12th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 15B) August 15, 2021
Ephesians 5:15-20 Panzer Liturgical Chapel
Today’s lesson gets us as close to a checklist as we ever get from Paul. But it’s not the same as the rules that Jewish believers religiously followed – one of the problems that Israel eventually developed was a worship of the rules or commandments, rather than worship of God. Paul does list a number of important rules for living throughout his letters. But at the end of this passage, he also reminds us of the attitude that is necessary to be successful in their living.
In verse 15, Paul reminds us to live wisely. And then he elaborates on what that might look like for us.
First, we are called to make good use of our time. The word that Paul uses isn’t framed in the negative – he’s not accusing the Ephesians of being lazy. The verb exagorzomenoi is more related to taking advantage of all the chances you have a something – like grabbing bargains at the market or taking every opportunity to perform an action or deed. Paul is assuming that those who live in the Way of Jesus want to use our time the same way we portion our resources. We are called to invest our energy in occupations and avocations that are beneficial to the family of God. Faith isn’t just what we do on Sunday morning, or in our private devotionals time. Faith is lived out in every aspect of our lives, to serve the common good.
Second, don’t be ignorant – use your head. This goes hand in hand with understanding the Lord’s will. It’s important to remember that faith and knowledge go hand in hand. One of the most famous scientists of the 16th and 17th centuries was the astronomer Galileo Galilei. So much of what we know and love about the world today has its roots in his discoveries, observations, and hypotheses. He developed a 30x refracting telescope, which then gave him the ability to see the planets in our universe and beyond in ways they had never seen before. He made significant observations about the moon, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Neptune, even hypothesized the shape of the Milky Way and galaxies outside our solar system. But the thing that got him in the most trouble was his observation in 1608 that the Earth rotates around the Sun, rather than the Church’s assertion of the opposite.
In 1615, he was brought before the Roman Inquisition, and the inquisitors found that his ideas were ridiculous and in violation of the lessons taught in the Holy Scriptures. He was ordered to refrain from the publication of anything related to the topic – and he did that for 16 years. But eventually, Pope Urban VIII asked him to debate both sides of the argument, which papal advisors took as advocacy. He was eventually found suspected of heresy and held under house arrest for the remainder of his life. Fortunately, he was able to continue other work during that time but never worked on the scientific principles of heliocentricity again. Upon his death in 1642, he was not allowed to be buried in the Cathedral in Siena. It was in 1737 that the Church allowed him to be reburied in the church, and it was not until July 1981 that Pope John Paul II reinstated Galileo’s status and allowed the publication of all documents related to his work four centuries before. This was the Church’s way of offering an apology.
The church leadership and biblical scholars of the 17th century were threatened by Galileo and other scientists’ works because they believed it was contrary to their understanding of scripture. But here’s the underlying truth. Their disbelief didn’t make his work untrue. Sometimes there is a gap between what we understand about science and what we understand about God. But that doesn’t mean it’s one or the other. Pope John Paul II said at the closing of the Galileo commission,
"From the Galileo case we can draw a lesson which is applicable today in analogous cases which arise in our times and which may arise in the future. ... It often happens that, beyond two partial points of view which are in contrast, there exists a wider view of things which embraces both and integrates them."
As we see the resistance around the world and the church to the application of medical science which challenges some people’s understanding about faith, we can see this fundamental problem has yet to be solved.
Thirdly, the ideas presented in verses 18 & 19 are practical ways to make sure that we keep our faith journeys the most important thing. He presents opposites and pairs of ideas and behaviors. Don’t get drunk on wine – instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit. Speak to each other with songs, and psalms – that is worship together, but also reminds them to make music in the heart. It’s a reminder that worship is not just what we do when we gather together, but also the song of that the Spirit generates in our hearts and minds as we seek knowledge and grow in our faith journeys. The writer reminds us that our faith is at the same time communal and personal. And sometimes, the thing that makes us feel the most uncomfortable is the thing that God is calling us to do.
All of this leads us to Paul’s last request in this passage. We are called to give thanks to God for everything. This is not only remarkably hard but often feels impossible. It’s easy to be thankful for the good stuff, but how can we feel the same way about the difficult things that happen to us? What do gratitude and thankfulness look like in a world filled with pain, disagreement, and an emphasis on individuality and independence? Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked that question and came up with this answer: if we’re not careful, it looks like cheap gratitude to go with cheap grace.
He began to preach about something different: how costly faith will transform our understanding of what it means to be truly grateful. These teachings and sermons were reflected in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, written in 1937. Later, when he was in prison for resisting Hitler, Bonhoeffer experienced this costly gratitude, a sense of humility and dependence on the gifts of others, more profoundly than ever before. He wrote, “In normal life, one is not at all aware that we always receive infinitely more than we give, and that gratitude is what enriches life. One easily overestimates the importance of one’s own acts and deeds, compared with what we become only through other people.”
Sometimes, our thankfulness comes, not for the tragedies themselves, but for the love shared with those who go through the tragedy with us. Our thankfulness is grounded in the presence of God in the midst of the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of life. Our thankfulness is nested in our revelation that crisis and opportunity are often two sides of the same coin.
Christian historian Diana Butler Bass wrote a wonderful book, Grateful: The Subversive Practice of Giving Thanks. In the introduction she says this:
…gratitude is not a transaction of debt and duty. Rather, gratitude is spiritual awareness and a social structure of gift and response. Committing ourselves to exorcising the ghosts of the old model and embracing and practicing gift-and-response gratefulness will empower both personal and social change. And it might be what saves us, as individuals and as communities.
Gratitude – thankfulness – are not about how we feel about the gifts that we receive. They are ultimately about what we do in response. They are not just about how we act as individuals, but how we put that gratitude and thankfulness to work together in the world beyond ourselves.
When NC novelist and essayist Reynolds Price was diagnosed with cancer in 1984, he thought the worst thing might be that the cancer would kill him. Instead, through surgery and radiation therapy, he was able to beat the cancer, but lost the use of his legs and spent the next 25 years in a wheelchair. In the beginning, he raged and was understandably depressed. But then he heard God say, just because the old Reynolds is dead – that doesn’t mean there is not still work to do. He saw his new life as a stripped-down version of his old self. God’s new call was for him to show the world that God wasn’t finished with him yet – and there could and would be triumph in this circumstance that was not of his choosing. The years that Reynolds wrote from a wheelchair were the most productive years of his artistic life, so much so that even as a paraplegic he was able to say, “Thanks, even in this.”
I don’t know what that looks like for you – most days, I don’t know what that looks like for me either. I have shared the circuitous route of my own faith journey, and how I felt a tug to make the church my life’s work in my teens and in college, but ignored it to take a more socially and personally acceptable path. Eventually, I ended up here, a military spouse and preaching in an Army chapel, which is about as far away from what I expected as you can get. One Sunday, a confirmation student asked, do you wish that you had answered the call earlier – taken a different path?
And my answer was then, and is now, no, I don’t wish I had done it differently. Because if I had, I probably wouldn’t be here now. I’m pretty sure that I would be somewhere else serving God and loving people, but the road to this place came through all of that indecision and rebellion, and all of the gratitude I have for the life that I have already led, and especially for the friendships made along the way. If there is anything I have learned in this circuitous journey of faith it is this: God is down every road. And this is the best gift of all.
Peace in Christ, Deb
(c) Deb Luther Teagan
Resources:
Ralph Martin, Interpretation: Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon, p. 66
http://www.vaticanobservatory.va/ content/specolavaticana/en/research/studi-galileiani.html
Diana Butler Bass, Grateful: The Subversive Practice of Giving Thanks, page xxiv).
Willimon, Pulpit Resource, AUGUST 15, 2021: IN ALL THINGS, THANKS
No comments:
Post a Comment