The Wide Arch of the Ranged Empire: Ephesians 1:15-23
Christ the King Sunday
I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your
love toward all the saints, and for this reason 16 I
do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers, 17 that
the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of
wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, 18 so
that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may perceive what is the
hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious
inheritance among the saints, 19 and what is the
immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the
working of his great power. 20 God put this
power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his
right hand in the heavenly places, 21 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. 22 And he has put all things under his
feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, 23 which
is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (NRSVUE)
One of the things I truly like about
Thanksgiving dinners is the ways in which the conversations, every year, are
wildly unpredictable. This can be
unpredictable in an awful way, unfortunately, but when it’s good it can be
hilarious; I have had Thanksgivings in my life where I was asked about my
favorite element on the periodic table (I don’t have one, but my uncle does),
told where the best era for time travelling was (that person said early 18th
century, with which I vehemently disagree), and listened—multiple times—to explanations
of the history and culture of baseball.
(I still think it’s a dull game.)
This year, I found myself in a challenge over the best of William
Shakespeare’s tragedies (it’s King Lear, of course).
Yet there were some who argued for a
lesser-known tragedy, Antony and Cleopatra. That play is a wildly romanticized imagining
of the end of the Roman triumvirate centered around the doomed relationship of
the title characters as Marc Antony focuses too much on his infatuation with
the queen of Egypt and gets outfoxed by Octavius Caesar. It certainly isn’t my favorite, especially
after spending years studying actual Roman history, but it does have the intensity
of Shakespeare’s language that yields some marvelous quotes.
In
the very first scene of the play, Antony and Cleopatra are together at her
palace when a messenger arrives from Rome.
Cleopatra urges Antony to pay attention and hear whether Caesar has
something important to say, but he is already too wrapped up in her. “Call in the messengers,” she tells him, and
Antony responds dismissively, “Let Rome in Tiber melt and the wide arch / Of
the ranged empire fall. Here is my space. / Kingdoms are clay.”[1]
It’s a bold statement, and ultimately
one that leads to his death, to declare that the entire might of the Roman
Empire can go stuff itself in the face of his desire to be with his love. It’s also quite the declaration of where Antony’s
notion of power lies and whether Caesar truly has the command over his co-ruler
that he thinks he does.
A similar subversive dismissiveness
rings through the verses of today’s reading.
The letter to the Ephesians is an odd duck in the Biblical canon because
we can’t quite pin it down to a time period; Margaret MacDonald of St. Francis
Xavier University writes that “many commentators now argue that the work had
more than one purpose…some argue that it more closely resembles a liturgical
piece [or] a sermon…in light of the challenges of the latter decades of the
first century CE when the death of the apostles and growing diversity of church
teachings…required new emphasis on the identity of the church”. We’re not even quite sure of the author. “In modern scholarship, the majority view…is
that the work was written in Paul’s name by a close associate.”[2] Although addressed to the community at
Ephesus, it’s possible that this was a circular letter meant for several
fledgling kinships in the clunky and young Church—which makes it all the more
remarkable that it is so adamant about who has what power and authority.
“I have heard of your faith in the
Lord Jesus…and I do not cease to give thanks for you,” begins this passage, a
foundation of gratitude that is entirely apt in the season of Thanksgiving and
a traditional way to begin a letter of the time.[3] Professor C. Clifton Black of Princeton
Theological Seminary writes, “[Ephesians] in its entirety — is an uninterrupted
thanksgiving…Thanks are extended, not to the letter’s recipients, but to God
for stimulating the church’s faith, love, insight, and hope (verses 16-19).”[4]
The writer here gives thanks for a
God Who gives, among everything else, a “spirit of wisdom and revelation” so
the Ephesians can “perceive what is the hope to which He has called you.” What hope?
Not only to let the empire’s arches fall but to be reassured that
they will, that Rome with its divisions and injustices will drown, that
kingdoms are clay, that Christ is left standing after everything else fails, “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”.
There are a lot of things going on this
particular Sunday: it is the liturgical holiday recognizing Christ the King, an
interesting event in a church that is often discomforted by the language of
royalty. It is the Sunday after the
American holiday of Thanksgiving, a day of connection and gratitude with horrifically
whitewashed origins as well as civic questions about the ongoing impact of food
insecurity in cities both near and far.
It is the tail end of Native American Heritage Month, a federal recognition
since 1990 of the importance of the indigenous peoples in these United States
and yet a marked ongoing lack of accountability for preservation and honor as
those same people are threatened with loss of land, new pipelines, and ongoing
culture erasure. It is the Sunday before
Advent begins, a strange and beautiful beginning of the Christian year where
Christ is King and an unexpected and powerless infant and neither identity
cancels out the other.
Rather
a lot more to ponder than the U of M/OSU game.
I’m aware
that many here don’t roll with the language of kingdoms, and that’s valid. It’s hard, especially for Americans with our
ongoing legacy of imperialism in the name of democracy, to name kings as
anything we would want to have, let alone worship. But this disciple of Paul’s veneration of
Christ, his prayer of hope, is not because he needed to trade one emperor for
another. Paul and his early followers knew
well how empires could crush and imprison.
But it was precisely that awareness of the fallibility of human lords
that spurred the celebration of a divine One; Christ not only is more emperor
than Caesar but completely remakes the entire concept. Professor Mark Tranvik of Luther Seminary
writes, “[W]hen Paul stresses in Ephesians that not only is Christ seated at
the right hand of God (Ephesians 1:20) but then goes on to remark that he is ‘far
above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that
is named’ (Ephesians 1:21), he is saying something about the relative power of
governments and rulers. While they certainly are to be respected (see Romans
13:1-7), they are not be equated in any way with the dominion of Christ
himself.”[5]
This is not
a king who taxes, traps, and tires his citizens; this is not an emperor who
hoards land and resources while civilians starve; this is not a lord who
sacrifices people for power. This is a
God Who is embodied in a brown, Jewish child, the son of a carpenter; this is a
God Who teaches that the last shall be first and that injustice is the highest
crime; this is a God Who allowed greed and fear to crucify Him only to defeat
death and return to charge the Church with a message of ferocious compassion
that refuses to ignore the lost, the least, and the cast-aside.
No wonder the letter speaks of this
as hope! No wonder there is thanksgiving
for the ways in which the letter’s recipients have been brought into the tale
of grace, of love, of life abundant!
Professor Black continues, “If the church’s witness is true, if in fact
God has made Christ the King, then no other power on this
earth is sovereign and deserves ultimate obedience...Before Christ the King,
all our idols collapse beneath his feet as rubble before the One who has
subjected all things to his Messiah (verse 22)…This letter does not deny deep
human divisions…[but the faith] is that none of these things can or will defeat
God, shackle his Christ, or enslave his church. Christ Jesus occupies the
heavenly throne now.
“…If Christ
is King, then Christians are not helpless victims. They are conduits of
Christ’s immeasurably redemptive power (verse 19): the church is the very body
of his fullness that fills all things with loving goodness (verses 22b-23; also
2:8, 10, 19-22; 3:10, 17-19).”[6]
“Let Rome
in Tiber melt,” says Antony who only has eyes for his girlfriend, but this
Church is Christ’s body, “the fullness of him who fills all in all,” writes Paul
with a heart full of hope. This is not a
declaration of war against empire but a satisfied observation that it’s already
been won; this is not an invitation to take power for ourselves and inevitably
break the beloved humans who fall to us but an encouragement to celebrate that Christ’s
rule is full of healing, dignity, and restoration. No authority, no power, no dominion can
overtake the God Who reaches out a hand to everyone and says, “Come, beloved
creation, and be made whole in the justice and mercy I wield.”
How
hope-filled are we, Church, that Christ is the kind of King who fills us with
goodness so that we might become love to the world? How do we come back from Thanksgiving
grateful for all our blessings but aware that there is so much work to be done
toward a just and merciful world? How do
we prepare for the waiting season of Advent to honor a God-made-human in such a
way that we, too, learn to love our own humanity and respect that of others in
all our complex, beautiful, infuriating diversity? How do we look at our own power structures
and idols and say to them kingdoms are clay but that we do not cease to
give thanks for those who remind us of faith, hope, and love?
It is in
education; learn who holds power and how they are using it, and fight for the
voiceless to be heard. It is management;
keep an eye on where you yourself are building wide arches of your own empire
and ignoring the ways in which Christ beckons you to serve in an entirely
different kind of kingdom. It is encouragement;
come together in thanksgiving and praise, we who are called the Church, to
recognize the gift of being able to shore each other up in the long work of
justice and mercy. And it is faith;
every day, it is a recommitment to the idea that there is hope in this God Who
fills all in all, Who loves beyond death into life, Who holds power not to
crush but to lift up. May we have such
faith, now and forever. Amen.
[1] Shakespeare,
Antony and Cleopatra, act I, scene 1, ll. 38–40 (Antony
and Cleopatra - Act 1, scene 1 | Folger Shakespeare Library)
[2] MacDonald,
“Ephesians,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible One Volume Commentary
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2010), 833.
[3]
See MacDonald on the nod to Hellenistic letters thanking the gods for the
recipient’s health, “Ephesians,” 835.
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