Wisdom is knowing yourself--and that you're not that wise

1 Kings 3:4-28

Solomon is famous for his wisdom, so I figured on this Confirmation Sunday that I would talk a little bit about wisdom, since that’s something we could all use a bit more of.

            For Solomon, wisdom might have been a gift from on high, but for most of us, wisdom is something learned. It requires practice, discipline, and time, which is why many of our elders are so wise. They’ve had a lot of time to practice wisdom, and they’ve done a lot of listening in their lives. But age is also no guarantee of wisdom, because it doesn’t just come to us through osmosis—and it doesn’t come randomly either. Instead, the wise possess a few traits—actually, more or less the same traits that Jesus talks about on the Sermon on the Mount. He said: “Blessed are the poor… the mourners… the meek… those who hunger and thirst for righteousness… the merciful… the pure in heart… the peacemakers… the persecuted… the reviled… and those falsely accused.”

If you want to be wise, you have to practice being those things. Have you practiced being poor? Mourning? Being meek? Being merciful? Have you practiced any of that? Because if not, you will not learn wisdom. The opposite is also true, have you practiced richness? Haughtiness? Triumph? Have you been the persecutor? The one mocking others? Then, you can’t learn wisdom.

This might sound all well and good, but if it only lives off in the realm of theory it’s not of much use, so I am going to be explicit and specific.

The real king and queen of Israel

2 Samuel 11-12

            There was a king and queen of Israel during the time of David, but it was not at all as the nation of Israel thought.

I’ll get to them in a minute.

            You might recall, deep in the recesses of your memories, that God didn’t want to give the people of Israel a king. God was supposed to be their king, and anybody else was going to be a shallow imitation. But they asked and asked and asked, and God, being the parent that he was, unable to say “No” forever, eventually said, “Ask your mother,” which was also him, so that was confusing, but eventually he relented.

            “Fine!” God said, “You can have a king.”

            And much like that rare occasion when a child gets rewarded after hearing “No” from their parents a thousand times, the result of the children of Israel getting what they want is a disaster. The line of kings leads Israel through the Promised Land and out of it before you know it.

            David was supposed to be the greatest king. He’s the subject of our reading today, but by the time we pick up with the story, we should realize it may have been better if he would have been killed by Goliath long before, because when David falls, he falls hard. The hero-David becomes the villain-David, who uses his power to have an affair with a married woman named Bathsheba, and afterwards, unable to coerce Uriah, her husband, into covering his tracks, he goes and has him killed instead. It’s the kind of thing we would hardly be surprised to hear on the news today, as everybody expects their politicians to abuse their power.

Not everybody! You might say. Surely there are those in power who don’t abuse it, and there are—absolutely—but there are only two paths with power: You either use it and abuse it, or you give it away. Neutrality is not an option—not in this game. Any time a person in power gives away power they are starting down that road toward discipleship, following Jesus who told us that to be a disciple we are to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow. The problem is that giving that power away also means giving away your influence. History is littered with anonymous people who had power and gave it away, but we don’t know who they are.

Meanwhile, anybody with power who we consider “good”—our moral leadership, you might call them—has figured out how to work this world of transactions and keep enough power to keep doing “good.” This may well be pragmatic, but it isn’t righteousness. At best, it’s making do in a broken world. The paradox of Christian discipleship is that you can’t follow Jesus and retain any power for yourself whatsoever.

Why the Old Testament is so stinking repetitive (and baptism is not)

Joshua 24

What do you know about the Old Testament? If you’re like many Christians, the answer is not much. You probably know a few stories—there’s the creation of the world; there’s an ark; Moses, plagues and parting the Red Sea; there’s Jonah; and maybe, if you really stretch your memory back to Sunday School, you might remember a few other things. Perhaps you know quite a bit more than that, or maybe even those few events were testing the limits of your memory. Wherever you find yourself when it comes to the Old Testament, there is some good news: The Old Testament is really good at repeating itself.

            Many of our readings, including today’s from the book of Joshua, spend a large amount of time retelling a series of historical events. Often, God is the one sharing that history. God says, “Long ago your ancestors—Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor—lived beyond the Euphrates and served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac…” etc, etc, etc. Pretty soon, God is listing off the entire history of Genesis and Exodus. Then, God just keeps on going, telling us about kings and nations and history, lots of history. You might wonder: Why? Today’s reading could have been 90% shorter if God just skipped to the point. Many of you probably would have liked that.

            In order to understand why the Old Testament is so repetitive, you need to imagine the way these stories were passed down. People didn’t write them down. Few people were literate—why would they be? Even if you had the materials to write a book; you can imagine the effort—writing each individual copy! It would be centuries before there were scrolls, and even then most people—even devout Jews—would never see them, and only the priests could read them. This was an agrarian society; people didn’t need to know how to read, but they certainly did know how to tell stories. For centuries, these stories about God were passed on around campfires and dinner tables. People told them over and over, each story like a thread weaving the tapestry of the history of the nation, each character stacking their rock on the cairn that is the history of the Hebrew people. God became known through these historical characters. God’s name became “I am the Lord, your God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”