Psalm 14
1st Reading : 2 Kings 4.42-end
2nd Reading: Ephesians 3.14-end
Gospel : John 6.1-21
Text: I pray that you may know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge (Ephesians3.19)
How can we know anything that surpasses knowledge? What is Paul trying to say? The wealth and splendour of the great city of Ephesus is apparent even from what is left of it to-day. In his letter to the Christian community there, Paul addresses some of the great issues that engaged the Greco-Roman world of his time, notably the quest for knowledge and the elusive key to the mystery of life. The gods of Olympus were still being venerated in splendid temples, but thoughtful people were no longer convinced that their all too human deities – with their clouds of incense and their fake mysteries- offered a convincing answer to life’s great questions. The sense of a real mystery waiting to be revealed was equally prominent in Jewish apocalyptic writings of this period. Bringing to both traditions his perception of the truth about God which he has seen in the life of Jesus, Paul senses that he has been entrusted with the task of revealing the mystery to Jews and Greeks alike, and he seizes the opportunity to do so in a letter addressed to a community of mainly Jewish Christian in a Greek city.
Paul was utterly convinced that the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and not least the ongoing power of his Spirit at work in the lives of individual believers and the church community, held the key to the apocalyptic visions of Judaism as well as the yearning for god-given knowledge and power which the Greek world was seeking. The first half of his letter to the church at Ephesus consists of an extended prayer, in which he gives thanks for the faith and love which they have shown, and prays that as they accept Christ into their hearts, they will discover in Him – and gain access to – the knowledge and the power which has been the visionary dream of Jews and Gentiles alike.
The short passage we read this morning contains the concluding petitions of his prayer, which sum up much of what he has been saying. The process begins as we are being rooted and grounded in love. Love is the growing medium, so to speak, in which the young Christian seedling is planted out. Our first experience of Christ’s love is usually mediated to us through the love that we receive from those who care for us whether within the family at home or within the family of the church. At some point in our lives, and it may be by a gradual process or in a moment of clear decision, we come to accept and welcome that presence of Christ in our hearts. Then we find – like a plant that begins to flourish in an appropriate growing medium – that we are being strengthened in our inner being with power through his Spirit. The longer-term vision is that this process, fed by love, continues until we grow into the love of Christ in every possible dimension – breadth and length and height and depth – until finally, as Paul puts it, we come to know the love that surpasses knowledge, and are utterly filled with the fullness of God. At this point Paul’s visionary language has taken wing to describe an experience that is beyond description, a total absorption into the love of God that is almost certainly beyond the reach of our experience in this life.
And yet the thought that we might come to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge is deeply attractive. There are times in our lives when nothing makes sense any more, when all we can do is hang on in the darkness to our faith that God loves us, our faith that he has not and will not let us go. Is that perhaps how we experience something of what it means to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, the love that knows and does not dismiss the misery and pain that we know, the love that shines through our tears, not to banish them but to bless them.
How can we know anything that surpasses knowledge? Our Gospel reading told the story of Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand, which St John will go on to interpret as prefiguring our sharing in the bread of life which is his body. As a Christian community, dedicated to worship and service, we receive the bread of life which becomes his presence within us and among us. Perhaps the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge is the love that fills our hearts and stills our fears, when knowledge and words and rational understanding all fail us.
In any case, as we prepare to celebrate the mystery of Christ’s presence among us, with Paul’s prayer in our hearts, there is no better conclusion to take with us than his own words:
Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.