Ephesians 1:15-23
“Rich Hope”
May 24, 2020 – Ascension Sunday
I insisted on stopping. As we drove down our street, tired and ready to be home, I pulled up in front of the mailboxes and picked up our key. Beth and I had the same conversation we’ve had many times. “Why are you so eager to get the mail? Are you expecting something?” “No,” I answered, “but who knows? There might be something wonderful waiting in there, a package, a card, a check!” Beth just sighed and paraphrased once again that line from Alexander Pope, “Hope springs eternal in my husband’s breast.”
I confess. I do have a sort of irrational hope every time I open the physical mailbox or even the virtual one holding e-mail. Perhaps I will be surprised by an envelope or a message filled with unexpected good news. Of course, it’s almost always just bills or advertising or a promise of cash or gold from some royal personage in Nigeria. Those last don’t fool me at all, but I still like to hope.
Psychologists, especially Charles Snyder beginning in the 1990s, tell us that hope plays an important role in human happiness and what might be called a good life. It seems like human beings need hope in order to flourish. When hope disappears we lose motivation and sink into depression and other psychological disorders.
As we turn to hope, the second of the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, we come to an emotion and character trait which seems especially vital at the present time. My guess is that most of us would like some solid hope that both our individual lives and the world around us will be better in the future than they are now in the grip of a pandemic. We are looking for hope. So were the people to whom Paul wrote.
There are difficult questions about the exact recipients of the letter we call “Ephesians,” even whether the original of verse 1 included the name of that or any ancient city. But it’s clear that it was aimed at Christians in that area, Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey. And the culture in and around Ephesus was thoroughly Romanized Greek. As we read in Acts, they worshipped Greek gods, especially Artemis. Yet many had a fatalistic view of life: what will be will be.
One famous citizen of Ephesus, five hundred years before Paul went there, was the philosopher Heraclitus. His philosophy is obscure. All we have are fragments of the book he wrote, but he is famous for saying panta rei, “everything flows,” everything changes. He also said that one cannot “step into the same river twice,” because the water flowing past is always different water. In other words, there is nothing permanent, nothing lasting in this world. It is always flowing past us, with nothing solid we can grasp for long.
In Roman culture in general there was a kind of resignation to the impermanence and shortness of life. Many of their gravestones bear an epitaph first attributed to a later Roman philosopher, Epicurus, non fui, fui, non sum, non curo, “I was not. I was. I am not. I do not care.” Paul wrote to men and women who had grown up in a generally hopeless world. If you look further on in chapter 2 verse 12, he reminds them of that, “remember that at that time you were without Christ… having no hope and without God in the world.”
You and I also now live in a world of general hopelessness. Most realistic people agree that it is unlikely human life just about anywhere on our planet is going to return to what we have been calling “normal” anytime soon, if ever. But even before the pandemic, a rising tide of violence, racism, economic inequality, and political division across the world was making it difficult to be very hopeful about the immediate prospects of life in years to come. Those of us with children and grandchildren were already wondering what sort of world the next generations will inherit. We picture something worse rather than better than the time in which we grew up. Hope seems in short supply.
Yet those psychologists tell us hope makes human life better, that we need it in order to flourish and do well. Those who score higher on a “hope scale” are more successful and more resilient when encountering difficulties. Hopeful college students are more likely to graduate.[1] So what shall we do when hope is hard to find, when it seems more sensible to resign ourselves to reality rather than hope in some fantasy?
Let us first realize that, while it is the same word and much the same idea, Christian hope is different from other hopes we experience. It is realistic, but it is focused on a reality which goes beyond what we can see with our eyes and predict with studies and statistics. That gives the theological virtue of hope an availability and resilience which transcends current events and which direction the curves on graphs are headed. You and I may have hope in Christ even if nothing ever goes back to what we thought was normal, even if both our own individual and our social lives keep spiraling downward for the foreseeable future.
Just as in our text from I Thessalonians last week, Paul commends his readers in the area of Ephesus in verse 15, beginning with their “faith in the Lord Jesus” and continuing on to their “love toward all the saints.” There are the other two theological virtues again, connected together with hope in this passage. Peter Kreeft says that faith is the seed, hope is the stem, and love is the flower. As we look over his letters, we find Paul constantly seeing these three Christian character traits growing up together in the churches he planted. So just like for the Thessalonians, Paul gives thanks for the Ephesians in verse 16.
Then in verse 17 Paul begins a prayer. In many ways it is a prayer that his readers will have hope. I think it is a prayer still working down through the ages for us as we read what the apostle had to say. It is a prayer for us as Christian believers to have certain qualities of mind, which are conducive to hope. He begins by asking that the God and Father of Jesus Christ might give us “a spirit of wisdom and revelation.” That simply means he would like us to know the truth about what is most important, the basic facts of the Christian faith revealed to us. Most importantly, Paul asks that we will not just know the facts, but that we will “know him,” know Jesus Christ the Lord.
It is knowing Jesus that will “enlighten the eyes of your hearts” as verse 17 says. As I shared with the children today about Jesus’ ascension, part of what it means is that Jesus is no longer seen with physical human eyes here on earth. He has been “lifted up,” “out of sight.” But that does not mean He is no longer present, no longer perceivable. With the knowledge that comes through faith and trust in God’s wisdom and revelation, the “eyes of our hearts” are enlightened and opened to the reality of Jesus even now. That’s how Paul can pray that we “may know the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints.”
One of the things people hope for on earth is an inheritance. Not that anyone wants to lose a parent or other beloved relative, but some of us might look forward to property or money which will come to us one day. But that’s a pretty unsure sort of hope. As his four children grew toward their college years, my friend Jay used to tell them, “You know how some parents have scrimped and saved to create a college fund for their children from the day they were born. So when they come to the end of high school there is that nice big bank account waiting and ready to pay for any school they choose? Well, kids, that’s not you.”
A wonderful financial windfall is not realistic hope for most people in this world, even though we may pretend it’s part of the American dream or something like that. But what is available to anyone, and is more realistic, is a rich and glorious inheritance shared with the saints, with all God’s people, in His presence. That is a hope not focused on next month or next year, nor on Phase II or Phase III of some reopening plan. It is a hope focused on an eternal and everlasting future together with Jesus.
As Kreeft says, our hope grows out of the faith we have. So Paul goes on in verse 18 to explain why we have such hope. It is not based on our own power, our own competence to achieve our financial or educational or career goals. It is based on “the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe…”
Christian hope is different from other hope in the fact that it is based on the power of God and focused not on months or years to come, but on eternity. That is why Christian hope is more sure than ordinary hope, and something that goes even beyond faith.
Ordinary hope is often less than faith. I may “hope” that the person I voted for wins the election, while having very little confidence that she will. I can have “hope” for some future outcome without having much faith at all that it will happen. I don’t recommend it, but you can buy a lottery ticket and hope to win, while having almost no faith or any sort of confidence that you actually will win. But Christian hope goes beyond faith, grows out of it, because our confidence is based in God rather than in human beings or luck or even in the best predictions of science.
Our Christian hope goes beyond ordinary hope in yet another way. In verses 20 and 21, Paul gets more specific about that “immeasurable power” of God. He tells us that
God put that power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.
That is what we are remembering and celebrating on Ascension Sunday. Death is not a limit on hope. The boundaries of this world are not a limit on hope. The authorities and powers of this world, whether they are dictators or diseases, presidents or pandemics, are not a limit on our hope in Christ. Jesus rose and was lifted up above it all and now rules over it all from the seat of power for the whole universe. That is what makes Christian hope different from and better than any other form of hope.
You might think, then, that we should just give up on ordinary forms of hope, focus all our attention on the future and on a kingdom yet to come. Maybe we should quit hoping there will be a vaccine for COVID-19 or an economic recovery or some easing of racial tensions and less violence around the world. But that is not at all what having Christian hope implies. When talking about Jesus’ being above every rule and authority and power and dominion, before he said, “but also in the age to come,” he said, “not only in this age.” Jesus is not just going to be in charge someday. He is in charge right now.
Yes, yes, yes, I know. I feel it too. It sure doesn’t look like Jesus is in charge right now. It looks like a virus and prejudice and fear and incompetent governments are in charge right now. Yet Jesus is still our faith. Jesus is still our hope. All of this, whatever “this” might be, is within the rule and the reign of our Savior seated at the right hand of the Father. That’s our hope, not just for the future, but for the present.
How so? How is Christian hope in Christ for the future also hope for the present? How does it make a difference in what is happening to you and me as we worry about masks and paychecks and when we might meet together in person once again?
It works like this. Those psychologists who talk about the importance of hope for human well-being focus a lot on developing what they would term “realistic hope,” hope for things like doing well on a test or for finding some way to reduce pain a little. But they also admit that people benefit from what they call “transcendent hope,” hope that goes beyond any specific outcome that one can define in this world.
It works like this for Christians. Paul started out noting how the faith of the Ephesians showed up in their love toward the saints, toward other Christians. Hope for our transcendent future with Christ makes such love possible. That wonderful amount of money many of you gave for food boxes for families in our community came partly from your hope that you don’t need to hang on to everything for yourself. Whether you have enough money or not, God has enough riches for you in the long run. Hope in a rich future makes us generous people right now.
Christian hope helps right now also in our relationships. Sometimes the realistic thing to do is give up all ordinary expectation that someone we are having trouble with is going to change. One of our men Friday morning shared a story like that about a co-worker. But the hope we have in Christ, that we may not just spend a few years or decades with someone, but eternity, can help us look at that annoying, difficult person with a love we could never manage without that hope. We can see them not as they are now, but as what they will be when healed and made whole in Jesus.
Finally, Christian hope can help us right now when every other hope is truly and completely gone. If nothing else, this pandemic has been an opportunity for us as Christians to think about dying and how we are going to do it. As we remember men and women who died for their country or caring for others, most of us will feel some desire of our own to die well, to die bravely, to die, at least, in peace. That’s exactly when our Christian hope that death is not the end of everything can make a huge difference, right now.
An old Christian bit of liturgy at a graveside begins, “In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ…” That sure and certain hope, that rich hope Paul is talking about here, makes all the difference in how we lay our loved ones and friends to rest, in how you and I may lay our own selves down for the last time. We do it in an assurance that goes beyond any hope this life offers.
The last couple verses of our text, 22 and 23, talk more about how everything is under the authority of Jesus Christ as He sits at God’s right hand, “under his feet,” like those disciples were, even as Jesus was rising up into heaven. But look there at the end of verse 22 and 23, at the reason behind our Lord’s authority, “for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” That is one more reason for rich and sure hope. You and I were created to be, and will be forever, part of something bigger and more glorious than our own selves. Jesus did everything He did, including rising up to sit down in power and glory, for this strange and wonderful mystery of which you and I are members, the Church.
That’s why we must say that the Church, that our church, never closed. We don’t need to worry too much about when some government authority tells we can open our building, because Jesus has been keeping His church open here on earth all along.
The very fact we are still in some way together in spite of a virus, in spite of the fact that we can’t use our building yet, in spite of our own individual worries and problems, points us again to our hope. We are going to be together. We hope it might be at 3636 West 18th Avenue before too long, but we, most of all and more certainly, hope that it will be forever and ever with our Lord Jesus Christ. That hope is always open for us.
Amen.
Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2020 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj
[1] See https://positivepsychology.com/hope-therapy/.