The Sermons at Calvary
By Father Richard Humke
WALK IN THE WAY OF WISDOM
August 17, 2003, 15-B, Calvary
Church
Proverbs 9:1-6
Psalm 147
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:53-59
Every
once in a while there are three short Scripture readings on a Sunday morning,
and today is one of those "once in a whiles."
Our
readings today are not only short ones but also difficult ones. They are not easy to understand. The first two readings are about
wisdom. I want to read part of them to
you again:
Wisdom has
built her house, she has hewn her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine, she has
also set her table. She has sent out
her servant girl, she calls from the highest places in the town, "You that
are simple, turn in here!" To
those without sense she says, "Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine
I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and
live, and walk in the way of insight."
(Prov. 9:1-6)
And
in the Second Reading St. Paul says:
Be
careful how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the
time, because the days are evil.
So
we see that today's first two readings are about "wisdom," but a use
of the word that is different from the way we usually use that word. In some people's minds "wisdom" and
"intelligence," or "wisdom" and "book learning,"
or "wisdom" and having a Master of Divinity degree or a Ph.D. go
together. If that is the way you think
of wisdom, you will find that Scripture uses it otherwise.
The
wisdom that the Bible speaks of is an awareness of how the world works, and of
how God works in that world, and of what the implications of all that are for
life. Wisdom in the Bible means
learning to live in the world correctly.
Another way of putting it is that wisdom in the Bible means learning how
to live well in the world according to God's will.
Wisdom,
to paraphrase Bill Moyers, is having a clear understanding of the core
principles of religion and how they apply to daily experience. Wisdom is having mature common sense, grounded
in the knowledge of God and God's ways.
Some
questions that a person with wisdom will ask may be these: What are the consequences of what I will
do? What will happen if I do this
instead of that? How will my actions
affect other people and the communities of people in which I live? (That's a question that is being answered
increasingly in our time with the words, "I couldn't care less how what I
do affects other people." And the
consequences of that are frightening for our future.) Or another question: Is
what I am doing in cooperation with God's will?
Very
highly educated and intelligent persons may not have wisdom, as it is
understood in the Bible, while some of the most humble and simple persons may
know wisdom almost intuitively. That's
why we are moved when we read in the paper an interview with someone who has
lived 100 years and who has had no chance for an education and who has lived a
very difficult life of hard, hard labor, who then tells us the principles by
which she has lived her life.
She
tells us how she has treated other people -- she tells us of her faith in God
-- she tells us of the struggles she has undergone while never losing that
faith -- she tells us how important her family is to her -- she tells us how
important it has been all her life to honor hard work and simple living -- she
tells us that she has found happiness in having little but enjoying what she
has had -- she tells us that she has always tried to do what is right. And we realize that we are listening to wisdom.
The
grammar may not be correct; the concepts may not be terribly sophisticated; but
there is wisdom. It is the
wisdom of someone who has learned to live well. All that garbage of the talk shows, where beautiful people and
often odd people, try to make their lives seem meaningful is shown for what it
is: self-serving and ego-centric.
"Wisdom"
as used in the Bible partakes more of that last word in our reading from the
Old Testament today: insight. Think of "wisdom" when you hear it
in Scripture as "godly insight."
Godly insight as to how to live life.
In
our First Reading today Wisdom is personified as a woman (one of the few
feminine images of God in Scripture, for God is that Wisdom in today's
reading -- another name for God). We
are invited by Wisdom to come into her house, which is a substantial house
because, we are told, it is supported by seven pillars. She has prepared a feast for us.
"Come,
sit at my table, eat my bread and drink my wine, let us talk
together..." In other words, spend
time with Wisdom, who is a gracious hostess, we are told; and she will teach
you many things. Spend time with God
and God will teach you how to live.
Most
cultures of the world, I believe, have shown great respect for the elderly
because it is supposed that they have wisdom, that they have insight. It may have formerly been that respect for
the elderly was expected because relatively few people lived to old age, and so
the elderly person was a phenomenon, someone out of the ordinary, and so particularly
blessed by the gods. He or she was
listened to out of respect for longevity, to be sure; but also that person was
listened to for the wisdom to be gained from one who had lived long years and
had seen so much of life.
But
it isn't enough merely to have lived long years, of course. We know that when we say, perhaps
when an old man takes a young trophy bride, "There's no fool like an old
fool." What is important is living
and observing what goes on in life, and then stepping back to reflect upon it;
and in the reflecting to see connections between things, to see what has value
and what does not have value in life, to see what your responsibilities are as
you live in a community with other people -- that is wisdom.
When
I preached a sermon on this text many years ago, before I had my own senior
citizen discount, I was quite solicitous of older people in what I said. Now that I am one of them, I no longer need
to be so solicitous. In fact, I worry
about what I call the AARPing of America.
(And I know that's really not fair to AARP, which is a very responsible
organization. I just use it to get your
attention!) It's a very simple
attitude. It goes like this: I've got mine, and I'm not going to worry
about anybody else.
Let
me tell you about one person who expresses this attitude. I was introduced to her in a Letters to the
Editor column. (As an aside let me say that that is often the first
thing I go to in a publication because it's so much fun. I love to begin my day by reading the letters
in the morning paper, particularly those from people in the more affluent zip
codes who feel so put upon by having to pay taxes and to support things in the
community and perhaps, God forbid, to help other people through government
programs. My heart goes out to
them. And I say that with perfect
sarcasm.)
Well,
I came across this lady in an AARP publication. She is named Jane Doe (let us say), aged 69 (not really very old)
from Mississippi. She summed up
beautifully what I'm talking about, though I doubt that Jane Doe had any idea
how crass she sounded when she said, "I don't want my insurance to
change...Maybe that's selfish, but damn it, I feel I have earned the right to
be selfish."
I
am giving this Jane Doe her 15 minutes of fame this morning because she
expresses so much that is wrong today in America (though I know nothing about
her insurance situation and that's not what I'm referring to). Why does reaching 69 years give anyone an
excuse to be selfish? The truth is, of
course, that Jane Doe is only being more of what Jane Doe has always been: selfish.
I'll bet she has some happy daughters-in-law, don't you?
But
when a person has lived many years, and has learned how to live those
years in responsible community with other people and in relationship to God,
then that person has wisdom. But Jane
Doe (whom we will now leave to her own devices in Mississippi and mention no
more) does not have wisdom, despite her years.
She is just a selfish old woman. She missed out on the essence of wisdom,
as Scripture knows it, and that is that we must learn to live with respect and
care among the people God has placed us, that we are responsible for one
another, and that no one ever earns to right to be selfish.
I
think of a woman in Southern Indiana about whom I read one time in our
paper. It was a heartbreaking story of
her daughter's leaving home and going to live in Texas with a friend. Shortly after she got there, both girls were
stabbed to death in their apartment.
The mother, who was so young herself, was shown standing next to the
tombstone in the cemetery near New Washington.
It's
just one more of those stories with its own peculiar details and
heartbreaks. It's just another story of
tragic death in America. We read them
every day, and it is hard any longer to feel moved by them. But I did shed some tears for this
mother because of something she said.
It was so different from what one reads most of the time. She said, after the killer had received a
death sentence, "It was a relief, and yet I didn't take any glory in the
fact that a man had been sentenced to death.
I just cried and felt really bad...I felt so sorry for his mom. I thought that was her baby, and her baby
was a murderer..."
A
therapist may say that she isn't dealing with her anger yet, and perhaps she
isn't. But her words, spoken out of the
honesty of the moment as she felt it, are noble words. They are wisdom words. They are the words of someone, who though
young, has hold of wisdom because she knows that vindictiveness and hate are
not the answers for her life.
Wisdom
is learning things like that. Wisdom is
learning that we live in community with other people, and we all owe each
other. Wisdom is recognizing that it is
not right to be selfish. Wisdom is learning
respect for others. Wisdom is knowing
that God cares about all those kinds of things. Wisdom is knowing that happiness in life, for the individual and
for the community, is only to be found when people live honest and faithful and
caring lives under God.
So
listen to Wisdom. She says, "Lay
aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight."
Richard
H. Humke