In this current age, we are constantly bombarded with different ideas on how to live wisely. There are books, blogs, internet posts, news reports, and random sayings from television shows and movies that tell us what we need to do to be happy or how to layout a regimen so we can have a healthier, more efficient, and financially stable life. I’m sure that, like me, many of you have read, seen, or watched some of these different methods and sayings and found some of them to be quite helpful, and others to be quite the opposite.
Yet there is something that all these books, methods, and sayings lack. But fortunately for us, our lessons today show what it is they’re missing.
Today, our readings teach us how to truly live our lives wisely.
In the epistle, Paul asks us to live ‘wise lives’. To try and “understand what the will of the Lord is.” Wisdom is something he has hoped for us ever since the first reading we had from Ephesians all the way back in July. And not just wisdom, but also “insight” into “the mystery of his will.”
What both the Psalmist and Paul tell us is that true wisdom is to live righteously, turning away from things like drunkenness and debauchery.
But if we are turning away from something, what is it we are turning towards? We don’t just abandon the pleasures the world has to offer because it is ‘the right thing to do.’ We do so because these things distract us from the point of wise living. The one thing that can give us true purpose.
And that is praising God in the fullness of the Spirit.
In other words, turning ourselves completely to God through his Son Jesus Christ.
In what follows after the passage we read in Ephesians, Paul gives us a way to focus our lives even more on Christ. He gives a description of how Christians in various relationships, such as spouses, family members, and servants and masters, should live in those relationships. He tells us that in those relationships, we should either be obedient to the other person, as we, the church, are obedient to Christ, or that we should be loving and graceful to the other person as Christ loved the church and sacrificed himself for all of us.
What Paul is basically saying to all of us, is to emulate the relationship of Christ with the church in all relationships with each other. In other words, we are called in all our actions to look to Christ as an example and, more importantly, to use our actions, significant life events, and even our very being to turn our thoughts and focus to Christ’s love and sacrifice for us all.
And that is really the point of the lessons today and what it truly means to live wisely. By making Christ the focus of all our actions, as well as our very being, we turn ourselves to “the living bread” mentioned in the Gospel today. The living bread that is Christ. In Christ, we no longer have to worry about prolonging the day death comes into our lives.
Instead, we can rejoice in God’s life-giving grace.
There are so many words and methods out there that try to help us lead a wise life. Well, thank God that in Christ we have the wisdom that leads to life eternal.
And how do we follow that path?
By following Christ.
By taking our lives and transforming them into something that continually reminds us that he sacrificed himself for the world. That he bore all the sins of the world, all of our sins, on the cross, and then rose again so that we might rise away from death into life.
By remembering the kindness Christ showed us on the cross by showing kindness to those we meet.
By “being mindful of the needs of others.”
By loving others as God loves us, and treating them as we want them to treat us.
That is, by loving God and our neighbor.
By forgiving others as God forgives our sins.
By helping others, even when we don’t want to. Even when the very people we help annoy us to no ends.
By working to bring all people in to become children of God through Christ.
By remembering that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that in the end, all that believe in him should not die, but have everlasting light.”
By praying to God for his help in bringing about his will and love in the world.
By using the gifts, talents, and abilities to do our best to fulfill that love and will in the world.
By acting as an example of Christ’s love in the world to lead others to him.
By laying aside all things that distract our attention from God and taking on all that will remind us constantly of the good he has done for us.
By turning away from those things that make us greedy or self-centered, and instead, focusing on the needs of others.
By making Christ the everlasting treasure in our hearts instead of the ones that fade away here in this world.
By remembering that our actions affect more than just ourselves.
By replacing malice with love in our hearts.
By loving our enemies, and praying to God that maybe he can turn them, or on occasion, us, back to the right path so that those enemies can become our friends.
By asking God’s forgiveness and help in turning away from our sins and, instead, turning towards righteousness.
By working our hardest to love Christ.
By asking God’s help in working through the pain of difficult times without anger or malice towards him.
By asking for God’s help whenever we need it.
By reflecting on what God’s will is, and what can we do now to act according to that will in the world.
By praising him and thanking him for his life-giving grace.
By “singing unto the Lord a new song.”
By sharing the Good News of his life to the world and showing the kindness and grace he showed us to all that we meet.
By dedicating all that we have and all that we are to him.
And for that, we can say, “thanks be to God!”
