August 20, 2006
TEXT: Ephesians
5:15-20
The Melody of Thanks
“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump,
bump, bump on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of
coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels like there really is another way, if
only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it.”[1]
These
opening lines of A.A. Milne’s loveable classic Winnie the Pooh, remembered to me by a colleague this week, may
well capture the essence of this short passage from the letter to the
Ephesians. There may be another way to
come down these stairs of living each morning, if we could only stop bumping
for a moment and think of it.
Might
there be another way to live besides this one that incessantly numbs us into
inattention by 24-hour news and commentary, by ubiquitous advertisements for
products we don’t need but have to have, by dozens of brands of identical
looking breakfast flakes no one of which offers more than the illusion of
nourishment, and by the persuasive delusion that we can learn, acquire,
consume, dress, diet or thicken our eye-lashes into well-being? Is there an alternative to our technologies
that put us vicariously in the huddle, on the stage, in the board room, on the
front lines, with the exhilaration of reality, while keeping a safe and
unaffected distance removed?
“Be
careful how you live,” urges our guide in this morning’s reading, and I wonder
if that could be the beginning of an alternative. “Be careful,” begins the reading, and I
wonder just what that might mean.
I
have a friend who seems always on the alert.
Several years ago, Lori and I were attending a conference in San
Antonio, and my friend had met us there for a visit. We had walked a mile or so from our hotel to
a Mexican restaurant and market that had been recommended to us, and now late
in the evening, immersed in animated conversation on the walk back, my friend
suddenly ordered us to the sidewalk across the street.
Not
so much annoyed as perplexed by the stern manner with which he had so abruptly
interrupted our otherwise convivial reunion, we asked what was going on. Thrusting his hand into a pocket we later
learned contained a gun, he nodded in the direction of several young adults now
on the other side of the street, some behind where we had been walking and
others ahead, and said, “a fight is about to break out, and we were in the line
of fire.”
And
we had been having such a nice conversation.
Absolutely detached from our surroundings, we had been cocooned in our
companionship, while trouble brewed ahead of us and behind. And also while Mike’s antennae had remained
extended and alert. “I always keep my
eyes open,” he casually confessed.
I
thought of that experience again as I read these cautionary words written to
Christians living in the eastern Mediterranean city of Ephesus. “Be
careful,” admonishes the writer; “Be careful how you live, not as unwise people
but as wise.”
“Be
careful.” How many times have we heard
that? How many times have I offered the
same urging? “Be careful,” I would say
to my kids as they left to go out on a Friday evening. “Be careful,” I say to my wife when she sets
out on a trip without me. “Be careful” I
say to a worker climbing a ladder. “Be
careful” we say now to almost anyone as they set off to do almost anything that
seems to us even the least bit risky – physical, financial, even romantic…
“Be careful,” Bing Crosby sings to his
love interest in the Oscar-winning movie Holiday
Inn,
“it’s my
heart.
It’s not my watch
you’re holding.
It’s my
heart...
…It’s yours
to take, to keep or break,
but please
before you start,
be careful,
it’s my heart.”
“Be
careful.” So what do we mean by that
benediction? What does it mean to be “full
of care?” It could suggest that we stay
on “national security level Red,” anxiously and continuously scanning the open
water around us for the flutter of pirate sails. But anxious, fearful preoccupation doesn’t
seem the kind of counsel the apostle would be urging.
“Mindful”
could be a useful synonym moving us partway toward an understanding. Mindfulness simply suggests a state of
“paying attention,” of being fully present, and that is useful advice. We miss so much of our lives through simple
distraction; losing out on wonders and beauties, miracles and also dangers
because we simply haven’t looked. “Be
careful” in the passage could be nothing more than an urging to open our eyes
and look; be attentive, mindful, aware.
A more
careful look at the actual vocabulary of the phrase nudges us in that direction. The literal word used here is the Greek word
rooted in the verb “to see.” “Don’t be
blind,” then, the writer is urging – but in ways I have to believe involve
vastly more than literal vision. “Open
your eyes,” in other words, to how you live.
Which
calls attention to another dimension in that English word, “careful,” than
simply the accumulation of data. When
care is involved there is an element of importance – of value. We care about something, or we “couldn’t care
less.” When we care about something we
have invested some measure of significance, of meaningfulness in that to which
we are attending. When I care about you
it means that you matter to me. When the
writer encourages his readers to “Be careful how you live,” he is encouraging
them to view their days, their experiences, their choices, their relationships,
efforts and energies as matters that matter; that warrant mindful attention,
rather than as irrelevant drips that slip unattended down the drain.
The opposite
of life on “auto-pilot” at 30,000 feet, we are to make “the most of the time, because
the days are evil.” Notice the
selective wording in that phrase. It
isn’t, “make the most of time,” as though better time management, efficiency
and a more sophisticated Palm Pilot were the solution. The wording encourages us to “make the most
of the
time” – which is to say this particular,
peculiar time.
This
isn’t about the number of clicks on a clock, but rather the character and
quality, the capacity and opportunity of this present time. It is, according to
the writer, a context that calls for care and finally wisdom because there is
danger afoot. “The days,” he ominously
asserts, “are evil,” which I take to mean full of the influences of death that
move counter to God’s aspirations for life.
What
follows then is a series of admonitions that flesh out some of the details of
what the writer has in mind – spiritual wisdom that understands the will of
God; sobriety, gratitude, and, almost climactically, music – “psalms, hymns and
spiritual songs;” not merely tunes on the iPod, playing as background music
while we jog or commute to work, but on our lips; vocalized, whether “in tune”
or “off key,” emerging from the gratitude filling our own heart. In other words, sing.
I
like that idea. As with so many things we
used to do ourselves but now largely turn over to the professionals we simply
buy tickets to see, we don’t spend much time singing. Oh, we may wail out a tune in the shower to
the dismay of our family, or beat out a radio rhythm on the steering wheel to
the amusement of the driver beside us at the stop light; and we certainly hum
and grunt our way through a couple of hymns on Sunday morning if we are able to
follow the tune, but singing – that harmonic ventilation of the heart and soul
– is more and more a dormant art.
Once
upon a time there was a large collective repertoire that was widely held in
common – folk songs, protest songs, work songs, show tunes, patriotic hymns,
and hymns, themselves – songs that almost everybody knew and could sing along
with at the slightest provocation on front porches or school buses, in campus
commons or courthouse lawns, or huddled around camp fires.
But
not any more. And it’s too bad, because
music – to some extent music simply heard, but much moreso music actually made
out of one’s own instrument – has an almost mystical ability to interweave the
human and divine, and within the human, the body, mind and soul. Music, as a force both aural and kinesthetic,
both mechanical and organic, both natural and artistic, has power – physical,
emotional; insinuating but also persuasive power. It has the power to both express and
form. It is both the clay pot and the
fingers that press and shape it. It is
both instrument and tool.
What
if, then, we stopped our bumping down the stairs for a moment and imagined the
spiritual implication – the formational possibility of gratefully singing those
psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.
For
one thing, it would push out the cacophonous messages of desire currently
infiltrating our minds and replace them with conscious expressions of gratitude
and grace. For another, singing the
kinds of songs the writer prescribes would put useful words in our mouths,
tuning our living to the will and wisdom of God, and alert us to the discordant
ways our culture bends and twists God’s mind into foolishness and division.
And
it would lift us out of our preoccupation with all that is demanded of us, all
we are asked to give, and lift us up into a mindfulness of all we have
been given and received. Imagine how
different it would be to descend the steps of morning no longer bumping and
bumping and bumping, but wearing,
dancing,
singing
a
melody of thanks…