The 4th Dimension

St. Augustine of Canterbury Anglican Church

Bishop Peter F. Hansen

Sermon for the 16^th Sunday after Trinity, October 5, 2025

“…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.”

ST. PAUL offered a prayer that was his highest hope for us all, to know the love of Christ to the fullest and have Him everywhere in our lives. I think it’s his best prayer. Paul prayed a lot. His epistles are letters in which practical issues are addressed, mistakes corrected, and directions are given. Then he stops and he prays. Today’s whole epistle is a prayer from Ephesians, and among his prayers, it stands out. How do other prayers of Paul sound?

In Romans, he says, “May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” ^{Romans 15:5–6} and “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” ^{Romans 15:13} Good prayers.

To Philippi he writes, “it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” ^{Philippians 1:9–11} and for the Thessalonians he prays, “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.” ^{1 Thessalonians 5:23–24} “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.” ^{2 Thessalonians 2:16–17} And at last to Philemon, Paul asks: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.” ^{Philemon 25}

These are tremendous prayers, and they are for you and me as well. But going back to the present case, Paul reaches inside his spirit for an image of the reality he experiences of just how vast the love of Christ is and he inspires us to imagine it so our faith will grow and our love bloom to the heights he has experienced in his Master.

But four dimensions? He says, “the breadth, length, depth and height.” We know the first three dimensions and easily can describe any physical object or location by a three-axis grid commonly denoted as the x, y and z coordinates. That’s easy. Add another dimension and you get mathematicians quarrelling. Einstein was convinced that the fourth dimension was time, and I guess it’s up to anyone to agree or counter his #4 dimension known to some as Spacetime. The 4^th dimension is seen as complementary to the first three, interwoven and properly describing events in space, events of solid objects moving through time. But from there it gets weird. Some dispense with time and imagine a figure seen from all sides at once, trying for the kind of perspective that God might have, seeing all things from every vantage point. With our stereoscopic eyes in one head, we have a 3-D concept of things and people about us. What if we moved as easily along another dimension, along another line entirely. Or so we hear them saying. It just makes me dizzy.

But then why stop at four? A fabulous singing group from the 60s was called the 5^th dimension. Is there even such a thing? Remembering that this was the late 60s, the proposed 5^th dimension was seen not as a physical place, but a spiritual state of higher consciousness. They sang the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius, and promoted love, unity and peace: good things. Shedding fear, they sang of joy and the empowerment of the soul. They were a soul group for everyone. And of course, there were five of them.

So now that you’re somewhat disoriented, and your defenses are down, a speaker might take advantage of you and start telling you half-truths and secret signs and mystic phrases. That’s how it worked with us hippies 55 years ago. But remember, we’re focused today on the 1^st century, not the 20^th, so let’s go back to St. Paul and his prayer…

I’ll translate from the King James and paraphrase:

I don’t want you to despair about my trials over you: that’s to your credit. I kneel to Jesus’ Father, whose Name is over all of creation, and I pray He will give you, out of His infinite treasure, power within your human nature by the Holy Spirit’s His might to co-inhabit with Christ in your hearts, through a true faith in Him. May you be deeply planted in love and strongly established there to understand what true believers know of the ultra-dimensional love of Jesus Christ: the length, breadth, depth and height – to experience to the fullest the entirety of God.

Stop and feel that prayer work through your mind and body and spirit and soul. God is here. Christ is here. God’s Spirit is here. Each breath brings Him in. We can hardly contain it. His love makes us alive, gives us hope, joy, safety, and a kindly good regard toward each other. It’s all we ever wanted in our life. But Paul is not quite through. Let’s hear the rest of the prayer… So here we are filled to overflowing with God: David’s cup that runneth over.

Now: to the One who is able to do infinitely and abundantly more that we can ever ask, or even think of, by His strength and Spirit indwelling us now, let this church extend glory to Christ Jesus by these three dimensions: the length, the width, and the height; and now through all of time, until He returns again to make a new world that shall last forever. Amen. 

St. Paul prays up a storm here and leaves us breathless. Do you really want that much of God? We may be challenged here, but reason this out: God is infinite. He is forever without beginning or end. He is all powerful and the heavens that exist inside this universe keep showing us more of His creative power and ability to fashion beauty, present us with mysteries, pathways through the stars, discoveries by the minute. Can we really ask for our own personal experience with such a Being to be limited by our fears of being overwhelmed, swamped by His gracious vastness, so we might have a safe little god of our own devising, an idol just pocket size? God in a box? A genie in a lamp granting pitiful wishes?

No. Let’s hear it from another translation and let your soul resonate with this prayer. It’s okay. It’s just us here…

May God give you a gift from the wealth of his glory I pray, that he would give you inner strength and power through his Spirit. Then Christ will live in you through faith. I pray that love may be the ground into which you sink your roots and on which you have your foundation. This way, with all of God's people you will be able to understand how wide, long, high, and deep his love is. You will know Christ's love, which goes far beyond any knowledge. I am praying this so that you may be completely filled with God.

All Glory belongs to our wonderful God, whose power is at work in us. By this power he can do infinitely more than we can ask or even imagine. All Glory belongs to God in the church and in Christ Jesus for all time and through the infinite dimensions of eternity! Amen. ^GWT

+PFH