Making the Most Of…
The First Congregational Church of Wauwatosa
11th Sunday after Pentecost – August 16, 2009
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.

 

15Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, 16making the most of the time, because the days are evil

“Making the most of the time” stuck out to me. In some translations it is rendered, “redeem the time.” I think what Paul is trying to tell the people at Ephesus, and us, is that we’re supposed to be getting something out of the time we spend, because we’re to be wise, rather than unwise. Paul’s advice to make the most of what we have echoes a goodly amount of the practical, how-to advice that we see in contemporary society.

I did a little research and discovered that there was advice on “making the most of” everything from relationships, to time management, to hobbies, to sight-seeing in certain places and on and on. Did you know that you can make the most of seeing Sarajevo, Bosnia? Two of the “making the most of” pieces that appealed to me were the ones on relationship and time management, I guess because these are areas in my own life that I’m always looking to improve – I guess, because I want to make the most of life!

The article on relationship, excerpted from the provocatively titled book The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Perfect Marriage, began: “Time is more precious than gold. If we treat our time together as such, our relationship will flourish.” Do we hear an echo from Ephesians? Making the most of, redeeming the time is about realizing the value of the time that we have. If we want good relationships – whether with our spouse, our children, our friends, our church or with God – it means that we have to spend out time on it wisely and not squander it. I know that it seems so patently obvious, but this is the stuff which reminds us that the old Latin proverb repetitio Mater studiorum (repetition is the mother of learning) is true. If we want to make the most of relationship then we have to spend time and spend it wisely.

The authors Hilary Rich and Helaina Laks Kravitz offer a list of five things that we can do to make the most of our relationships:

  1. Take a walk together in the evenings. Even if you are too tired to talk, it will help you feel closer to each other.
  2. Spend 10 minutes every evening talking about each other's day. Even if you don't have a chance to see each other that much, you will at least know what the other person has been doing.
  3. Eat breakfast together in the morning. Even if you are rushed and only have 10 minutes, sitting together at the table will make you feel like you are starting your day as a team.
  4. Talk with each other once each day on the telephone. A five-minute conversation helps couples connect and will be time well spent.

What they offer is, I think, wise and practical; if we practice these basic, simple things it won’t take a great amount of time, but it will make the time we do have together more productive.

We can apply some of those same principles to the development of our spiritual life, as well, since how we live is an integral part of it. Paul is simply telling us that our everyday conduct is important, just as those five points on improving relationship reflect attentiveness to everyday behaviors. Paul advises caution and, truthfully, how often do we just let things distract us from living, behaving, or serving as we would like – and as we know that God would like? I know that I find myself getting focused on some issue or task and, in the process, sometimes forget to make the most of the time I have. One author I read even suggested that Paul’s counsel against drunkenness just might be counsel against losing focus in our daily living. It is an interesting thought, how many focused drunks have you ever encountered?

In place of being “drunk with wine,” Paul says, “be filled with the Spirit, 19as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, 20giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Our Puritan/Congregational ancestors took this seriously because they understood themselves to be a church composed of “visible saints by calling.” Worship – from the old English worthscip -- to ascribe worth – was important to them. So important in the case of both Plimoth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies, that they were willing to leave everything they knew and loved behind and take-up life in a new and unknown land. This comes home powerfully to me each time I walk onboard the Mayflower II in Plymouth, Massachusetts. To see the cramped conditions, the hardships those folks endured on the over two- month-long journey across the Atlantic Ocean in a ship that would fit into our social hall humbles and amazes me. They were, indeed, very serious about making the most of worship and their faith.

Worship, however, wasn’t simply confined to what they did for the better part of Sunday. Rather, that worship – and the daily time they spent in prayer and Bible study – set the tone for the life they lived in the rest of the week. William Ellery Channing revealed the Congregational roots of his Unitarian faith when he delivered his discourse on “The Church” in 1841. He told the people of the First Congregational Unitarian Church in Philadelphia:

God heeds not what we say, but what we are, and what we do. The subjection of our wills to the divine, the mortification of sensual and selfish propensities, the cultivation of supreme love to God and of universal justice and charity toward our neighbor – this, this is the very essence of religion . . .

What Channing identifies is the essence of spirituality. Our spirituality is genuine when it brings our faith into lived experience, providing the means for visible sainthood if you will. The end is, as William Ames described the practice of theology, “living toward God,” which implies living toward others in the process. Channing also describes the practical nature and purpose of the church, in other words that it is to put into practice that which it preaches and to make the most of the time we have – together in worship right now and in the worship we offer through our everyday tasks.

Sainthood in its Congregationally understood way isn’t otherworldly, but is this-worldly, and thus ultimately communal. Being a ‘saint,’ a follower of Christ’ is to be the practical fruit of the church’s preaching. Marva Dawn, who is doing wonderful work in the area of worship, points out that one of the grave problems facing churches now is the loss of a sense of community. In fact, she identifies the lack of genuine community as the root problem of the churches. The gift of Congregational churches to the church universal should be the emphasis upon the life “in common” that rests at the heart of the Congregational ideal and made possible through our emphasis upon the response to relationship expressed in the church covenant, which identifies our chief purpose as the “publick worship of God.” The community comes as the result of individuals responding to God’s call to relationship. This community gathered in response to God’s call then becomes the means of communication of the Divine presence. The heart of God speaks to the human heart and those in dialogue constantly seek new partners; intentional and mutual acts of communication and commitment. We worship because it is why the church exists.

We worship because it is how we serve God and reminds us of how we are to serve others. We can say that the service of worship leads to worship through service, making the most of life and time together. . Our gathering for worship allows the individual to serve others through the exercise of the gifts that God has given to each of us. All of us have gifts, as Paul reminds us in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, and while they will vary, the end result is the same: the community is drawn together and individual hearts join to commune with the loving heart of God. This understanding of “churchbeing,” to use a term coined by Marva Dawn, stands over against how many would solve the problems confronting the churches today. Dawn speaks to this point when she writes:

Churches think they’re a “community” because that is what the word church suggests, without realizing how much the technological milieu hinders us from really caring for each other with gutsy, sacrificial love of genuine community. Moreover, when we find out how much effort it takes truly to be the kind of community the Bible describes, we are often not willing to involve ourselves in that much struggle and suffering. In our overly entertained and blatantly consumerism-oriented culture, with little concern for serving the common good, many “churches” have become, in George Hunsberger’s masterful phrases, “vendors of religious services and goods,” instead of “a body of people sent on a mission.”

The essence of the church as the place of the heart-to-heart exchange stands in sharp contrast to worship as consumption. Worship is service to God and to the community gathered in response to God gracious invitation to relationship. Church is not where I come to have my needs met, but where I come to offer myself to God and to others and in the process I find myself and am made whole – where I am nourished by the Bread of Life, received through Word and Sacrament.

Worship is when the church is most truly itself and expresses its nature as the people, the body, and building made up of living stones, it is how we make the most of time and of life together. This is made so clear in Channing’s description of the church as it meets for worship and testifies to the idea of the relationship or communion of human hearts with the heart of God in Christ revealed in “warm hearts . . . beating on every side.”

We come together in our places of worship that heart may act on heart; that in the midst of the devout a more fervent flame of piety may be kindled in our own breasts; that we may hear God’s word more eagerly knowing that it is drunk in by thirsty spirits around us . . . . I see the signs of Christian affection in those around me, in which warm hearts are beating on every side, in which a deep stillness speaks of the absorbed soul, in which I recognize fellow-beings who in common life have impressed me with their piety.

What we hear in Channing’s words is what we hear in our Congregational ‘magna carta,’ the Cambridge Platform’s description of a Congregational church gathered “for the publick worship of God and the mutual edification one of another, in the fellowship of the Lord Jesus.” We are called to live out the covenant of grace, not in some abstract way, but in our service to God through those “warm hearts” on every side. We gather to worship because out of that experience we go forth to serve.

The church as “a company of saints by calling” in Congregational thought is a place of the heart. The church is a worshipping people, a community where love lives and expresses itself in a concrete manner through the actions of those gathered, chief of which is the service offered to God in worship and continued through a welcoming spirit and loving service to those in need. In other words, continuing to incarnate, enflesh Christ to this world, because we are the body of Christ. When Jesus is talking about the “Bread of Life” he’s not ultimately talking about the Sacrament, rather he’s talking about himself. His life of self-giving service in the flesh offered true worship to the Father, and we must be one with him in it. I also found what another author wrote helpful:

It is in communion with God through Christ that we attain to the full stature of our humanity. We are made in the image of God. Christ is the image of the invisible God. In Jesus we see both God as he is, and us as we are meant to be. Through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross we are drawn into that right relationship which we should enjoy with God. We are made one with Christ through our part in the Church, his body. In the Sacrament we live in him and he lives in us.

Making the most of time and of life itself is about how we spend our time and our resources in building relationships – with God and with one another. We come to do that through union – oneness – with Christ and by learning, as did Solomon, to have a “heart skilled in listening.” But, and I want to stress this in conclusion, it’s about how we spend, how we use, time and relationships that will make a difference. Let me remind us of a simple method for spending good time with God. This method takes just seven minutes – two in the morning and five in the evening. Here is how it works. In the morning take two minutes alone with God; focus your heart and mind on God in silence. After two minutes just say, “Thank you, Lord, for the day ahead. Be with me through it and never let me forget you are here with me.” Or you can offer some other simple, little prayer to focus yourself on the presence and then off you go. You’ll be surprised how during the day you’ll see God at work in the ordinary.

In the evening take five minutes to read and meditate on a passage from the Bible. Just relax with it and use a translation that speaks to you the best. God really does want to be in relationship with us and help us to make the most of life and time, but first we have to give God the opportunity to speak to us. Five minutes will do that and open the way to a new and deeper awareness of God and of self.

Begin, as I’ve said before, by giving God seven minutes a day – two in the morning and five at night. It’s wise use of time, it will make a difference and you’ll find that you make the most of it.

William Ellery Channing “The Church” in The Complete Works of William Ellery Channing (Boston: The American Unitarian Association, 1891), p. 328-29.

See Marva Dawn A Royal “Waste” of Time: The Splendor of Worshiping God and Being Church for the World (Grand Rapids: Wm. J. Eerdmans, 1999), p. 48.

Dawn, p. 121.

Channing, p. 434.

Walker, The Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1991), p. 205.