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An invitation to joyful confidence and humble wisdom (25th Sunday after Pentecost, 11/17/2024)

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Readings (Track 2)

Our readings from Daniel and Mark make quite a pair. The Daniel reading ends a long description of the Last Things; the Mark reading begins a long description of the Last Things. In both, all hell is breaking loose or is about to. In both, hell doesn’t get the last word. How are our innards supposed to respond? Both readings—together with the psalm and epistle—are an invitation to joyful confidence and humble wisdom. Joyful confidence and humble wisdom. Let’s see if you agree.

Psalm 16. It’s one of the Psalter’s many individual petitions. “Protect me, O God, for I take refuge in you.” The situation is lethal; the Grave and the Pit are in view. Nevertheless, the psalmist is confident in the Lord’s power and goodness, so the overriding emotion is joy, both in the present and anticipated in the future. Fear’s probably knocking (pounding?) on the door. But the psalmist doesn’t have to answer; we don’t have to answer every robocall.

So giving attention to joy’s a choice. If we pay attention, there’s joy in the present: “My boundaries enclose a pleasant land; / indeed, I have a goodly heritage.” And in the future: “And in your right hand are pleasures for evermore.” Those who’ve read C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters may recall that senior devil’s rant (“[God’s] a hedonist at heart.”[1]). In the present:

And since the other readings will get us thinking about wisdom, notice v.7: “I will bless the Lord who gives me counsel; / my heart teaches me, night after night.” Counsel, actionable wisdom, on an ongoing basis.

What the psalmist is experiencing is what we pray for in that short prayer immediately following Baptism: “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.” The psalm gives us a palpable picture of how God’s answer to that prayer can be experienced.

So, an invitation to a confidence that generates joy.

Hebrews. The psalmist’s confidence rested on the Lord’s experienced power and goodness, experienced by the psalmist and the psalmist’s community. The confidence repeatedly expressed in our Hebrews text rests on that same power and goodness at work in Jesus—as we celebrate at every Eucharist. And here the confidence generates corporate faithfulness.

Turns out our 21st century temptations aren’t all that different from 1st century temptations. “Not neglecting to meet together.” It can be a strong temptation: anything to avoid having to deal with that person. But withdrawal makes the same sense for a Christian as it does for a football player. “So you’re a football player. What team are you on?” “No team, just a football player.”

Anyhow, an invitation to the confidence that generates corporate faithfulness.

Mark. Our Mark reading starts by continuing the eyesight issue from last week. What do the disciples see when they see a scribe? What do they see watching the very different gifts of the rich and the poor widow? Even after three years with Jesus, he’s still working on their eyesight. Today, looking at the temple, the disciples are all “Ooh, Aah,” when you don’t even have to be a prophet to know that between the high taxes and the Zealots, the temple’s days are numbered. But Jesus keeps trying—as he does with us.

As the reading continues some disciples ask “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” They want a timetable, information out there that doesn’t require any change on their part. Jesus has no interest in giving that sort of answer. His answer instead is punctuated by “Beware!” —sometimes better translated as “Watch!” or “On guard!” The future will demand wisdom, discernment. From Scripture’s perspective the only wisdom worth the name is a humble wisdom, a wisdom ever-aware of its own limits. So, in Jesus’ answer: don’t try to prepare your speech for the hostile authorities beforehand—the Holy Spirit will take care of that; don’t assume you know when the Master will return.

However we summarize Jesus’ answer (“All hell will break loose, but hell doesn’t get the last word!”), it clearly invites confidence. Equally clearly, an invitation to humble wisdom, without which that confidence will probably be counterproductive.

Daniel. The bottom line of that long description running from chapter 10 to 12: the Lord is sovereign, whether in the times of the Persians or the Greeks, whether the faithful are honored or hunted. The last verse supplies the exclamation point: “Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.”

Let’s stay with that verse for a bit. That word ‘wise’ has shown up repeatedly in Daniel. It introduces Daniel and his three companions back in chapter 1; it characterizes the persecuted faithful in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes (chapter 11), whose genocidal policies sparked the Maccabean revolt. In Isaiah, it introduces the servant in the fourth “Servant Song:” “See, my servant shall prosper [be wise].” That same Song is probably responsible for the description “those who lead many to righteousness.”

“Those who are wise.” In the book of Daniel, Daniel and his companions are the paradigms of the wise. By their time, Lady Wisdom, participant in God’s creation, “delighting in the human race” (Prov. 8:31), and Moses’ Law had pretty much merged. So Daniel and his companions carefully observe Moses’ Law. Perhaps surprisingly, this frees them to give their best service to foreign kings. I think Jeremiah, who wrote “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile” (Jer. 29:7), would have liked that.

Jumping ahead, in a variety of ways the New Testament celebrates Jesus as the incarnation of Wisdom. Back in Proverbs, the personification of wisdom as Lady Wisdom was more than a rhetorical ornament. It captured the insight that gaining wisdom is more like getting to know a person than accumulating innumerable maxims. The incarnation seals that: if I seek wisdom, I seek to know Jesus. Not simply Jesus’ teaching or Jesus’ example—these can quickly and conveniently become abstractions—but Jesus himself, with all the open-endedness and mystery any personal relationship involves.

But talk of wisdom is dangerous, as Proverbs already recognized: “Do you see persons wise in their own eyes? There is more hope for fools than for them” (Prov. 26:12). Wisdom neglectful of its own limits is no wisdom. And I don’t escape that danger by announcing that I’m seeking to know Jesus. It’s tempting to cherry-pick the parts of Jesus I find attractive. But, for example, Jesus aligned with none of the Jewish parties: Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, Zealots, Qumran separatists, etc., and annoyed most of them. He cut diagonally across all of them. I would expect the same to be true of our parties today, whether political or religious. So if Jesus is not periodically annoying me, I’m probably cherry-picking.

Coming at the same issue from a different direction, it’s easy to assume that after baptism and confirmation we’ve got the basics, and it’s just a matter of—as the Hobbits would say—“filling up the corners.” The Chilean priest Segundo Galilea is closer to the truth when he writes “Let’s not assume that a Christian believes in and prays to the Christian God. There are always ambiguities and subtle idolatries in the God they adore and follow. Getting acquainted with and conversion to the God of the Gospel is a task for one’s entire life, and for everyone.”[2]

But isn’t emphasizing the limits of our wisdom a buzzkill? Recall the baptismal prayer: “the gift of joy and wonder in all your works.” When wonder, awe, even curiosity kick in, the limits of our wisdom move over into the “Win” column.

To resume, as in Mark, our Daniel text invites us to confidence (“All hell will break loose, but hell doesn’t get the last word!”) and wisdom. And here I’ve spent more time pulling back the camera to notice the importance of a wisdom that stays conscious of its limits.

And, pulling back the camera in a different direction, taking in the Book of Daniel as a whole, what that confidence and wisdom do is create a quite remarkable freedom to engage Empire. Sometimes there are happy endings: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; Daniel in the lion’s den. Sometimes not. In the runup to today’s text we hear “The wise among the people shall give understanding to many; for some days, however, they shall fall by sword and flame, and suffer captivity and plunder” (Dan. 11:33). It’s not that the wise (the faithful) have changed their strategy; it’s just that the choices of the powerful are sometimes wise, sometimes foolish. And that lies beyond our control, but not the Lord’s. With Daniel and Mark: the Lord bats last.

[1] Chapter 22.

[2] “No pensemos que a priori un católico cree y ora al Dios cristiano. Siempre hay ambigüedades e ‘idolatrías’ sutiles en el Dios que adora y sigue. El conocimiento y conversión al Dios del evangelio es una tarea para toda la vida y para todos” (El camino de la Espiritualidad, p.55).

About that knife edge distance between wisdom and folly (17th Sunday after Pentecost, 9/15/2024)

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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.