The Biblical writers were very interested in the nature of wisdom and the ways in which people lived it. This study series for Lent will survey the different ways Biblical authors wrote about wisdom and the ways in which they expected it to influence daily life.
This series takes place on Wednesday evenings at 6:30 pm in the Pastor’s Study.
It follows the regular weekly Bible study which considers the readings for the upcoming Sunday. Those sessions begin at 5:00 pm.
The Biblical writers were very interested in the nature of wisdom and the ways in which people lived it. This study series for Lent will survey the different ways Biblical authors wrote about wisdom and the ways in which they expected it to influence daily life.
This series will be held on Wednesday evenings at 6:30 pm in the Pastor’s Study beginning February 25.
It follows the regular weekly Bible study which considers the readings for the upcoming Sunday. Those sessions begin at 5:00 pm.
I don’t remember the first time either of my children did something I had specifically told them not to do. I’m sure there was a first time. It’s been lost amidst all the other times. It’s one of the things my kids did as they grew – they knew that growing older meant shifting boundaries. Sometimes they’d test to see if the boundary had changed.
I remember that I didn’t do some things when they did something I had specifically told them not to do. I didn’t kick them out of the house, the way God sent Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. Mind you, I did kick them out of the house eventually, when they’d graduated from college. But that wasn’t a consequence of misbehavior, that was just a consequence of growing up.
So what small wisdom can we take away from the story of Adam and Eve? It’s unwise to listen to talking snakes – which we don’t have to worry about on an island that doesn’t have land snakes. It’s unwise to do things you’ve specifically been told not to do by God – that’s certainly true, but you probably knew that already.
What happens after you do the thing God specifically told you not to do? You lose Paradise. You no longer live in a pristine world. The world is not a perfect place any more.
The world is not a perfect place.
It’s wise to know that the world is not a perfect place.
When Jesus confronted his temptations, he already knew that the world was not a perfect place. He’d just been baptized by John the Baptist, who washed people in the Jordan River so that their sins might be forgiven. You don’t need baptism in a perfect world.
But baptism doesn’t change the reality of temptation. That’s another small bit of wisdom. It’s astonishing how many people have lived their lives with the conviction that because of their baptism (or something else baptism-like) they, and only they, were right. I struggle with that one all the time. I like to be right, I work to be right, I have a professional obligation to be much more right than wrong. Right?
If I let myself grow accustomed to being right, I’m at risk of shortcutting the work, or relying upon prior rightness to get me through changing conditions, or mistaking “I was right given what I knew” for “I was absolutely right,” because I probably wasn’t.
God’s call. Baptism. Participation in the church. Success in work. Contributing to the harmony of a family. Leading in a community. None of that sets temptation aside. It’s always there, and it leaps out when you least expect it.
“However we think of the devil,” writes Warren Carter at Working Preacher, “the figure’s presence in the Gospel personifies the vulnerability of human life and life in relation to God. No one, not even God’s anointed agent, is free from having their identity and loyalty tested.”
Jesus didn’t escape temptation. You and I aren’t going to, either. It’s an imperfect world, and we are subject to temptation.
Temptation looks like good things. That’s another small wisdom. Temptation isn’t just shiny distraction. Temptation looks like blessing. In the case of Jesus, the temptations look like things he did later on. As Audrey West writes at Working Preacher:
Jesus refuses in the desert to turn stones into bread to assuage his own hunger, but before long he will feed thousands in the wilderness with just a few loaves and some fish (Matt 14:17-21; 15:33-38), and he will teach his disciples to pray to God for their “daily bread” (Matt 6:11).
He refuses to take advantage of his relationship to God by hurling himself down from the heights of the Temple, but at the end of his earthly ministry he endures the taunts of others (Matt 27:38-44) while trusting God’s power to the end upon the heights of a Roman cross (Matt 27:46).
He turns down the devil’s offer of political leadership over the kingdoms of the world, and instead offers the kingdom of the heavens to all those who follow him in the way of righteousness.
I’ve always found the last temptation, the realms of the earth, somewhat odd. The devil offered political power to someone he addressed as Son of God. Think about that for a minute. The Son of God already has power over the nations of the earth. The devil offered him what he already had.
Similar things happened in the other two temptations. Jesus had the power to create bread. He could have called the angels to him – and when the devil had gone away, they came without his call.
Temptation offers what we already have.
Another small wisdom. Temptation offers what we already have.
Sometimes, what’s tempting about it is a relief from labor or effort to achieve it.
Or, the temptation is to lift ourselves out of our humanity into some exalted condition.
As Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “These days, I read the story differently. The devil doesn’t come to make Jesus do something ‘bad.’ He comes to make Jesus do what seems entirely reasonable and good — but for all the wrong reasons. The test is a test of Jesus’s motivations. A test of his willingness to identify as fully human, even as he is fully God.”
Another small wisdom: Temptation urges us to be something other than fully human.
Temptation also invites us to raise others up to more than human. Jesus’ last response to the tempter is to quote Deuteronomy 8: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” The devil has offered himself for worship, to be raised up above humanity and above whatever kind of being he is.
In addition, the offer to rule the nations ignored the people of those nations. What did they want or need? The devil didn’t ask. Those people weren’t important.
There’s a pair of small wisdoms: It’s temptation when you’re invited to raise someone else higher than human, and it’s also temptation when you’re asked to treat other people as unhuman.
That’s why all the “isms” – racism, sexism, homophobia, cultural imperialism, and so on – are so destructive. Each of them invites us to raise ourselves above other people by denying their full humanity.
Is there any small wisdom about resisting temptation? There is, but it’s hard. I wish it was as simple as reading Scripture and holding onto its directions – and that’s not simple. Plenty of faithful people well steeped in the Bible have fallen into temptation, myself included. I think the wisdom is, as best you can, try to resist temptation in company with other faithful, supportive people. Jesus did it alone, it’s true, and at some point in the process there’s nobody who can make the your decision for you. But Jesus did rely upon the religious tradition in which he’d been raised. He relied upon their recorded words and their recorded examples. He relied upon his relationship with God. He may not have summoned angels to him, but he trusted in their presence.
Jesus managed to resist temptation with those supports. Those might be enough for you and me. But as for me, I’m going to ask for more help if I possibly can.
There’s another small wisdom here that’s really uncomfortable. It’s the wisdom to find power in weakness, security in vulnerability. In John Milton’s poem Paradise Lost, he introduced the Son of God as a terrifying figure casting lightning bolts at the rebellious angels. There’s no sign of such a force in the Gospel accounts of the Temptation. A human, hungry Jesus faces a self-confident, more-than-human granter of wishes. It’s also uncomfortable to note that these temptations foreshadow the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry: bread that would represent his broken body, the nations triumphant over the Son of God, the Temple that gazed upon his crucifixion. As Amy Frykolm writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “True power is the mysterious path that Jesus walked. It comes with no guarantees. It is self-giving surrender, the strangest of paradoxes, and it leads to the cross.”
That’s a scary small wisdom.
It brings up one more small wisdom: that there really is resilience in the vulnerability, there really is strength in the weakness, there really is victory in the defeat. To quote an old hymn, there are angels hov’ring ‘round. As Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “Sometimes our journeys with God include dark places. Not because God takes pleasure in our pain, but because we live in a fragile, broken world that includes deserts, and because God’s modus operandi is to take the things of death, and wring from them resurrection.”
The world is not perfect. Temptation is real and we are vulnerable to it. Temptation looks like good things, not just shiny things. Temptation often offers what we already have. We may be tempted to lift ourselves above our humanity, or to set someone else as superhuman, or to regard others as subhuman. As best you can, find help to resist temptation. Find power in weakness. Remember that from death God brings resurrection.
Small wisdoms to bring us through temptation.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching, sometimes on purpose, sometimes accidentally. The text as prepared does not exactly match the sermon as delivered.
The illustration is Mountain Landscape with the Temptation of Christ by Joos de Momper the Younger (btwn 1600 and 1650) / Sebastiaen Vrancx – Web Gallery of Art: Image Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15417048.
“Plead your case before the mountains,” wrote Micah some 750 years before Jesus was born, “and let the hills hear your voice.” He wrote about an imagined court in which God and God’s people each tried to make the case that they had kept the covenant, and that the other had broken it. The role of the mountains? They were summoned as judges.
It was Micah’s poetic way of inviting the people of Jerusalem, particularly the wealthiest and most powerful, to consider what God might think of the things they were doing. The prosecution’s opening statement really gets rolling in verses nine and following. “Can I tolerate wicked scales and a bag of dishonest weights?” Apparently merchants were defrauding their customers. “Your wealthy are full of violence; your inhabitants speak lies with tongues of deceit in their mouths.”
I grant you that we’re only getting one side of the case, but it doesn’t sound that hard for the mountains to judge, does it?
The covenant had been first delivered to the people on a mountain. The Temple in Jerusalem, where the people hoped their devotions would excuse their violence and fraud, stood on a mountaintop. God had set high standards from a high place. They didn’t seem to be playing out as intended down in the valleys.
Almost eight centuries later, as Matthew told it, Jesus ascended a mountain to speak to a gathering crowd who wanted to hear him. We’ve grown to call it “The Sermon on the Mount.” Its placement in the Gospel reflects Matthew’s belief that the best way to show that Jesus was the Messiah was to pay attention to what he said. Jesus’ words tell us who he was and who he is.
The first thing he did was to tell his listeners who they were. They were blessed.
As Karoline Lewis writes at Working Preacher, “You are blessed. You have to hear that on the front end. And note that being blessed is not just for the sake of potential joy, but also for the sake of making it through that which will be difficult. Again, these are Jesus’ first words to his disciples. We need to hear in each and every one of the Beatitudes what’s at stake for Jesus and for his ministry.”
You see, this is another mountaintop moment in the Scriptures. It has a pretty close relationship to the gift of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai. It has its precursory echoes in Micah’s summons of the mountains to judge the people. It’s mountaintop wisdom, and the tragedy of mountaintop wisdom is just how often it stays on the mountain and doesn’t make it down into the valleys.
As Lance Pape writes at Working Preacher, “But if the Beatitudes are a description of reality, what world do they describe? Certainly not our own. ‘Blessed are the meek’ (verse 5), says Jesus, but in our world the meek don’t get the land, they get left holding the worthless beads. ‘Blessed are the merciful’ (verse 7), says Jesus, but in our world mourning may be tolerated for a while, but soon we will ask you to pull yourself together and move on. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart’ (verse 8), says Jesus, but in our world such people are dismissed as hopelessly naïve.”
I think Dr. Pape has his finger on it: “hopelessly naïve.” Isn’t that what we hear when we assert the Beatitudes as truths? They reflect a better world, but we don’t actually live that way. Some say we can’t actually live that way. For instance, Stephen Miller, Deputy White House Chief of Staff, who told CNN interviewer Jake Tapper “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power… These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
That’s the valley. If you can forgive a Biblical reference in a sermon, that’s the valley of the shadow of death.
Is that where we want to live?
It’s where a lot of people have lived over the course of history. The Hebrew people lived in it when they were slaves in Egypt, when their nations were overrun by the empires of Assyria and Babylon, and when they were occupied by Rome in Jesus’ day. The feudal systems of Europe, Japan, and India left a lot of people in the valley of death. As Osvaldo Vena observes at Working Preacher, “Grief comes for all of us, but mortality rates were higher in the ancient world. Parents simply could not expect their children to survive infancy, let alone make it to adulthood. It was not a given. War, food and housing insecurity, and infectious diseases could cut a life short.” In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in the aftermath of truly catastrophic world wars, nations and non-governmental actors strove to bring food, farming assistance, vaccination, and stable health care delivery to places on the earth that had lost child after child to the grinding effects of being poor. In 2010 I heard a United Nations official tell a UCC gathering that the end goal of these efforts was not far off. He could imagine an end to extreme poverty.
The mountaintop wisdom was in sight from the valley.
Mr. Miller and his ilk would drive it away, out of sight, obscured by clouds high on the mountain.
We need to bring mountaintop wisdom to the valley.
As Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “Jesus acts. He doesn’t simply speak blessing. He lives it. He embodies it. He incarnates it…
“This is the vocation we are called to. The work of the kingdom — the work of sharing the blessings we enjoy — is not the work of a fuzzy, distant someday. It is the work — and the joy — of the here and now. The Beatitudes remind us that blessing and justice are inextricably linked. If it’s blessing we want, then it’s justice we must pursue.”
Mountaintop wisdom.
Let’s bring it to the valley of death.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes while preaching, sometimes on person. The sermon as delivered does not match the prepared text.
It’s still Christmas. It really is twelve days long in the Church calendar, and we’re on day eleven, so you can thank your lucky stars that you’re not likely to receive eleven pipers piping or eleven missionaries today. On this eleventh day of Christmas, if we’re thinking about the Holy Family, we’re probably thinking about the mixed joy and fear of Jesus’ parents, still trying to figure out what their newborn would need next.
The Revised Common Lectionary wants us to turn our attention elsewhere. As Cody J. Sanders writes at Working Preacher, “The prologue of John’s Gospel cracks the lens with which we are tempted to engage in any too-small reading of the Gospel by directing our attention toward a cosmic space-time reality. Unlike the Lukan narrative that often shapes our imaginations in the Christmas season, the Second Sunday of Christmas plunges us into the deep time of the primordial Genesis creation narratives with John’s opening words: ‘In the beginning…’”
You’ve probably caught the reference John made to the beginning of Genesis, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…” (Genesis 1:1) You may not have caught the other parallels John made with other classic texts, particularly those from Jewish Wisdom literature like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. As Jaime Clark-Soles writes at Working Preacher, “John brilliantly presents Jesus in the role of Lady Wisdom in a number of ways. As we read in numerous LXX texts, Lady Wisdom (hokhmah in Hebrew, Sophia in Greek) is God’s partner: she helps to create the world, she delights in the human race, she continually tries to help humans to get knowledge and flee from ignorance. She cries aloud incessantly. Unfortunately, the Old Testament tells us that she is often rejected because fools hate knowledge and humans would rather wallow in ignorance, for the most part.”
As I mentioned in this morning’s children’s time, wisdom and knowledge aren’t the same thing, but… acting in ignorance, deliberately choosing ignorance, is definitely not wise.
In contrast, wrote John, Jesus, God’s Messiah, embodied the ancient concept of Wisdom: knowledgeable, just, generous, righteous, thoughtful, faithful, peaceful.
These had been the virtues encouraged by Judaism: written in wisdom literature, declared by the prophets, required in the Law, and celebrated in the Psalms.
Those are the virtues exhibited by Jesus.
A little wisdom had become a lot of wisdom.
It’s a wisdom that’s not just of the intellect. “The Word became flesh and lived among us” – the word “lived” can be translated as “pitched a tent.” “Pitching tent,” writes Karyn Wiseman at Working Preacher, “means coming to be fully part of the world in which you live and minister. The Word in this text is doing just that — coming to ‘pitch tent’ with humanity. The Word made flesh comes to be in the world and to change the world.” Dr. Clark-Soles writes that John is “a very touchy-feely Gospel… John wants us to understand that the same intimacy shared by God and Jesus is shared with us and Jesus/God. Hence, the Incarnation.”
“Moreover,” writes Karoline Lewis at Working Preacher, “in the Word made flesh and dwelling among us, now God not only goes where God’s people go, but is who they are. That is, God now dwells with us by taking on our form, our humanity. This ‘different’ dwelling of God is God being where God’s people are, and now who God’s people are.”
A little bit of wisdom has become a whole lot of presence, God’s presence, with us, with everyone, with all the world.
The wisdom Jesus embodied is the wisdom Jesus lived. He brought compassion and forgiveness to people who’d been told they deserved no forgiveness and would receive no compassion. He rejected the options of servile acceptance of tyranny and of violent upheaval against tyranny. He encouraged rigorous personal ethics and a community ethic of mutual care and support. He refused to accept the casual practices that had enriched moneychangers around the Temple at the expense of faithful people. When they came to arrest him, he did not meet violence with violence.
Jesus set us the challenge of living that same wisdom, and it is a challenge. It’s a high bar. It’s a wisdom that may call us to put others’ interests over our own. It’s a wisdom that looks foolish when it leads to a cross.
It’s a wisdom that leads to resurrection.
The foolishness of the world leads to suffering, dissension, and death.
I really wish people wouldn’t hand me perfect sermon illustrations on Saturday, but some people have a talent for it. The headline of yesterday’s editorial from the New York Times Editorial Board was, “Donald Trump’s Attack on Venezuela Is Illegal and Unwise.” They concluded with these words:
“We will hold out hope that the current crisis will end less badly than we expect. We fear that the result of Mr. Trump’s adventurism is increased suffering for Venezuelans, rising regional instability and lasting damage for America’s interests around the world. We know that Mr. Trump’s warmongering violates the law.”
This is the kind of leadership that Jesus simply rejected. He wouldn’t do it himself. He wouldn’t bow to those who tried to govern him that way. Let’s be clear: it got him crucified. Nothing they did could force him to change his ways. Nothing they did could prevent his resurrection.
Fortunately there are examples of people following Jesus’ wisdom in the world.
Melissa Bane Sevier writes in her blog: “Yes, there are people who do really bad things in this world. But there are also moments when we can point to some person or act and think: There. There it is. That’s how we see eternity right here.
“Maybe it’s some random act of kindness. Or the face of your most precious loved one. Some deep goodness you see in a person you know or a stranger.
“We have each other. The Word is made flesh anew each day, right here among us.
“And we glimpse grace and truth.”
Glimpse grace and truth in those around you. Let others glimpse Christ in you.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes while he preaches. Sometimes they’re intentional. Sometimes they’re not.
Joseph had a dream, and it changed what he did, and what he did changed things for Mary and Jesus, and what they all did changed the world. What is your dream?
Here’s a transcript:
The service for the Fourth Sunday of advent the Church of the Holy Cross will feature the Christmas pageant performed by our young people. I’m not thinking about this week’s Scripture with the idea that it will become a sermon, but I am still thinking about the first chapter of Matthew (Matthew 1:18-25).
Luke described the circumstances of Jesus birth; Matthew didn’t. Matthew, however, talked about one of the real difficult moments in that series of events: because when Joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant, he determined to set her aside: quietly, so that she wouldn’t be shamed any more than she already was.
Then he had a dream, and in that dream an angel assured him that she was with child by the Holy Spirit, that this child would be the Messiah, and that he would be the one who would be called Immanuel, God with us.
You’ve got to have a dream.
That’s an old song from a musical, but it’s also true. Dreams change things when we set out to put those dreams into reality.
Joseph might have shrugged it off — I’m not sure how you shrug off the words of an angel whether in waking life or in dream life — but he could have. Mary could have had her child, the Messiah, all alone, cut off from family and friends. But Joseph had a dream, and Joseph’s dream meant that he had a role to play, and that was a supportive partner to those who were taking the lead roles: to Mary the mother who would carry and then comfort the newborn child, to Jesus himself, Jesus who would eventually carry everything including the cross, that Jesus had done so because Joseph had a dream and set out to live that dream.
What is your dream? Is it a dream of love and care and support? Is it a dream that overcomes your prejudices? Is it a dream that leads towards life becoming better, not just for you, not just for your family, but for all those around you and those perhaps on the far side of the world?
Dreams change life. Have a dream and live it.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
When John asked Jesus if he were the they’d been waiting for, Jesus took the opportunity to define what a Messiah was, and to invite everyone into thee Realm of God.
Here’s a transcript:
For this third Sunday of Advent, I’m thinking about the eleventh chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 11:2-11). If this seems a little far along in the book to be describing things that happened before Jesus’ birth, well, it is.
John the Baptist, who had baptized Jesus, had been arrested and was being held in prison by King Herod. He sent messengers to Jesus to ask him if he was the one who had been promised, or should they wait for another? Jesus said to the messengers, go and tell John what you see and hear: the people are being healed, the dead are being raised, the poor hear good news.
The messengers left, and hopefully that message brought John some comfort and reassurance.
Jesus then turned to the crowd and asked them why they had gone out to see John the Baptist in the first place? Did they go to hear a reed that was being blown by the wind? Did they go to see somebody in great clothing?
No. They went to hear a prophet. And yet, said Jesus, the least in the realm of God is greater than John the Baptist.
Well, that’s a lot, isn’t it?
In this message, Jesus defined for us what he meant an Anointed One, a Messiah, to be: a healer, a teacher, someone who restored people to life, someone who restored people to the full care of their communities. But Jesus also defined what it is to be a prophet. A prophet is one who tells the truth despite discomfort, despite oppression.
But Jesus also said it is God’s grace, the grace that brings us into the realm of God, that surpasses everything. God’s grace made John a prophet. God’s grace makes each and every one of us a citizen of God’s realm.
As we approach this season of Christmas, as we prepare to rejoice once more in the gift of Jesus Christ, let us rejoice as well that we have been included in that same realm of God as John the Baptist, that we share it with that great prophet and with so many other saints over time.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
Isaiah’s vision of an utterly peaceful world began with wisdom, compassion, righteousness, and peace. May we move toward it this Advent season.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the eleventh chapter of the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 11:1-10). This coming Sunday is the second Sunday of Advent. The theme is peace, so it is entirely appropriate that the Isaiah reading is one of his accounts of the Peaceable Kingdom.
The wolf and the lamb lying down together. The lion eating straw like the ox. “And a little child shall lead them.”
Not surprisingly, Isaiah started with a description of what leadership would look like: that a shoot would emerge from the stump of Jesse, and that this new monarch would rule in a new and different way, with wisdom, with righteousness, with the fear of the Lord – that kind of reverent respect that, well, is frankly very uncommon amongst leaders of nations, now isn’t it?
The foundation of peace for the natural world, Isaiah said, was peace within the human world.
I can’t say that that is obviously true. If human beings ceased to make war upon one another, if human beings ceased to commit crimes against one another, if human beings abandoned violence forever, I’m afraid there would still be hunting in the forests and in the seas – at least until God changes the world. Nevertheless, Isaiah was absolutely right to seek out that first part of the vision rooted in peace amongst human beings. Because even if we can’t directly affect the peace of the rest of Creation, we can make peace amongst ourselves. We can choose wisdom over folly. We can choose compassion over violence. We can choose peace.
All too frequently, we choose folly. We choose violence. we choose war. All too rarely, we choose wisdom. We choose compassion. We choose peace.
In this Advent season, may we take a step, even a fraction of a step, towards Isaiah’s vision. Let us choose wisdom, righteousness, compassion, and peace.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below; I’d love to hear from you.
The authors and editors of Second Samuel have labeled this poem “The Last Words of David.” Ralph W. Klein has noted that this is the first of ten passages one might call “the last words of David.” There’s a part of me wondering if David kept talking in the hope that so many last words meant he’d never die… Well, no.
Among David’s talents in life was poet and songwriter. Seventy-three of the 150 psalms are credited to him, and the Books of Samuel contain other songs remembered as his work. If I were a monarch and a songwriter – I guess I claim one, but not both, of those titles – if I were both, I would be very pleased to write a song like these words in 2 Samuel to summarize the nature of my life as a king.
The God of Israel has spoken; the Rock of Israel has said to me: “One who rules over people justly, ruling in the fear of God, is like the light of morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain on the grassy land.”
Is not my house like this with God? For he has made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and secure.
If I were David, that’s how I’d like to be remembered.
As Kathryn M. Schifferdecker writes at Working Preacher, “The light of morning, especially after a good rain — that’s what a God-fearing king is like. In the semi-arid land that is Israel, rain is a very precious resource. A good, soaking rain during the night, and then the sun rising to bring forth grass and grain and fruit from the earth — these are priceless gifts of God. And so is a good, just king, one who rules in the fear of the Lord. Both enable life to flourish.”
If you’re struggling to imagine this, think of what rain brings in Kona rather than Hilo, and it will make more sense.
“Is not my house like this with God?” David asked, rhetorically, I’m sure. But it’s a question that has a complicated answer. David lived for many years as an armed rebel opposed to the established government. In order to support himself and his army he became a mercenary, and contracted with the nation’s enemies. After the death of King Saul and most of his heirs, David used military force to subdue other claimants and gain the crown. David committed rape against Bathsheba and murder against her husband Uriah. David’s apparent failure to hear the complaints of the citizens primed the rebellion of his son Absalom. In their next book, 1 Kings, the authors of 2 Samuel described yet another attempt by one of David’s sons to usurp the throne.
In writing these “Last Words of David,” he was wearing rose-colored glasses that I’d describe as more rose than glass. Valerie Bridgman writes at Working Preacher, “As a former hospice chaplain, I know that when people come to the end of life, their memories often soften to ‘clean up’ the messiness of their lives.”
In this poem, he cleaned up the past, for sure. As he “cleaned up,” he managed to tell the truth. The characteristics of a good ruler, a proper leader, are as he described. They seek to bring justice to their people. They start with what we would think as structures to define liberties and responsibilities, that seek to prevent people from being injured by others, or being so heavily burdened that they lapse into poverty. The laws you’ll find in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy provided that framework. Among the obligations you’ll find there is to make sure that widows, orphans, and foreigners had access to food, and that they were not denied shelter.
Beyond structural justice comes the resolution of disputes, both those we call crimes and those we call civil complaints. Some of those – probably most of those – would have been resolved within the villages or the family groups without ever coming to the King. Respected adults in the clan or a council of elders would have resolved the questions of disputed property lines, who owned the stray goat that turned up in somebody’s herd, and what should be done about the fight between those two guys. It was the more difficult cases that went to the monarch, who had to discern truth that others were not able to.
Ah, truth. Another essential characteristic of just leadership. One mentioned by none other than Jesus himself. Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “Jesus prioritizes truth to such a degree that he frames his life’s ministry, from incarnation to this moment and beyond, to his act of testifying to the truth. Truth is so important to Jesus that he told the Samaritan woman at the well that the test of worship is the measure of spirit and truth. Above all, therefore, the good news is centered, anchored, and rooted in truth. This is our test; let it be our testimony. Testify to the truth.”
We might, with Pontius Pilate, mutter, “What is truth?” at this point and leave the room. Jesus didn’t answer Pilate’s questions at any point thereafter.
I think we can do better than Pontius Pilate.
In the Last Words of David, we have the truth about leadership, power, and authority. It is founded in justice. Further, it stands upon accountability. That’s what it means to rule “in the fear of God.” David the King, when he was doing well, realized that he needed the support of his officials and his people. He took care to listen to their concerns. Several of the stories about David are not about how resolute he was, but how willing he was to change his mind when someone brought him new information. If you’re going to be rigid as a leader, then you’d better be right every time, and who does that? If you won’t learn as a leader, frankly, what good are you?
David’s capacity to change his mind was one of his best qualities.
David described himself in this poem as “the oracle of God,” that is, one empowered to speak on God’s behalf. That doesn’t sound particularly humble, and it wasn’t. He called himself the man God exalted – again, not humble. He called himself the anointed of the God of Jacob, and if you were wondering if he’d found humility yet, no.
All these titles, however exalted, did reveal another truth. It was God who spoke. It was God who exalted. It was God who anointed. David might have been king, but God made him so.
He was accountable to the people and to those around him. Most of all, he was accountable to God.
His greatest successes took place when he remembered God’s authority over his. His greatest failures took place when he believed he had more authority than God.
Rulers who acknowledge no accountability to others are not like the light of the morning shining upon grassy meadows drinking in the night’s rain. No, they are like the weeds and thorns that nobody wants to touch because they injure you. They are like the things cut and gathered and burned because there’s nothing more to be done with them.
Good leadership brings light. Poor leadership brings thorns.
Those are the standards for us to use in evaluating our leaders. Do their stated policies promise light, or do they promise thorns? What experience do we have of them? Did their leadership shine, or did it cut and pierce? Did they strengthen structures of justice or did they dismantle them? Did they make decisions based on fact and fairness? Did they tell the truth? Did they acknowledge accountability to others? Did they claim to be more than they were?
Light? Or thorns?
These are also the standards to use in evaluating our own leadership. Have we illuminated? Have we encouraged? Have we assisted the people on the margins? Have we been humble before God? Have we told the truth? Have we diligently worked to understand the truth?
Light? Or thorns?
Pilate never learned the truth from Jesus. He crowned him with thorns, not light. Three or four years after sending Jesus to the cross Pontius Pilate was ordered back to Rome to explain why he had executed a group of Samaritans. We don’t know what happened with that. The Emperor died before Pilate reached Rome, and no record survives.
Thorns. Not light.
Jesus went to the cross wearing thorns, and rose from the grave to enlighten the world. Jesus did not reach for the temporal power of a Pilate or a David or an Emperor Tiberius. He simply told the truth.
Let this be our leadership, and let this be our leaders: Tellers of truth. Builders of justice. Wise and discerning souls. Open to learn. Accountable to those they lead and to God.
Light. Not thorns.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric sometimes improvises while preaching. “Sometimes” means “every week, at least a little.”
I haven’t looked at my sermons over the last few years, but it seems to me that I tend to preach more somber sermons just before I got on vacation, and more cheerful sermons when I come back from them. Well, here I am, just back from vacation. So what am I thinking about?
Wisdom. You know. The fear of the LORD.
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.” We spoke that together during the Prayer of Invocation this morning, and the phrase “the fear of the LORD” showed up as well in Psalm 34.
What do you think? Should I have taken a longer vacation?
To reflect on wisdom, I’ve got the assistance of the letter to the Ephesians, which has such cheerful advice as to be wise, not foolish (and recognizes that foolishness is frequently more fun); not to get drunk with wine; and to make the most of the time, “because the days are evil.”
Perhaps the Apostle should have taken a vacation as well.
Frequently in the letters of the Apostle Paul, he provided us with a list of things to avoid. Curiously, though, there’s only one here: don’t drink to excess. That was good advice in the first century and it’s good advice today. I admit that it’s a bit simplistic. “Just say no” sounds good, but it fails to account for the power of addictive substances and behaviors over human beings.
But… where’s the rest of the list?
In fact, there’s only one other item on the list, and it’s not a “do not do,” it’s a “please do” item. What is wisdom? To be filled with the Spirit, and to sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody to the Lord in your hearts, and giving thanks to God.
You know, that sounds almost… cheerful.
As novelist Paul Coelho wrote, “The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.”
That verse from Psalm 111 is the one that sticks in our memory, isn’t it? “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.” A lot of people aren’t fond of that verse, even if they do remember it. It’s not a cheerful verse. We don’t like fear. It feels bad. And in a church like ours, where our theology guides us to a more positive feeling about God, it feels wrong.
Which is something of a pity, because fear is such a handy emotion. It is, literally, life-saving. The fear response in the human body allows for quicker response to encounters with danger. Fear sometimes – not always – prevents people from entering dangerous situations. Fear sometimes – not always – prevents people from doing things because they fear the consequences. Honestly, it’s a pretty useful human characteristic.
Still, you don’t want to think about people around you as people to fear. You don’t want to fear people who love you.
Except that… I know I fear disappointing the people I love. I still do it, I’m afraid, but I fear it and that fear prevents me from disappointing them more often. And I fear disappointing God.
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.
But it is not the fullness of wisdom. Because the Apostle, who I’m quite certain knew Psalm 111 backwards, forwards, upside down and sideways, utterly failed to go there when talking about what constitutes wisdom versus what constitutes foolishness. Even in a world which is evil, said the Apostle, wisdom is celebration. Wisdom is thanksgiving. Wisdom is singing.
As Sally A. Brown writes at Working Preacher, “Gratitude to the God who has become one of us—accompanying us even amid oppression, pain, isolation, and grief—is an act of holy defiance against all the forces, seen and unseen, that conspire to crush our faith and our hope.”
During my vacation I did a lot of traveling. I flew about 5,000 miles, then I drove to eight cities in four states. That’s a lot of driving for someone who rarely takes a trip longer than eighty miles. It’s also something I probably can’t sustain as the years advance.
Exhausting.
But.
I saw people I love and care about. I heard their voices. I heard their stories. We shared meals and laughter and hugs. And a few of the obligatory self-portraits.
Exhilarating.
So what is wisdom, and what is folly? To give my attention to the exhausting elements of my time away, or to give it to the exhilaration? Ephesians is clear: Wisdom is celebration. Wisdom is thanksgiving. Wisdom is singing.
I guess I’ll focus on the love and the stories and, of course, the obligatory self-portraits.
None of that means that the difficult things didn’t happen, or weren’t difficult. It doesn’t even mean that they were “worth it,” however anyone wants to think of that. The Apostle said the times were evil and it might have been one of the more obvious things to say about the world in which he lived. It’s a pretty obvious thing to say about the world in which we live.
But it is not the only thing to say about the world in which we live. We believe that God pronounced this Creation “good,” even “very good.” If we set our minds solely on the evils of this world then we commit the folly of appreciating the profound gift of God in Creation, in humanity, in our own lives. Some of ancient Israel’s neighbors had religions that believed the world to be a sort of cosmic accident at best, or the work of a malign deity at worst. In the first century, Gnosticism held that Creation imprisoned free spirits.
Judaism and Christianity following it rejected both ideas. The universe is a beautiful, sacred place, created by a loving God for the life and joy of those who live in it. We are not just accidents of fate. We are the image of God.
That’s a foundation of wisdom.
The Apostle knew as well that the news of Jesus’ death and resurrection was and is and will always be good news. Jesus did not come to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved. When so many religions demanded sacrifice on the part of worshipers to their gods, Christianity celebrated the sacrifice of its God on behalf of human beings. The very word “gospel” is Greek for “good news.”
When someone gives you good news, what do you say? Me, I say, “Thank you.”
The Dutch theologian Meister Eckhart wrote, “If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.”
Mahalo nui loa, ke Akua.
Melissa Bane Sevier, writing in her blog, reflects on our culture’s demands for efficiency. “When the apostle writes that ‘the days are evil,’ I take that to mean that day upon day upon day can be evil if we don’t redeem the time. Sameness, boredom, work, heaviness, laboriousness. We redeem the time by filling it with things that give life to us and the people around us. Yes, sometimes that involves being efficient.
“But I’m also reminded that making the most of our time often means an efficiency of the spirit, which might be a far notion from checking off lists.
“How will you make the most of your time today?
“I’m planning to eat supper on the porch.”
Personally, I’m planning to enjoy our annual picnic, with its games and conversations, with its laughter and its life. I’m also planning to enjoy a few hymns and spiritual songs this morning. I hope you will, too, even those of you who aren’t enthusiastic singers. God ahead. Pray twice this morning.
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, but not the only beginning. Joy in the LORD is also a beginning, and a constant companion for the journey. Look at what is around you, and not just to what is far away. Look at what is within you, and give thanks for the gifts you have received. Let your hearts, minds, and voices sing.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Although Pastor Eric preaches from a prepared text, he sometimes improvises while preaching. Or he just makes an error. In either case, the recording will differ from the prepared sermon.
