Takoma Park Baptist Church, Washington, DC January 25, 1987
For a number of years I have made it a habit to get up at five o’clock; yes, that’s five in the morning. I’ve made it my habit as a part of my set of personal disciplines, because I find that I can get at a number of things well before the rest of the household is in my way and well before the telephone and the busy work agenda takes me over. So up and out at five.
But there are some risks with this discipline. If you are waking up at five in the morning, there is the risk, for instance, that you will not be awake at five in the afternoon. And if you are in some kind of committee meeting or counseling conference – well, let's just say that you might not be too favorably impressed if you are telling me your life story and I nod off to sleep in the middle of it! But then that would make us even, since some of you nod off during my sermons! There are some risks associated with getting up that early.
But one of those risks is on my mind this morning as a way to get us thinking about the theme of the message. That risk is the risk of stumbling. You see, at five in the morning, except during some of the summer months, it's dark. I know I am telling some of you something you didn't know; you've never been up that early and you didn't know it was still dark. Well, it is, I assure you, and you can readily guess what that means. First, where is that stupid clock? Can't find it to turn it off. And then, out of bed, on to the cold, cold floor: where are those slippers? And start walking. Very carefully, with a little stagger and a lurch; I do admit this old body rebels still at early rising. Walk carefully, but ouch! Now what was that my toe hit? Only the same bed post that's been there for sixteen years! How come it got in the way of my big toe?
When you insist on walking in the dark, the risk is that you are going to stumble, even when you are walking through familiar territory. When you can't see and you are a little confused anyway, the cobwebs have not been swept away by the first cup of coffee, when you walk in the dark, you're likely to stumble and even to get hurt.
It gets worse, folks. All kinds of things accumulate on the floor next to my bed. I don't know how three pairs of shoes got there. Surely I have not been dropping shoes there night after night. But have you ever planted your bare foot right square on a pile of two left loafers and a right boot? It is most uncomfortable! But again, I say, if you insist on walking in darkness, you'll find that you have in fact left yourself lots of obstacles and that they will rise up and smite you, like it or not.
I say again, too, that all sorts of things accumulate on the floor by my bed during the night, things I did not give permission to be there. One morning I did my five o’clock routine, staggered along the bedroom floor a couple of steps, and planted my full weight of a hundred and mmmmmmm pounds right square on our little dog! Well, that was the morning the whole family received the precious privilege of getting up at five to investigate the howls and yelps. I did the howling and the yelping; the dog was pretty calm about it:
If you walk in darkness, there are beasts out there lurking for you. There are some most unpleasant surprises for those who will not walk in the light.
Now I have several choices, don't I? I can choose to keep on with this little game, and can keep on skinning my shins and stumping my toes. I can choose to walk in darkness and I can keep on stumbling. Or I can choose to fix up a little night-light or otherwise get enough light on the subject that I can see what I'm doing. It's really quite simple what the choices are. But the trouble with me and the trouble with most of us it that we don't learn from our stumbling. We don't take the kind of action that would help us cope with the darkness. We just act as though we were powerless and we keep on stumbling rather than turning on the light and walking in the light.
Spiritual stumblers are like that too. Spiritual stumblers choose to ignore the light and walk in the darkness. Spiritual stumblers, given plenty of information about where the light is and how you can get insight for a confident walk, still choose to leave the lights turned off and to stumble instead of walk.
And so Paul's admonitions become very important to us. Listen to Paul's word that identifies our need and our possibilities: "Once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light.” Walk as children of light and not of darkness.
Now I think it's important to know that for the New Testament, walking in darkness is not the same thing as walking and living in ignorance. Darkness and ignorance are not the same thing in Biblical language. Instead darkness is the choice of the wrong way, darkness is choosing to ignore the truth, not just being ignorant. You see, the Bible understands that our problem is not just a problem of information; it’s a problem of will. The Bible understands and teaches that the human predicament is a matter of wrong choices, not just of wrong information. We may have all the right answers and still fail to act on them. We may get all the kings of Israel and Judah memorized, we may be able to recite the Beatitudes backwards, we may be able to quote every theologian from Martin Luther to Martin Luther King, and still fail to choose to follow the right path. The human problem, you see, is not that we do not know how to live; it is that we do not choose how to live.
And so that's why Paul has to admonish us in this very candid and very straightforward passage, "walk in the light". You have the truth, now choose it. You know what is right; now walk in the light instead of stumbling in the darkness.
Now if you followed the Biblical text carefully, or if you can find it again in your Bibles there where you are, I'd like for you to see that Paul identifies for us the principal stumbling blocks that are in the path, he names for us the items that you are most likely to stumble on if you choose to leave the lights turned out. Look at the text of Ephesians 5 with me:
First, verse 3 of chapter 5: Immorality and impurity or covetousness must not be named among you … immorality and impurity or covetousness. And then he repeats himself in verse 5: Be sure of this, that no immoral or impure man or one who is covetous -- that is, an idolater – has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ. That's pretty tough business, isn't it? And just how tough it is depends on what translation you are reading. Immorality, impurity, and covetousness are the words used in the Revised Standard Version. The Good New Bible says, immorality, indecency and greed. And as for the old and majestic King James Bible that some of you prefer – well, I will spare your ears and tell you only that it is an R-rated translation. Paul is identifying the misuse of our sexuality and the misuse of our desire to have things, and he is telling us, these are the things that will cause you to stumble, and as often as not, you choose to leave the light out. You choose to stumble on them.
The Quaker writer Richard Foster not long ago published a book entitled Money, Sex, and Power. That's just about got it all, doesn't it? Money, Sex, and Power. And Foster's essential point is that we are living in a time in which those items are the principal stumbling blocks of a whole generation.
Well, Richard Foster didn't invent that. And neither did our age invent it. Paul understood it long ago. Paul understood in his own way the yuppie generation as described by Adon Taft of the Miami Herald. Says Taft’s article, “The nation's largest generation of young adults in history is attending worship services in great numbers but doing less than older members to support churches with their money or their talents. (There is the covetousness business.) They seek answers to personal questions but seldom volunteer for demanding but mundane tasks such as teaching Sunday School. They pack the pew but pass the collection plate quickly by. (More covetousness; and now hear this). They question the morality of war but four times as many of them are living together outside of marriage as they did 20 years ago.” And, says Taft in a telling phrase, "the same folks who gave us Playboy magazine also gave us Campus Crusade for Christ."
Over and over again, you see, where sexuality is concerned, where money is concerned, where what we want for ourselves, for our pleasure is concerned, we choose to ignore the light and to walk in darkness. But the truth is that when we walk in darkness, we stumble. We stumble and we hurt ourselves and damage someone else, and, most of all, we act as though God did not count. And we need desperately to hear the word of Paul, "Once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true."
Now if you still have the Biblical text open to Ephesians five, look at verse 4 and you will find out the other primary stumbling block, the other item which so often we choose to fall over. Ephesians 5, verse 4: “Let there be no filthiness, nor silly talk, nor levity, which are not fitting, but instead let there be thanksgiving.” Wow, this Paul is a real killjoy, isn't he? First he plastered some very harsh labels over our personal freedoms, and now he wants to clamp down on laughter and joke-telling and good cheer!
No, that's not what the passage means. When Paul says, “Watch out for filthiness and silly talk and levity,” he really is saying, recognize that you exercise more choice with what you say than with just about any other facet of your life. With what you say you can create harmony or you can work havoc. With words, with what you say, you can instruct someone or you can mislead him. With the weapon of speech you can establish the character of a life or you can turn it into banalities and trivialities. You have control of what you say; you choose it.
And so when Paul says, choose thanksgiving instead of silly talk and levity, I don't think he is asking us to be puritanical sobersides. I don't think he's telling us not to speak with humor and good cheer. No, he is saying, use the gift of language to build up and to enhance your relationships. Don’t choose to speak in such a way that things degenerate and the climate is polluted and nobody can concentrate on the things that matter. Do not choose darkness, do not choose what is pointless fluff, when the occasion calls for honest reflection. Do not speak in mindless drivel and stumble along and hurt both yourself and someone else when you could, with the gift of speech, offer something of value.
I think of a thousand thousand conversations about the weather, the football scores, and how bad the traffic is, when I could have chosen to speak a loving, caring, redemptive, witnessing word to somebody. But I chose silly talk and levity, and I stumbled.
I think of a friend of mine who opens phone conversations with the predictable line, “How are you? Fine. I need to ask you to do something.” -- in such a hurry to get down to his needs, his wants, that neither does he wait for me to answer the "how are you" questions nor does he give me a chance to ask him, he just answers right away, “I'm fine,” and plunges ahead. That's a stumble. That borders on levity and silly talk because it chooses to ignore a real person on the other end of the line. No, says Paul, let there be none of that, but let your language instead be thanksgiving, let it be a well-chosen vocabulary of praise.
"Walk in the light … walk as children of light, and try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.” Choose to walk in the light God has given, else you will be stumbling and falling and breaking things. And it never had to be that way, for God has given you the light already. God has given you the light of truth already, and his name is Jesus Christ.
Walk in the light; the daystar is shining already, and you know that He is Jesus the Christ. So walk in the light. The truth of God is not unknown to you. He is word made flesh, he it is whom we can taste and touch and handle, which our very hands have handled and which our own eyes have beheld. He is the light of the world, Jesus the Christ. Walk in the light. Walk in the light; or else, I assure you, you will stumble, and in stumbling injure yourself and make a mockery of God's gifts. Walk where? In the light.
