rooted and grounded

Rooted and grounded – Ephesians 3:17, John 6:1-24

“ ….and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.”
I hope that most of you managed to get, at least, a flavour of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. I have to confess I will not be spending many hours glued to sports about which I know very little and to which I feel little affinity but in recent years these celebrations of life and culture which mark the beginning of Games have been spectacles in their own right.
The opening of London 2012 was no exception and in a sweeping view of British culture and history somehow the production did capture quite a lot of British identity with honesty and humour but without, at least I thought, too much syrupy sentimentality. It is too easy for us to celebrate the things we want the tourists to see – the palaces and castles, the red post boxes and landmarks and the legendary cups of tea which we all know really come mostly from bags in mugs rather than leaves in fine china.
The idea of capturing what we are about and experiencing who we really are is one which is hard to express. This is true in all areas of life – not just our national culture, but if you have ever written a mission statement for an organization you will know just how hard it is to focus into a few words what seems to each individual in the group quite obvious.
This prayer in the Letter to the Ephesians captures a good essence of what it is to be a follower of Christ. It is one of those passages which is worth sticking up in front of the sink or on the bathroom mirror for a couple of weeks so that you can see it often and chew over what it is saying. Whilst the Epistles have some fairly indigestible passages in them, this is one which reminds me of a nice warm sunset by the beach, with gently rippling waves – it hints at the might of the ocean and the heat of the day – but leaves us comfortable and comforted in a world of hope and promise.
It reminds me of Romans 8 where excitement almost gushes out of Paul after he gets through a real tangle of theology. There he talks about love which will hold onto us through length, breadth, depth and height. Here the author talks about love which is to be experienced by those who follow Christ – a love whose dimensions are beyond knowledge, a fullness of God which can be experienced and known but not explained.
The Gospel today may not seem to link immediately to this idea but in amongst John revealing who Jesus is – the tent posts of his Gospel, these saying of Jesus which start with “I am” he gives pictures of how this works.  Chapter 6 is built around this central asertation that Jesus is the Bread of life which comes later in verse 35 – but of course that is next week’s Gospel and so I will not upset my colleagues by preaching it a week early!
However, it is worth knowing it is coming and that the end of the chapter is full of debate about what exactly Jesus meant by the statement. The feeding of the five thousand gives a clear picture of the actual ability which Jesus has to remove our hunger but in the passage about Jesus walking on the water we also find out that Jesus removes our mortal terror when we are faced with danger – Do not be afraid he commands the Disciples.
This faith that they are being grown in, brought up in, settling in to – this faith is Jesus, is not one which sits easily – but they are being asked to rest safe in the knowledge that they will be taken care of, guided, looked after. Jesus, in John’s Gospel is way, truth, life, gate, shepherd, vine, bread, water and resurrection – a picture painted in great variety and great honesty. John does not shy away from the fact that this is not an easy path to choose and that followers of Jesus will meet opposition and fear and get hungry and lost and come under attack but for everything Jesus is the answer and it is in Him that they find both the source of their being and the answers to their needs.
And suddenly that brings us crashing back to Ephesians – the idea that in all things rest in Christ, that we are rooted and grounded in the love of God. But this story of assurance, this prayer of hope comes out of a place of suffering – Paul is in prison for the sake of the Gospel. Although it is likely that this letter was actually written by someone using Paul as the central character but after his death – this assurance that Jesus is all in all is very much a part of Paul’s theology – as we have seen this is the central assurance of Romans – a letter definitely written by Paul.
So back to the Olympics. The sentimentality, if there was one, was to compare a rural idyll of the pre-industrial age with the sweated toil of the industrial revolution. Anyone who has done any reading on rural history will know that idyll was often broken by very real starvation and uncertainty. But through all the harshness of industry rose a spirit which challenged previous ages, and which challenged us in this country still, and that was how to make things better for everyone – the second part of the production featured the NHS – a great question for our time.
It is all very well knowing we are rooted and grounded in Jesus, that things will turn out OK but what does that mean to our every day life – what does that lend to our character and give to the quality of our dealings with the world. Perhaps it is just like that vague sense of “being British” – that there is something beyond reach and explanation which is what being a Christian is all about – coupled with a vague idea that it come out in the wash – well somehow. And this is all to often how we sell ourselves, fuzzy sentimental religion which spends time picking over its own bones rather than dealing head on with the issues which surround us – children who give up hope before the reach secondary school, a society which is cash rich and life poor, indecision about who we are as a nation, what our values are and a definite undermining of religion in all it forms, but especially the historic priviledge of the Church of England.
We sit uneasy on many of these fences and they are uneasy places to sit. But being rooted and grounded in Christ does not mean hovering above the surface of life it means knowing that Jesus is food and drink and life and direction not out of some vague sense of doing the right thing for us but because food and drink and life and direction are what we will need if we dare to truly engage on this journey.
There were three (or was it four) hymns used during the opening ceremony. The first was Jerusalem – which is often seen as sentimental – but Blake’s vision of bringing the hope of a New Jerusalem to the industrial slums which he witnessed – the vehemence and passion of spears of burning gold and chariots of fire to achieve the building of the heavenly city here in England is often lost in a strange sentimentality. Historian Tim Stanley wrote yesterday in the Telegraph blog:
“So after all of this, what is Britain? A country that can still put on a show, that has many identities, that is culturally rich, that has a battered landscape, that lost a lot when the factories were first built, that has patches of God still found lying about……..” That has patches of God lying about.
Society does not stand still, and people around us do not think to water the patches of God or to see them flourish – that is our job. Our mission is to everyone and all the time but not for each of us all at once. There are places of curiosity, places where people have questions or express hunger or fear. Then we are called, in those little rays of light which fall as patches of God, which bring our faith to a place where it can be gently shared, then we are called to demonstrate where we are rooted and grounded, who this Jesus is for us and might be for them. There is so much small religion which could be turned into great faith, patches which could be cultivated into great swathes of life.
There is a hymn which wonderfully paraphrases Ephesians 3 – the second verse goes like this:

Rooted and grounded in thy love,

with saints on earth and saints above,

we join in full accord:

to know the breadth, length, depth, and height,

the crucified and risen might

of Christ, the incarnate Word.

But it is not just for us, we must join with that prayer in Ephesians and expand it not just that we will have an ever expanding view of God and God’s love, but that somehow, through us, that message will not be some vaguely looked for happiness, but a real experience of grace and growth for those around us, as patches turn from forgotten byways into the arteries of life.