loved me before the creation of the world” (John 17:24). The letter-writing John wrote, “Now we are God’s children, and it hasn’t yet appeared what we shall be, We know that when he appears we will be like him because we’ll see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). That is the height of God’s love. God is going to give to us the same thing that fills his heart with unfailing joy from all eternity. He is going to show us his glory. And more than that, he is going to give that glory to us. God’s love is infinitely high.
There we have the geometry of God’s love: infinitely wide and infinitely long, infinitely deep and infinitely high. Infinite in any direction, from forever ago to forever from now. The psalmist understands:
You surround me—front and back.
You put your hand on me.
That kind of knowledge is too much for me;
it’s so high above me that I can’t fathom it.
Where could I go to get away from your spirit?
Where could I go to escape your presence?
If I went up to heaven, you would be there.
If I went down to the grave, you would be there too!
If I could fly on the wings of dawn,
stopping to rest only on the far side of the ocean—
even there your hand would guide me;
even there your strong hand would hold me tight!
If I said, “The darkness will definitely hide me;
the light will become night around me,”
even then the darkness isn’t too dark for you!
Nighttime would shine bright as day,
because darkness is the same as light to you! (Psalm 139: 5-12)
The geometry of God’s love: Infinite in every direction, infinite in every aspect. What a gift! What joy! Thanks be to God.
General Resource: Timothy Keller, Prayer (New York: Dutton, 2014), 173-175.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
A few weeks ago I used the word “truncated” in an online comment. A college classmate responded to say that that was a geology term. He should know, that’s his profession. I said that I had only been in the geology building a couple of times in four years and that I had learned the term in solid geometry. If you take a cone- or pyramid-shaped solid and lop off the pointy end, you can say that it is truncated solid. It is shortened.
As I was reading today’s portion of John’s letter, it occurred to me that we could think of God’s love in terms solid geometry. God’s love is three-dimensional. We are so used to thinking of love in abstract terms, as if it were some sort of calculus, that perhaps simple Euclidian geometry can help us.
So, just to refresh, two dimensions deal with area, length times width, such as how many square feet are in a room that 40 feet by 45 feet. Three dimensions deal with solids. Volume is length times width times height. How many cubic feet are in a room 40 feet by 45 feet by 11 feet high.
Sometimes we think of love in two-dimensional terms: I love you and you love me. The relationship may sound simple, but we both know that it is more complex. If you think our relationship is complex, let your mind be boggled by how complex our love relationship with God is.
Paul prays for the Ephesian believers in chapter 3:
I ask that he will strengthen you in your inner selves from the riches of his glory through the Spirit. I ask that Christ will live in your hearts through faith. As a result of having strong roots in love, I ask that you’ll have the power to grasp love’s width and length, height and depth, together with all believers. I ask that you’ll know the love of Christ that is beyond knowledge so that you will be filled entirely with the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:16-19)That certainly seems like solid geometry to me.
Paul uses the word “grasp” in its military definition, that is to capture, wrestle, overpower, take command of. Paul is really praying that the Ephesian believers will work hard at meditating and pondering the gospel until the point that they break through into the true meaning of it. This is the work of the Spirit. Paul is proposing this three-dimensional approach to wrestling with God’s love as a way of finally breaking through into its core.
God’s love is foundational. John tells us that:
[L]ove is from God, and everyone who loves is born from God and knows God. The person who doesn’t love does not know God, because God is love. This is how the love of God is revealed to us: God has sent his only Son into the world so that we can live through him. This is love: it is not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son as the sacrifice that deals with our sins.How wide is God’s love? Consider the words of Isaiah: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they will be white as snow. If they are red as crimson, they will become like wool” (Isaiah 1:18). Scarlet and crimson are the color of blood. In our human propensity to rank order things, murder – taking another person’s life, shedding blood – is usually considered the worst thing a person can do. Isaiah presents God’s take on this: Even if you have killed somebody on purpose or in a fit of anger, even if you are responsible for the death of someone else through negligence, God’s love is wide enough to enfold you and embrace you. God says, “The width of my love is seen on the cross. Jesus died for your sins, no matter how heinous they might be.” Since Jesus died on the cross so that each of us can be saved by grace alone, then God’s love is infinitely wide. It is more than wide enough for each of us. Any sin of ours, even all our sins laid end to end, are outdistanced by the breadth of God’s love. That’s the first dimension of God’s love.
How long is God’s love? In John Jesus says, “My sheep listen to my voice. I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life. They will never die, and no one will snatch them from my hand” (John 10:27-28) Paul wrote the Philippians, “I’m sure about this: the one who started a good work in you will stay with you to complete the job by the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6). Note that the operative verb is “will stay.” There is certainty there. It isn’t “may” or maybe.” God’s love is infinitely long. That’s what John is addressing when he says, “This is how we know we remain in him and he remains in us, because he has given us a measure of his Spirit.” The Spirit seals this in us. As Jesus told his hearers, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, then you will produce much fruit. Without me, you can’t do anything” (John 15:5).
The visionary John who wrote the Book of Revelation notes that the first beast was allowed to make war on the saints and gain victory over them. All who worshiped the beast “from the time the earth was made” didn’t have their names written “in the scroll of life of the Lamb who was slain” (Revelation 13:8). What this tells us is that God has put the divine love on us in the very depths of time. The vine has been pruned and the branches that have been kept will remain because the God – Father, Son, and Spirit – will remain in the very life juices that keep the vine flourishing to produce good fruit. God will not remove his love. Salvation is by grace, not works. God’s grace to us has nothing to do with what we do. It can’t be earned, it can’t be manufactured. It is a gift which began in the depths of time and will last into eternity, from forever ago to forever from now.
The reason that the love of God in Christ is infinitely wide and infinitely long is because it is infinitely deep. Jesus is the proof the depth of God’s love. Without Christ, any talk about the depth of God’s love would be simply abstraction. A picture is supposedly worth a thousand words. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is worth a billion words, a million volumes. Jesus felt the distance between heaven and hell. “My God, my God, why have you left me?” (Mark 15:34). Jesus was thrown into the deepest pit anyone could ever find themselves. And he went voluntarily. God’s love is infinitely deep to match its infinite wideness and length.
If God’s love is deep, it is also high. In his priestly prayer in John 17, Jesus prays, “Father, I want those you gave me to be with me where I am. Then they can see my glory, which you gave because you loved me before the creation of the world” (John 17:24). The letter-writing John wrote, “Now we are God’s children, and it hasn’t yet appeared what we shall be, We know that when he appears we will be like him because we’ll see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). That is the height of God’s love. God is going to give to us the same thing that fills his heart with unfailing joy from all eternity. He is going to show us his glory. And more than that, he is going to give that glory to us. God’s love is infinitely high.
There we have the geometry of God’s love: infinitely wide and infinitely long, infinitely deep and infinitely high. Infinite in any direction, from forever ago to forever from now. The psalmist understands:
You surround me—front and back.
You put your hand on me.
That kind of knowledge is too much for me;
it’s so high above me that I can’t fathom it.
Where could I go to get away from your spirit?
Where could I go to escape your presence?
If I went up to heaven, you would be there.
If I went down to the grave, you would be there too!
If I could fly on the wings of dawn,
stopping to rest only on the far side of the ocean—
even there your hand would guide me;
even there your strong hand would hold me tight!
If I said, “The darkness will definitely hide me;
the light will become night around me,”
even then the darkness isn’t too dark for you!
Nighttime would shine bright as day,
because darkness is the same as light to you! (Psalm 139: 5-12)
The geometry of God’s love: Infinite in every direction, infinite in every aspect. What a gift! What joy! Thanks be to God.
General Resource: Timothy Keller, Prayer (New York: Dutton, 2014), 173-175.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
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