Sermon - Trinity XX 2021 - Ephesians 5:15-21

The Wedding Feast, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, 1620

“Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.”

Most of our resources in life are renewable. If you spend all your money you work for more. If you eat all your food you can grow some more. If your clothes wear out you can sew some more. Especially today in our consumerist culture where things are quite cheap and easy to obtain, it’s easy to treat many things with little care because you can just throw them away and buy new. This consumerist attitude tends to make us wasteful.

There is one resource which is not renewable and yet very easy to waste and that’s time. We all have an undisclosed finite amount of time. Each day has just 24 hours. Life isn’t like a movie which you can rewind. We can’t hit the reset button. We can’t recycle spent time and use it a second time. Every moment which passes is a moment which is gone and irretrievable.

Because of time’s finite quality you’d think we wouldn’t waste time, but boy do we! St. Paul connects wasting time to getting drunk. Being drunk or high both cause us to lose track of reality, which is why they’re attractive to so many, they’re used as escapes from reality. But when you escape from reality, that means you’re not living in the real world, and your time in reality is wasted; your time is lost.

But there’s another drug today which is far more widespread and dangerous than cheap vodka or marijuana: screens. TVs, computers, smartphones, they’re everywhere and incredibly addicting. Like drugs, screens cause us to lose track of reality, to live in a made-up world and escape from reality for a time. It’s not just when playing video games or watching fiction, but even when you’re on social media or reading blogs or watching the news or non-fiction documentaries, those are things that happened to someone else, somewhere else, at some other time. Instead of being present with the people around you, screens cause you to escape, to lose time.

In this regard books can be very similar to screens. Sure, books and screens can give you all sorts of valuable information. You can learn a lot from them. But they don’t compare to, nor can they replace, the wisdom and knowledge gained from a life lived in reality with the people around you. So suffice it to say, the most precious and limited commodity available is time, and it’s distressing how much of it we waste. It’s therefore a great comfort to know that Jesus redeems our wasted and evil days and gives us days without end.

But before we get to the comfort of Jesus redeeming our days, we need to establish why this is a problem, why wasting time is so dangerous, and why the pastor would spend time preaching about this. In Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast He identifies people who waste time and what happens to them. “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come.”

In this parable a king is giving a royal wedding feast. We’ve probably all been to weddings before and the receptions which follow them. But could you imagine going to the reception hosted by the richest and most powerful man in the area: the king! It would be the party of a lifetime! Most people wouldn’t even dream of getting the chance to go to something like this. That’s why the reaction of the guests is bizarre when they’re told to come to the feast: “They paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them.”

When the summons went out the guests paid no attention and went off. No sane person would ignore the summons and go back to what they were doing, but these guests weren’t sane. They were so busy living in an unreal fantasy world that they didn’t even realize what they were refusing; they just paid no attention! They missed the really important thing because they were too busy with the less important.

The application to this parable is that God summons us to eternal paradise with Him, something far better than even a wedding feast thrown by a king, and yet so often many choose to ignore the summons and busy themselves with things that don’t matter nearly as much. The great treasure in this world is the people around us, especially those in our community, church, and family, and yet we choose to spend all our time working or staring at screens. The great eternal treasure which God gives us is found in His Word, the sacraments, and prayers, and yet we choose to sleep, go work, stare at more screens, and play games.

Any time which is spent doing the lesser thing, when the greater thing is available, is wasted and lost time; it’s debauchery. What’s the result of that? “The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.” If we choose to waste our time on the lesser things and ignore the King’s invitation, then God will put an end to us and raise up others to come to His feast; because the banquet hall will be full regardless of if we are there. The “servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guests.”

But even once you’re in the wedding hall, you still can’t waste time. “When the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.”

The wedding garment is faith. Without faith you’ll be cast out into the darkness. The way faith is received is by being filled with the Spirit, as we confess in the catechism, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to Him, but the Holy Spirit has called me by the gospel.” We are filled with the Spirit when our ears are first filled with the Word. We fill our ears with the Gospel by opening our mouths so that we and others may hear and believe. This is a wise use of time and this is why we’re encouraged to spend our time wisely “addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart.”

The songs of the faithful are songs which clearly confess the faith and the Gospel. Jesus Christ clothes us with His righteousness. In baptism we receive the garment of salvation, and by faith we wear this wedding garment, clinging to Christ’s righteousness like a warm blanket in a cold wilderness. Without the wedding garment, without faith and Christ’s righteousness, we would wither away and fail to enter the great wedding feast.

So we pray that God would “teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” In wisdom God will direct our steps to walk wisely instead of foolishly, to spend our time in the greater things instead of the lesser things. And be of good cheer! Jesus’ death upon the cross redeems us, and redeems our wasted days and time. Have you wasted time? I know I have. But don’t despair, don’t waste more time fretting about the past, today is a new day and Jesus has redeemed our wasted time.

While we can’t recycle our lost days and hours, we can’t hit a reset button, God does one better: He replaces these finite evil days with an endless good day in paradise. The time we’ve wasted has been redeemed by Jesus and is infinitesimally small compared to the greatness of the wedding feast which is prepared for us in paradise. A taste of that feast is given to you here this morning from the Lord’s own table so that you may depart in peace and learn to walk wisely. May the Lord bless you to walk wisely, be filled with the Spirit, and to sing and make melody to the Lord with your heart.