August 15, 2021
/Proper 15
1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14 | Eph. 5:15-20 | John 6:51-58
The Rev. Bradley Varnell
So at first I was drawn to the Ephesians reading by the admonition it contains to live wisely. I had a professor who often ended lectures in seminary with that: live wisely, he’d say and we’d run off to whatever was next. But then, over this past week, as COVID cases increased, and as this new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came out basically saying the world just is going to get warmer, I found myself drawn to another phrase in Ephesians: the days are evil. The days are evil – filled with small evil and large evils. In the midst of these evil days the people of Ephesus are encouraged to live and act with wisdom.
The way to combat the evil around us is through the power of wisdom. But we have to ask what wisdom. The wisdom of the economy and market? The wisdom of the technocrat? The wisdom of the powerful? Wisdom comes in all sorts of shape and sizes and if we are live wisely – whether in Ephesus or in Houston – we have to have a standard. In another one of his letters – to the people of Corinth – Paul provides the kind of wisdom we are to live according to. In 1 Corinthians 1 Paul writes that we – Christians – “proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jewish people and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power and the wisdom of God.” Jesus is the wisdom of God. Jesus is the practical guide for life in the midst of evil days. In Jesus we find God’s wisdom for living in the world filled as it is with sin and suffering. Jesus, the wisdom of God, shows us what it means to live wisely in evil days.
In Ephesians, wise living looks like singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody to the Lord while giving thanks to the Father. To live wisely, in other words, is to live in light of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Wisdom, in the face of evil days, consists of singing songs, of praising God, of holding on to the truth that in the cross of Christ God has overcome evil once and for all. Knowing that Christ has triumphed over evil allows the Ephesians – and us – to rejoice in the face of evil. To laugh in the face of evil. To live in the truth that despite the evils we may face and endure, they will not triumph.
This is wisdom. This is living wisely. Because it is living in light of the knowledge that Jesus faced evil and lives, that Jesus lives on the other side of evil. Because Jesus lives, as the Gospel song says, we can face tomorrow. Because no matter what tomorrow brings, Jesus is on the other side awaiting us.
The church is called to be the body of Christ in a world that is literally on fire. In evil days weare called to be a people who shout of the goodness of God, who orient our lives in light of the hope of the resurrection. The wisdom Christians are invited to live out lives by is a wisdom that is won through cross and resurrection. It is wisdom that refuses to live as though God cannot – or has not – overcome death.
The days are evil. We don’t need to ignore that. There is incredible suffering in our world, in our neighborhoods, in our families. Christians can’t turn away from that. Nor can our hope, our joy, come by ignoring this suffering, these evils. Our hope isn’t based on a saccharine, Pollyanna attitude, a belief in the inevitability of progress, or the innate goodness of humans. Our hope hope is based on the promise of God, the God who broke into a world filled with evil days, who lives those days, died in those days, and rose again on the other side of those days.
Live wisely. Live in light of the future we hope for, the future God has promised. There is an apocryphal saying, attributed to Martin Luther. He (is supposed to have) said “if I knew the world were ending tomorrow, I’d plant a tree.” By most logic, that would be a fool’s errand, a waste of time. By in light of Christ, in light of faith in the God who raised Jesus, it is a beautifully wise act. Because the God who created us will not allow death and evil to be the final words. God is a God of life, and to plant a tree at the end of the world is a deeply defiant act that testifies to God’s promise. So plant, water, hope, sing songs! Because the days are evil, and we have to face that, but in facing the evil of our days, we do not despair, because Jesus is risen. The days are evil, but there will come a day when Jesus returns in glory and evil is wiped away, and the presence of God, the glory of God will cover the world like the waves of the sea. Live in these evil days, not as unwise people, but as wise, as people who have been promised, by God himself, to never leave you or forsake you. Live in the faith that the evil days are nothing compared to the joyful day of the Lord that awaits us. AMEN.