Paul's Prayer Priorities - Enlightenment

SERMON Dennis Evans 11-12-2017

“Paul’s Prayer Priorities – Enlightenment”

Scripture readings: Isaiah 42:1-7; Ephesians 1:15-23

How can any human being miss the fact that we all need some kind of light to come on and shine for us? And we all need something to come on that isn’t like the light in the refrigerator that only comes on when we want it.

Along the Columbia River at Priest Rapids Lake
Desert Aire/Mattawa, WA
October 2017

Not a day passes when I don’t want some light to show me what’s going on, and how to respond to it, or to show me where to go next. That sort of light could be compared to an outside light: sorting out the world around me. Not even a porch light: but a flashlight, a street light, a search light, or a light house.

There’s that story of the policeman who finds a drunk crawling around on the sidewalk under a street light, and he asks the drunk what he’s doing. The drunk says: “I’m right here in front of my own house, but I dropped my keys so I can’t get in.” Well the cop decides to help him and he spends a few minutes with the drunk helping him search.

Finally, the policeman asks, “Are you sure this is where you dropped your keys?” And the drunk says: “No, I dropped them way over there. But the light is much better here.”

The drunk knew that he needed an outside light, but he didn’t have enough inside light to show him that he needed much more. He needed more light inside his befuddled brain. We also know that he needed more light in his heart, if he truly wanted to find the key that would open the kind of door that would let him come home to a much better home than he could ever imagine.

Paul had found such a light, and such a key, and such a home. So had his friends: all because of Jesus.

First came the light. This is how God works. The first thing God does is to say, “Let there be light!” (Genesis 1:3) But the light came even before that, because “God is light” (1 John 1:5) just as much as “God is love” (1 John 4:8).

Jesus, as well, is “the light of the world” (John 8:12) and he calls us to be “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). Jesus is the light of God that comes into a dark world that has lost the light of its creation. Jesus is the light of God that comes into a dark human world where humans have chosen to live independent of the light, which means to live outside the light, but there is no life outside the light.

The light of God is no ordinary light. It isn’t the light of the sun, or the light of electricity. The Gospel of John says this about Jesus: “In him was life, and that life was the light of men.” (John 1:4) Jesus is the light for human beings to live by, and to have that life abundantly.

The light of God is actually life itself. By definition you can’t have most forms of organic life without the sun. Spiritually you can’t have the light of personhood, or the light of love, without the life of Jesus who is the light of the image of God. Jesus is the brilliance of God that makes human beings into the children of God. But the first humans tried to live without this light, or to rule this light for themselves. We can’t rule the light of God. The fact that we tried to be in control of the light was the choice that produced our human darkness in the first place.

In their sin of trying to live by nonsense, these first humans handed down to us a banished life, on the very edge of darkness. It’s the part of us that has damaged the image of God, and his light and life in us. But Jesus, the Son, who is the servant of all, came: “To open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison, and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.” It’s just as the prophet Isaiah said it would be. (Isaiah 42:7)

Who are the blind, the captives, the sitters in darkness? It’s everyone in the world. It’s us, and everyone else.

Jesus died for us on the cross to give us the light and to show us the light. Suffering on the cross and rising from the dead, Jesus bridged the darkness to trade our darkness for his light.

Suffering on the cross and rising from the dead Jesus shows us the light, because (in doing that) he shows us what light is, and what the light does. Because Jesus shows us the light, we can not only live in the light, but also know what the light is for, and what to do with it.

The light from Jesus gives light to us, and the light in us shows others what the light is, and what to do with it. That is why Jesus, “the light of the world”, calls us “the light of the world”. So, Jesus shares his name, and his servanthood, and his calling with us.

So many of the prayers of Paul for his friends were about this very thing. It’s about them (and us) seeing the light, knowing the light, having a relationship with the light, having our lives changed and transformed by the light, having a life guided and motivated by the light, having a life rebuilt in the image of light, and with the mission and calling of being the light, showing the light, giving the light, implanting the light, reproducing the light.

Paul prayed for his friends, including us. Part of Paul’s prayer about the light went like this: “I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened….” (Ephesians 1:18)

When I walk in the dark with the help of a flashlight, I’m very thankful for it. I understand what the light is for. But I would understand light in a much different way if the light was my life: if I was light.

Paul’s friends, just as we, have met the light, and our lives have been changed by the light, because it is something we can hold onto. Holding onto the light helps us to walk in the darkness.

Paul wanted much more than this for all of us. He wanted the light to take over our hearts.

Paul wanted the light to enable the power and the motivations of God to change us. Paul wanted the light to guide us through the maze and dungeon of the darkness, in ourselves, and for us to be led to the freedom that comes from the life that is also light. Paul wanted the dungeon torn down and replaced, so that light would be what our lives and our hearts and our minds are made of.

There are other faiths or religions that talk about enlightenment. Because of this, many Christians have become suspicious and afraid of the word enlightenment. It is a Bible word: not a common Bible word, but it is there, and it’s important enough for Paul to care deeply about it. Everything in this particular prayer relates to that enlightenment.

Light helps you to see better, and to know better. Paul prayed for the Father to “give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.” (Ephesians 1:17) It’s all the same thing. The Holy Spirit plays a part in answering the need of our heart, and the core of our being, to know God better. But the enlightenment means that we need that light to come inside us so that we can become the light.

The Holy Spirit could just tell us things, and give us a lot of accurate information: inspired information, and doctrine, and instructions. But the Holy Spirit also must become the light inside us that makes us light. Information, doctrine, and instructions are not enough, no matter how inspired they are.

The light must come inside and make us into lives that are light.

This is grace. This is what grace is for, if God is going to completely have his way with us. The cross and the resurrection were acts of God, in Jesus, to call us his own; to change our name from sinner to child of God, but even that is not enough.

In Second Corinthians, Paul wrote: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.” (2 Corinthians 8:9) In the same way, we may say that Jesus became dark on the cross so that you might become light. In the same letter Paul wrote: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 6:17)

We will not understand the prayers of Paul very well unless we remember that these were prayers for others. We know that Paul prayed for himself. We just don’t have many examples of those prayers.

Paul commonly asks for his friends to pray for him, but he never asks them to pray for the gift of things. He doesn’t even ask them to pray for his health; although we think that he tried this without success, if that was what his thorn in the flesh was about. (2 Corinthians 12:7-10) The Bible instructs us to pray for people’s health, but our prayer list should include the much greater needs of others.

This prayer surely gives us something to pray for, for ourselves. If Paul prayed it for his friends, then his friends could join Paul in his prayers for them. They were, after all, clearly prayer partners, all of them together. So, let’s pray these prayers for ourselves, never forgetting that every other Christian needs our prayers for their enlightenment, because we are all prayer partners, all of us together. Let’s also remember that those who are not yet being invaded by the light need our prayers as well.

Enlightenment, for us, in the Bible, means seeing reality as God sees it. It means seeing our lives and God’s goals for our lives, as God sees them. It means seeing the whole world and everyone and everything in it as God sees them, and as God wants them to be.

In Paul’s prayer, enlightenment means the beginning and the growth of hope. “in order to know the hope to which God has called you.” The world and everything and everyone in it needs hope and needs this prayer, and so do you. Pray to be made into light, and pray to be made into hope.

Enlightenment means the beginning and the inward growth of power. Now, power, here, is a translation for the Greek word “energeia”. It’s energy. It’s energizing.

We and the world give up. We run out of energy. Or there is a break in the circuit, and the energy isn’t flowing into us. In a way, the same word means “working”.

Sometimes I wish I had power. But I would probably mess everything up with it, if I had my choice.

God’s power isn’t about power, as we think about it; or as politicians, and monarchs, and dictators covet it. It’s the ability and the energy to work.

For us Christians it’s a very special focus of work. It’s the kind of energy or power that only does certain kinds of work. It’s the power that created the universe and our world. It’s also the power that raised Jesus from the dead. God’s power reverses weakness, evil, sin, and death.

So, it’s the kind of work that gives form and substance to something that wasn’t there before. It’s the kind of work that reverses evil, and death, and darkness, and defeat, and weakness, and sickness.

That is the nature of God. It’s the power that we are supposed to see in the world around us when we see God in our world. It’s what the world needs to see through us. It’s the ability we want the world to know and receive for itself. It’s the ability that is needed by everyone we know or hear about: the energy to do something new that wasn’t there before, the energy to bring dead things, weak things, tired things, and even outdated things, to life.

We are right to pray for such a power. We are right to pray this power for others.

When Paul says that God “appointed Christ to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way,” (Ephesians 1:22-23) it means, at very least, that in Christ, in the Church, the energy that raised Jesus from the dead still works and pushes out in God’s plan to fill the world. It’s the very core and center of everything God is about. Enlightenment shows us this.

Paul’s friends, as well as we, have been tempted to think that we are stuck on the outside of everything looking in. Enlightenment would begin and grow the understanding that God has: that Christ in us is the center of everything that matters. Christ in us is the center of everything this world needs. It’s at the center of what God want to do in the lives of the people around you.

Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the Bible, called “The Message” puts it this way. “At the center of all this, Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world, the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ’s body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence.” That’s what God (that’s what Jesus) wants to do through us, together.

Enlightenment enables us to see things the way God sees them, and to see our tasks and callings as God sees them. It is this enlightenment that says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13)

The Lord’s Supper reminds us that the power which raised Jesus from the dead and through which all the gifts and riches of Jesus are ours, is the power that works in us. The crucified Jesus lives in us.

The holy meal says this. Because this Jesus lives in us, we are also promised that the great energy and work that raised him will also raise us (raise us in the end, but also raise us up every day until then). The energy of the resurrection will work through us, for others, and for God.

This enlightenment gives us the knowledge that comes within us through experience. With that intimate knowledge comes light, and sight. With that light comes hope. With that hope comes a power that energizes us for the work of the kingdom to change lives, and to change the whole world.

In this enlightenment, we will truly see, and love, and follow Jesus, and live out his plan for us.