Gordon McPhee – delivered to St. Edwards, Beauharnois
John 6: 51-58
Scripture: Ephesians 5:11-20 [MSG]
11-16 Don’t waste your time on useless work, mere busywork, the barren pursuits of darkness. Expose these things for the sham they are. It’s a scandal when people waste their lives on things they must do in the darkness where no one will see. Rip the cover off those frauds and see how attractive they look in the light of Christ.
Wake up from your sleep,
Climb out of your coffins;
Christ will show you the light!
So watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times!
17 Don’t live carelessly, unthinkingly. Make sure you understand what the Master wants.
18-20 Don’t drink too much wine. That cheapens your life. Drink the Spirit of God, huge drafts of him. Sing hymns instead of drinking songs! Sing songs from your heart to Christ. Sing praises over everything, any excuse for a song to God the Father in the name of our Master, Jesus Christ.
Summary:
This short bit of Paul’s letter to the Ephesian church, Ephesians 5:11-20, is often used to direct our gaze at the world of dark, hidden pursuits, going on around us. We are to “watch our step,” “expose these things,” “Rip the cover off those frauds,” and instead, “sing hymns … praises over everything.” But Paul is not speaking of and condemning the world outside the Ephesian church, he’s addressing them. They, and we, are the ones he adjures not to waste time on useless busywork hiding their barren pursuits from the light of Christ. They, and we, are the ones who need to “watch [our] step” and “use [our] head” for the times are too desperate to live carelessly.
We are like vampires hiding from the light of Christ and we must “[w]ake up from [our] sleep, [and] [c]limb out of [our] coffins.” We are to rip the cover off all the dark hiding places in our own lives, exposing all our frauds to the truth of Jesus. Then others will not see and recognize comfortable dark places in our lives that they can befriend with us. They will see only the light of our Master, Jesus Christ and either turn away because they hate the light or see and be drawn to the love of God dwelling in us by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Introduction: ARE YOU A VAMPIRE?
Nosferatu, the Romanian name meaning vampire, is a French word coming from ‘vam’, meaning blood, and ‘pir’ meaning monster in the Slavonic Magyar, or Hungarian language. Bram Stoker turned the idea into a novel in 1897, and so the fascination with these fantastic and fanciful transformed humans began. I would not put too much stock in this insight but we may very well speculate on the massive popularity that people who live and prosper in the dark, who cannot bear the scrutiny of direct sunlight, have accumulated in our present age.
Why such fascination with this genre? Why are we taken with the idea of ordinary people, like us, who can be transmuted into those who cannot endure the light? Certainly, the fact that increasingly the sun is less friendly and we must protect ourselves from its radiation is not the reason any more than the ‘gothic’ style is. Paul, in Ephesians 5:11-20, does express his view of what may be going on.
If you walk into a dark room, with a bright light in your hand, it illuminates everything in that room. If you walk into the room and nothing is illuminated, it’s because your light isn’t shining. It’s covered, or worse, isn’t lit. The only other dark places in the illumined room will be the things in shadow. The things deliberately covered and protected from the light. This morning we’re going to talk about what Jesus, through Paul, encourages us to do to illuminate our whole lives and the community around us.
Sermon:
“Don’t waste your time on useless work, mere busywork, the barren pursuits of darkness” Sounds like your ideal Protestant ethic, doesn’t it? The best of clean productive living. The kind of thing we might tell our teenagers when they’re going off the rail, doing poorly at school and getting into trouble. And “Expose these things for the sham they are.” Is this Paul calling us to arms, to march forth in our Christian purity and set the world straight? We often read these kinds of passages this way and unfortunately, some stop there, finding their comfort zone in self-righteousness that translates into snubbing others they see as less holy than themselves.
If we begin a little before this, starting from verse 8, we may find Paul has a different idea in mind, “You groped your way through that murk once, but no longer. You’re out in the open now. The bright light of Christ makes your way plain. So no more stumbling around. Get on with it! The good, the right, the true—these are the actions appropriate for daylight hours. Figure out what will please Christ, and then do it.” Essentially, Paul says, we’ve been changed and so has everything around us. The lights are turned on and the path before us is plain to see. We don’t waste our time groping around in the dark uselessly trying to find the direction to take, it’s right there in front of us.
The key to understanding what Paul is saying is realizing he is talking about us, those who are “out in the open … [in the] bright light of Christ [that] makes your way plain.” He’s not condemning the rest of the world who still grope through the murk, that’s expected, it’s all they can do, it’s where we once were, they don’t have the light yet. But we do. So for us to waste our lives is a scandal. And an outrageously bad thing.
When Paul tells us to “Rip the cover off those frauds and see how attractive they look in the light of Christ” that’s not a call to cry out to the world and governments and church leadership in self-righteous moral indignation. Paul wants you to go into your private closet, in front of the mirror, and look deeply and honestly into your own life. To peel away the covers we’ve put over those things we do not want exposed to the light of Christ’s love and truth. Because we know they won’t stand the scrutiny. That’s why we hide them, protect them in the darkness. We know they are frauds. What we call love, compassion, morality, fulfillment, and joy are so often shams we have constructed to avoid coming to Jesus with our whole lives, and they will be revealed for their true selfish and empty work when exposed to the light of Christ.
So, the question we’re asking ourselves this morning is, “Am I a vampire?” Can I stand in the light, or do I still love the darkness?
“Wake up from your sleep,
Climb out of your coffins;
Christ will show you the light!”
The amazing property of light is that it illuminates. It is not directional or selective. If you walk into a dark room with a bright light everything is illuminated. Nothing is hidden in darkness except what is covered, and what covers it is clearly visible. Paul challenges us to put it to the test. Don’t just take his word for it. He’s confident that if you “rip the cover off” whatever is cashed away in your life you’ll know it to be a fraud, unattractive in the light of Christ.
“These are desperate times!” What a thing for Paul to say. But think about it for a moment, if we have truly let Christ show us the light and exposed the fraudulent parts of our life so that we do not walk in the pursuits of darkness then are we not shining that same light everywhere we go in the world? “Watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. … Don’t live carelessly, unthinkingly.” The world you are living in is still in darkness. What Paul is saying is that if you are filled with the light of Christ, then you have to be on your toes because others around you who are living in darkness will not appreciate you shining the light of truth on their lives. For them, darkness is the norm and their comfort zone.
And as you know, light illuminates. Wherever you go, just living as you do, will shine the light of Jesus, which is why Paul adds, “Make sure you understand what the Master wants.” Your path is illuminated, the way is clear, you need to be attentive to it, to look to Jesus in scripture and prayer every day, every moment of every day to know what He wants, because the world of darkness around you, that has not yet accepted the light, will try to cover and distract the light from their view.
Now here’s the really important corollary to what Paul is saying. If you expose the frauds within you, rip off the cover, as Paul says, and recognize the barren pursuits of darkness so they are exposed for the sham they are then the world around you will see this in you too and know, from the light in your life, that these things in themselves are frauds as well. This is our witness for Christ, to shine this light by the lives we live, the choices we make, and the words we say.
But what if we find there is “useless work, mere busywork, … barren pursuits of darkness” that don’t mind being close to us, that we do not find objectionable, things of this world for which we are not persecuted for being different from? Things not hiding from the light in our lives? This is why Paul calls us to attention, “[D]on’t live carelessly, unthinkingly.” As he said in the previous verses, “Figure out what will please Christ, and then do it. … You groped your way through that murk once, but no longer.”
It may make some feel good to stand up a decry the darkness in our world but truly this does little but invite derision and mockery. Your life, filled with the life of Christ, in the choices you make, the actions you perform, and the words you speak, accomplish far more for the work of Jesus Christ and the furtherance of the Gospel than anything I can do up here in the pulpit. But for that to be true we each must first allow the light of Christ to have its full effect.
“Wake up from your sleep,
Climb out of your coffins;
Christ will show you the light!”
Whenever you find you are comfortable in the world, look in yourself for that same sham, that same fraud, lurking in your heart, neatly tucked away under an excuse or a fear or a falsehood to hide it from the light of Christ in you, the light that illumines your heart. For Luke 6:45 records Jesus saying, “The health of the apple tells the health of the tree. You must begin with your own life-giving lives. It’s who you are, not what you say and do, that counts. Your true being brims over into true words and deeds.”
That is the only reason to look outside yourself at the barren pursuits of darkness. To see if there be any any of the same in us. As the psalmist cries out in Psalm 139:23-24,
“Investigate my life, O God,
find out everything about me;
Cross-examine and test me,
get a clear picture of what I’m about;
See for yourself whether I’ve done anything wrong—
then guide me on the road to eternal life.”
But like any good vampire, we shun the light. We don’t have to think about it, it’s automatic, like closing your eyelids when you look up at the sun. We were born into a sinful world and have learned our lessons well.
This is why Paul says, “Don’t live carelessly, unthinkingly.” echoing his call in 1 Corinthians 16:13, “Keep your eyes open, hold tight to your convictions, give it all you’ve got, be resolute.” And don’t mistake his imperative about drinking too much wine for some out-of-place call to asceticism. Anything we do that softens our convictions and resolve, anything no matter how good or innocent, taken to the level of ‘too much’, cheapens your life. Not because it is bad or denigrating, but because it gives evil a place in your life. As Paul spoke of earlier in chapter 4 concerning anger, “Go ahead and be angry. You do well to be angry—but don’t use your anger as fuel for revenge. And don’t stay angry. Don’t go to bed angry. Don’t give the Devil that kind of foothold in your life.” Anger is good in its place, but when given ‘too much’ it gives Satan a hold on you, it cheapens your life. And the same is true of everything we elevate to extremes.
There is one thing Paul tells us that we cannot get enough of, the Spirit of God. “Drink … huge drafts of him.” “Sing hymns instead of drinking songs! Sing songs from your heart to Christ. Sing praises over everything, any excuse for a song to God the Father in the name of our Master, Jesus Christ.” Paul is asking us to fill our waking lives with Jesus Christ. Not useless busywork that must be done in darkness but work that glorifies and praises God in Christ. Throw back the curtains in song and let the light of Christ fill every nook cranny and corner of your life. See the comfortable dark places in your life where a drinking song would be more appropriate and rip off the cover exposing it to the light.
Climb out of your coffins. The light is there all around you. That is the amazing truth of what Jesus has done that Paul is talking about all through this letter to the Ephesians. The light of Christ is not something you, or your neighbours, coworkers, friends, and relatives need to seek. It is all around them, shining into every place they go. It is shining in you, and from you to them. They must cover and hide all the shameful pursuits of darkness, busywork that occupies all their time for it is not easy to hide from the illumination that is all around. And as Paul said of the Ephesians, and us, this is how we used to live before Jesus filled our lives.
Let the Holy Spirit into every part of your life. Expose everything to the light, the truth of Jesus Christ. So that there be no evil way in you. So that those around you will not befriend you because they find a common comfort in shared things they do only in darkness. Rather they will either shun you, as they shun the light, or they will see and recognize and be drawn to the light of Christ Jesus in you, because the Father has revealed Him to them, and you are the angel, the messenger of Good News the Holy Spirit has lead them to. “Climb out of your coffins; [let] Christ … show you the light!”
Amen
