EPHESIANS 5:15-20

Be very careful, then, how you live - not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let us pray,

May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all of our hearts, be pleasing and acceptable to you, our rock and our redeemer…

You all know by now that I’m insane when it comes to exercise. So no one should be surprised to learn that I spent my birthday weekend doing a sixty-mile bike ride. I rode with some ladies from my mom church. Before we rode out on Saturday morning, we did a devotional together. The devotional asked us to share what was giving us anxiety about the fall.

I was at a table with women who all have elementary school aged children. All of them shared about how the Delta variant was stressing them out. Because their kids are too young to be vaccinated. But absolutely need to go back to school in the fall. One of the moms, Samantha was telling us about a conversation she had with her daughter Ava. Ava is 7 and is going into second grade. On the ride home from gymnastics class on afternoon Ava asked:

Mommy, why do I have to wear my mask in gymnastics class? None of the other kids have to wear theirs.

Samantha told Ava: 

Honey, I hate to tell you this, but this won’t be the last time I expect more from you than your friend’s parents do. My job as your mommy is to help you become a grown up. And sometimes grown-ups have to do things they don’t want to do. Because grown-ups have to think about everybody. Not just what they want. So you’ve got to wear your mask in gymnastics class. To do your part to keep everybody safe and healthy. 

I thought of Samantha’s conversation with Ava as I read through our Scripture reading for this morning. Because it encourages us to reflect on what it means to live a wise life. Our Scripture reading for this morning comes from the second half of the letter to the church in Ephesus. The first half of the letter explains this new humanity Jesus creates through his death on the cross. Because of Jesus, there is no longer Jew or Gentile, but one humanity- children of God.

The second half of the letter concerns itself with how we are to live, given our new identity as children of God. A few weeks ago we learned that we are to live in community with one another. And how we treat people within that community says a lot about the God we worship. In this short excerpt, the author explains what it means to live wisely. There are two practices that can help us live wisely- discernment and worship.

Discernment is learning to listen to the still small voice of God at work in our everyday lives. It is asking who is Jesus? Who am I? And how do I get in on what Jesus is already doing in my life and community. Oftentimes we enter into periods of discernment when we feel that God is calling us to something new. But we aren’t quite sure what that new thing is just yet.

Let’s say you’re the parent of a small child. You want your child to have a relationship with Jesus and become and independent adult. You’ve observed that the last school year was brutal for your child. Your child hasn’t had to share toys with other kids. Or attend a birthday party that wasn’t hers or her sisters for a year. So even though it makes you nervous, you sign your kid up for gymnastics class. Because the inconvenience of her wearing a mask is worth learning how to share with other kids.

The second part of wisdom is worship. Worship is an act of wisdom because it allows us to praise God for who God is and what God has done for us in Jesus. In worship we are filled with the Spirit and open to the movement of the Spirit in ways that we aren’t when we’re not in worship. Worship is also an act of wisdom because it is a communal experience. When two or more are gathered in Jesus’ name, Jesus is present with us. As the Scriptures are read, the hymns are sung, and the word is proclaimed, we embody our belief that God is in control, not us.

I feel most alive and most truly myself in worship if that makes sense. No matter how bad my week has been. Worship is a weekly reminder that God is at work in my life and in my community. Worship is also a weekly reminder of the dangers of numbing oneself to God’s gifts. It is difficult to fully worship God when you have a hangover. Or when you’re jealous of someone else’s outfit. Or if you’ve spent the 15 minutes before church gossiping about someone you’re in conflict with. The author of Ephesians asks us not to do these things because these things make it harder for us to do what we were created to do. To love one another and worship God always.

I want to close our time together this morning with some reflections on gratitude. To live a life of gratitude. As the author implores us to do. Particularly in the face of all that is wrong in the world. All the pain. All the need. All the stupidity. May seem to some people to be a very foolish way to live. Here is where I’d like to suggest that God’s wisdom may look a lot like foolishness.

It is foolish to send your kid to gymnastics class with a mask on. When none of the other kids have to wear one. That’s just asking for your kid to throw an epic tantrum on the drive home from class. Unless you’re trying to teach your kid that God’s wisdom isn’t the world’s wisdom. The world teaches us that what we want is the most important thing. And if anyone disagrees with me, well they can go jump off a bridge.

But God teaches us that the most important thing is to worship him and love each other. Sometimes that means wearing a mask to gymnastics class. Oftentimes that means doing what is unpopular, hard, and uncool for the sake of those we care about and those God loves. I shared Samantha and Ava’s conversation with you this morning. Because I think it does a good job of illustrating the higher standard we strive for as Christians. We worship a God who literally died for us. So that we might be better able to love one another and worship God forever.

One way that we might train ourselves in the ways of wisdom is to look for moments of hope in our lives and share those moments with one another. Hope is a desire for a certain thing to happen. It is usually a desire for a certain thing to happen in the face of difficulty. 

My moment of hope for this week came from Arkansas Governor Hutchinson. Hutchinson is a Republican governor in a very conservative state. In April, when covid cases were very low in Arkansas, he signed a law banning state and local mask mandates. Then the Delta variant ripped through his state. Now children under 12 are the most vulnerable group in the state because they can’t yet be vaccinated. In his state, kids are now very sick. And the problem is only going to get worse when they go back to school at the end of the month. Because of the law he signed, schools don’t know how to protect their children. 

This week Governor Hutchinson went on tv and admitted that signing this ban on state and local mask mandates was premature. “It was an error to sign that law. I admit that.” Now he’s looking to amend the law. To give local school districts more options to protect their kids.

Govenor Hutchinson is my moment of hope because it is so rare to watch a politician admit they made a mistake, apologize, and work toward a solution. I was quite impressed by the Town Hall Meetings he led to explain why he wants to amend this law. He listened to those who disagreed with him. He treated people who were basically yelling at him with dignity and respect. He admitted where he fell short and what he wanted to do differently in the future.

Friends, this is wisdom. Wisdom is saying that all of us will face adversity in our lives. But how we respond to that adversity is what matters. When we mess up- and we will mess up. We apologize, we deal with the fall-out, and we move on. But in everything we do as followers of Jesus we treat people with dignity and respect. Because the new world and the new humanity begun in Christ Jesus is surely coming to pass. 

Thanks be to God,

In Jesus’ name, 

Amen.