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.
[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.”
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