Named with Love

I decided to forgo the gospel reading this week in favor of the second lesson, Ephesians 3:14-20.  There is just something so basic about the letter to the Ephesians - talking about the basics of faith - and especially in this passage - how great God's love is for us.  So maybe I'll stick with Ephesians for a bit this summer and preach on some of the basics of faith. It also means that I get to avoid 5 weeks of bread.


Enjoy!

Are any of you named after someone?  Bob is named after his grandpa, my dad’s great aunt Suzie believed I was named after her because we shared the ever so common middle name of Elizabeth.  There is a lot in a name, and a whole new dynamic is added when you are named after someone.  If you are named after someone it is often a parent or a grandparent – possibly one of your parent’s favorite aunts or one of their siblings who died young.  You could be named after someone famous or a teacher who made a difference your parent’s life.   Sometimes being named after someone means you are named after a book or movie character.  Or possibly a biblical character – even if you spell your name differently. 

And as much as we are named by our parents we are also named by God.  During baptism we are claimed as daughters and sons of God.  We are baptized in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit and we are named with Christ or as today’s reading from Ephesians says – it is from the Father that every family in heaven and on earth takes its name.  We are named after God and we are named by God. 

But what does that mean?  Well if we continue reading in Ephesians it says that Christ dwells in our hearts, as we are rooted and grounded in love.   Christ dwells in our hearts – Christ lives in us!  Christ is part of us!  And through Christ, we are rooted and grounded in love.  To me at least to be rooted and grounded in love means that no matter what we do, no matter where we stray, no matter how far from God we seem to get, we are still at our very core loved!  We are still love by God throughout our whole lives. We are loved by God regardless of what we do because God is love.

These words can be very comforting but they can also be overwhelming.  Paul goes on to write in Ephesians – I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 

I’m overwhelmed just reading that.  Just that description of God’s love having breadth and length and height and depth makes it seem HUGE!!!

It is something that we can probably never understand, never comprehend, not matter how hard Paul prayed for us, no matter how much we pray that for ourselves.  Because really God’s love for us is beyond understanding. 

It is a love much like when our parents named us with love – carefully they picked out a name that was meaningful to them, often after someone else they loved.  It was not a name based on who you were already, some quality that you already had, but something or more likely someone they hoped you would be.  And it is with that same type of love that God has for us, one that gives us a name before we are even born.  But it is a love that is even greater – one that is not restricted by human understanding, one that has breadth and length and height and depth.  A love that was given to us before we were born, a love that loves us even when we screw up, regardless of how much we screw up, a love so great it is beyond measure.