There is something to be
said for unflinching honesty that doesn’t sugar coat things. There is a fascinating tension in this whole portion
of scripture (Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Chronicles
and 1 and 2 Kings)– the people have been freed from Pharaoh, delivered from
slavery, to be the free people of God. But it’s really hard to be free, and they
have begged to have a king, like the other peoples. So God gives them a king,
and they struggle after that with the political reality of having a king, as
God said they would.
But God bless their honesty,
the scriptures are ambivalent about their kings – on the one hand they praise
their achievements- we see how powerful and wealthy, successful and wise they
were, how they ruled in righteousness or built up Israel and brought prosperity
and strength, but on the other hand, they also blame the kings for breaking the
covenant with God, for turning away from the promises and words of God and their
choices ultimately lead the people of Israel into exile.
And throughout, for most of
the kings, the prophets are continually calling them back to covenant and
reminding them who is really in charge. And
the bible holds both of these things in tension – their great success and their
utter failure, and in the midst of it all, God’s desire for relationship –to be
their God and for them to be God’s people, a light to the nations, hope for the
world.
So despite David’s murder,
rape, etc. he is known for his faithfulness and his righteousness,
and for his love of God. And Solomon,
who has 300 of concubines and 700 wives and builds shrines to foreign gods and
builds opulence and wealth on the backs of the poor, was known for his wisdom.
So let’s just get that
little bit aside here for a second – these are not clean characters or easy
stories. They are messy and scandalous and frustrating, and the writers of
these texts acknowledge the disappointing side of their heroes readily. Because – and this is important to keep in
mind throughout – this is God’s story. God who works in and through and in
spite of the best and worst we can throw at God, and who never gives up on us –
that is the story they are all telling, and they are committed to telling it
right.
We left things last week
with David’s household - which is a not the most peaceful one - God tells him
the sword will never leave his house, and it never does. In his old age there are several attempts by
sons to take over after David, lots of bloodshed, and finally, Solomon -
Bathsheba’s second son (the first one dies as punishment for his killing of her
first husband, Uriah) Solomon is the one chosen by God, appointed by David, and
anointed by Nathan, who ascends to the throne of David, but even he is involved
in some scheming and has a potential usurper half-brother killed in the process.
So Solomon, who has already
shown cunning and savvy, now begins his reign of the Israel in the most ideal
way possible- at least from God’s point of view. God says to him, Ask what I should give you. And Solomon
asks for wisdom. And God is very pleased
with this request. Because while wealth
or power or revenge would serve Solomon, but wisdom will serve the people.
What is wisdom?
Like love or hope or
foolishness, it almost can’t be explained or explored in the abstract, it appears
in circumstances and situations, in the word and actions of human beings in
real life. So wisdom
researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine study people
who are considered by others to be wise, and look at the kinds of experiences
that make someone wise, and what it looks like in context to be wise.
In order to illustrate
Solomon’s wisdom, we are given a story, a context in which to see wisdom
enacted. It’s a horrid story, really,
about two women on one of society’s lowest rungs caught in a tragic situation
and at the mercy of the king, who holds the power of life and death in his
hands. It’s a story of loss and despair, of what desperation and grief can do,
and of what love looks like too.
In this story, Solomon
peels back the curtain of wisdom for a glimpse, and shows the roomful of people
not a dazzling display of his own intellect or power – though to hang a child’s
life over a sword is certainly power- but a simple doorway to wisdom. He
doesn’t judge or condemn either woman, and he doesn’t try to get to the bottom
of anything, or figure out rationally what is right and what is wrong, and who
is to blame and what their punishment should be. He taps into the deeper
reality. He starts with the love that
will care for the child enough to let him go, so he might live, and exposes
that.
Solomon sidesteps the
drama and (albeit with considerable drama of his own) lays the truth bare. The consequences will still be theirs – one
will need to face her loss instead of denying it, and will grieve terribly, the
women will have to work out their relationship and living arrangements with one
living child and one childless mother. But Solomon’s actions in this moment
leave open the possibility for reconciliation and forgiveness, for honesty and
a way forward, without in any way simplifying or trivializing the complex
reality of life and living for these women and anyone else there witnessing
this moment.
Of course, we want to
know, Would he have sliced the baby in two? The absurdity of this as a solution
– it’s sheer illogic and shocking non-solutionness makes me think no, of course
not. Unless it is simply to shut them
both up and get the problem out of his presence, which, as a powerful king, is
risk enough for them to take him seriously. A king could do what he wanted, so
if he wanted to make a mockery, or cause pain, or show his might, he certainly
could have.
But that’s not where he
was headed. He offers the solution of
dividing the child as a test, one that actually treats the women as
participating human beings and not as problems to fix or objects in his
way. By this absurd gesture he allows
reality to be exposed – the deeper truth is spoken, the one who loves the
child, and would give the child up to see him safe, this is the true mother.
Wisdom is not knowledge; it
connected to the way things are, to our very being. It is like glimpsing the
alignment of things, sensing the deep truth underneath it all. And it is always something that moves us
beyond ourselves and connects us with others, it is always for others, never
for our own personal gain.
Included on the long list
of words people use to describe those who are wise are “things like compassion,
ability to see the big picture, to put things in perspective, to see things
from many points of view, to be able to reflect on and rise above one’s own
perspective.” Dr. Margaret Plews-Ogan, who studies wisdom, explains, “Wisdom is
different from intelligence. Intelligence seeks knowledge and seeks to
eliminate ambiguity. Wisdom on the other hand, resists automatic thinking,
seeks to understand ambiguity better, to grasp the deeper meaning of
what is known and to understand the limits of knowledge.”
Where does wisdom begin?
Solomon gives us some
insight into this. He is credited with
Proverbs, (and Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes – the wisdom literature). And we hear there this very
often-repeated refrain, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” (e.g., Prov. 1:7; 9:10; 10:27; 14:27, 15:33; 16:6). This is where Solomon started.
The word for “fear” can mean
being afraid or scared, but it can also mean reverence, wonder, amazement,
mystery, astonishment, honor, in other words, something like awe.
And it is linked linguistically with the word for seeing –
Abraham Heschel wrote, Awe is a sense for transcendence, for the
mystery beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world intimations
of the divine, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple: to feel in
the rush of the passing, the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot
comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe."
The fear of the Lord, the
awe and the awareness of the eternal beyond the within the ordinary, the seeing
into – this is the beginning of wisdom.
Wisdom is speaking from the great truth bigger than ourselves, the silence
beneath the noise, the real reality that holds us. But, it begins with an honest assessment of
yourself and the world. Lord, How can I govern so great a people? I
am but a small boy! Give me an understanding mind. I am limited and you are beyond all – help me
see with your vision, help me glimpse with your insight, that I may serve these
people rightly and do what is best for them.
Solomon asked for wisdom
from God and received it. But most often
wisdom is gained not from studying or listening to someone else wise, but from
experience, often tragic, difficult, painful, real life experience. Where these
things can cause post-traumatic stress, they can also lead to what some have called,
post
traumatic growth. Plews-Ogan asks, “What
better teacher of compassion than one’s own experience of suffering? How better
to learn humility than to make a mistake? And what better to discover the
deeper meaning of one’s life than to face a circumstance that forces you to
focus on that which is of most value to your life?”
And we are participants in
the process, we can receive the paths wisdom carves in us. All the exemplars of wisdom the University of
Virginia researchers looked at in their Wisdom Study had one thing in common–
they had all, at some point, made an intentional choice to do something that
was hard. Plews-Ogan describes it like this: “It may not have been what they
really wanted to do, and certainly not something they thought would necessarily
end up well. But it was something they felt they had to do to set things
straight. They chose, in many cases, the harder course of action. They chose to
face their circumstances face on. We say, they “stepped in”. They may have decided
to apologize to a patient or family, to go into a room full of intense
judgment. It might have meant that they had to face their addiction, or take
control of their health. At some point they made a courageous choice to
make a difference in their own lives.”
But what leads people to
make hard choices in the face of adversity? To remain vulnerable and changeable
instead of hardening and becoming bitter and shut down?
When researchers asked
what gave those people the courage to make their hard choice – to step into
something they’d rather avoid, their answers could be summarized in five
things: a community to hold your experience- a place to tell your story,
cultivating gratitude and hope, some kind of quiet reflection or prayer, doing
something to help others, and having some kind of spiritual grounding to help
guide you as you make hard but good choices. Since wisdom is from God, it doesn’t surprise
me that these things that open a place for God’s wisdom to grow in us sound exactly
like church.
Solomon had the gift of wisdom
from God, for the people, to see the greater truth and help others live in it, to
connect him to God’s reality and bring that reality to be in his leadership, but
he also had his own cleverness and intellect in spades, and it is easy to see
when he relied on one and not the other.
His rule was
characterized by stability and peace within the borders of Israel’s huge
territory, and political and social order. He was a prolific writer and
composer, beloved for his wisdom, and he gave the people of God the
Temple.
But he also used slave
labor from conquered peoples to build the temple, built shrines for the worship
of foreign gods, and taxed the people heavily to support his lavish and
excessive lifestyle. He made the people
work as soldiers, chief officers and commanders of his chariots and cavalry,
and gave preferential treatment to the tribe of Judah, which angered and
alienated the other tribes. By the time
his 40 year reign came to an end, the people were weary, burdened, frustrated
and disillusioned, after his death, the kingdom he had built broke apart.
Wisdom keeps us human and
connected to others. It keeps us human and connected to God. But, Solomon did not have a prophet. There was
no Nathan for him like there was for David.
Was there anyone who spoke hard truth to power? Who reminded him of his
vulnerability? Who called him back to God’s ways when he got distracted by his
own power and ingenuity, or became enslaved to his desires and the drive to
satisfy his own wants, even at the expense of those he was called to serve?
One researcher describes,
“…a wisdom atmosphere as one in which doubts, uncertainties and
questions can be openly expressed, and ambiguities and contradictions can be
tolerated, so that individuals are not forced to adopt the defensive position
of…“too confident knowing”.’ (John Meachum)
Perhaps Solomon, for all his
wisdom, did not have this.
These wisdom researchers
were not studying church. They were not looking at the Bible or the faithful
from the generations who’ve gone before us, or those of us who seek to live in
wisdom in a community of Jesus Christ with and for one another. So they couldn’t have
realized what it would sound like to us gathered here tonight when they said this:
“When we foster compassion, empathy and forgiveness,
in ourselves and in others, we are opening up the possibility for wisdom. When
we foster the capacity for self- reflection in our children, or our community,
we are creating the matrix for wisdom to develop.
When we foster gratitude, wisdom is likely to follow.
When we accept the complexity and ambiguous nature of things, and refuse to
accept a simplified black and white explanation, we are increasing the
likelihood of wise decisions. Wisdom does not arise out of the easy, simple
parts of our lives. Wisdom lives in the most messy, hard, complex and painful
of our experiences.”
This, my friends, is Church. They are talking about
church. They are talking about us. We
are people called to live with one another in the messy, hard and complex
experiences, called to foster gratitude, to make space to openly express
doubts, and to accept ambiguity and mystery.
We are called to hear and
hold each other’s stories – stories that God works in and through and in spite
of so that we can be with God. We are to
be, for each other and the world, the people who help one another step into
hard things, and who remain open and soft when life wants to make us bitter and
shut down.
We make space for
silence and pray together, we can be brave and trusting instead of afraid and
guarded, and we can dwell together in the fear of the Lord, that place where
awe and wonder well within us and open up to us a seeing that otherwise remains
closed.
And when we look at David
and Solomon and all these faithful who have gone before, in all the raw
ugliness and beauty of their lives, it can help us to foster compassion,
empathy and forgiveness in ourselves and others.
We are the Church, the
Body of Christ, the living and breathing reminders of grace, experiencers of
grace, spreaders of grace amidst life’s joys and struggles. We are the community where wisdom grows. May we come in honesty and awe before God and “feel
in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal." (Heschel)
Amen.
Amen.
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