Fairhaven UMC

The last time when I was here with you, I preached on the subject of wisdom, and I mentioned that I’d never heard a sermon on wisdom before, which by the way, another pastor friend of mine commented the same thing. He says, It was not just me. It was kind of just one of those things that people rarely preach on. This week again, I’m going to preach on something I’ve never heard anybody preach on before, and that’s the book of Esther.

The reading you just heard is 10 verses from the end of Esther’s story, which is what the lectionary gives us. And I was wondering where the rest of the story was. So yeah, if you’re familiar with the lectionary, it’s a three-year cycle. So I went back through all three years to find the rest of Esther’s story, and it’s not there.

What we just heard this morning, that’s it. That’s all there is in the lectionary. So I thought to myself, That’s just not right, because Esther’s story is central to the Jewish faith, which of course is the foundation of our Christian faith, and our Jewish brothers and sisters have an important holiday called Purim that is a celebration of Esther’s life. So why is this story not read and preached on? So here we go.

So as I thought about this question of why people don’t preach on Esther, I noticed two things. First off, the book of Esther doesn’t mention God specifically. God’s presence is assumed throughout the whole story, and so is prayer, but God is not mentioned by name. But I think more important for preaching is that it’s an awkward story to talk about in church because it centers around what I think of as the big three in society, money, power, and gender, all of which can be awkward to talk about at any time, but more so when you have all three subjects together and you’re in church.

So the story of Esther is practical and timely, and so are the lessons we can draw from it. So let’s dig in here. The setup for Esther’s story is the Babylonian invasion of Jerusalem, and you recall that tragedy when that struck. The Babylonians destroyed the city of Jerusalem and the temple around 587 BC, and they took the Jewish people captive to Babylon and left behind only the poorest of the poor to work the land so it wouldn’t go completely wild.

And we’ve talked about that in a number of different sermons. So the Jewish people lived in Babylon under the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar and briefly Belshazzar, and their prophet at the time was the prophet Daniel, and we know all these things from the book of Daniel. But what the Babylonians didn’t see coming was a huge massing of power in Persia, the part of the world we call Iran today. And the king of Persia conquered Babylon less than 50 years after the Babylonians conquered Israel.

So the Persians basically moved in. They claimed everything in Babylon, including the Jewish people. So without physically moving very far, if at all, God’s people were now living under Persian rule. And the Persian empire was huge and massively powerful.

I mean, just to give an idea, at its largest, the Persian empire stretched from India, which is like halfway between Africa and Australia, right, India, all the way over to Ethiopia and Africa. I mean, this is power and wealth like the world had never seen before. And the Persian empire lasted for 200 years. As for Babylon’s foreign captives, the Israelites and other nations that Babylon had conquered, unlike in our world today, the Persians did not see foreigners as a problem.

The Persians saw foreigners as free labor, in other words, slaves. And this is why I chose our closing hymn for today as Lift Every Voice and Sing, which is a song of the end of slavery and the birth of freedom. So if there is a big picture idea for the book of Esther, it’s that the empires of human beings and the oppression they bring don’t last forever, but God does. The Babylonians, they were unbeatable for 50 years, and then the Persians beat them.

The Persians were unbeatable for 200 years, and then the Greeks beat them. I mean, it keeps on going. Closer to our time, the Holy Roman Empire of the Habsburgs was unbeatable for 400 years. On the other hand, the Soviet Union lasted only 69 years.

The empires of human beings do not last, but the reign of God does. And God works within all these human frameworks in ways that surprise us, and through people we would never expect, like a young teenage orphan girl named Esther. Now how Esther lost her parents, we don’t know. What we do know is that she was adopted by her uncle Mordecai, who was related to King Saul and therefore was from the royal family and was treated as such by the Babylonians.

But under the Persian Empire, Mordecai was just another servant in the court of the emperor. And the name of the Persian emperor, as we were discussing here, I believe it’s Ahasuerus, I think is how they pronounced it in Hebrew. It’s a tongue twister. I call him Artaxerxes.

That was the Greek name. He was known by Artaxerxes. So one day when Mordecai, Esther’s uncle, was resting in the courtyard of the palace, he overheard a couple of eunuchs plotting to kill King Artaxerxes. And I should mention the book of Esther talks a lot about eunuchs because there are quite a few of them in the palace.

Artaxerxes had a really bad habit of taking men from the people he conquered and forcing them to serve in the palace, particularly taking care of the royal harem. And he made them eunuchs so they wouldn’t bother the harem. And I’m sure this did not go over well. At any rate, when Mordecai overheard this conversation between these two men, he reported it to the emperor.

The guilty parties were executed, and these events were written down in the permanent court records of Persia and then promptly forgotten. So sometime later, King Artaxerxes gave a massive banquet for all his officials and all his buddies. I mean, he was totally showing off the wealth of the empire. This banquet lasted 180 days.

It’s almost half a year of feasting and drinking and being merry. And as the festival was drawing to a close, Artaxerxes added one more huge seven-day feast. And Queen Vashti was also permitted to give a seven-day feast for herself and her ladies. And on the seventh day, Artaxerxes commanded Queen Vashti, who was very beautiful, to come to the men’s banquet wearing her crown so that all the men could see her beauty.

Now the Bible doesn’t say this, but many Bible scholars and commentators say that the queen was commanded to attend the banquet wearing only her crown. And Queen Vashti said no. And the men took great offense and they consulted together and they decided that Vashti was out and her place and her crown would be given to someone better than she. So a search for the new queen began.

And the court officials were sent out throughout the empire looking for beautiful young virgins who just might please the emperor. And this went on for years. For years they looked. And Esther stayed hidden as long as she could.

But eventually she was caught up in one of these sweeps and she discovered what the process was like for young women. They were taken to live in the palace for a whole year, being served and trained by their personal eunuch. They’re given beauty treatments and skin treatments and perfume treatments. You get the idea.

Prepped for the king for a year. And after a year’s worth of treatments and training, each woman would be sent to the king for one night. And if he wasn’t 100% sure he had found his new queen, that woman would then be moved into another wing of the palace where she would live until and unless he called her by name, which hardly ever happened. I cannot imagine a more boring existence.

Anyway, when Esther’s turn finally came, she took the advice of her eunuch, whose name was Hagai, and he was really pulling for Esther. He did a beautiful job with her. And she put all of his advice to good use. And at the end of the night, Esther was chosen.

The emperor set Vashti’s crown on Esther’s head and she became the queen. After some time passed, there came an imperial official named Haman, who King Artaxerxes really, really liked. And he promoted him quickly. And at Haman’s request, Artaxerxes passed a law that everyone in the empire must bow down to Haman every time they saw him.

And this law was passed, but Mordecai refused to bow down to Haman. Mordecai was a true believer in God, and he only bowed down before God. And Haman was so enraged by this that he plotted to destroy Mordecai, and not just Mordecai, but all the Jews, all of Mordecai’s people. And Haman cast lots to decide on what day that would happen.

And the word for lots in Hebrew is parim, and that’s where they get the name of the holiday, parim. So Haman cast lots to choose the day of the destruction of the Jews. And Haman then goes to the emperor and gets permission to wipe out these strange people, as he calls them, who have different laws and do not obey the king’s laws. And the emperor says, Here’s my signet ring.

Go do whatever you want to do. And when Mordecai hears this, he sends a message to Queen Esther, telling her to talk to the king on behalf of her people. But Esther answers, Hey, look, there’s a law that says nobody can enter the king’s presence without being invited. The penalty is death, unless he holds out the golden scepter.

I could be killed, she says. And Mordecai answers, You won’t escape what’s coming. And who knows, perhaps you’ve come to the throne for just such a time as this. And I want to highlight that thought just for a moment, because this could be true of any one of us at any time when we least expect it.

God puts us where we are, just as we are, according to God’s wisdom, which none of us can see right now. But who knows, maybe you are here for just such a time as this. So Esther prays to God, and then takes her life in her hands and goes to see the king. And Artaxerxes holds out the golden scepter, and she lives.

Esther then invites the king and Haman, his number one man, to a banquet she has prepared. And while they’re eating, as you heard a moment ago, the king asks her, What is it that you wanted? What is your request? Even to the half of my kingdom, it shall be yours. And Esther answers, Please come again, both of you, to another banquet tomorrow. And these dinners, of course, and the fact that there are two of them, are an indication that Esther is about to make a big ask.

And she’s counting on these two men to be her champions, to be her heroes. At least that’s what the men are thinking. And so Haman, feeling very sure of himself, goes home that night and builds a gallows in his backyard to hang Mordecai on. But that night, the king can’t sleep.

So he orders a servant to go and find the palace’s book of records, the history of the kingdom, and read it out loud to him. And when he hears the story of Mordecai, who exposed the conspiracy against the king’s life, and he hears that Mordecai was never thanked for what he did, the king is troubled. And at just that moment, Haman is seen peeking around the corner, and the king asks, Hey, what would you do for someone who the king wishes to honor? And Haman figures he’s the one who’s going to be honored. So he tells the king, Such a man should be given a royal robe that the king has worn, and a horse that the king has ridden, and a royal crown on his head, and he should be led through the city by noble officials saying, ‘Give honor, give honor.

‘ And the king answers, Go quickly and do this, everything you’ve said, for Mordecai. And of course, Haman is humiliated, but he does it. And later that day, the king and Haman are at the second banquet with Queen Esther, and the king asks again, What is your petition? What is your request? Even to the half of my kingdom, it shall be yours. And Queen Esther answers, If I have won your favor, let my life be given to me, and the lives of my people, for we have been sold to be destroyed and annihilated.

And the king is enraged, and he answers, Who is he, and where is he that is presumed to do this? And she answers, This Haman right here, he is a foe and an enemy. And at the king’s command, Haman is hanged on the gallows that he built for Mordecai. And because an edict that has been sealed with the king’s seal cannot be undone, all of the Jewish people are still in jeopardy. So at Artaxerxes’ command, Mordecai writes another edict, giving the Jewish people the right to defend themselves and to plunder as they are able, and the king seals this edict, and it goes out.

Now in the royal city, most people living there understood that this was a political standoff, and they just pretty much ignored both edicts, right? But in the rest of the empire, people didn’t know this, and close to 75,000 people were killed in the skirmishes. This was very costly for the emperor. So that was the end of that. The self of the Haman and all that he had done cost the emperor a great deal.

But after that, there was a peace for the people of Israel, there was honor for Queen Esther and for Mordecai, and that’s what’s celebrated at the holiday of Purim. So as we step back now and look at this story through 21st century eyes, many books have been written about Esther in the years since then, and people have commented that the books that are written today in our time tend to make Esther sound almost like a Disney princess, you know, a beautiful woman in rags to riches story, and how she and her man live happily ever after. That’s not exactly how it went. This Miss Persia contest that Esther found herself in, along with thousands of other women was not something any of the women ever wanted for themselves.

And the eunuchs who prepared them for this competition were not nuts about having their life’s work involve nothing more than making women look beautiful for a king who most of the time couldn’t care less. Nobody ever asked any of these people, How do you feel about this? Their voices were silenced, voices of both men and women. And yes, the palace might have been pretty, and at least there was decent food there to eat, but there was no leaving the palace once you were inside. It’s kind of like Hotel California.

You can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave. So Esther gave her very best effort every day of the time she spent there. She made friends among the eunuchs, and she cared about them. She listened closely to the eunuch who was assigned to her.

She took one shot with the king and gave it her very best effort, in spite of the fact that the king was much older than she was, and a foreigner, and was of a different religion than she was. And she was courageous in the presence of a man who thought nothing of ordering the slaughter of an entire nation. Bible teacher Rachel Held Evans, of blessed memory, once wrote this about the story of Esther. She wrote, What does it mean to be the people of God when you’re being ruled by a violent and a godless pagan king? Is God still on the throne when the fate of his chosen people is left to the whims of kings like Artaxerxes? How are the powerless supposed to respond to power? The first message of the book of Esther is that God is in charge.

And this is always true, no matter what we see around us, no matter what sociopolitical machinations are going on, no matter what the people who think they’re in charge are doing. And there’s some interesting observations. Not once in this story does Artaxerxes make a decision on his own. He’s always asking his friends, his buddies, even his wife, but the entire book of Esther, he makes no decisions on his own.

This emperor has no clothes. His power is, in a sense, an illusion. And God is behind the scenes, using the small and the weak and the unimportant people to bring humility to the powerful. God put Esther in a place where she could save her people.

God put Mordecai in a place where Artaxerxes owed him his life. And this set in motion a series of events that in a matter of 48 hours changed the direction of an empire. In the book of Ephesians, the apostle Paul writes, In spite of all appearances to the contrary, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. In the end, Esther goes down in history as what the Jewish people call an eshet hayil, a woman of valor.

This orphan girl with no power or place in society rises to become queen. And the Jewish scholars point out that the name Esther in Hebrew is similar to the word hidden. And she was hidden in plain sight and revealed at just the right time. Rachel Held Evans concludes that the story of Esther is a story about how we can live as God’s people in a society where God is not a priority.

And specifically, we pray and we do our very best and then we leave the rest in God’s hands. Because no matter how you look at it, ultimately God is in control. And so long as we are seeking God’s will, we will always be, like Esther and Mordecai, safe in God’s hands. Amen.

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. .