The Kindness Contest

I grew up before pay per view. Saturday night brought boxing and wrestling into our television in living color. Some fights featured lumbering heavyweights, who bellowed together for a few punches, then broke apart to catch their breaths. That is until the main event with the likes of Ali or Foreman or Frazier. These guys could move and inflict damage. Flurries of punch drew blood and swelled eyes shut. Spit and sweat flew together when blows landed. Bruises swelled the young men's faces out of recognition.

For this week's sermon, I'm staring into the end of Ephesians 4, not a pretty sight. Toilet talk and cancerous anger ooze from these verses. Young Christians under severe pressure are finding their guts busting out and wondering where all the mess came from.

At the end of each three minutes, the combatants made their way to their corners. Managers glued cuts together, let the blood out of bruises and jacked smelling salts into groggy battlers. The managers directed, challenged and encouraged their man to victory. Then the bell rang.

In the middle of this mess of Ephesian guts stands the Holy Spirit. The mess grieves him, like a manager watching his pupil get the spit beat out of him. We are sealed to the Holy Spirit like a boxer to his or her manager.

The two boxers stood and squared off, walking and bouncing back into combat. Pain was met by steely gaze. Fear was pounded between the gloves. The stronger, more skilled and more determined fighter would win. Unless it was a Tyson over in 90 seconds fight, us viewers could size up a winner by the 5th or 6th round. Fights gruelled on for 12 or even 15 rounds, except for knock out or TKO. Three judges voted on a winner and it was over.

Once the guts are drooping and the Holy Spirit Manager has his corner time, the hope of victory is painted. Kindness, tenderheartedness and care will flow in this new group of Christians. Old hates will lie unconscious, impervious to smelling salts and cold towels. Bitterness will be counted out and brawling will lose. They will all be defeated by love, God's love.

Light Versus Darkness

The Christian Paul gets excited about what God has going. The Ephesians are trying to thrive in a power based culture where magic and money rule. Paul writes to them that God's new kingdom, His new culture has the juice to totally remake the city.

I have been staring into chapter 5 of Paul's teaching specifically today. Paul aches for the Ephesians to own their new lives as Children of Light. Ephesus is a dark town with the largest temple to a demon, Artemis, in the known world and millions of dollars worth of materials dedicated to spells, charms, curses and other magic arts. Their statue maker guilds almost control the town.

Yet,

God had set up a living outpost of Light in the middle of their swirling darkness. Yet the outpost had shadows of sin, anger, lust, pettiness of various sorts gave folks places to hide from the light. Paul encouraged these believers to let the light of God's love shine out the negative and energize healthy care for the world around them.

The phrase I am working through is "making the most of every opportunity" or "redeeming the time" as the King James puts it. The full sentence that this phrase occupies advises them to live studied, wise lives. Children of Light want their lives to count and to get the most out of every chance.

As Christians in the 21st Century United States what does a life that counts mean? Like Ephesus, our country spins around power and influence. Our temples might be corporate headquarters or Club shopping warehouses. How do the shadows show up in our churches? How do we need to take ahold of being children of light as we see the darkness descend?

Make the most of every opportunity. Now some have interpreted this as finding a church that gives me and my children every opportunity to fellowship. Mega church attendance makes up a huge percentage of the attendance of the United States Christians, far beyond their actual numbers. That is likely a start. Healthy fellowship is key.

Paul wants them to look outside their fellowship to engage the darkness with God's light power. That requires a sacrificial, other centered view. The main focus is on God's will and carrying it out in the day to day. Its mowing the lawn kind of basic. Its lending $20 or raking leaves in Jesus' name. What else might it be?

Why leaves turn gold

My neighbor is crazy rich. His yard is graced with a 45 foot tall tree of gold leaf. They weren't always golden. He must have won the lottery and decided to show it off to the rest of us by replacing the regular green leaves with these wonderful gold ones. The joke is on him. The leaves are not staying on his fancy tree. The breezes of fall are plucking them to the ground. Tonight I'm sneaking over and loading up a wheel barrow full.

Why should leaves turn such fantastic colors just before they die and fall off? I'm not referring to the science with the different "phyls" in the leaves. I learned that or tried to in high school. I mean why should I look at dying leaves and find their colors fantastic?  When I look at an overripe banana, I am not equally amazed at its color. (Though Grandma Keeler said a banana wasn't ripe unless it had some black spots.) So why do dying leaves draw my gaze with wonder?

Some evolutionists may have generated some sort of explanation for the perception of beauty as a benefit to homo sapiens that has spilled over to my perception of leaves. Perhaps in earlier days people found the sight of reds, purples, golds and rusts instead of lively greens disgusting and our time has it wrong. I doubt both these explanations.

I believe there is a Superior Being who is crazy about color, patterns and light. Before the "bleak mid-winter" sets in, this Being designed these joyous explosions of color to give us hope. Just so we wouldn't miss the message, our eyes and brains were designed to respond to dying leaves as beauty.