Readings (Track 1)

In today’s sermon I’m inviting us to wonder about two questions. The first concerns the prayer after baptism found on p.308 of the BCP:

Heavenly Father, we thank you that by water and the Holy Spirit you have bestowed upon these your servants the forgiveness of sin, and have raised them to the new life of grace. Sustain them, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit. Give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works. Amen.

Given its strategic place, it looks like a prayer concerning all our life as Christians. So, for what are we asking? A complete answer would be too much to expect from a single sermon; but our second question can give us some hints.

For the second question we pull back the camera to the official author of Proverbs (our first reading): Solomon. 1 Kings presents him as proverbially wise. 1 Kings presents him as catastrophically foolish. His economic policies make of Israel a pressure cooker that explodes immediately after his death. So, what went wrong?

Well, there’s the official answer, and the answers a closer reading of the text might suggest. The official answer is found in 1 Kings chapter 11: “For when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods; and his heart was not true to the LORD his God, as was the heart of his father David” (v.4). And we might take that seriously, until we recognize that it’s the same voice we heard from Adam back in Genesis: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate” (Gen. 3:12). James’ words about the tongue in our second reading turn out to be applicable in unexpected places.

A closer reading of 1 Kings suggests three possible answers. First, Solomon is wise. And wisdom carries the inevitable temptation to assume that one’s wisdom has no important limits. And the wiser one is, the stronger the temptation. The burdens Solomon’s grand building projects and economic centralization placed on the backs of the people: was Solomon unaware, or simply unconcerned?

This helps us, I think, unpack that baptismal prayer: “Give them an inquiring and discerning heart.” An inquiring and discerning heart: even as it seeks to expand the limits of our wisdom it stays aware of those limits.

Recall today’s Gospel. Jesus asks “But who do you say that I am?” and Peter absolutely nails it: “You are the Messiah.” You may recall Jesus’ words in Matthew’s version of the scene: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven” (16:17). But in response to Jesus’ explanation of what being Messiah means, Peter rebukes Jesus and Jesus in turn rebukes Peter: “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” In virtually a heartbeat Peter goes from what he knows to what he doesn’t know.

Fortunately we don’t live most of our lives on a knife edge, right at the fateful border between what we know and what we don’t know, but sometimes we’re there, and if Peter’s experience is any indication, we may not even be aware of it. “Give them—give us—an inquiring and discerning heart.”

The second thing that may have been going on with Solomon is captured by that ironic observation of Ben Franklin: “So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.” And the more reasonable one is, the wiser one is, the easier to find strong—ironclad—reasons for doing what one wants to do. Of course the temple must be magnificent. Of course the royal dwellings must be magnificent. Game, set, match. And the pressure in Israel the pressure-cooker goes up a few more notches.

This is what’s behind that strange turn in today’s psalm. The psalmist celebrates the excellence and the power of the law in vv.7-11. The law is perfect, and by it “your servant is enlightened.” The psalmist is talking about the law; the psalmist could as easily be talking about the wisdom whose voice we heard in our first reading. And we would think that with all this excellence and power nothing more needed to be said.

But v.12: “Who can tell how often he offends? / cleanse me from my secret faults.” The law/wisdom is powerful, but too vulnerable to being coopted by our desires. “So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.”

The Greeks thought—and until recently our culture has largely followed them—that if only reason reigned supreme everything would sort itself out. If only we could all be more reasonable! But reason, as Franklin noticed and the psychologists have confirmed, is no match for our desires. And our baptismal prayer pays as much, if not more, attention to those desires than to our reason.

And our baptismal prayer suggests a third way Solomon’s wisdom may have gone off the rails. I’m thinking of that bit toward the end: “the gift of joy and wonder in all your works.” That’s an invitation to continual contemplation. Not contemplation as opposed to action, but action and contemplation nurturing each other. Solomon’s no slouch when it comes to contemplation: “He composed three thousand proverbs, and his songs numbered a thousand and five. He would speak of trees, from the cedar that is in the Lebanon to the hyssop that grows in the wall; he would speak of animals, and birds, and reptiles, and fish” (4:32-33). But all that contemplation seems curiously siloed. When it comes to being king, he simply does what the surrounding kings do, enacting the prophet Samuel’s dire warning: “He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers” (1 Sam. 8:13-15). Take, take, take. Autopilot. And the pressure in pressure-cooker Israel keeps rising.

Solomon: proverbially wise, catastrophically foolish. From what 1 Kings narrates of his actions three things could have been in play. First, wisdom tends to forget its limits, so even as Solomon was wisely building up Jerusalem and profiting from his international arms trade, he was ignoring the economic tensions that would explode at his death. Second, wisdom is vulnerable to being coopted by desire, so Solomon’s wisdom offered unanswerable reasons for the luxury he and his court desired. Third, wisdom can get siloed: contemplation for this, action for that, with that “joy and wonder in all your works” leaving untouched what most needs touching.

Why does 1 Kings tell us all this? Not to trash Solomon, just as Mark’s Gospel has no interest in trashing Peter. But so that we might be more aware of our own vulnerability, and of those knife-edge moments in which the space between wisdom and folly is only a knife-edge. And with 1 Kings and Mark still ringing in our ears perhaps we’ll be able to give greater attention to our baptismal prayer:

Heavenly Father, we thank you that by water and the Holy Spirit you have bestowed upon these your servants the forgiveness of sin, and have raised them to the new life of grace. Sustain them, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit. Give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works. Amen.