Wake Up Sleeper

But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. This is why it is said: “Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” — Ephesians 5:13-14

Cindy and I spent a weekend with wonderful friends in Southern Illinois in the Shawnee National Forest. I was sitting on the porch at dawn, watching the sun rise slowly, its golden rays burning the morning mist away and brightening the surrounding country fields. The above scripture, "Wake up, sleeper,” came to mind watching the morning unfold in the summer heat.

Scholars can't agree on what Paul used as a source for verse 14. Some think it is fragments from Old Testament scripture, perhaps in Isaiah, and others believe it's from an early Christian Easter hymn. Regardless, two points Paul makes in Ephesians 8-14 are believers need to awaken from their moral slumbers, and unbelievers need to awaken to repentance and quit denying a spiritual reality.

In these verses, Paul used the tension between light and dark to remind Christians our lives, deeds, and positions need to align with the very spiritual light we profess in our walk of faith. And in conducting ourselves as "children of light" [v.9], we expose the darkness (acts of sin) in the world. It is moral character and grit in both words and deeds where the body of believers (the church) is the complete embodiment of Christ in the world. Paul encourages the church to awaken its moral consciousness in the darkened sludge of an immoral, sinful world. We are to have nothing to do with evil and the ways of sin in the world. A moral awakening leads to the progressive redemption of the world through the growth of Christianity.

In David Lowery's film A Ghost Story, Casey Affleck's character dies in a car crash. After choosing not to move forward to eternity when the afterlife portal opens with brilliant, divine, and heavenly light beckoning Affleck's character's soul, he ends up as a ghost lingering on his property. His presence was constant but not forbearing. He could stay but not affect the world beyond a thrown dish here or shorting a light bulb there. In denying the divine light, Affleck's ghostly character lived an undistinguished and bound life of hopelessness and despair. The ghost's lingering and purposeless imagery reminds us to live our lives with purpose and progressively mature our spiritual life by following Christ and walking in His light.

Lowery's point about wayward lingering is Paul's point, too, regarding lingering in sin or aligning ourselves with lives living in the realm of darkness. Our moral character aligned in Christ is to have an impact and not stay in the shadows of a wayward culture or the world's ways. As one walks in moral excellence and the truth and light of Christ, it is these very acts from which salvation in Christ delivers sinners. Paul's quotation in verse 14 appeals for one to arise from the morally and soulless dead. It is an invitation to salvation for the unsaved — a life's resurrection, transformation, and awakening away from darkness and the languishing of one's soul and spiritual life.

-Dan Nickel