Epiphany 2006

Read Ephesians 3:1-12.

YOU HAVE ACCESS!

I’ve been real proud of myself for the last six months. Each morning I walk into the office and log into my computer. We each have a password that we set, and it changes every 30 days. For six months, I have known my passwords. I haven’t forgot them. Until today.

It figures that I was in a rush. I just wanted to stop and shoot off a quick email before I went to get my haircut. So I entered my password, and nothing. It beeped at me. That real annoying kind of beep too. The one that says, “You’re in trouble. What you need, I have, and you can’t access it without your password.”

So I tried other passwords. I tried capitalizing certain letters. I tried. And finally I had to admit defeat and walk over to Bob and ask for help. I couldn’t access my computer.

For thousands of years, folks have been looking for ways to access God. Different religions are built upon different ways to access God. Buddhism shows you how to have access to the divine through its principles, Islam has its own way to access God, Judaism has their way to access God, and Christians have their specific take on how to access God.

Religion tries to give you access to God. But what Paul says here in Ephesians is that religion can never give you access to God. Paul would know this too. He was the best religionist that there ever was. He was trained in the finest religion school, and became a leader among his people. When Christians began to grow in numbers, Paul was one of the first to try to stomp them out. He tried to stomp them out because he did not agree with their version of how to access God.

On his way to Damascus to persecute more Christians, Paul was stopped by a great light and a loud voice that asked, “Paul, why do you persecute me?” Paul was confused because he wasn’t persecuting any one individual. He persecuted everyone who belonged to the Way, the ones who followed Jesus of Nazareth.

But the voice made it clear to him, that when he persecuted the church, he was persecuting Christ himself. After his encounter, Paul became blind, went off to Damascus, sealed himself in a room, and did not eat for three days. He had much to think about.

The voice later visited a man named Ananias. Ananias was told to visit Paul, because the Lord had great things in store for him. Ananias was dumbfounded, he was to go visit the one man who put fear into the hearts of every Christian. But Ananias visited Paul. When he encountered him, he announced himself to him, and immediately scales fell off of Paul’s eyes. He could see, and what he saw changed his life.

Paul saw that for thousands of years, folks had missed the point. They had created laws, rules, and regulations that mitigated their access to God. If you wanted to access God, then you had to follow a certain way. You had to live morally, righteously, and holy. But no one could ever do that full-time. No one could ever live that perfectly. No one had direct access to God.

What he saw after his blindness is that no person can ever access God. Instead God becomes accessible to us through Jesus.

Many people have questions about the nature of God. What is God like? Does he live in heaven? Is he a Spirit? Does he exist? Is he a “he” at all? And many folks have tried to answer these questions. But all of our answers fall short of God’s answer to us. God’s answer is Jesus.

For Christians, we tell the story of how we have access to God because God finds us first in the person of Jesus. We don’t offer a way to access God. We offer Jesus. If you want to know what God is like, then turn to Jesus.
Don’t turn to the maleness of Jesus. Turn to Jesus’ actions, to his compassion, to his mercy, to his righteous anger. Look at how he thinks through the faith; look at how he lives it like no one else can. Look at how he forgives sins, and look at how death cannot hold him in.

Paul says to the Ephesians to stop trying to gain access to God. It has already been given to you in Jesus. Follow him, love him, obey him, and offer him to others. Tell them that they don’t have to work so hard anymore to find God. God has already found them. And tonight we join with the three kings to celebrate how God finds us. In the tiny squeals of a baby. A baby named Jesus.