An expert in the law comes to Jesus and asks him how he can inherit eternal life. Jesus turns the question to him and asks: “what does the law say, how do you read it?” The lawyer’s answer is that we must love God and love your neighbor. Good answer, Jesus says. “But” – you see lawyers always need good definitions! – “who is my neighbor?!” In response to that question, Jesus tells this story.

A man was going down the road and he fell among thieves. They beat him, robbed him, and left him half dead. Along came a priest, who when seeing him, crossed to the other side. Along came a Levite (himself a religious leader adept at religious law) and he kept on walking. But then came a Samaritan. A man with all the wrong genes, all the wrong religious ideas, and all the wrong heritage. He rescued the man, he poured wine and oil on his wounds, and paid for his nursing back to health.

Jesus asks the expert: which one of the three was a neighbor to the victim? The expert could not bring himself to say “the Samaritan” so he said: the one who had mercy on him.

Why did the priest and the Levite cross the road? (no this not a setup for a joke) There are a number of potential answers.

1) One of my favorites, probably because I can identify, is that they were just too busy. The priest had to get to an 8:00 service and the Levite had a class to teach.

2) Another answer is that they were simply scared. The victim could have been bait, and maybe there were others waiting to pounce as you bent down to help.

3) However, one of the most compelling answers – particularly since Jesus is telling this story to an expert in the law – is that neither the priest nor the Levite thought they had a legal obligation to help the man. There was, at least in their minds, no law that said: “when coming upon a man beaten to a pulp on the side of the road between Jerusalem and Jericho one must stop and help him.” Since there wasn’t an applicable law they walked on.

So… when Paul comes to write his letter to Christ’s followers in Ephesus he tells them to live wisely. This is sensible goal, one that I expect everyone of us in this room shares. We all want to live wisely.

Choir – do you want to live wisely?

I thought so. So how do you do it? Ah… there’s the rub. It’s one thing to have a target, it’s another thing to hit the target. As a kid I had a basketball goal, I had a basket ball, and moreover, I had height. Didn’t matter. Michael Jordan I could never be.

But while God didn’t make me to play BB, he did make me to live wisely. So how do I do it?

Paul mentions the obvious: don’t live in debauchery. By the time Paul is writing, there have been about 400 years of Greek philosophy saying that wisdom consists of avoiding extremes. Don’t get drunk with wine

Drink in moderation, eat in moderation, have courage, but don’t be foolhardy, have generosity, but don’t give everything away… this is the Greek ideal.

Here’s the problem: how do you find this elusive moderation, temperance, this sense of incarnational wisdom? Is it one drink? Is it two drinks? One desert a day? Were the firefighters who rushed into the World Trade Center towers foolhardy or brave? Obviously at the time brave, but from our present perspective… The other day I heard one of the men who led the 9-11 commission say that knowing what we know now, they shouldn’t have been ordered in…

So how do you find it this wise moderation? One answer: legislate. Codify, put it in ink. Create a set of rules that will lay it all out.

With dinner you get one glass of wine… no carbs… when traveling on the road from Jerusalem and Jerrico…

This, as you know, is the approach Jesus fought. The law, codes and rules, will only get you so far. And if you don’t have the right perspective they can be as harmful as they are helpful. Like telling Jesus that he couldn’t heal a blind man on the Sabbath because it was working on the Sabbath.

Aristotle’s answer to finding the elusive virtue: you imitate (mimesis) the virtuous. Paul’s is to imitate Christ. But it involved more than the mimicking of behavior.

This is why Paul says don’t get drunk… BUT be filled with the Spirit. Our hope for living wisely rests partly in paying attention to the wisdom of the ten commandments, of other rules and laws, that men have established through the ages – but it’s more than that. It’s spiritual.

There are two primary images of the Spirit – pnema (air), fluit (oil) – one is a gas the other a liquid… they fill a vacuum, travel where a solid might not. They permeate, they fill…

If you and I are going to live as wise people we need more than a list, more than a set of good ethical principles, more than prohibitions (like don’t get drunk), we’ve got to be filled with the spirit of Christ. This means when we see a man on the side of the road, we don’t search our rule database, we listen to our heart.

Of course it only pays to listen to a heart that is rightly formed, which is rightly filled with the spirit of Christ. This spiritual formation, this heart-felt commitment to transformation, is the way of reaching the goal of living wisely. Follow all the rules you want, you’ll never get there. Put your heart on the alter of sacrificial love… you’re there already.

Have you have had an experience with drunkenness? I’m not asking for testimonies – although that might really be interesting! – but I’m asking if you’ve encountered the evil of alcoholism? I’m sure we all have college stories of getting a bit too tipsy… etc., but that’s not the evil of drunkenness.

Early in my ministry I had a knock at the door from a hardworking man who had a lovely wife and teenage boy. It was midnight, he was in no shape to drive to my house, he told me things I didn’t want to hear, and he would have never said in any other condition. It was my first introduction to the demon of drunkenness. I’ve met the monster many times since. In another pastorate I visited a high ranking government official, living in a government owned multi-acre estate. Once I made it past the guards and gates, I found a man on a 3 day binge, whose wife and kids were about to leave to go back to America.

The monkey of abuse is no cute animal, and he is hard to get off your back once he’s crawled up; which is why AA groups aren’t based on 12 rules, but on a spiritual journey and a community of helpful fellow travelers.

It’s not about abstaining from everything that is potentially dangerous. If that’s the case then we shouldn’t eat McDonalds or own a shotgun – both if abused are very dangerous to our health.

The point is to be filled with the Spirit. If that is our goal then we are on our way toward hitting the target of wisdom.

Part of being a spirit-filled person is joyfully embracing the great gifts that God has given us. Verse 20 “Always giving thanks for everything ...”

This spirit is antithetical to self-centered debauchery.

I don’t doubt that in Paul’s mind he had a metaphor at work. We fill glasses, we fill our stomach, we fill our gas tank. We can have our fill of drink which is focused only on pleasing ourselves, OR we can empty ourselves and be filled with a purpose beyond our own pleasure.

At the heart of it, I believe that living a Sprit-filled life is about a spirit-led balance. We embrace food and wine and money and cars and houses and jobs and kids and ALL the good things God gives knowing they are gifts to be respected for what they are. Neither alcohol nor your spouse nor your job nor your church are going to bring you joy. That is God’s job. Which is why we sing. Which is why we encourage one another with good words.

I know there are those who say being filled with the spirit means…
Tongues, jumping pews, slain, barking, laughing, healing…
I don’t, and I don’t think we should, condemn that kind of thing among those who are sincerely seeking the work of God. But when I look at the witness of scripture it seems clear.

To be filled with the Spirit means you don’t cross the road and walk on…