Potentially Problematic: Joy (Ephesians 5:15-20)
Ordinary Time
15 Be careful then how
you live, not as unwise people but as wise, 16 making
the most of the time, because the days are evil. 17 So
do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 Do
not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the
Spirit, 19 as you sing psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your
hearts, 20 giving thanks to God the Father at all
times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (NRSV)
A friend of mine introduced me to the
song “Joy” in college, playing it on a CD in her well-worn Honda Fit while the
sun slid down behind the railroad tracks.
I didn’t get it—didn’t like it, at first. The lyrics are jarringly at odds with the
chord progression and the whole thing felt right at the edge of being out of
tune, just barely contained. “That’s the
point,” my friend said, almost rolling her eyes at me.
The song stuck
in my head and I found myself looking up why it was like that. The band, Page CXVI (116), was formed around
a quote from C.S. Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew when Aslan sings Narnia
into existence.[1] The song itself was written after the death of a relative of
Latifah Alattas, the lead singer. She knew
of the hymns and the verses that encouraged joy, always joy, but in that
moment, in that grief, she had none.
She sang it
anyway.
“Be filled
with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among
yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts”.
Today begins a
short series in this ongoing season of Ordinary Time that takes several texts
that seem obvious on the surface—and have historically caused problems with
those first-look readings. The texts are
potentially problematic.
The whole
Bible is like that, but let’s start here.
The letter to
the Ephesians has a lot to say about the gathering of the faithful, the ekklesia,
the Church, and how it is run. It likely
wasn’t written by Paul himself but by a close associate summarizing his
theological reflections on community for a new audience.[2] This passage would seem, at first blush, to
be yet another list of “do”s and “don’t”s to follow; here’s how you do church,
here’s how you don’t do church. It may
feel like John Wesley’s notes on the chapter had the right tenor that we must
live “circumspectly - Exactly, with the utmost accuracy, getting to the highest
pitch of every point of holiness. Not as fools - Who think not where they are
going, or do not make the best of their way[;] with all possible care redeeming
the time - Saving all you can for the best purposes; buying every possible
moment out of the hands of sin and Satan; out of the hands of sloth, ease,
pleasure, worldly business; the more diligently, because the present are evil
days, days of the grossest ignorance, immorality, and profaneness.” His brother Charles, the hymn writer, would
be pleased by John’s assertion that “there being no inspired songs, peculiarly
adapted to the Christian dispensation, as there were to the Jewish, it is
evident that the promise of the Holy Ghost to believers, in the last days, was
by his larger effusion to supply the lack of it.”[3]
How
condemning. How exhausting. Wesley’s care for diligence is laudable but
if his were the days of the “grossest ignorance,” I’d hate to hear what he
thinks of ours. And it is a whole other
sermon to unpack his exhortation that we get to “the highest pitch of every
point of holiness.” Wesley understood,
though, that when we approach these verses, when we approach Ephesians, when we
approach the entire Bible as simply a prescriptive list of “should” and
“ought,” we quickly get mired in problems.
Who should do what, and when? Are
there loopholes? If the days are evil,
how can we truly live wisely? And what
does it mean, anyway, to “understand what the will of the Lord is”? If we have days, or weeks, or months when
there is no psalm or hymn in our heart that is joyous to our gracious Lord, are
we no longer filled with the Spirit?
Must we have the joy, joy, joy, joy down in our heart in order to correctly
give thanks to God?
“[L]iving
wisely is not a matter of obeying a given set of laws,” writes Professor
Richard Carlson. “Indeed, the word ‘law’
is used only once in the entire letter of Ephesians and that is to inform us
how Christ ‘has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances’ (2:15).
While there are a number of ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ in Ephesians 4-6 (including our
text), these are not presented as fixed rules which must be
followed. Rather, living wisely involves discerning and enacting the
will of Christ (Ephesians 5:17).”[4]
It is tempting
to equate “discerning the will of Christ” with “setting down a rule book.” We learn as children that knowing the rules
and obeying them gains reward, so it’s natural that we try to do the same thing
with our faith. But there is so much in
the life of faith that moves beyond the black and white of legal adherence;
what if we never drink a drop of alcohol but cannot get past crushing
depression? What if we are the most
productive person who makes the absolute best use of our time and yet cannot
shake a deep anger at our own exhaustion?
What if we follow every single rule we can find but still do not have
joy?
I’ve talked
several times about the difference between joy, an undercurrent of trust in
God’s faithfulness, and happiness, a temporary emotional reaction to a
situation. The thing about this passage
of Ephesians and the thing about that earlier song is that both deal with joy,
not happiness. And both deal with joy that
comes not out of having succeeded at a checklist of rules but from the longer
and more difficult reality of a relationship with God that molds us to the
Divine will.
“Ephesians
1:10 has already declared that the will of God is to bring all things together
in Christ,” writes Professor Brian Peterson. “That is God’s goal, God’s telos for
the world. As if that weren’t breathtaking enough, Ephesians 3:10 insisted that
God’s intent for the church is that the church will be a witness about God’s
rich wisdom to all the spiritual forces of the world. Thus, we know where God
is bringing the world, because God has revealed that grace in Christ. We also
know that God has an astonishing role for the church in being the community
which embodies that promise. To ‘understand what the will of the Lord is’ means
to live lives, which align with the goal revealed in Christ.
“To live out such a life can only be
done by the power of God’s Spirit. The ironic association between being
intoxicated and being filled with the Spirit can be seen in the Pentecost story
of Acts 2, where the bystanders think that the believers are drunk…[T]he claim
is that the church is filled with nothing less than the full presence of God in
Christ through the working of the Holy Spirit…[T]hese are the activities which
flow as a result of the Spirit’s work among us. This is what wisdom looks like,
and what the Spirit’s filling brings: a life composed in songs, in praise (and
lament), a melody joined together across cultures and years.”[5]
“When peace like a river attendeth my
way”—to be filled with the Spirit does not make us into happy little
rule-followers who never drink and are always Sphinx-like in our wisdom; it
enables us to act in God’s name toward the renewal of creation itself, one
moment of gratitude and one honest song at a time. We offer not our best report cards but our
truest selves to God for this is the only offering we can really give, anyway.
“Be careful how you live.” Professor Carlson writes that this “would be
better rendered as a vibrant exhortation of encouragement: ‘Pay really close
attention to how to live.’”[6] Make the most of time, watch how drinking
affects you, don’t be foolish, give praise to the Lord not because this is how
we earn our way into goodness or happiness but because this is how we live into
the gifts the Spirit has given us. This
is how we discern the will of Christ: by
paying attention to the places where we are called to the simplest, most
complex trifecta of guidances—love God, love neighbor, love self.
In that, we can give thanks
for everything not because everything is amazing and we’re happy all the time
and songs just fall from our lips like a Disney film but because we can sit at
the metaphorical piano like Latifah Alattas and voice our grief as well as our delight
to the God Who equipped us to feel such things in the first place.
And then we can hold that space for
others.
“To be filled by the Spirit does not
lead to private projects or mystical experiences, but to the common work of the
community’s worship and mutual building up,” says Professor Peterson. “The wise life in Christ is one that is
embraced within a context of worship, and one which itself becomes an act of
worship in thanks to God.”[7] Professor Carlson agrees that, “This short
text and its surrounding context remind us that wise living is personal but
never private. Each Christian is a new self which has been created by God. But
this new self does not live in isolation. Rather, each new self exists as a
member of the body of Christ, joined integrally to the body’s other members. In
this way, we live both with each other and for each other. Similarly, our new
self is created to be active by doing good works (Ephesians 2:10) and not to be
dormant or secluded. Wise Christian living is not relegated to either the
privacy of one’s church attendance on Sunday morning or one’s devotional life
at home. Living wisely means allowing the Spirit to work the will of Christ in
all aspects of life so that who we are as Christians is integral to how we live
as Christians.”[8]
Does the world you inhabit—your
family, your job, your Lions Club, your favorite coffee shop, your online round
robin letter—know that you have joy in your heart? Do they know that you carry psalms in the
fullness of the Spirit as you use well your time on this earth where the wine
can be good and the will of God draws all things to wholeness? Do you? If not, what rules are wrapped so tightly
around you that you are living so carefully you’ve stopped really living at
all? How is the Spirit of wonder and
wisdom inviting you back to a life that is full and rich and inviting, a life
that heals both you and the ones who encounter you because the Spirit of God
has filled you?
“And I’m so happy,” goes the song in
a minor key when the singer is not happy at all. “I can’t understand; I can’t pretend that
this will be all right in the end. But
I’ll try my best to lift up my breast and sing about this joy.”
Pay really close attention to how to
live, Church. Pay close attention not to
the should and the ought and the don’t and the can’t but to the melody in and
around you that voices the entirety of who you are, wise and foolish and grace-filled
and loved. Pay close attention to the
Spirit Who cares little for productivity and checklists and oh so very much for
curiosity, wisdom, joy.
May we have the focus to see our own
lives, the hope to sing the joy we may not understand, and the Spirit to fill
us with grace enough to see beyond the rules.
Amen.
[2]
Margaret Y. MacDonald, “Ephesians,” in New Interpreter’s Bible One-Volume
Commentary (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 2010), 833.
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