An Understanding Mind

Scriptures:     1 Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14,    Psalm 34:9-14,     Ephesians 5:15-20,     John 6:51-58

I want to begin by thanking everyone who came out for this year’s Backpack Sunday.  At Emanuel Church, we’re grateful to be able to contribute in a small way to the education of the children of our congregation and the children of our community.  There’s so much potential in this room – your young lives, learning and growing, and who knows what you’ll accomplish over the course of your lives.   We pray and we expect that you will grow up to make the world a better place, and that other peoples’ lives will be better because of you.

In our Old Testament reading, we are given a glimpse of King Solomon at the beginning of his reign over Israel following the death of his father, King David.  We’re told that as he was worshipping at Gibeon, God came to Solomon in a vision.  We’re told that God said to Solomon, “Ask what I should give you” – basically, “Ask me for anything you want” – basically a blank check.   If God came to any of us and said, “Ask me for anything you want”, I’m sure we could come up with quite an interesting wish list.  Small children might ask for all the candy in the world.  Older children might ask for superpowers, to be able to fly.  Our elderly members might ask for relief from the pain and limitations of age, to have younger bodies again, while retaining the wisdom of age.  We’d probably all ask for wealth.  Some might ask for superhuman strength, or for superhuman intelligence, to be smarter than Albert Einstein or Steven Hawking.  I might ask to be able to play guitar like Eddie Van Halen or Jimi Hendrix, which would indeed be a miracle, an act of divine intervention.   Or, to be a bit less self-centered, we might ask for healing for loved ones, or for an end to poverty or homelessness.  We might ask for an end to war, for peace to prevail across the country and around the globe. 

Solomon could have asked for any number of things – to be incredibly wealthy, to live for a really long time, for all his enemies to be killed.  But instead, he poured out his heart to God – “Lord, I’ve been put in charge of this great nation, with all these people to govern, and I feel like a little boy dressed up in my father’s robes.  Give me an understanding mind, a mind able to distinguish between good and evil, so that I can govern this nation that you’ve given me to govern.”  We’re told that because Solomon asked for wisdom and not for wealth or long life or for his enemies to be killed, Solomon was granted wisdom, along with wealth and long life and peace from his country’s enemies.  And some of Solomon’s wisdom lives on; by tradition much of the book of Proverbs, along with the book of Ecclesiastes, reflects the wisdom of King Solomon.  Scripture also tells us, however, that there were limits to Solomon’s wisdom, that his many marriages to foreign wives, made for political reasons, led him to worship and sacrifice to other gods, and that the magnificent Temple, along with his own palace, came at the cost of very heavy taxes and levies on the people – and after his death, a revolt against his son Rehoboam’s plan to impose even heavier taxes led all but the tribe of Judah to break off, form their own government, and establish their own places of worship.

In a few days our children will be starting school again.  There will be new teachers, new classrooms, new desks and books.  And there will be new facts to learn – new words to spell and define, new books to read, new numbers to add, subtract, multiply and divide, new cultures to study, new properties of nature to experience and understand.  You’ll be cramming your heads with new knowledge, learning new skills that you may need as an adult.  And it’s funny; in school you’re taught lots of different facts and shown lots of different skills, and there’s no way to know which of these you’ll actually use as an adult.  As an adult, in my day job in accounting and here as pastor of this church, I use the English skills I was taught in school – how to spell words, how to construct a sentence, punctuation, grammar, all that -  and in addition to the Bible, I draw from time to time on the books I read in high school and college and beyond.  I use much of the math I learned in school, including algebra, which in combination with Excel spreadsheets is a big part of my daytime job, though I wouldn’t know where to begin with a trigonometry or calculus question these days.  And I’m grateful to say that I haven’t had to dissect a frog in many a long year, though I’m equally grateful for any classmates whose journey toward becoming surgeons may have started with scalpels and a frog reeking of formaldehyde.  But as grateful as I am to have been exposed to those experiences and to have learned some skills along the way, I’m grateful every day that I took two years of business typing in high school – because whether I’m at my day job or preparing a sermon or chatting on Facebook, I’m typing all the time, and I surely haven’t the time to use the two-finger hunt and peck system.   But who knows…it’s likely that down the road, a few years or decades from now, much of what I do now via typing will be voice-activated, and my typing skills will become as archaic as typewriter ribbons and carbon paper.  So it’s good to keep an open mind to what we learn in school, even if we think we’ll never use it, because none of us knows what the future holds.

So far I’ve talked about knowledge.  But there’s a difference between wisdom and knowledge.   Gaining knowledge is about gathering and retaining information.  Wisdom is about knowing how to use the knowledge we have, or, if necessary, how to gain the knowledge we lack.   Knowledge is used to do things right.  Wisdom is used to do the right things.  And there’s a difference. Knowledge is a tool that can be used for good or evil, can be used to bring blessings or curses upon the world.  Scientific knowledge can be used to cure cancer or to create nuclear weapons, to save life or to destroy life on a massive scale.  Knowledge has given us the ability to render this planet uninhabitable.  Wisdom may yet give us the grace not to do so.

Our reading from Psalm 34 speaks repeatedly of “the fear of the Lord”.  Psalm 34 tells us that “those who fear the Lord have no want”.  I’m not sure we know what to think – I’m not entirely sure *I* know what to think - about this phrase “the fear of the Lord”.   We may think of Jonathan Edwards’ sermon on “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, about God hurling bolts of lightning at rebellious sinners before dropping them, kicking and screaming, into the fiery pit of hell.  But I don’t know if those mental pictures are helpful to us, and Jesus surely didn’t instruct his disciples to cower in terror before the Almighty – he taught them to call God “Father” for heaven’s sake – literally for heaven’s sake.  We speak of the “fear of the Lord” in terms of awe and profound respect – and I think this gets close to the meaning – although it still leaves God sounding a bit like Cartman on South Park yelling at everyone around him, “Respect my authoritah!”

I think that part of what the Psalmist is recommending with the phrase, “the fear of the Lord”,  is knowing our place in the universe – that there is a God, and it’s not me - that, for example, I live in a vast universe, far beyond my comprehension – and I’m not at the center of it.  Indeed, I’m a small part of something far beyond myself – actually, I’m a small part of many somethings, a small part of many communities far beyond myself – this congregation, the United Church of Christ as a whole, the health system where I work during the day, this neighborhood of Bridesburg where I serve even though I don’t live here, this city, this state, this nation, the planet, just to name a few.  That is to say, the fear of the Lord gives us a proper perspective, guards us from self-absorption.  Perhaps it’s a bit like the old Shaker hymn, “Tis the gift to be simple, tis the gift to be free, tis the gift to come down where we ought be, and when we find ourselves in the place just right, it will be in the valley of love and delight.”  Much of our misery in life comes from not knowing our place in the universe, comes from not fearing God because we’d rather pretend to be God, blithely taking actions that condemn people halfway around the globe to poverty and misery.  And when we overreach, the results generally leave much to be desired.

Indeed, just as I personally am not the center of the universe – nor are any of us here - we as human beings cannot declare independence from the rest of the universe, from the plants and animals, insects and microbes, with whom we share this planet.  In these days of climate change, perhaps that phrase “the fear of the Lord” can lead us to remember our deep connection to every other form of life on the planet, our dependency on ecosystems whose workings we don’t fully understand, such as the bees, without whose work in pollinating plants, many planet species upon whom we depend for food would come to an end, leaving our lives nasty, brutish, and short.   Perhaps that phrase, “the fear of the Lord”, the concept of knowing our place in the universe, can help us to pause and consider before taking actions or continuing inactions that threaten the environment, and ultimately our own viability as a species.

Our brief reading from Ephesians tells us, “Be careful how you live, not as unwise people, but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.”  Again, in this world of climate change, we  must be more careful than ever how we live.  Our reading goes on, “Do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.  Do not get drunk with wine….but be filled with the Spirit….” and here comes a phrase that will help us remember our place in the universe – “giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  If we forget our place in the universe, if we forget the fear of the Lord, we will take everything around us for granted.   We’ll act as if the world is made solely for our amusement, like a machine that starts up when we get out of bed and shuts down when we close our eyes.   But if we remember our place and our role in the universe, if we maintain profound respect for God, our hearts will overflow with gratitude.  It’s important to understand that we as individuals are not God.  But it is equally important to recognize  that in Christ we are connected to God, that God is in us – as when we take the bread and wine of communion – and that through Christ we are reconciled with God, as when Jesus prayed at the Last Supper: “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

Solomon prayed for an understanding mind, a mind able to distinguish between good and evil.  May God grant all of us – especially the young people among us – understanding minds, able to tell right from wrong.  May our profound respect and love for God overflow into respect and love for our neighbors and for the environment, the plants and animals with which we share this planet. Amen.