Sermon for Trinity XVI, September 20th, 2026

Brothers and Sisters, we are so blessed to have Holy Scripture in our lives. Paul speaks to the Ephesians that his suffering is their glory because they have come to know Jesus as King because of it. Even in this, while he is currently in prison writing this, he is interceding on behalf of the Ephesians and praying for their holiness. He prays that they would be “strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.”

Lets break this down here. 

“That you may be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man” 

Paul is praying that the church would have strength to grasp the mystery of God, to be rooted in love, and be filled up to the fulness of God. We hear of the “inner man” in his entirety, including all faculties, intellectual, emotional, moral, which make up his spiritual nature. And St. Paul emphasises this prayer by asking that the gift may be “according to the riches of His glory.’ these spiritual riches are as unlimited as the glory of the Divine Nature itself.  

Paul continues: 

“that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith”

Paul is writing to Christians, so he is not praying that Christ would enter people in whom He is completely absent. The sense is that Christ would make His home in them, that His presence would become settled, established, and increasingly govern their lives. There is a difference between receiving Christ and allowing every room of the house to belong to Him. Are there rooms in the heart where we welcome Christ, and others where we would rather keep the door shut? 

the office of the Holy Spirit is to implant and work out in us the likeness of Christ.  

In the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Abba Lot comes to Abba Joseph and describes his spiritual life. He keeps his rule, fasts, prays, meditates, practises silence, and tries to purify his thoughts. He wants to know what more he should do.

Joseph stands, stretches his hands toward heaven, and, the account says, his fingers become like ten lamps of fire. His answer is:

“Why not become fire?”

Prayer, fasting, and worship have a purpose: opening our whole selves to God’s transforming presence. Paul’s prayer reaches into everything we are.

Becoming fire means God’s love transforming our resentments, desires, speech, and treatment of other people. We can and do experience the fullness and depth of the Love of God…..

The Raising of the Son of the Widow of Nain

Lucas Cranach the Younger, after 1565, possibly 1573. Oil on hardwood. Stadtkirche Wittenberg, Germany. Public domain.