Today is also Pentecost Sunday. My younger grandson will be baptized today, with our extended family gathering in church, in person, for the first time in over a year. He's already part of the family, but marking that more formally today: part of our family, part of our church family, part of the borderless family of God.
I've been reading lately in Ephesians. I memorized Ephesians 3 long ago, but am newly aware of how tightly connected the strands of this letter are woven. Paul's repetitions of "therefore" and "for this reason" tie the entire letter together, almost as one thought about unity in Christ. Arbitrary chapter divisions obstruct the connections Paul was trying to make:
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. . . .
Therefore, remember . . . now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility . . .
Therefore, you are longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
For this reason . . . I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace given me through the working of his power . . . . I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory.
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 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. 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.
The ideas are connected, but they also speak of deep connections in all of heaven and earth, far beyond our understanding.
I've been starting my days, now that the weather has warmed, outside on my patio. I read, think, journal, then pause to watching the robins enjoy my birdbath. The yard is full of the sweet scent of locust tree blooms. The bugs drawn to those blooms attract cedar waxwings and great crested flycatchers. I can't always see them, high up in the branches, but I can hear them, chattering and calling.
See it or not, admit it or not, we are part of a mighty web of interconnected nature. The air we breathe is a gift from the green plants around us. The food we eat is a gift of the soil and sun. My morning coffee is grown on hillsides far from my home, harvested by hands I will never see.
Paul's "therefores" weave it all closer: this is not a world of disparate parts, of aliens and strangers, little islands on our own, answering to no one. We are woven into interconnected families, all rooted and established in love, all bound together by a gracious power far beyond our own.
I sometimes listen to people pronouncing judgement, dividing the world into "them" and "us," and wonder: have you read those words of Ephesians? Have you let that reality sink into your heart, and soul, and bones?
I sit on my patio and listen to God's love singing around me: bird families, bug families, woven together with plant families and our own neighborhood human families.
I sat on the hillside yesterday with my children and grandchildren, my daughter's oldest friend, my daughter's husband's parents, and reflected on the ways God weaves us into families. I thought of the ways we become rooted and established in love, over years, decades, llfetimes. Sometimes we catch glimpses of that love, but we will never fully grasp how wide and long and high and deep it is.
Watching my family, I see and enjoy each one. And I see and enjoy their care for each other: my son walking with his nephew around the distant fields. My older grandson swinging in the trees with my younger grandson, laughing. One daughter spending her day gathering flowers for her sister's party. The childhood friend driving hours to spend the evening with the family, remembering together.
God loves us all more than any of that. Enjoys us more than the most loving parent enjoys the most devoted child. Delights in our care for each other, our care for those near us, our care for those farther away.
The real work of the Holy Spirit, I'm beginning to see, is love: giving us love beyond our own, and helping us see and share that love.
"The Lord's holy people," I've come to believe, are not the "chosen," the sole recipients of love. We're the ones who have begun to see how amazingly expansive God's love is. We're the ones who have begun to live in that love as dearly loved children. And we're the ones who have begun to treat those around us, those far from us, even those difficult or hostile or completely foreign to us, as dearly loved children as well
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.
