Mystic Congregational Church, UCC

Mystic, Connecticut

Sermon from August 20, 2006

“Wisdom and Discernment”

Rev. Patricia L. Liberty

Scriptures:

Ephesians 5:15-20

1 Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14

Re-entry after vacation is always a little challenging for me.  We’ve spent most of last week hiking in the Apache National Forest in northern Arizona.  We went from canyon lake to canyon lake, found bear and elk tracks, listened for the tell-tale sounds announcing their presence, and worked hard at staying at least one step ahead of them or downwind a little bit.  In the tens of thousands of open acres that make up that wonderful wilderness, we were very aware that we were on their turf, guests in their homes.  It was our job to stay out of their way.  We managed to photograph them from a distance along with some sunrises and sunsets, beautiful vegetation and trees.  We rose at sunrise and rested at sunset. I wore my favorite sweatshirt, the one with the picture of the Milky Way on it, with a tiny, tiny dot and an arrow that says, “You are here.”  My cell phone didn’t work.  I didn’t have a laptop.  The world survived my being incommunicado.  Gratefully, the world was as unfazed by my brief checkout as it was by my return.  

 Coming back to civilization, I discovered that the news hadn’t really changed much.  In the city of Phoenix (which is roughly the size of Rhode Island and gives a whole other meaning to the phrase “just down the road”), things were pretty much the same.  The human condition didn’t change much while we were gone.  The headlines announced a fragile truce between Israel and Hezbollah (probably the best news).  The usual hot spots in the Middle East dominated the front pages while Tiger Woods dominated the leader board and the health care, affordable housing, and the poverty crises continued. 

 I was reminded of activist Bill Stringfellow’s words, “Daily devotions are best done with the newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other.”  As I pondered the lectionary readings this week, Paul’s words stuck with me as well,  “Be careful then, how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of time, because the days are evil.”  They are as easily words for our time as for Paul’s.

 Even two thousand years ago in a place called Ephesus, the world presented many challenges to a Christian’s faith, politics, and ethics.  Though one might guess that perhaps there weren’t the same problems in the church in Ephesus (by the way Paul writes) as there are today, the truth is that there were.  It’s important to note that the community lived in relative unity.  Unlike the Corinthian church that seemed to be in constant turmoil about something, this gathering experienced relatively little conflict.  Paul writes his words of warning to them because the environment in which they lived was enough to cause concern.

As a thriving city on the crossroads of the cultural superhighway of its day, Ephesus drew people from all over.  There were a lot of things that competed for people’s attention and for their allegiance.  It was, for the time, urban and sophisticated.  Its easy accessibility made it a center for various cultural and religious activities.  The allure of the cosmopolitan traditions and the common acceptance of some of the wildest and competing “mystery religions” put Christian believers at risk. 

 The translation of verse 16, “making the most of time” is more literally translated “to buy out” or to transform” time.  Coupled with Paul’s indication the times are evil, his words have an unmistakable urgency, which could as easily have been written for today.  While we might hear these words as warning, the truth is that they are really an invitation.   For Paul, the life of faith meant the ability to live in the same tired, old world filled with struggle and problems and evil in a new way with a new perspective that comes from being a person of faith. 

 While it seems that most of the time Paul tried to get as far away as possible from his Jewish roots, in truth he draws on in quite a bit, particularly in passages like this where he speaks of wisdom.  He calls on a part of the Jewish tradition, the wisdom tradition that is rich and powerful and all but overlooked in his own time and in ours as well.

 Wisdom is that practical, earthy, human, sensual, joyous, part of faith.  It is the very essence of spirituality.  As the early church defined itself, codified rituals, and figured out what it meant to be followers of Jesus in the post-Easter era, there was a tendency to emphasize religion at the expense of spirituality. 

 Well, in our time we have completely divorced them.  It is a consequence of modernity that we have divided religion and spirituality.  I often hear people say, “I'm not religious but I'm spiritual.”  Often, that means that they have burned out of the church for one reason or another, finding it irrelevant, messed-up, corrupt, useless or some combination of those.  Paul invites people to be both spiritual and religious at the same time, to have one inform and strengthen the other, to exist in creative tension.

 In our time, with the separation of religion and spirituality, we have somehow made assumptions about how the world is put together.  We have allowed religion to define spirituality and not invited spirituality to inform and enliven religion.  Much of how we put worship together suggests that the flow of energy is one way; from pulpit to pew.  We sit in rows rather than in a circle, we elevate the pulpit as if it is the only place where something worthwhile is spoken. 

 It reflects a basic assumption about our culture that began with the enlightenment, that wisdom is the same as knowledge.  We have confused being wise with being smart—the truth is they don’t really have much to do with each other.  Being wise has nothing to do with being smart.  Being wise is about paying attention to time in a whole new way.

 If we were to arrange our sanctuary theologically, I think we would sit in a circle.  There would be a central worship area that contained something of beauty, and it would change as ours does from week to week—a visual reminder of God's creation, a word that keeps speaking through time and for time.  There would be a sharing of preaching lest we assume, as you learned last week, that preachers are the only people that can preach.  Prayers would be communal.  We would pray with and for each other, rather than one simply on behalf of the whole.  The hymns—well, they would probably still be a struggle:  the red hymnal, the blue hymnal, do we sing with cleaned-up language, do we sing with the original language …  We probably still struggle with that but we would sing nonetheless.  What we would do would be to arrange our worship in a way that reflects at our faith; that says that every time we come together, we are open to the possibility that God will create something new with us, among us, and for us.

 The translation is limited a bit by the fact that we have only one word for time and Greek has two.  When Paul speaks of the times being evil, he is speaking of chronos—the era, the age.  Chronos is where we get our word “chronological”.  Chronos is the kind of time that can be measured with watches and sundials.  It is the basis of days and weeks, months and years.  It passes whether we are paying attention or not.  It needs nothing from us. It can be both gift and curse.

 When he speaks of transforming the time, the other Greek word Paul uses is kairos.  The New Revised Standard Version limply translates the phrase “make the most of the time” which, I think, sounds more like it should be part of a beer commercial. It is more accurately translated  “transform”.  Paul invites us to transform the stuff of time, the very content of time.  Kairos is what gives chronos meaning.  It literally means “moment in time that brings change”.

 A church schoolteacher I know illustrated the point to his class by holding up two clocks.  One showed a traditional clock face with numbers and hands and a second hand.  Children responded to questions about what time they got up in the morning, when they left for school, what time they got home, when was bed time.  Then he took out a second clock with the numbers covered and the hands pointing at blank spaces.  In the center of the clock, all clustered together were things like “Doing chores, Visiting an older relative, Taking care of a pet, Writing a letter to a cousin, Attending a church school trip to the local soup kitchen, Spending time playing outside.”  “When is it time for those things,” he asked?

 Transforming time is really, simply, about how we live.  Kairos time is about the possibility of wise living, and holy choices in the face of many options. 

 We often live as if we had all the time in the world—putting off until tomorrow any number of things simply because we assume tomorrow will always be there.  Transforming time is about treasuring today as an opportunity to occasion the kingdom in our midst, right here and right now.

 These twenty-four hours that stretch out ahead of us are filled with opportunities to embody the kind of wisdom to which Paul invites us.  So perhaps today is the day to bury a grudge, start a conversation, hope for the best, say a healthy goodbye, ask for guidance, unburden your soul, do a holy deed, spend some time with an old friend, talk to your kids, better yet:  listen to your kids, talk to your partner, better yet:  listen to your partner, pray for guidance, give thanks for insight, laugh a good laugh, cry a few tears, sit and simply be, sit with the newspaper in one hand and the bible in the other, volunteer at the women’s shelter or the soup kitchen.  The opportunities are endless.  Remember no one ever gets to the end of their life and says, “Gee, I wish I had worked more.” 

 Living as the wise people Paul invites us to be is about living in awe, wonder, reverence and appreciation.   The Psalm has captured it when it said, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”  It’s another unfortunate translation that “fear” has come to mean “terror” when it is really designed to mean “awe”.  It means to stand in awe and reverence, to see God in the dramatic as well as in the ordinary, in the beauty of the created world and the workings of our bodies, in praise and worship, and also in service.

 The time transformation Ephesians points us to is an invitation to see all time, every moment as holy and full of wonder, every moment as witness to God’s presence, power and love.  To live as the wise means holding the eternal in every moment, remembering God’s dreams and desire for all of creation, including us.  It’s a tall order but it begins a little bit at a time when in this moment, in that moment, we begin to bring something of the eternal.

 Paul says later that one of the ways to sustain ourselves in the journey is to sing songs and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts and giving thanks to God at all times and for everything.

 Gratitude holds a central place in the transforming process.  It connects us with the wider universe on which we depend.  It grounds us a in a vision that is beyond the stuff of our own life at any given moment.  It restores a sense of balance.  As Meister Eckhardt noted, “If the only prayer you can make is thank you, that will be enough.”  Thanksgiving joins us with God, our neighbor and the world around us, past present and future.  As Bruce Epperly notes, “Those who are thankful are never alone or without hope.”

 It’s a tall order. Peter Gomes said, “If we focus to much on the word and we have no spirit we will dry up.  If we are too much into the spirit and do not know the word we will blow up. When there is balance between word and spirit then we will grow up.  Then we will become the Christians who God will use to transform the times.”

Amen.