Wisdom

 Wisdom

Ephesians 5:10-21[1]

We’ve been living in what’s called the “information age” for a long time. I still remember the first time I helped my son work on a school project using the internet. It was his “volcano” science project, and he was assigned to write a report on Mauna Loa on the island of Hawaii. To my surprise, the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park had a web site with all the information anyone could ever need about Mauna Loa. That was thirty years ago! Over the last three decades, our access to information has increased exponentially! Then, we had to log into our dial-up internet service using our home computer. Now all we have to do is search on our smartphones to get instant access to just about any and every kind of information we might ever want or need.

I’ve mentioned before that all that access to information doesn’t translate into greater wisdom. That’s not a particularly astute observation on my part. These days it’s so common as to be almost a cliché. To be sure, information can lead to wisdom, but I wouldn’t say that wisdom comes simply from the accumulation of information. If that were true, we should be the wisest generation of all time! That idea is one of the flaws in the assumption that access to education will automatically translate into better lives for all people. That’s the hope, but the fact remains that it takes more than going through an education to benefit from it. As many have observed, you have to make the effort to let the education “go through” you. In other words, you have to try to actually learn and internalize what you’re being taught so it makes a difference in your character and your life.

Our lesson from Ephesians for today addresses wisdom. As we saw last week, the believers in the First Century were real life human beings who struggled with real life challenges in their faith and in their relationships. And one of the main instructions that Paul gave them was to “live wisely, and not foolishly” (Eph 5:15, CEB). We might feel hesitant to use that language, especially in light of what Jesus said about calling people “fools” in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:22). But Jesus was talking about a specific kind of language that demeans and diminishes another person. On the other hand, like our lesson for today, the Bible is full of statements about those who live “foolishly.” From the viewpoint of the Bible, living “foolishly” means to actively resist God and the way of life guided by the “fear of the Lord.”

Of course, that’s not language that appeals to us either. When our Psalm for today tells us that “Fear of the Lord is the foundation of true wisdom” (Ps 111:10), I’m not sure it helps us. But once again, I think we need to understand what the Bible means by the “fear of the Lord.” I don’t believe it means that a proper response to God is to cringe in fear of punishment from God’s “wrath.” Rather the idea is to honor and respect God. The “fear of the Lord” means taking to heart the Bible’s instructions for living. It means seeking to imitate God’s character, as we heard last week. And in the Bible, the fundamental qualities of God’s character are unfailing love, faithfulness, and mercy! I would say that if we want to know what it means to live a life that honors and respects God, we can look to Jesus as our prime example!

I realize that’s a tall order. Who among us can imitate God’s character—truly? Who among us can follow Jesus’ example perfectly? But the idea is that we do the best we can with what we have to work with, always growing in our understanding of what it means to live like this, and in our ability to practice it. In that respect, living “wisely” is a skill. It’s something we have to practice, and the more we practice it, the better we get. It’s a bit like developing “muscle memory.” That’s what athletes and musicians strive to achieve in their practice routines. But it doesn’t happen overnight. If you’ve ever tried to learn a skill, you know that. It must be learned and developed over time and with repeated practice.

So what should we be doing if we want to develop our ability to live wisely? Again, I think our lesson from Ephesians for today points us in a direction. St. Paul tells us to “Carefully determine what pleases the Lord” (Eph. 5:10, NLT). Being “careful” about how we live doesn’t mean that we’re walking on eggshells, but rather that we pay attention to how we are living. He says it this way: “Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do” (Eph 5:17, NLT). And the way to live wisely and thoughtfully is to “be filled with the Spirit” (Eph 5:18). I’ve always found that verse a bit confusing. It seems to me that the Spirit is the one who works in our lives to bring us to faith, to lead us in living a life that follows Christ’s example, and to empower us to serve one another. My question has always been, what can I do to “be” filled with the Spirit. It’s always seemed to me that it’s up to the Spirit to fill us, rather than being up to us to “be” filled with the Spirit.

But I think Paul gives us a clue as to how we can “be filled with the Spirit.” Everything that follows in the next few verses defines what it looks like to “be filled with the Spirit.” Paul says that when we’re filled with the Spirit, we will “sing and make melody to the Lord” in our hearts. When we’re filled with the Spirit, we will “give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” When we’re filled with the Spirit, we will “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph 5:18-21, NLT). That last part may raise some eyebrows, but I believe it just means treating others with respect rather than demanding our own way.[2] If that’s what it looks like to be “filled with the Spirit,” then it seems to me that one way to seek to “be” filled with the Spirit is to practice those things like skills we are trying to learn until they come naturally to us.

There are other ways to learn wisdom, of course. We learn wisdom when we have a mentor to guide us. We learn wisdom by going through some of life’s most difficult challenges. But there’s a spiritual dimension to wisdom that we shouldn’t neglect. It’s the wisdom that recognizes how important it is for us to worship God. We constantly need to be reminded that God is God and we’re not! And not just once a week. There’s wisdom in recognizing what an awesome God we have! There’s also wisdom in practicing gratitude. It turns what we have into “enough” and it turns disappointment into contentment. And there’s wisdom in recognizing that we’re not always right, and we don’t always need to get our way. Rather, we can yield to others and give them respect. Wisdom means making an effort to listen to those who disagree with us and trying to understand where they’re coming from.

There is a vast difference between information and wisdom. Most of us have instant access to just about any and every kind of information we might ever want or need to know. And information we would never want or need to know as well. The kind of wisdom that the Bible teaches us refers to a way of living that emulates God’s character. And we do that by striving to follow Jesus’ example. Like an athlete practicing every day, or like a musician working on developing their “chops” every day, wisdom is something we learn by the way we live. It develops over time as we learn to honor God, not just on one day of the week, but every day.

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[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 8/18/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline, 111, defines submission as freedom “to lay down the terrible burden of always needing to get our own way.”

 

Relationships

Relationships

Ephesians 4:21-5:2[1]

Last week we saw that we demonstrate the quality of our faith by the quality of our relationships. It doesn’t take a person with greying hair to know that relationships can be complicated. They can be wonderful, and they can be aggravating. They can fill our lives with meaning and purpose, and they can leave us feeling empty and confused. They can be joyful, and they can be painful. And sometimes they can be all of that at the same time. I’m not talking about any specific kind of relationship, but rather all of our relationships. All that makes us human means that we all approach all of our relationships with all of our flaws. I think, given that reality, “complicated” is the right word for relationships.

As we discussed last week, according to St. Paul, we take our faith in Jesus “on the road,” so to speak, in our relationships. That’s where we demonstrate the strength or weakness of our faith. That’s where we discover that we still have much to learn in order to grow more like Christ in our daily living. In our lesson for today, Paul gets specific about what our faith means for our relationships. Perhaps uncomfortably so. He talks about honesty, anger, and stealing! We might find that surprising. After all, these days we tend to idealize the early church. We think that they were perfect “saints.” And here’s Paul telling those first Christians to stop lying to one another, to stop taking their anger out on one another, and to stop stealing from one another. Apparently, the first believers were just as flawed in the way they conducted their relationships as we are.

Paul starts off by telling them to “stop telling lies” (Eph 4:25)! That’s pretty blunt! It presupposes that they were lying to each other! I would imagine that most of us would take offense if someone told us to “stop telling lies.” We all tend to assume that we’re honest people. Or at least that we’re “honest enough.” But we live in a world where the standard operating procedure seems to be “say whatever it takes to get what you want without having to give up anything to anybody.” In that world, we have all kinds of subtle ways of “bending” the truth to suit ourselves.

The problem is that dishonesty in any form erodes the fabric of our relationships. Instead, Paul quotes from the prophet Zechariah: “Let us tell our neighbors the truth.” In a world where “truth” seems to be for sale to the highest bidder, we might ask the question Pontius Pilate posed to Jesus: “What is truth?” I don’t think Paul wants us to be brutally honest to the point that we actually damage our relationships. There’s a time for speaking the truth plainly and openly, and there is a time for not telling everyone everything you know. Instead, Paul gives us direction about how to be truthful when he says, “Do not use harmful words, but only helpful words” (Eph 4:29 GNT). I think that’s the bottom line for Paul: because we’re connected to one another in relationships, we’re to speak to one another in a way that will be helpful, in a way that will “do good.”

Paul’s instructions about our relationships continue in a way that continues to be uncomfortable. He says, “When you are angry, do not sin” (Eph 4:26, NIrV). I would say that for many of us, addressing our anger is just as touchy as questioning our honesty. When it comes to anger, it’s usually someone else who has a “problem” with anger, not us. Our anger is entirely “appropriate” and “justified.” At least in our own minds. But the problem is that anger is not only something we feel deeply, it’s also powerful. The question is how will we use that powerful emotion. We can take anger as a warning signal that we’re off track in some way. Perhaps we’ve misunderstood someone, or we’re holding onto an unrealistic expectation, or we’re trying to control something that we can’t control. Or we can simply take our anger out on the people around us. When we do so, we use the power of our anger to harm others. I would suggest that’s the “sin” Paul wanted us to avoid.

It’s said that it can take years to build up a relationship, but only seconds to destroy it. That’s the power of anger. I’m not talking about the fact that we all lose our temper from time to time. I’m talking about letting anger control us to the extent that we say hurtful, hateful things to others. But we can choose how to respond to our anger. Psychologists tell us that anger is usually a response to either fear or hurt. If we can pause when we’re angry, take a breath, and try to see what is driving our anger, we have a chance to use our anger for good. And that means using our anger to correct our faulty behavior in our relationships. And the key to dealing with our anger in a healthy way is to “be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you” (Eph 4:32, NLT). Perhaps the first step toward doing that is to realize that we can’t simply impose our expectations on others. Rather, the way of forgiveness and kindness is to accept people for who they are.

Finally, Paul addresses the quality of relationships in the body of Christ in a way that might seem shocking. He says literally, “Thieves must no longer steal” (Eph 4:28). It’s uncomfortable to think that there were thieves in the early church. Some Bible translations display this discomfort with Paul’s words when they render this as “those who used to steal.” But that’s not what Paul says! Paul simply says, “Thieves must no longer steal.” It would seem that the early church contained people from all walks of life, including people who made a practice of stealing.

Again, most of us assume that we’re good, upstanding, honest people. We would probably insist that we’ve never stolen anything in our lives. But there are all kinds of ways of stealing. In the Bible, the prophets and apostles called not paying fair wages “stealing.” Of course, some ways of stealing are more subtle than others. We can steal a person’s good name by spreading gossip! We can steal a person’s trust by deceiving them or betraying them. We can steal a person’s innocence by taking advantage of them. The basic premise seems to be “I want what you have, and I’m going to use any means necessary to get it, regardless of how it might hurt you or anyone else.” I think Paul’s words about stealing here are not just about money or possessions. He’s talking about a fundamental way of relating to one another that seeks not to take advantage of anyone, but rather to do good to others.

Relationships are complicated. And it’s uncomfortable for us to talk about dishonesty, anger, and stealing in church. We want to assume that those are faults from which we’re inherently immune. But they’re part of the human condition, and St. Paul rightly saw them as a threat to our relationships. More than that, they undermine our ability to bear witness to the new life God is creating in each of us through the Spirit based on our faith in Jesus Christ. We can reassure ourselves that we would “never” do anything like that. But the uncomfortable truth about all of us is that we are all equally flawed and fallen. We may not all give in to our flaws to the same extent. But we are all susceptible to dishonesty; we’re all susceptible to taking out our anger on others; we’re all susceptible to stealing, particularly in their more subtle forms. Paul’s call to us, however, is to strip off those behaviors like a stained garment. He calls us to clothe ourselves with kindness, forgiveness, and love. He calls us to seek to do good to others, and not to harm. When we live like that, we will try to help others, not hurt them. We will look for ways to give to them, rather than trying to take from them. And as we do so, the quality of our relationships will demonstrate the genuineness of our faith. And the more we demonstrate the genuineness of our faith through the quality of our relationships, the more the quality of our relationships will draw people around us into our community!

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[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 8/11/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Billboards

 Billboards

Ephesians 4:1-16[1]

I’m not a fan of billboards personally. I know they serve a purpose in our advertising-driven world. But I’ve been in places where people can’t just put up a billboard wherever they want, and I like the ability to appreciate the scenery without all the clutter. Many of us have experienced the evolution of billboards. These days we have LED screens for billboards. But some billboards are still simple hand-painted signs. For a long time, the sight of workers pasting up the printed strips of a billboard was a common one. In those days, it was also fairly common, at least where I lived, to see a billboard that had some of the strips peeled off. Apparently the contract ran out! The funny thing was that you could still make out the gist of the original ad. And sometimes you could also make out the one underneath it!

In a very real sense, we are all living and breathing billboards for faith in Jesus Christ. Whether we like it or not, and for better or for worse, our lives are all constantly “on display” for Christ. In the time when we were supposedly a “Christian” nation, everyone was assumed to be a person of faith, and perhaps it didn’t matter as much. To be quite honest, I’m not sure any nation can ever truly claim to be “Christian.” But now we live in a time when more people in our society explicitly reject any and every religion. In my mind, that makes it all the more important that we are aware that our lives are constantly “on display” for Christ. The language of the New Testament is that we are “witnesses” to what Christ has done for us and for all people. And one way in which we bear that “witness” is by the way we live.

This is an important part of our lesson from St. Paul in Ephesians for today. As in the case in some of his other letters, after laying out the message of the Gospel and what that means for our “hope of salvation,” he turns to the practical implications for how we live our lives. Here, he urges those who know Jesus Christ to “lead a life worthy of your calling” (Eph 4:1, NLT). If you asked ten people what it means to live in a manner “worthy” of the salvation we have been given through Jesus Christ, I think you might get ten different answers. Some would point to particular religious or spiritual practices you should do on a daily basis. Some would say that it’s about choosing a special “vocation” like devoting your entire life to Christ. Others would insist that you have to agree with certain very specific beliefs.

But St. Paul takes a very different direction in answering this question. To him, “leading a life worthy of your calling” means to “Always be humble and gentle.” It means being “patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love.” It means making “every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace” (Eph 4:2-3, NLT). In other words, we demonstrate the quality of our faith in Jesus Christ by the way we treat one another. I would add that this applies to how we treat all people, whether or not they are one of “us”!

One of the things I have always found to be a bit surprising about this passage is that St. Paul says that we display the quality of our faith by the quality of our relationships! And the quality he was looking for is the ability to remain “united in the Spirit, binding ourselves together with peace.” He said we display the quality of our faith when we practice patience with one another, when we bear with one another, or “make allowance for each other’s faults” as the New Living Translation puts it. And we do so because of the love we have for one another. It reminds me of Jesus’ statement to those who followed him that “Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples” (Jn 13:35, NLT).[2]  

There was a time when church “unity” was based on denominational structures—Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Methodist, or Baptist. There was a time when church unity was based on shared doctrinal convictions. Although many would have denied it, it was also based on being on the same side when it came to politics. That was the case for many centuries. But the kind of unity that makes the church truly live does not come from human institutions, or shared doctrinal convictions, or even from political agreement. It’s the unity that God creates.[3]

That’s why Paul adds the statement that “There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, in all, and living through all” (Eph 4:5-6, NLT).[4] True unity in the church is the unity that God creates—the church is the one people of the one God. It’s the unity that Jesus Christ creates—the church is the one people of the one Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It’s the unity that the Spirit of God creates—the church is the one people of the one Holy Spirit. Here Paul places special emphasis on the unity created by the presence and powerful work of God’s Spirit in all our lives. That’s what makes the church really live. At least according to St. Paul!

So, how do we develop this unity in order to help our church thrive? For one thing, it’s something we have to “grow up” into. St. Paul sees the Christian life as a process by which we are all constantly “growing in every way more and more like Christ” until we “measure up” to “to the full and complete standard of Christ” (Eph 4:13, 15, NLT)! If you’re like me, and you’re aware of how often you fall short of that standard, you may be thinking that’s impossible. How can anyone every live up “to the full and complete standard of Christ”? That’s a natural response, I think. But St. Paul insists that this whole process is not something we do on our own. It’s the “new life” that the Spirit of God creates in us. It’s what God is doing in all of our lives through Jesus Christ.

If we’re all “billboards” meant to display this astounding work that God is doing in all of our lives, we may struggle with feeling like we can never live up to that kind of scrutiny. We may feel like those old billboards that have part of the “new” message, but there are some strips missing and some of the old underlying truth still visible. That’s an uncomfortable truth for us, but it may be reassuring to remember that it’s true for all of us. We all have a mixture of the new life and the old truths that make up who we are as real-life followers of Jesus Christ. That’s why we “grow up” into the “full stature of Christ” precisely by practicing gentleness, humility, patience, forbearance, and love in our relationships with one another and with all people. Those qualities don’t always come naturally to us, but the more we put them into practice, the more we will be able to practice them in our relationships. As we do so, even our flawed lives can be billboards bearing witness to the new life that God gives us all through Jesus Christ!

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[1] © 2024 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 8/4/2024 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 345, where he insists that the church “is not ‘one’ for itself; it is one for the peace of divided [hu]mankind in the coming kingdom of God.”

[3] Cf. Moltmann, Church in the Power, 347: “Can political enemies ‘remain one under the gospel’? How long can they do this? And what does it mean for their conflict itself? Does this not make ‘the gospel’ an abstract and ineffective power?” His answer is that what counts in the midst of these conflicts is the “fellowship of Christ.” In other words, it is our mutual faith, and the presence of the living Christ among us through the Spirit, that creates unity in the real conflicts of human life.

[4] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.1:668: “In all the riches of His divine being the God who reconciled the world with Himself in Jesus Christ is One. Jesus Christ, elected the Head of all men and as such their Representative who includes them all in Himself in His risen and crucified body is One. The Holy Spirit in the fulness and diversity of His gifts is One. In the same way His community as the gathering of the men who know and confess Him can only be one.”