Ephesians 5:15-20
Time is something we think about often enough. We have a popular saying: Life is too short.
Too short for what?
Life is too short to be sad, to hold grudges, to not celebrate. Life is too short to worry. Life is too short to be on a diet, to live on low-fat everything, to forgo cake and champagne or any of the good stuff! Life is too short to stay in a bad job, a bad relationship, or to live a lie. Life is too short for a long story, life is too short to talk slowly, life is too short to waste a minute of it.
In the immortal words of Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
Clearly, there is a wide range of ideas about what life ought to be used for. No doubt there is a wide range of ideas about what wise living should look like. What do the scriptures say wise living should look like?
We know from the context, the entirety of this letter, that the life God has intended for us is to seek reconciliation with God and with others. To know ourselves as God’s beloved and seek to imitate God’s love in our lives and relationships with the world. To let that love be reflected in all we do, making the most of the time we have.
The key to making the most of the time is to feel the urgency of it but avoid becoming anxious about it. A sense of urgency will motivate you to do what needs to be done, to take the risks that ought to be taken. We need that sense of urgency. But anxiety is another thing; anxiety will paralyze you, making you afraid to do anything at all.
I could easily become anxious when I think about the minutes ticking by, the sand sifting through the hourglass, knowing that as each day passes I have one day less ahead of me. And yet, when I allow this anxiety to overcome me, I am failing to do the very thing I intend to be doing, the thing I ought to be doing – seizing the moment, making the most of the time. I am failing to live in this precious moment that is given to me.
Make the most of the time, the letter says to us.
A textual tidbit I learned this past week about this phrase, making the most of the time – it is a Greek word, exagorazomenoi. Within it we see the Greek word for marketplace – agora. And it literally means to snap up all chances of a bargain at the marketplace. If you see a great deal on a bag of apples, take it – it will be worth it. And if you see a great deal on a blanket, take it. Take the opportunities that are presented to you when they are worthwhile, without stewing too much over whether there might be a better one somewhere or if this is the appropriate type of apple or blanket. Let go of whatever is getting in your way of taking the good opportunity that is before you.
That is an enlightening way of hearing the phrase, making the most of the time. Seizing the opportunity to do something good. And to be looking for those opportunities to do something good. This is life abundant and overflowing.
How can we as the church, the body of Christ, do that?
How can we pay attention to the incredible bargains that are offered to us and seize them?
Take church meetings, for example.
I think of church meetings, because I have spent a lot of time in church meetings and thinking about church meetings. And I know there is a lot of time wasted in meeting. I have sat in some meetings where we let hours go down the drain as we rehash things that have gone before, things that are really of no consequence today, or things we dislike but have no power to change. Sadly, neglecting what we might be doing now, how we might be making the most of the time.
I have been in meetings that are the equivalent of pushing the food around on our plates. An hour passes by and no active steps have been taken, no concrete decisions made. Nothing is changed.
And mostly, I have been in meetings where there are too few present. Most people don’t come to the meetings. Maybe because they don’t like meetings – they have been in too many of the kind of meetings I have just described. But maybe because they don’t know they are needed. They assume that they are neither needed nor wanted, because others are already doing it.
Of course, we must realize that this business of meeting, discussing, planning – the good, the bad, and the meh – this is all part of the business of being church. Could we do it better? No doubt. But we start where we are and go from there. What are the possibilities you can see?
Even as you read this there are incredible opportunities for us to be church all around us. In our city, there is the National Folk Festival coming up in a few weeks, an event that will draw thousands of people here. How can we be a part of helping this beautiful thing happen? How can we welcome the strangers in our midst? There will be a lot of them.
There is the event called Third Friday every month downtown where citizens of Salisbury come out to be a part of the community – how might we be a part of that?
And there is so much more. How might we be a part of the many efforts in our midst to make our community more beautiful, more joyful, more loving?
Exagorazomenoi! There are a ton of bargains out there – don’t think there are not. Let us go out and snap them up! Let us fill ourselves with the Spirit, with songs of praise and thankfulness for everything, and make the most of all we have been given. We have been given life – adoption into the family of God, a new identity as God’s beloved children. And we have been given a purpose – to nurture and strengthen the body of Christ.
To live this life overflowing – it is not something in the past that we look back on. It is not something in the future that we look toward. It is now and here, on offer to us.
Let us make the most of it.
