Ephesians 5:15-20, John 6:51-58
Lectionary 20 Pentecost 13
Knowledge and wisdom are two attributes that our society values. Access to knowledge is easier today than ever before. Books, documentaries, and the internet are readily available resources, as long as you can discern fact from fiction. Having knowledge does not necessarily make a person wise. There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom. That a tomato is a fruit is knowledge. Not putting tomatoes in a fruit salad is wisdom.
The dictionary defines wisdom as the ability to use your knowledge and experience to make good decisions and judgments. People are not always skilled at that. This is why we have hot dog eating contests and mud wrestling. What is the last foolish thing you did? This is why we have confession.
While we do not always make good choices, even our wisest human wisdom is different than God’s wisdom. In our human wisdom, we place a high value on money and material acquisitions. Our human wisdom produced the expression, the one who dies with the most toys wins.We judge people on their appearance, if they are chubby or thin, do they have an accent or speak a different dialect, are they dark skinned or light. Looks count for quite a bit. Research shows good looking people are generally treated better than others, and are also perceived as being more likable and trustworthy.[1] Our wisdom has produced anxiousness, fear, and self-indulgence.
Be careful then how you live not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil, Ephesians says. Sometimes evil is painfully obvious, as in the most recent revelation of sexual abuse in the church. We see evil in acts of violence and in discriminatory policies. Sometimes evil can be hidden.
Gerald May writes in his book, Dark Night of the Soul:
I must confess I am no longer good at telling the difference between good things and bad things. Of course, there are many events in human history that can only be labeled as evil, but from the standpoint of inner individual experience the distinction has become blurred for me. Some things start out looking great but wind up terribly, while other things seem bad in the beginning but turn out to be blessings in disguise…I also feel that the dark night of the soul reveals an even deeper divine activity: a continually gracious loving, and fundamentally protective guidance through all human experience—the good as well as the bad.[2]
May’s thoughts of continual gracious loving echo what the author of the letter to the community of Ephesus wrote, Give thanks to God at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. To be thankful in the face of the evil of the world seems to us to be a foolish way to live, but God’s wisdom sent us Jesus to be the light that no darkness can overcome.
When we live a life of thanksgiving, we know most deeply what God has made available to us. We realize that we are God’s beloved. Our scripture reading gives us other instruction. Understand what the will of the Lord is. Be filled with the Holy Spirit. Sing songs and hymns together. It is in community that we discern the will of God. It is in community that Jesus is alive through the Holy Spirit. That’s God’s promise, that wherever two or three are gathered in His name, God is present. It is in community that our voices join together to sing more powerfully than we can alone.
Even in the church, Frederick Buechner writes, [you catch glimpses of the joy beyond the walls of the world although] church is apt to be the last place because you are looking too hard for it there. It is not apt to be so much in the sermon that you find it or the prayers or the liturgy but often in something quite incidental.[3]We find it when we see someone here who has been on our prayer list, or in conversation in the Gathering Space. Joy can strike us when looking at the saints in our stain glass windows, or seeing our babies born into this congregation.
It is in community that we come to receive Jesus, the one who assures us, I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. Jesus tells us that consuming him is a matter of life and death, not just for us, but for the whole world. This bread, this Word of God, came down from heaven like manna and became flesh. In Holy Communion, we are jointed to Christ, not through anything we do, but as a gift. The paradox is that out of Jesus’ death on the cross comes life. God invites us to live in the world recognizing God as the giver of life, present in all moments. We learn to recognize that God invites other to the table, too.
Jesus invites us to a different kind of life, a life that gives itself away to the world. This is wisdom, to come together in community and fill ourselves. Then go, carrying our songs beyond our walls out into the world.
~Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin
[1]https://www.businessinsider.com/studies-show-the-advantages-of-being-beautiful-2013-6
[2]May, Gerald. The Dark Night of the Soul. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004. 1-2, 12.
[3]Buechner, Frederick. Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy & Fairy Tale. New York: HarperCollins, 1977, 84.