5/24/09 slightly edited version of my sermon on Ephesians 1:15-23 "Dynamite"

I always give thanks for you when I pray, asking that our great God will fill you with all wisdom and knowledge so that your eyes may see the supercalifragilisticexpealidosious power that comes from Christ who has been raised from the dead and now reigns in heaven above everyone and everything, now and forever, and is the head of the church, which is his body in whom his fullness continues to dwell.
Whew! The scripture is one long sentence in Greek that is overflowing with words of power. The word for power is dunamis, which sounds like dynamo, dynamic, dynamite. There is also the word for energy which is almost a direct transliteration of the Greek energia. Other words for might, strength, rule, and authority are found here. The writer has a hard time capturing the dynamite we believers have in what God has done in Jesus Christ.
I want to emphasize three things in this passage. The first is the dynamic power we have in prayer. I pass another church on my way here with a message board on the street. It had something that first offended me. It said, "Want a get rich quick scheme?" Then I read the rest of the message it said, "Count your blessings." Ah, this is what Paul does so often in his letters...give thanks, a prayer of thanksgiving.
Let's try this experiment for just a moment. Begin counting your blessings....how rich...how fortunate we are. My hunch is that very quickly you are not counting material blessings, but relationships. Right? How are we blessed, but by loving others and being loved by others? I read an article that clarified this for me. It said we don't put pictures of our stock portfolios or retirement plans on our refrigerators, but pictures of our family members and friends at parties and weddings and celebrations. Do you feel God's dynamic power flowing into your life?
We also pray for others. We call this intercession. I never forget how powerful this is as I go out and visit. People in the hospital say, "thank you for all the prayers. You don't know what they mean to us. We feel them." One of the best hours of my week is Wednesday at 1 p.m. as a group of us gather to pray for every person on this blue prayer insert every week. We hold each person before God and God's might power. What dynamite we Christians have! Praying for one another. Another way I try to practice this is to have a DP at every service. A DP is a Designated Pray-er, one who simply lifts the service up as it is going along.
I think it was Martin Luther who said, "I have so much to do today, that I must spend 3 hours in prayer." I know that the older I get, the less I work and the more I pray. We have the dynamite of prayer.
Two, we have the dynamic power of Christ's ascension. Christ's going into the heavens is not a matter of loss and grief, but a celebration that he sits at the right hand of his Father and has overcome every other power. Think of the hardest situation: Israel and Palestine in conflict......North Korea and Iran test firing missiles.....war in Iraq and other places....AIDS.....famine....flood....whatever it is Christ's power is greater.
It is not triumphalism. Sin still exists. But we as Christians do not give up. We do not give more power to these situations than we do to Christ.
May I illustrate with this Austin phone book? It's pretty thick isn't it? Do you think I can tear in two? No? Well, watch this. (Start tearing it one page at a time.) Do you see? Our dynamite might be slow in exploding. It may not happen quickly. How many years of prayer, worship, waiting, organizing did it take before the wall between East and West Germany fell or the apartheid government in South Africa fell. We live into this dynamic power, not defeatism.
Three, we are the church, the body of Christ which receives the fullness of his dynamic power. I am so glad to be part of the Church with a capital C, and the United Methodist Church. I have seen Christ do amazing things through us.
This past Thursday, I went to a meeting at the Austin District office. I thought it was about our "Nothing but Nets" campaign. Do you know about this? For $10, we can buy a mosquito net that can protect a family of four and keep them from getting malaria, still one of the deadliest tropical diseases in the world. We UM's have the goal for the next four years to fight poverty and treat preventable diseases. I was going to offer our gym for the 3 on 3 tournament next April that would be part of raising some money for nets. But at the meeting I met the young woman who is responsible for the whole continent of Africa. She was challenging the Austin District to partner with a clinic/school/church in Guinea. The thing that got me was the shift: we were being called to empower each other. No more was it going to be the American church that went to Africa and told "those" people what to do. We were going to learn together, to be brothers and sisters together.
I know we do a lot already. The UMC is in more than 100 countries around the world. Here is another example of how we are connected, how we are the body of Christ, filled with his "all in all."
The good news I have to share is that we are filled with dynamite. Let's go live into this truth.

Amen.