STRENGTHENING INNER BEING
Ephesians 3:14-21

Yesterday's paper carried a story on the front page about a nun, a Catholic sister, who had died, Sister Mary Thomas Zinkand. Sister Mary Thomas had dedicated her life to the work at Mercy Hospital. I never met her, but the article spoke beautifully about her character, her concern for the sick, and the poor, at Mercy Hospital. Since 1945 she had been President of the Hospital for 35 of those years. Sister Mary Thomas was friends with people in high places: Mayor, Governor, Comptroller Schaeffer, Senator Mikulski. I never knew her, but after reading about her. I liked her. I was impressed by her spirit, her character, God's spirit at work in her.

As I read the article, it made me think of another woman who had a long association with Mercy Hospital. There is even a plaque commemorating her service up on the wall right next to the information desk. I knew that woman , who was a Sister of Mercy just as Sister Mary Thomas Zinkand was.

How do people get like that, full of character, sense of mission, full of love. Chance, providence, the irresistible work of God. Or did they have something to do with the process. Did they make choices? Did they do things that made them who they were. Is character a matter of chance or choices? What is it that gives strength to one's inner being? Sister Rush, I think, was not a Catholic sister. She was a Baptist sister from Providence Baptist Church. Sister Rush had a long career at Mercy Hospital. But not as President. No, Sister Rush cleaned the rooms the resident doctors used when they slept over night at the hospital. And knowing Sister Rush, she did much more than clean rooms. She probably helped those young doctors keep their lives in order. She called them by her presence to be people of character. Because that is what she was, a person of character, full of Christ's spirit. Even though not Catholic, Sister Rush.

Ephesians 3:14-21

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,
from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name.
I pray that,
according to the riches of his glory,
God may grant that you may be strengthened
in your inner being
with power through God's spirit,
and that Christ may dwell in your hearts
through faith,
as you are being rooted and grounded in love.
I pray that you may have the power to comprehend,
with all the saints,
what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ
that surpasses knowledge,
so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to God
who by the power at work within us
is able to accomplish abundantly
far more than all we can ask or imagine.

It sounds in this text as if the strengthening of one's soul is a product of the working of God. It says through God's spirit, but it is also a product of our activity, our opening through faith. The text said Christ dwells in our hearts through faith, and we are rooted and grounded in love. Beginning to understand what saintly people understood of the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge.

What? How can we know something which surpasses knowledge? Sounds like something Yogi Berra would say, to know that which surpasses knowledge. I don't know if Yogi would say surpasses. I know it sounds impossible, unrealistic, but that is what the author of Ephesians is speaking of here: a leap of faith. That's how philosopher Soren Kierkegaard described it... It's like a small boy in the loft of a dark barn. He hears his father calling from below, "I see you. Jump down. I'll catch you." And in faith, knowing the father's love the child steps out into that great black abyss, knowing the unknowable. The breadth and length and height and depth of the love of the father of God.

In his book Living in the Presence subtitled Spiritual Exercises To Open Our Lives to the Awareness of God, Tilden Edwards speaks of a moment in life which challenges the world as we rationally know it:

Our false identity is challenged by some other force in and around us, which in faith we call God. The challenge comes in the form of some experience of mercy, of unmerited love, that cuts through our fearful, willful ego identity. This may come through another person, or seem to come directly from God.

There are moments, transforming moments, which occur in life and make us aware that there is something more that what one would define as reality. There are moments when we come to know the unknowable... that is the love of God. But knowing the unknowable in an instant is not the same as stepping out in faith. You can know and not step out, but then do you really know? Have you really been filled with the fullness of God. You have for that instant, but what about long term?

When I was home I talked one night with one of my brothers-in-law. We talked for hours about lots of things. And finally we got around to what I think he really wanted to tell me. This kidney operation has really changed me. I see things differently. I've even started going back to church every week. I like the ritual. Experiencing the presence of God in a moment is a good thing, but there is no breadth, length, height, or depth to it. David knew the love of God, but he forgot about it. He wasn't filled with it, not where Bathsheba and Uriah were concerned. Experiencing the presence of God in a moment is not the same as being rooted and ground in love. Rooting and grounding demands work, spiritual cultivation, building. It demands disciplines, worship, silence, devotion, prayer, reflection - all the time, orderly and disorderly. All of that foundational stuff which brings forth transformation in living and caring - exhibited in lives of faith like Sister Mary Thomas Zinkand, like Sister Georgia Rush, like those sisters in Ploughshares sentenced to prison last week. Their lives were transformed at some moment, but more importantly their lives were made to conform over a lifetime. So may we be converted daily transformed from death to life by the knowledge of the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, which surpasses reason. Amen.