audio forthcoming….

Psalm 100:2, 4 Know this: God is God; God has made us, and we’re Abba God’s; we’re God’s people and the sheep of God’s pasture. God is good; God’s mercy is everlasting; and Abba God’s faithfulness endures from age to age.

Introduction

God lives at the end of infinity; God finds God’s home in the finite. God is the first movement; God is the last movement. God is immortal; but then God is mortal. God is beyond the stars; God is the very twinkle in the eye of the one who loves you. God is so far; but also? God is so near. God is here but only because God is not here, too. It’s hard to speak succinctly about God.

Dorothee Sölle refers to God as the “far-near God.” Grand-humble; royal-common; immaterial-material; here-there; far-near. These paradoxical statements keep God just in our grasp and just outside of it. To declare that God is “far” and only “far” is to objectify God and force God into a (far) corner thus (ironically) to make God small, figured out, caged, folded up like an origami God and stuck in a wallet. And we cannot render God strictly close as God is only near, never far. In this equation God becomes (logically) too small, no different than that voice in your head, your conscience, and ceases to be God because there is no distinction between your inner person and God—the confusion here becomes dastardly when one’s own wishes and desires are mistaken for God’s (acts of violence, narcissistic manipulation, etc.).

To speak of God is to speak in paradox, holding as one two statements appearing to be antithetical while seeing they deeply relate as one existing in the other. (Death in life, life in death.) Here is where the letter of Ephesians shines, for me. The language employed by the author of Ephesians plays with the stretchiness of paradox like the way a womb can expand to comfort and nourish the entire life held within its embrace.

Ephesians 1:15-23

On account of this I also heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and the love toward all the holy ones. I do not cease being thankful concerning you mentioning [you] when making my prayers, so that the God of the Lord Jesus Christ, the progenitor of glory, maybe give you a spirit of wisdom and a revelation in knowledge of God…[1]

Eph. 1:15-16

The author of Ephesians writes this section in single sentence,[2] peppered with small-big, near-far statements about God. The author commends the Ephesian Christians for their faith and that this faith leads them to love outwardly. Their inward faith renders them turned outward and not inward, toward their neighbors; smallness located in bigness. Then the author brings together their own thankfulness for the Ephesian Christians in tight correlation to their prayers to God. This gratitude for these Christians weaves its way into Paul’s prayers eliminating the distance between the two; nearness located in farness. Then the author brings to the fore that this God who is the source of glory is also the one who gives of God’s own spirit of wisdom to those who believer, granting them a revelation in knowledge of God. Something big in something small in something big. It is God in Christ in the Spirit that participates through Paul into the Ephesian Christians in the Church. [3] The big in the small and the small in the big; the far in the near and the near in the far.

…the eyes of your heart having been enlightened in order that you behold what hope there is of God’s calling, what wealth of God’s inheritance in the holy ones, and that which is beyond the greatness of God’s strength in us, the ones who believe according to the activity of God’s might of strength.

Eph. 1:18-19

Again, the author of Ephesians continues with these big-small, far-near statements. It’s the God who acted in Christ—way back when—who calls now; God’s far voice comes near, divine soundwaves beckoning down long hallways of history taking those who hear from any era into the Christ who lived and died and rose again as if that then was and is now. In this way God still acts now not as an historical event still working itself out, but as a current event in our lives; the far-near God, the historical-current God.

Better yet, it is the historical-current-future God speaking to God’s historical-current-future church, granting wisdom and knowledge of God’s self according to the context of the believers, as they are and where they are, as they all await their inheritance by their hope. [4] And this hope that lays hold of God’s historical promise currently spoken to them while trusting God will fulfill that promise in their future, is not only a sentiment. This hope informs and forms the Ephesian Christians’ praxis in the world (evidenced in their love for their neighbor mentioned at the outset).[5]

This God worked out in Christ by raising him from the dead and making him to sit on God’s righthand in the heavens high above all rule and authority and power and domain while being named above all names, not only in eternity but also in this coming one. And, God “subjected all things under his feet,” placing him as head above all things in the church. Wherever his body is there he is the fullness of all fulfilling.

Eph. 1:20-23

And here at the end of our passage, the bigness of God resides in the smallness of those who are called; the far God is near to the ecclesia, the called ones. Here, the church is in Christ by faith and yet this Christ is the one who fills the church.[6] The great Christ, the one who is above all powers and authorities and domains and names and who sits at the righthand of God is the same one who is present in the small church and shows up where this small, fragile, vulnerable, and humble body is by faith in the power of the holy Spirit, participating in his self-witness. The small church carries the big burden that is the light yoke of faith in Christ, bringing Christ and thus God with them in their praxis in the world by faith manifesting as love toward the neighbor.

Conclusion

God is the far-near God, the big-small God, the here-there God, the infinite-finite God. The largeness of God is also God’s intimate closeness, farness that is nearness, the immaterial that ends in the material; the divine that intersects with the human.

But what does this have to do with us? Well, we are wrapped up in this great big-smallness, this far-nearness. And we are not only wrapped up in it but brought further in to God to be closer to the neighbor, bringing this far-near, big-small God closer to those who have been deprived of access to God. This is the witness of the church in the world: God for us, God for you, God for me. We, the church, are called in our faith to be as Christ in the world bringing God’s love, life, and liberation to those who are trapped under the principalities and powers of kingdom of humanity.[7]

Beloved, Christ witnessed God into the world; after Christ ascended, the divine Holy Spirit came to make the church God’s witness of God in the world in Christ’s name as Christ’s body, bringing the world and its inhabitants into the manifold grace and mercy of God. We are called and inspired to bring the big God into the smallest recesses of the earth, into the hearts of those who are crying out because of oppression and marginalization. We are filled by Christ with Christ to bring the far God near to those who suffer under alienation and isolation. Because where the body of Christ goes, there Christ goes, there the far-near, big-small God goes.

---

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[2] Markus Barth, Ephesians, The Anchor Bible (Garden City: Double Day, 1974. 160. “…Eph 1:15-23 has the form of one long sentence.”

[3] Barth, Ephesians, 160. “The main agents are God, the Spirit, and the Messiah. The apostle, the saints, and the church are mentioned in tun.”

[4] Barth, Ephesians, 160. “Again, the action of God is not limited to the past. Rather the faith, prayer, and community of the saints are related to that God who is still pouring out his Spirit, increasing knowledge, proving his might over all power, filling the church and the world. The saints are still to attain to an heirdom which lies before them; their faith (and love) cannot be genuine unless it is a hope relying on God who has made a promise, gives hope, and will keep his word.”

[5] Barth, Ephesians, 163. “…’wisdom’ and ‘knowledge’ imparted by the Spirit are not limited to perception, learning, and theoretical insight, but show the wise man how to live. It is characteristic that knowledge cannot exist without growth and expansion. A knower remains a learner, and knowledge will always seek to give others a share in its contents.”

[6] Barth, Ephesians, 160. “Thus the end leads back to the beginning, a reference to the communion of saints. But while the saints were described at the beginning as being ‘in Christ,’ at the end Christ seems to be portrayed as the one who is filling them.”

[7] Barth, Ephesians, 176. “…the message of Ephesians is concerned less with the salvation of the individual soul than with the peace between man, his fellow man and God, i.e. less with private piety than with the social character s of the church and its mission to the world.”