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.

Live In Love

Scriptures:            1 Kings 19:4-8           Psalm 34:1-8

                              Ephesians 4:25-5:2       John 6:35-51

I have a friend who likes to watch baking shows – currently two favorites are “Sugar Rush” and “Just Desserts”.  Teams of bakers compete to produce cakes and all manner of exotic confections.  I myself am not much of a cook – my culinary talents are mostly limited to opening boxes and operating a microwave – but two things that are striking in these shows are that once various ingredients are mixed together, there’s no separating them again – for example, if one of the bakers reaches for salt instead of sugar and tosses that into the cake batter, there’s no going forward with that batch of batter; they have to toss it out and start over.  The other thing that strikes me is the number of ways that baking a cake or creating some other dessert can go wrong – not enough or too much of various ingredients, wrong oven temperature, not enough oven time, too much oven time. 

In our Gospel reading, we’re picking up where we left off last week, with some overlap.  The crowds whom Jesus had fed with bread in our reading two weeks ago have crossed the lake to be with Jesus in Capernaum, in hopes that he’ll feed them bread again.   Meanwhile, Jesus is trying to feed their minds and spirits, but they’re developing an acute case of mental and spiritual indigestion.  When he fed them bread, they were happy to follow him anywhere.  When he invited them to look on himself as bread, they backed away from the table. 

When we hear Jesus offering his body and blood as true bread and true drink, of course, our minds go to communion, when we’re told to take and eat the bread, take and drink the cup, in memory of Jesus, as we did last Sunday morning at about this time.  But why do we do that?  Because Jesus told us to, of course.  But to what purpose?  Of course, we know from history that different Christian traditions have understood communion in various ways – Roman Catholics believe that the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ, though retaining their appearance as bread and wine – this is called transubstantiation, changing from one substance to another.  Classic Lutheran language says that Christ is “in, with, and under” the elements of bread and wine.  This is called consubstantiation – that Christ is with the elements, but that the elements remain bread and wine.  Classic Reformed language – that would be our tradition - emphasizes the role of memory – “do this in memory of me.”   A more recent term, “real presence”, is currently used by a number of these traditions, along with others, to express ecumenical agreement that Christ is truly present in the act of taking communion, while allowing for divergent understandings of exactly how Christ is present.  But beyond the details of understanding how Christ is present, in our reading today, Jesus is stressing the importance of taking him – his teachings, his way of life, himself – into our lives and our selves as we take the bread and wine into our bodies, incorporating Christ into ourselves, so that Christ becomes more and more a part of us, so that ultimately we are transformed more and more into the image of Christ.  And Jesus promises that if we feast on him – if we incorporate Christ into our lives – he will sustain us in this life, and grant us eternal life in the world to come.

Elsewhere in Scripture, eating is also used as a metaphor for receiving wisdom or instruction from God and making it an integral part of our lives – and Jesus was likely thinking of these verses when he referred to himself as bread.   In Proverbs 9:5-6, Wisdom is said to call to those with ears to hear, “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.” Jeremiah 15:16 reads, in part, “Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart.” In Ezekiel 3:1-3, the prophet is instructed to eat a scroll containing the words that he would speak to Israel.    This metaphor recurs in Revelation, the last book of the Bible, chapter 10, verse 9, when an angel gives the writer a scroll, saying, “Take and eat it, it will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey.”  So just as Jesus was inviting the crowds, Jesus invites us, his present-day followers, to take him – his teachings, his actions, his way of life – into our lives so completely that he would become a part of us from that moment forward.  Jesus made this invitation, with the promise that we will never hunger or thirst again, and indeed that we would live forever.

We refer to the bread of communion as the body of Christ, broken for us.  We may remember that St. Paul also described the church as the body of Christ.  In a famous sermon, St. Augustine wrote these words, which are in the newsletter, but I’d like to read them now “So now, if you want to understand the body of Christ, listen to the Apostle Paul speaking to the faithful: "You are the body of Christ, member for member." [1 Cor. 12.27] If you, therefore, are Christ's body and members, it is your own mystery that is placed on the Lord's table! It is your own mystery that you are receiving! You are saying "Amen" to what you are: your response is a personal signature, affirming your faith. When you hear "The body of Christ", you reply "Amen." Be a member of Christ's body, then, so that your "Amen" may ring true! But what role does the bread play? We have no theory of our own to propose here; listen, instead, to what Paul says about this sacrament: "The bread is one, and we, though many, are one body." [1 Cor. 10.17] Understand and rejoice: unity, truth, faithfulness, love. "One bread," he says. What is this one bread? Is it not the "one body," formed from many? Remember: bread doesn't come from a single grain, but from many. When you received exorcism, you were "ground." When you were baptized, you were "leavened." When you received the fire of the Holy Spirit, you were "baked." Be what you see; receive what you are.”[1] 

And so Augustine seems to be saying, among other things, that our life together as church should be as united and joined together as the grains in a loaf of bread.  In a loaf of bread, it’s generally impossible to pick out this or that individual kernel of grain.  The difference between a loaf of bread and, for example, grains of wheat in a seed packet, is that in a loaf of bread, the individual grains are broken apart, ground up, combined with yeast, and baked.  In the same way, our life as a church flourishes when our individual lives are broken open and then joined together by Christ’s love.  Augustine is also saying that just as we give special attention, sacred attention, to the elements of communion, we should also give sacred attention to one another and ourselves as members of Christ’s body, as grains of wheat within the one loaf.  This is very different from the message of our culture, which increasingly values some lives while viewing other lives – even other Christian lives - as disposable, depending on race, nationality, sexual orientation, age, economic status, among other markers. 

But, as in the baking shows, a number of things can happen to spoil the dough, to keep it from coming together as a loaf of bread as intended.  In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul warns against some of these “ingredients” that need to be kept out of the dough:  lying, resentment, stealing, evil or unwholesome or corrupting talk, bitterness, rage, anger, fighting, slander, malice.  And Paul specifies some ingredients that need to be in the dough:  kindness, tenderheartedness, forgiveness, and most especially love. 

It’s striking how much attention Paul gave to speech and attitudes.  But we should remember that the churches to which Paul wrote were not long-established, “tall steeple” churches with venerable histories, hundreds of members and millions of dollars in the endowment fund.  They were new, fledgling communities, house churches, likely with around as many members as we have here today, maybe a few less, maybe a few more.  And they were experimental communities, learning by trial and error how to work together and live together and love together as followers of Jesus.  There was no book of recipes for creating this kind of loaf, no instruction manual for maintaining this kind of community.  Any kind of discord among the members would threaten to break up the community, blow up the church – or, to use the baking metaphor, spoil the loaf of bread, causing it to become inedible.

Especially Paul warns against anger – and even in our short reading, Paul is exceedingly careful in discussing anger, knowing how explosive anger can be.  He seems to take for granted that believers will become angry, and yet wants to set limits on it:  “Be angry but do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no foothold to the devil.”  Anger is a natural human emotion, and even Jesus experienced and expressed anger, on one occasion to the extent of turning over the tables of the money changers in the Temple.   There is such a thing as righteous anger, as expressed by the Old Testament prophets in denouncing the injustice and corruption of their society.  But righteous anger is something we need to discern very carefully, because it’s human nature to mistake our own will for God’s will, and so self-interest can very quickly corrupt our attempts at righteous anger.  Paul is also telling his readers not to hold onto their anger, but to resolve their differences quickly – he uses that striking phrase, “do not let the sun go down on your anger”.  When we hold onto our anger, it hardens into resentment and holding of grudges – and it’s been said, accurately, that “holding onto a resentment or a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”  In other words, we harm only ourselves, while the person we hate goes merrily on with their life.  It’s important to name this because there is so much anger in our society, so much resentment, so much poison swirling around in the body politic.  In the church, we need to model a different and better way of resolving differences – both for our own health and well-being, and as a witness to those around us.

Paul uses a striking phrase, “do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”  That phrase sounds abstract, but I think we’ve all experienced it – at least I have.  We’re in disagreement with someone and we say or do something that we know will be really hurtful to them, and as we do it, we think, “well, that’ll show them.”  But after we do it, instead of a sense of triumph, we feel only guilt and sadness as we see how our words and actions play out.  And I think that’s at least something of what it’s like to grieve the Holy Spirit, when we dish out something to wound the spirit of someone else, but instead our own spirits feel pain.

Paul ends by saying, “Be imitators of God, as beloved children.”  This sounds like a tall order – but for those of us who are raising or have raised children, we might think of when they pretend to be a baker or a nurse or a pilot or a fireman or such.  Of course, there’s a long distance between what they pretend to be and what they can actually do.  But maybe if they hold onto that dream as they grow older, they may someday as adults become what they pretend to be as children.  And in that sense we can be imitators of God, as beloved children.  I don’t think Paul had in mind imitating God’s power or God’s wrath, hurling lightning bolts at one another, but imitating God’s love, because in his next sentence, Paul encourages his readers to live in love, to walk in love, as Christ walked in love and gave himself up for us.  Like children imitating their parents, we can imitate Christ’s self-giving, costly love – and of course, like children, there will be a gap between what we can do and what Christ did – and that’s ok.  It’s a matter of living into Christ’s example, and the hope is for progress, not perfection.  And in so doing, we acknowledge and respect the sacredness of God’s image within ourselves and one another.

Earlier in his letter to the Ephesians, Paul seemingly gropes for words to describe God’s love for us – “God’s love for you is too broad and too long, too high and to deep, for me even to begin to describe – and I want you to experience that love, experience every bit of it, so that you may be filled to overflowing with it.  And I want you to show that same love to one another.”   We can’t show others what we haven’t experienced for ourselves.  So I pray we will be open to God’s love, totally open to God’s love, letting God’s love overwhelm us, knock us off our feet – so that we can share that same love with one another and with a world desperately needing to be loved, desperately needing God’s love whose breadth and length, height and depth are beyond imagining.  Amen.

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[1] http://www.earlychurchtexts.com/public/augustine_sermon_272_eucharist.htm