“The Most of Every Opportunity”

A sermon based upon Ephesians 5: 15-20

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Third Sunday in Lent-C,  March 24th,  2019 

(12-14) Sermon Series: Growing Up In Christ (Eph. 4:15)

Kyle MacDonald is a 26-year-old blogger in Montreal, is the ultimate modern-day horse trader.  He has become famous for trading a red paper clip for a house. Yes, you heard right. A paper clip for a house.

How did he accomplish this remarkable exchange? Well, he didn’t have a job, but one day he looked at a red paper clip on his desk and decided to trade it on the barter section of the popular website Craigslist. He asked people to trade with him anything of value, but he was clear that he needed to trade up.

He got a response almost immediately from a pair of young women in Vancouver who offered to trade him a pen that looked like a fish. MacDonald then bartered the fish pen for a handmade doorknob from a potter in Seattle. In Massachusetts, MacDonald traded the doorknob for a camp stove. He traded the stove to a U.S. marine sergeant in California for a 100-watt generator.

In Queens, N.Y., he exchanged the generator for the “instant party kit” an empty beer keg and an illuminated Budweiser sign.  MacDonald then traded the keg and sign for a Ski-doo snowmobile.  He bartered the snowmobile all the way up to an afternoon with rock star Alice Cooper which he promptly traded for a Snow Globe depicting the rock group KISS. Then he approached actor Corbin Bernsen with the snow globe in exchange for a paid role in a Corbin Bernsen movie called Donna on Demand.

Now, why would Corbin Bernsen trade a role in a film for a KISS snow globe?  MacDonald had done his homework. Corbin happens to be one of the biggest snow globe collectors on earth with a collection of 6500 snow globes. Corbin went for MacDonald’s offer.  That’s when MacDonald took the role in the movie and exchanged it to the town of Kipling, Saskatchewan for a farmhouse. The town, in turn, held a competition for the movie role. So now MacDonald has a house. But MacDonald is not done yet. Now the farmhouse is for sale on his website. Mounted in the yard is a giant red paper clip (http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/07/07/paperclip-house.html).

“…Making the most of every opportunity…”  That’s how the apostle Paul put it in today’s text.  Kyle MacDonald, at least from a business perspective, seems to have taken Paul’s words seriously; and very creatively too.   But of course, the apostle Paul was not talking about business, he was writing to the Ephesians about being ‘made alive in Christ” (2.5); about living the life of a Christian in a difficult, challenging and ‘evil’ time (4:19-20). 

Because we still live in such a world; a world where times can be difficult, challenging, and evil, these words still have valuable ‘wisdom’ for us.

BE VERY CAREFUL

Paul begins with some very normal words: Take Care!  Watch Out!  Be Careful!  These are the kind of words we are used to saying to our family or friends when they leave us.

Here, however, Paul is not just wishing people well.  He is encouraging believers in Christ to live the kind of life that can bring blessings, hope, and maturity of faith, and of course, a ‘life of love’ (5:2).  What Paul means, in the context of this letter, is that if you want to continue to live with these ‘spiritual blessings’ from ‘heavenly places’ (1:3); blessings which can deliver to you ‘the riches of God’s grace’ (1:7), then, he says, you must ‘make every effort’ (4:1) to ‘know Christ’ (1:18) and to ‘grow up’ in Christ (4:15).  Along with this, Paul continues, you must also continue to ‘follow God’s example’ (5:1) to live as ‘children of light’ rather than to keep participating ‘fruitless deeds of darkness’ (5:11).  To do this, he now concludes, you must ‘be very careful how you live…’  (5:15). 

Do you recall all those Road Runner cartoons, about Wile E. Coyote and all the Acme products he bought which most often ‘backfired’ on him.  Most often this happened because either he didn’t read the label, or he didn’t read the label correctly.  It’s was very funny to watch the Coyote mess up, but maybe those cartoons were also making a point about life to children.  Warning labels points to dangers in life.  We do need to pay attention to them, though sometimes they might sound downright ridiculous, because the dangers should be self-explanatory.  When you read these, they make you wonder WHY a company had to put such a warning label on their product in the way that they do.

One warning label I found online said plainly, and wisely:

"Do not put in mouth." That showed up on a box of bottle rockets.
"Not dishwasher safe."  This was on a remote control for a TV.
"Do not attempt to stop the blade with your hand." In the manual for a Swedish chainsaw.
"Warning: May contain nuts." On a package of peanuts?
"Caution: Remove infant before folding for storage." On a portable stroller.
"May be harmful if swallowed." On a shipment of hammers. (http://rinkworks.com/said/warnings.shtml).

I guess you could say that we are all, somewhat related to Wile E. Coyote.  Haven’t you also met people who aren’t the sharpest knife in the drawer?   I've done some stupid things too, haven’t you?  I’ve tried to put something together before reading directions.  I’ve tried to take a short-cut, seen myself as smarter than the person who designed it.  I’ve lived dangerously thinking that something like that could never happen to me.  Haven’t you?

Let's face it, life can be dangerous; and the way forward, the way through can be misleading.  Sometimes even the smartest life can be like walking obstacle course; or a mine field. You never know when something's going to blow up in your face or what the next challenge is going to be. Maybe that's why the game show Survivor is so popular: It’s not real, but it does mirror the pitfalls of real life.

Because anyone’s life can be risky and hazardous, Paul begins to conclude his letter with this practical warning label: “Be very careful how you live.”  Be smart.  Be wise.  Be careful. 

Most of you know that my own daughter struggles with mental illness.   Most people don’t really understand what mental illness means, unless you’ve lived with it in your own family.  Unfortunately, science nor society, still hasn’t got a firm grip on what mental illness means and how it should be addressed by society. We in the church too, sometimes overlook the fact that just as a person can become physically ill, by no known fault of their own, people can also become mentally ill, by no known fault of their own.  These things can just happen, due to past stresses, unseen problems, or simple ‘accidents of nature’.

After several years of struggling to understand what was happening to our daughter’s mind, we finally began to understand and to try to address it, as best we could.  It may have helped, we often wonder, if along with the help of professionals, we could have understood the problems and challenges sooner.  I recall many signals and signs early on, but we never could get professionals to understand what was happening.  We went to doctor after doctor, but either they couldn’t see it, or they wouldn’t address it. 

One of those early signals was that my daughter, even when she got older too, did not know how to stop and look at a crosswalk.  Even when the signs were clearly marked, or a light was blinking ‘don’t walk’, she did not grasp the importance of taking stopping, or taking a look around, before she started to walk.  I don’t have enough fingers on my hands to count the number of times I had to either grab her hand, or shout at her to ‘watch out!’.  This became especially dangerous later, when she was old enough not to want to hold daddy’s hand, but she still would just walk straight into moving traffic.

Mental illnesses are real, and they are very challenging to deal with.  But as we all know, sometimes, even the smartest people; people with the highest IQ’s, and with remarkable abilities, can become so ‘absent minded’, and so care-less, that they fail to watch where they are going or what they are doing.  We all have heard of people who, as my mother used to say, ‘cut off their nose to spite their face.’   This means that people, even smart people, are capable of the crazy, self-destructive behavior.

To give an example, or two, even the ‘unshockable’ among us were shocked several years ago, when we learned that David Petraeus, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and four-star general, had handed in his resignation as a result of an affair he had with Paula Broadwell, his biographer and running partner.  Or what about what happen when one of the smartest presidents and most creative politicians we’ve had in my life-time, Bill Clinton, lied about his relationship with Monika Lewinsky?  It wasn’t just ‘dumb’ that he did it, but then he also did the second really stupid thing of not admitting it, and also lying under oath, even though he knew, as a lawyer, that this was a really stupid thing to do. 

DON’T BE FOOLISH…UNDERSTAND

Since people who aren’t being careful, can do really careless, stupid, and foolish things, Paul not only says, ‘take care…., but not leaving anything open ended, he speaks in plain, simple, unmistakable language: “Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is….”   (v.17). 

 “Common sense is not so common”, the French philosopher, Voltaire, once wrote.  The Bible has known this all along.  That’s why Paul doesn’t overlook reminding Christians how to continue to live like Christians.  Validating the Bible’s ancient truth, science gives us insight on why people who know better, don’t always choose better, do better, or live better.  

Shane Frederick at Yale University was among the first to conduct research that explained why rational thinking (making good, logical choices) and intelligence (the ability to make good, logical choices) don’t always go hand in hand.  In his studies, Frederick gave people simple problems to solve, like this one:  A bat and ball cost a dollar and ten cents. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

Frederick found that some people have the tendency to confidently blurt out the wrong answer, stating that the ball costs ten cents. You, of course, knew that the correct answer is that the ball costs five cents, and you’re completely justified if you’re wondering if the, well, less-than-smart people were the ones blurting out the wrong answer.

Psychologists from James Madison University and the University of Toronto wondered the same thing. They gave similar tests of logic to hundreds of people and compared the accuracy of their answers to their levels of intelligence. The researchers found that smart people were more likely to blurt out the wrong answer because they actually make more mental mistakes when problem-solving.

Smart people are more prone to make silly mistakes because of ‘blind spots’ in how they use logic. These blind spots exist because smart people tend to be overconfident in their reasoning abilities. That is, they’re so used to being right and having quick answers that they don’t even realize when they’re blowing it by answering without thinking things through.

The ‘dummies’ getting the bat-and-ball question wrong weren’t so dumb, either. When Frederick gave the question to students from Harvard, Princeton, and M.I.T., more than half of them got it wrong. Even students from some of the most prestigious universities in the world make stupid mistakes.

Perhaps the scariest thing about the errors that highly intelligent people make is how unaware they are of them. People of all levels of intelligence succumb to what’s called the “bias blind spot.” That is, they’re great at spotting other people’s mistakes and terrible at recognizing our own. The sillier the mistake, the harder it is for an intelligent person to accept that they’ve made it. http://www.talentsmart.com/articles/8-Ways-Smart-People-Act-Stupid-1501075892-p-1.html.

One of the smartest minds in all human history, Socrates, echoed another bit of biblical wisdom when he said: “I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.” Maybe that’s exactly why Paul is saying that in order ‘to make the most of every opportunity’ in life, we have to ‘take care’ and determine not to ‘be foolish’ by seeking God’s will, not going our own way. Only by looking beyond ourselves, can we hope to prevent our own missteps, no matter how smart, how moral, or how Christian we think we already are. 

BE FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT

Finally, when Paul links ‘understanding the Lord’s will’, not ‘getting drunk’ and ‘being filled with the Spirit’, it might sound very disconnected or disjointed, but it isn’t.  Paul is directing his readers to a very a very intentional approach to gaining knowledge and living one’s life. He is reminding us that living one’s life is not just a matter of the head, but it is also a matter of the heart.    

An example of the importance of heart knowledge, comes from how the academic world today reviews student applications.  When I decided to go off to college, back in the 1970’s, you had to take an aptitude test’ like an SAT, or Scholastic Achievement Test.  Most of you, if you wanted to go to college, may remember the ‘fear and trembling’ you underwent, waiting to receive your score to know whether or not you had a chance to get into the college of your choice.  For many years this score carried a lot of weight, and a certain score was absolutely necessary, until college enrollment experts discovered that scholastic aptitudes were not a perfect indicator for life success in school or life.  In short, they were testing aptitude, but overlooked fortitude, determination, or social involvement.

To put it another way, in recent years, experts have determined that to better predict success potential in business, school, and other areas of professional life, IQ, that is Intellectual Quotient, is not as reliable of an indicator as EQ, Emotional Quotient.  Of course, you need both, but when EQ is missing, no matter how smart you may be, people with low EQ, having strong, unresolved, emotional hang-ups, are most often unable to apply the intelligence they have, both for their own good, and for the good of others.

When Paul challenges the Ephesians to ‘be filled with the Spirit’, we must not think that Paul is speaking of some strange, unexplainable, super-spiritual activity.  Paul is simply speaking about the heart’s desire to learn ‘God’s will’, and seek God’s presence, so that we gain the kind of moral, emotional and spiritual perspective and restraint in our lives so we can find focus ourselves on the opportunity we have and avoid the moral and emotional weaknesses that are far too common. 

How does God give us this kind of emotional focus and perspective?  There is a great old Jewish story about a man who goes to his rabbi and complains, "Life is unbearable. There are nine of us living in one room. What can I do?"

The rabbi answers, "Take your goat into the room with you."

The man is incredulous, but the rabbi insists. "Do as I say and come back in a week."

A week later the man comes back looking more distraught than before. "We cannot stand it," he tells the rabbi. "The goat is filthy."

The rabbi then tells him, "Go home and let the goat out. And come back in a week." A radiant man returns to the rabbi a week later, exclaiming, "Life is beautiful. We enjoy every minute of it now that there's no goat -- only the nine of us."

It’s all a matter of perspective isn’t it?  Gaining the right perspective in life can give us both the attitude and the emotional fortitude we need to keeping living our lives with joy and purpose.  Being ‘filled with the Spirit, as Scripture names it, points to the practice of the most basic and regular disciplines of the Christian life: worship; prayer, singing, praise and showing gratitude.  Being filled with God’s Spirit means we focus on living our lives from the inside out’, ‘in the name of our Lord Jesus’, rather than allowing circumstances to take us down into the mess of this world.  This is what Paul means when he says we should filled in the Spirit by ‘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 (Eph. 5:18-20 NIV).

Interestingly, when you join a European Baptist Church, there are higher expectations for church members than we have here in the U.S.  One of those expectations is that you must not only purchase a Bible, but you must also purchase your own hymnbook, so that you can attend music classes to learn how to sing and participate in regular worship.  But music is not only understood as important for participating in worship, but music is how God continues to shape your heart.  For only as you continue to give your ‘heart to the Lord’ through song, deed, or word, can you keep your head, and watch your step through this only one life we have to live.

A final word.  Once the great 18^th century Danish Pastor, Soren Kierkegaard, said of the great 18^th century philosopher, Georg Hegel, that Hegel understood everything there is to know—except that he missed one teeny detail: what it means to live and die in the world.

Paul says, that the way we live wisely is to be ‘being careful’ with how we live, to ‘make the most of every opportunity we have, and to join with Jesus, to help redeem the times we live in.  Are you smart enough to figure out how to do this with your life?   Amen.