Fairhaven Sermon 9-22-2024

As Flo said, the subject this morning is wisdom. After our summer series on hymns, which is now done, we are back more or less to following the dictionary, at least for a little while anyway, until the holidays kick in, and that won't be all that far off. But I actually ended up with last week's psalm mixed into this week's sermon. So I'd like to start off just by reading last week's psalm to freshen it up in our minds, and then I'll dive into the wisdom.

So last week's psalm was Psalm 19. It was written by King David, and it reads as follows. The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words. Their voice is not heard, yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy, and like a strong man, runs its course with joy. In its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and nothing is hid from its heat.

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The decrees of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes.

The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The ordinances of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned.

In keeping them there is great reward, but who can detect their errors? Cleanse me from hidden faults. Keep back your servant also from the insolent. Do not let them have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless and innocent of great transgression.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. This psalm, in addition to our scripture readings for today, talks about a subject which I have rarely heard preached, which is wisdom. I don't recall ever hearing a sermon on wisdom, lots of other things, but not this particular topic. Wisdom, of course, is a good thing, in fact, it's a great thing.

Wisdom has its source in God and brings glory to God, draws us closer to God. Each one of our scripture readings today talks about wisdom, but each one from a different approach. I'll take a quick look at all three, but taken together, they kind of help us to understand how wisdom fits into a believer's life and sadly, how often wisdom has been lacking in human history. For many of us, I think, as we look back over our lives, and I think, speaking for myself, the older I get, the more this is true, the wisdom that we learned as children from our parents somehow seems to become sort of outdated.

I mean, the world has changed and it seems like things that we once valued are no longer considered as important as they were. Respect for others, for example, which is now sort of a quaint and old-fashioned idea, and honesty is often seen as kind of impractical. The fact is, though, that God's truth and God's mercy and God's standards have never changed because God never changes. Some people might think that that makes God backwards, but the truth is God is way ahead of us and is calling on us to catch up and catch on.

Let me give a real-world example. Now, this is not 100% accurate in every detail, but it's based on something that happened a few decades ago. There was a mid-level executive in a corporation who became aware that the company he worked for was considering a plan, a course of action, that would most likely lead to legal or financial trouble if it was approved. And this person also knew that the person suggesting the plan was his boss's boss.

So this guy was kind of in a catch-22. If he spoke up and pointed out the weaknesses of this plan, he might lose his job. But if he stayed silent, protected himself and his job, what would happen to the company? In a situation like this and in situations like this, what's the wise thing to do? Life presents us with questions like this all the time. And this is why it's so important for each one of us to talk to God every day, to have a time each day that's just for us and God and nobody else.

This is also why we need to pray for wisdom and not just pray, but actually actively seek wisdom. So what exactly is wisdom then? It's not just smart. Education is a wonderful thing, don't get me wrong. But education alone can't give us wisdom.

It's like the old saying says, Education tells us that tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting the tomato in the fruit salad. So is wisdom power? Not exactly. Wisdom is a powerful thing, but many people who have power don't have wisdom, and many people who have wisdom don't have power.

The dictionary says that wisdom is having a combination of experience, knowledge, and good judgment. Experience which takes time to gain, and knowledge which takes some effort. And good judgment, I believe, is mostly a gift from God. It's why we need to talk to God every day.

So today's scriptures give us some clues and they point us in some good directions. So starting out with the passage from Proverbs. Our reading from Proverbs today comes from the first chapter of the book of Proverbs. And it's just interesting, a little side note, that while the book of Proverbs back in the day in ancient Israel used to be used mostly to teach up young men, it was sort of like one of the men's school classics, that the first chapter of Proverbs and the last chapter of Proverbs are both written in the voice of a woman.

And the Bible doesn't give this woman a name, so for today I just want to call her Lady Wisdom because she comes from royalty, she comes from a royal house, from the courts of God, and she's not a goddess, but she's not exactly human either. And it might be best to think of her as sort of being the voice of the Holy Spirit. Not the Holy Spirit himself, but the Spirit's voice, and her words are words that God wants us to hear. As Proverbs chapter one opens, Lady Wisdom is crying out in the streets.

Something has gone wrong in her beloved city. And she is angry and aggravated and she's speaking a prophetic message. And Lady Wisdom calls out to the young, the naive, the simple, and to people who are just not listening, people who know what's right but refuse to do it, people who know what's best but refuse to choose it. To give a modern day illustration, it's as if the people of Lady Wisdom's city have been given a choice between a filet mignon for dinner or a Big Mac.

Why would anybody even consider the second option, right? Why would anybody choose a Big Mac with its lack of flavor and its tiny little size these days? Why would anybody even pull up to the drive-in knowing that there's this gorgeous steak perfectly prepared with sides of a salad and mashed potatoes and gravy and all waiting at home where you can sit in your favorite chair and eat with the people you love? And yet there's a line of cars down at the Golden Arches. So Lady Wisdom, she makes fun of them. She says, How long are you going to love being simple? How long are you going to mouth off and sing that stupid song about two-way all beef patty, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, sesame seed bun? How long are you going to hate what's good and choose what's worthless? And then Lady Wisdom starts describing three different kinds of fools that she's observing. She says, Number one, there's the simple, people who in theory could learn, who are capable of learning, but refuse to.

Then there's the mockers and the scoffers, people who are just downright rude, arrogant, and cynical. And then there are the fools, people who refuse to act wisely or to do what God says to do. And through the voice of Lady Wisdom, God calls all three kinds of fools to repentance. But still the fools don't listen.

So Lady Wisdom says, Okay, you've ignored me. My words were not threats, they were warnings to change course before it's too late. But you didn't listen. And now it's too late.

Trouble is on the way, like a whirlwind, she says. Distress and anguish and panic. But when you call on me, I won't be there. That's the thing about ignoring wisdom.

We can get away with it for a while. But if people insist on continuing to be unwise, even when it catches up to them, all the ignorance, all the sarcasm, all the cynicism, all the abusing of the powerless, going against what God has taught us, we have sown the wind and we will reap the whirlwind. Therefore, Lady Wisdom says, they shall eat the fruit of what they have done. And I, Lady Wisdom, will not be found.

Because, she says, waywardness kills the simple and the complacency of fools destroys them. But anyone who listens to me will be secure. Those who listen to Lady Wisdom, even when other people don't, will live in strength, not in fear. They may see a little trouble here and there, but they will be able to endure and thrive.

So that's the story of Lady Wisdom. The remaining two scriptures today assume that we, the listeners, are seeking wisdom, that we are listening to God. And these two scriptures teach us how to listen and what to listen for as we listen to God. So starting with Psalm 19, this psalm has been called, by the way, one of the greatest lyrics in the world.

It's been set to music by Bach and Beethoven and Handel and Haydn and many others. And in the Jewish faith, this psalm is said or sung every Sabbath and on every holiday. It's considered a bringer of joy. Psalm 19 can be broken down into three sections.

The first, creation praising God. The second, talking about the glory of God's law. And the third is a prayer to God, a prayer of thanks for the goodness of God's word. Now as New Testament believers, you and I, we might find it difficult to get excited about the Old Testament law and the Ten Commandments and the book of Deuteronomy.

But think of what life was like back then in ancient Israel. What we have in our Bibles describes one of the most well-defined, well-developed codes of laws in the ancient world. God's words created a nation that lived in peace and prospered. And this was back in the time of judges, when people owned their own land, lived their own lives and worshipped God on the Sabbath, and other than the tithe, there was nothing in terms of taxes or central government.

And this, by the way, for those of us who've been in the Bible study, okay, on Wednesday nights, when the people of Israel came to the prophets and said, We want to ask God for a king, essentially wanted to trash the whole system of judges that God had set up. The prophet Samuel gave the people a whole list of things that a royal government would do. He said it would tax them for the king's palace and the king's army. It would take their daughters as perfumers and their sons as warriors and on and on.

Samuel goes on. By contrast, God's way of setting up society was both wise and almost burden-free. But the people weren't wise enough to keep it, and they demanded a king like everybody else had. So the Old Testament law was amazingly wise and amazingly good, if it could be lived, if it could be kept.

And the psalmist prays that God would keep us away from insolence and mistakes and rebellion and other hidden faults, because nobody knows every sin that we commit, and nobody knows every word that is wasted, every effort that's in vain. Nobody knows these things except for God. And the psalmist asks, and we also ask, that God would forgive us and help us to see and turn away from the sins that we can't see right now, and that God would not let sin win over us. And the psalm ends with a prayer that we've heard many times.

It's often used to start a sermon. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. It's a good prayer for preachers to pray. It's a good prayer for everybody to pray, so I recommend it.

And then finally, in our reading from the Gospel of Mark, Jesus talks about wisdom as it relates to power and greatness. And this conversation takes place immediately after Jesus broke the news to the disciples that he was about to be betrayed and killed. And the disciples are confused, and they're afraid to ask questions. Instead, once they're out of earshot of Jesus, they start arguing over which one of them is the greatest.

And I'm sad to say that this arguing over who's the greatest is still a problem among some Christians, as we learned a few decades ago with the scandals surrounding Jimmy Baker and Jimmy Swigert and other celebrity preachers. And by the way, these kinds of preachers are still with us today, still deceiving people, still trying to make themselves rich and powerful by misusing God's Word. But Jesus turns the concept of greatness upside down, because human values are not heaven's values. I mean, do we really think that money means anything in the kingdom of God? In heaven, gold bars are used for paving stones, like brick to make roads with.

The apostle John describes this in Revelation chapter 21, verse 21, And the 12 gates are 12 pearls, and each of the gates is a single pearl, and the street of the city is pure gold. What God values is not gold, it's kindness and a generous spirit, and that we listen to God. To follow the way of Jesus is to value the marginalized, to minister to the least of these. And to illustrate this, Jesus takes a little child and sets him on his lap.

See, back in Bible times, children were on the lowest rung of society. They had no rights. They had no standing. In that society, at least in ancient Rome, not so much Jerusalem, but in ancient Rome, if a baby or a child wasn't wanted, he or she would be dropped off in the town square and left there, presumably to die.

And the early Christians, by the way, objected to this practice big time, and they adopted quite a few of those children. The early church became famous for it. So here is this child, the lowest of the low in that society, resting in the arms of Jesus. And Jesus says to his disciples, Whoever welcomes this child in my name welcomes me.

And just as a side note, this is one of the many reasons I like working with refugees. It's not a political thing for me. It's doing what Jesus said to do, and it's always a joy. Anyway, generosity to the least of these is the wisdom of heaven.

It's the same wisdom that God exercises when God looks at us. It's a generosity that extends all the way to the cross, which is what Jesus is trying to explain to the disciples. Jesus will not be dying on the cross in order for God to be gracious. Jesus will be dying because God is gracious, because God wants us to live and not die.

And Jesus also dies because the powers that be, religious or otherwise, cannot grasp the radical grace and generosity of God. And this is why the Pharisees were always on Jesus' case. It's one of the reasons. In the wisdom of God, greatness is not measured by status, wealth, achievement, reputation, or hard work.

It's measured instead by things like mercy and generosity of spirit. It's much easier to be great in the eyes of the world than it is to be great in the eyes of God. But in the end, only one opinion matters. Just as an example, I was on a Zoom call this past week with a classmate who is currently serving in South Sudan in Africa.

In Sudan, if you're familiar, they had a civil war a few years ago. The Christians live in the south now, South Sudan, and the Muslims live in the north, which is just called Sudan. And right now, there's a civil war happening in Sudan, which is also involving Darfur, which you guys have been aware of for a number of decades now, the problems in Darfur. My friend, he's near the border, and he's in the process of building a school where both Christian and Muslim children can learn together.

It's not a safe place to be, and it's certainly not a place where he's going to build a career or become famous, but my classmate isn't thinking about that. He's there to do God's work and to teach children how to care for each other across religious differences. And this is wisdom, not as the world defines it, but as God defines it. Greatness on Jesus' terms is risky.

It might mean setting aside comfortable lives. It might mean welcoming the vulnerable or feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, or visiting the sick and in prison. God's wisdom calls us to express our relationship with God and our love for God in the way we treat others, especially those in need. By the way, I love that food pantry for that reason.

This is the wisdom that Jesus teaches and the wisdom that Lady Wisdom recommends. So do we have the courage to follow? Let me encourage each one of us to keep on searching for God's wisdom, keep on praying for God's wisdom. It's not always easy to recognize, but it is always worth the cost of looking because God's wisdom is literally the foundation of the earth and of the heavenly kingdom where we will all live someday. So let's pray together.

Lord Jesus, help us to see where we lack wisdom and help us to turn to you for guidance. Help us to turn away even from the sins we can't see. And don't let sin win out over us. We want to live into the beauty and grace of your wisdom.

We ask this for your name's sake and for the sake of your people. Amen. .