L.D. 19, Ephesians 1:15-23 "The Big Inside" Scott Hoezee

If you walk into most any Protestant or Roman Catholic church sanctuary, the likelihood is that the dominant symbol you will see is the cross. As in our own sanctuary, so in most churches the cross is typically front and center. But if you go into just about any Eastern or Greek Orthodox church sanctuary, you will be overwhelmed by a huge icon, or painting, of Christ Pantocrator. This Pantocrator image is often painted onto the inside of the church's vast dome or, if the church doesn't have a dome, this icon will dominate the front wall of the church in the same place where we have our cross here.

"Pantocrator" is the Greek word for "Ruler of All" and it is an image of Jesus that emerges from Ephesians 1. In just about all Pantocrator icons, Jesus stares directly out at you with wide and often rather stern eyes. His outer robe is deep blue, symbolizing the majesty and mystery of God and the tunic he wears under this robe is red, symbolizing Jesus' shed blood. In his left hand Jesus holds a Bible, and his right hand is raised to give a blessing, with two fingers held up and the other three fingers held together, symbolizing the two natures of Christ (divine and human) and the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

If you've ever seen one of these massive Pantocrator icons, then you know what a powerful effect it can have on you. The majesty, power, and dominion of Jesus are depicted in ways that inspire awe. Also, the sheer scale of some of the larger such icons dwarfs us. Interestingly, I learned this past week that in many Orthodox circles the sternness of the Jesus seen in larger Pantocrator icons is compensated for in smaller paintings by giving Jesus gentler facial expressions and kinder eyes. So a smaller Pantocrator icon that you might see in someone's home will still convey all the majesty of Jesus as the Ruler of All but it will be more personal, a reminder that Jesus is still also the gentle and good shepherd.

Striking that kind of a balance between the cosmic Christ who rules all things and the more meek Jesus you meet in the gospel stories has been a perennial challenge for the church. Even the Catechism reflects this effort. If we say that Jesus is this all-powerful and universal King, may we still dare to approach him? Can Jesus be all-powerful and yet also still be a merciful dispenser of just the grace we need? After all, if you put too much emphasis on the almighty nature of Jesus, then the fierceness and raw holiness of that could put some people off. Indeed, it could be downright frightening.

So the Catechism softens this up a bit by reminding us that a key exercise of Jesus' awesome power is his protection of us. What's more, even though he will return one day as an uncompromising judge, we don't need to worry about that: the verdict on us is already in and the verdict is that we are now innocent because of the Jesus who took the punishment we would otherwise have coming to us.

In fact, Q&A 52 of the Catechism was very radical when it was written. Throughout the Middle Ages the church had used the specter of judgment to scare people into doing what the church said. Many churches put horrifying paintings of the last judgment right overtop of the church's front door. You couldn't even get into a church building without being smacked up-side the head with a stern warning: behave or else!

Those of you who have seen paintings in museums of the last judgment may recall that the artists of that era were graphic to the point of a kind of grim pornography in depicting the hellish torments of those judged sinful by Jesus. So considering that all of that was common at the time the Catechism was composed, you can see why it might be radical to ask, "How does Christ's return 'to judge the living and the dead' comfort you?" Since some in the church had long tried to inspire dread at the prospect of being judged, suggesting that this could become a source of comfort was indeed a very different approach.

This morning I'd like us also to spend a little time teasing out some of the implications of the idea that Jesus is now both the Pantocrator whose sheer power boggles our minds and the tender Savior who gently calls us to enter his rest. In the run of your average day, what might it mean to you to know that the Son of God to whom you have committed your life is at once your friend and also the fierce Ruler of All whose power is so terrible that it makes even the demons run for cover?

To answer that question, I'd like to suggest that we take our passage from Ephesians 1 in reverse order. That may seem an odd thing to do, but the punch of this remarkable passage may well get preserved better if we work backwards. A first item to note is that this passage shows the apostle Paul on one whale of a verbal tear. Most scholars believe that the original Greek of verses 15-23 is exactly one very long and very complex sentence! Our English translation has broken this up into nine verses and five sentences but the Greek text has no stops whatsoever. Paul here evinces a kind of breathless prose--the kind of verbal gush you sometimes get from a child who cannot get the words out fast enough to tell you about some great and fun experience he or she just had.

The climax of all this exuberant rhetoric comes in verses 21-23 where Paul piles up the accolades for Jesus. At the right hand of the Father, Jesus soars far above every other kind of ruler or authority. Paul seems intent here on throwing in just about every word, title, and authoritative concept that he can just to make sure he has the bases covered. He mentions rule, authority, power, and dominion. His original words suggest that Paul is encompassing every kind of political structure here on this earth as well as all spiritual dimensions. So whether you are talking about a Caesar, a king, a governor, a president, or a prime minister, Jesus outstrips them all. Whether you are talking about angels, demons, spiritual forces, or even the devil himself, Jesus outstrips them all. Also, you can throw in every honor and title of rank and respect you can think of, but not one of them could stand up to the title Jesus now bears as Lord of lords and King of kings. To further cinch his case, Paul says in verse 21 that this is the situation not just for now but for all times, including any and all future ages yet to come. Nobody will ever outrank, outstrip, or overrule Jesus.

So if all of that is true, it is not surprising to find that all things are under Jesus' feet. He is the head of the Church, yes, but also of every creature, every person, every nation, and every far-flung corner of the cosmos. The very last phrase of this exhaustive (and exhausting!) verbal binge is difficult even to translate as Paul is tripping over his own tongue. In Greek it's almost a tongue-twister because the words for "fill," "fullness," "each," and "every" all start with the letter "p." Strung together they are pleroma panta pasin pleromenou. Maybe we can preserve the tone of the original Greek if we paraphrase it this way: Jesus is the ever-filling fullness of filling for filling up each and every thing that can be filled!

This is indeed a classic biblical text on Christ as Pantocrator, Ruler of All. The picture here could not be grander. And so here is a view of Jesus that maybe we do not often ponder. This is a Jesus who spans the galaxies. This is a Jesus who is behind every single speck of matter in the known universe but this is also a Jesus who could hold the entire cosmos in the palm of his hand the way you or I would hold a marble. The sum total of all the light that emanates from billions of galaxies is just a twinkle in Jesus' eye and yet the details of that universe are known intimately by this same Jesus. This is finally a Jesus beyond our ability to grasp, a Christ beyond our reckoning. How can you be bigger than the entire solar system and yet still have your eye upon the sparrow? How can you be mightier than the sum total of every president, king, queen, prime minister, dictator, and ruler on the earth right now and yet at also be concerned for the welfare of the widow and the orphan?

Indeed, what would prevent a person from seizing on exactly Paul's zestful rhetoric only to conclude that it is simply ludicrous to think that any of us matters to this cosmic Lord? He's too big, we're too small. If last night before bed you prayed to God in Jesus' name to heal your daughter's broken arm, can you seriously believe that, given the grand sweep of everything this Jesus encompasses, a busted humerus bone would even register for him? In fact, while we're at it anyway, take the sum total of your life so far, highlighting especially the finest work you've managed to do: aren't you still so puny in comparison to this lofty comet-thrower and planet-spinner as to be finally a nobody?

Of course we know that this is certainly not the conclusion Paul wants you to draw. But what prevents it? The answer comes in the first part of this passage and the answer is faith. Paul starts things off by saying that he has heard about the faith of the Ephesian Christians and because of the good report he heard, he has not stopped giving thanks for them ever since. These people have a faith that has led also to great love. Such faith is itself a gift of God, and so Paul wants to see God the Father add to that gift. "I am praying that the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus will give you the Holy Spirit so that your hearts will be filled with wisdom and revelation. Because then you will know God even better with eyes and hearts wide open to take God in."

The Spirit of God lives in our hearts. Faith is our connection with the living God and because that faith comes from the Spirit of God, faith itself is alive. And it is in every single one of us. We are tethered to the glorious God of the galaxies. But notice something else in verses 17 and 18: Paul says that as God continues to thicken our faith, we will keep getting to know God better. That means that it is faith that shows you all the power, glory, and dominion of Jesus that Paul talks about in the verses we already looked at. You can't see the cosmic Pantocrator without faith. All of Paul's exuberance in this passage about the nature of the cosmic Christ will be invisible to you if you don't have faith.

So it is faith that shows you Christ Pantocrator, the ever-filling fullness filling all that can be filled. But precisely because faith is such a gift of God the Father through the Holy Spirit, you are not frightened by the Jesus you see. Because the other thing that faith does is detailed by Paul in verses 18 and 19: faith seals right into your heart the riches of the inheritance Jesus has waiting for you as a result of the working of his incomparable power.

Here is all the mystery of the gospel in a single line. Yes, Jesus holds all the galactic marbles. Yes, Jesus has a power and an authority and a dominating rule of all that is finally so much bigger than any one of us as to be ridiculous. But here is the good news: somehow Jesus is able to compress and compact all that power so that it can fit inside your heart and my heart! Have you ever seen one of those Hoberman Spheres? A scientist by the name of Hoberman figured out how to make an amazing thing called an "icosadodecohedron." It is a round ball made up of hundreds of rods, each one of which is multi-jointed to others. Some years ago at a science museum in New Jersey, my family and I saw a giant one of these in the museum's great hall. When that particular Hoberman Sphere is fully expanded, it is a ball that spans probably thirty or forty feet in diameter--it's quite huge. But when it is compacted and all the parts of the sphere are collapsed in on each other, the whole thing shrinks down to something not much bigger than a beachball.

Jesus' galactic power as Pantocrator is rather like that: it is every bit as huge and all-consuming in its sweep as Paul describes at the end of Ephesians 1. Yet by a miracle of God's Holy Spirit, it can collapse down into something shaped just like the human heart and that can fit right inside the human heart, too. And when by faith that power is inside of you, then you know that God's might is always in service of love for God's children.

It's the mystery of the incarnation all over again. When the apostle John began his gospel, he was very clear that the Son of God was the Word of God who had made this entire creation. But then he says, "The Word became flesh." The powerful Son of God who fashioned every atom in the universe somehow managed to contract all the way down to no more than a zygote inside a maiden's uterus. The Word of the Father, full of grace and truth and containing the very power of creation, made himself so small that for a time, you would have needed a microscope to see him!

Why? Because God so loved the world. Because God so loved you and me and every one of us. Jesus as Pantocrator does not possess power for power's sake. He holds in his hands the reign and rule of the ages but only because he wants to channel all that energy into the service of saving this world gone bad. So yes, faith opens the eyes of your heart to show you a Christ Jesus whose almighty nature could blow you away and force you to flee in abject terror. But because it is the personal gift of faith that shows you this, you don't cower, you don't run away. Because faith also reminds you that all that power is now inside of you in the form of God's everlasting love.

In a poignant moment of C.S. Lewis's "Chronicles of Narnia," the children at one point walk into what appeared from the outside to be no more than a shabby little building. But once they step into it, they discover a vastness they could not have guessed at before. "Why," Lucy exclaims, "it's bigger on the inside than on the outside." "Yes," another character replies, "something like that once happened on earth. In a place called Bethlehem there was a tiny stable whose inside was bigger than its outside because that stable contained the whole world."

There are lots of reasons why Christians of all people should not be small minded or narrow minded. There are lots of reasons why Christians of all people should have a vision for life and for salvation and for the church that quite literally spans the world and beyond. But no such reason is as compelling as the thought that each one of our hearts contains the whole world through the power of the Pantocrator who somehow has managed once again to shrink himself down to a size that fits inside you and me. That's why we should show a love that, near as others can tell, has no limits or bounds. That's why we should display a compassion that does not dry up just because we encounter an ethnic or sociological barrier with which we're not familiar or because we conclude that so-and-so got what he had coming to him (and so why have compassion on him?).

Of course, Jesus as Pantocrator is also the just judge, and so having this Jesus in our hearts does not spell the end of our being able to discern right from wrong, good from evil, proper ways of living from destructive ways. But even our judgments are nestled within a cosmic context of a divine love that led Jesus to a cross. Even our judgments need to be cruciform, tinged with grace more than with severity, aimed at the formation of hope more than striving for comeuppance. After all, if the Pantocrator has managed to compact all his power down into something that fits inside each one of us, can't we at least try to take our love and compassion and try to make it fit inside the lives of the confused, hurting people around us? Isn't incarnating ourselves inside other people's lives the gospel thing to do?

The faith that shows us the love of God is what keeps us from being scared off by the dominating authority and power of our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of all. Our task now is to make sure that as we live out that faith, we also are not so morally intimidating, outraged, or aloof as to put other people off. After all, if the Pantocrator of the galaxies does not scare us away, why would we as Christ's representatives ever want to scare off anyone else? Amen.