The Wisdom of Solomon

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(for The Simple Way women–I’m sorry to miss you!)

1 Kings 3:5-12 (NRSV)

“5At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, ‘Ask what I should give you.’ 6And Solomon said, ‘You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant my father David, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart towards you; and you have kept for him this great and steadfast love, and have given him a son to sit on his throne today. 7And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. 8And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted. 9Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?’

10 It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. 11God said to him, ‘Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, 12I now do according to your word. Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you.”

Solomon ended up being the last ruler of the undivided kingdom of Israel, he had a wandering eye (to put it very, very mildly), but as a young man, he had his head on straight, and because of his humility, he is still remembered today as the wisest man who ever lived.

May we follow in Solomon’s footsteps, being bold enough to ask God for things we want and need, and being humble enough to ask God for wisdom and discernment to help us to live faithfully.

For a fun Solomon/wisdom story, check out 1 Kings 3:16-28 🙂

It’s All Grace

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A few weeks ago–when the Southeast was pounded with much more snow than it could imagine withstanding–I took 4 different planes to end up in Atlanta, Dallas, and Durham.

The very last of the four flights was the only one with any delay at all, and it had to do with a mechanical problem, not the weather.

Even so, I spent hours upon hours wringing my hands in squeaky airport chairs, checking and re-checking my smartphone’s travel app, calling and texting friends and family–“what does the weather look like there?”  “what do you think the chances are?”

Of all the weather patterns that fell into place, granting me safe travel across the country twice, all the cancelled flights which didn’t affect my plans, and all the usually-expected air travel trip-ups that never happened, I lost sight of the great grace I was given because I was stuck in a cloud of worry and what-ifs.

On that one flight with the mechanical problem, it turned out that we needed to change planes; as we boarded our second craft, a middle-aged male in first class, conspicuously wearing a prayer-bead bracelet, complained to anyone who would listen about the inconvenient timing and general incompetence of the gate personnel.

I quickly realized the analogy–here I was, worrying and working myself up over all the travel problems that never materialized, spending my time focusing on what might possibly go wrong instead of noticing and being grateful for all the ways that the trip’s details fell into place.  I was complaining, inwardly, over something that was really not that inconvenient at all.

Though there was one hiccup in the trip, by the time I’d reached my fourth flight in 72 hours, I had enough possession of myself to smile (you know, in the tough things).  All our experiences offer us an opportunity to notice the things that go right or the things that go wrong–whatever we choose to focus on are the parts of the experience which are magnified; we have the choice to notice the grace and blessings that surround us, or to notice and magnify the negative in our lives.

What do you choose to see?

The Original “Lean In”

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Sheryl Sandberg has stolen from Jesus.  As usual, Jesus is pretty gracious, and as far as I know, Sheryl hasn’t yet been struck dead, but you hear the words of Sheryl’s best-seller in our Gospel text for this morning: “if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile” (Matthew 8:41).  Sandberg is the COO of Facebook and author of the book “Lean In.”  Her message is more specifically about women in the workforce and in society, but she’s tapped into something much larger, deeper, and more important than how to narrow the gender gap in Fortune 500 companies.

Part of what made her words so popular is that they don’t quite line up with the messages that we’re used to hearing from secular sources.  She challenges her readers that when doors start to close, you should stick your foot in them before they shut completely, when someone won’t answer you, knock harder instead of walking away.  Women throughout history have been known as the necks that move the heads of state; gaining ground through unofficial back channels–there are plenty of examples in the Old Testament alone.  To face problems head-on and refuse to back down is how Sheryl asserts women should tackle the last hurdles toward gender equality.  This is not the way that most women have been taught to respond to resistance; giving away a shirt is not the way most people have been taught to respond to someone who demands your coat.

Of course her audience is women in the workplace, and the dogged ambition that motivates the message might raise some concern, but I wonder why we don’t approach God’s message with the same ruthless determination.  Through Jesus, God teaches us a new kind of math in this Sermon on the Mount: meant to awake in the hearer the story of Moses and Mt. Sinai, Jesus gives a new summary of the law here in the fifth chapter of Matthew.  You hear again and again the refrain, “You have heard it said… but I say to you…”  Jesus is painting the picture of the Gospel as clearly as he can: when someone wrongs you, lean in.  When someone steals from you, lean in.  When all sorts of evil comes your way, batten down the hatches, turn your face toward the rain, and let it do its worst.

The strength to face these trials comes not from ourselves but from God, through the Holy Spirit.  It is only when we’re leaning on God that we can lean in to the kinds of lifestyle that Jesus is outlining for us in the Gospel lesson today, and that’s what the whole of Scripture is about.

In our Old Testament reading today (Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18), we hear about the ways that God set out for his people, the Hebrews, to behave.  They were to avoid corruption and deception, they were to be generous and fair to each other, to the less fortunate, and to the strangers in their midst.  At the end of each exhortation or law, there is a refrain, “I am the LORD.”  It refers back to the beginning of the passage, where God says to Moses, “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy” (Lev. 19:2).  It’s a sort of shorthand, you see–every line, every law that’s being laid out by Moses to the people on God’s behalf is about holiness.  It’s about living in a way that imitates God, that makes the world holy like God is holy.  That’s what being “sanctified” is–being made holy.

Even back in Leviticus, God knew that we humans weren’t quite capable of being holy on our own.  God says that his people will be holy because of his own holiness–the promise that God made back in Leviticus came true when Jesus arrived on the scene.  That’s part of the reason why Matthew’s gospel draws so many lines back and forth between the Old and New Testaments–he wants his readers to see clearly that God is fulfilling his centuries-old promises in the person of Jesus Christ.

So, how do we live these words that God has given us today?  How do we “lean in”?

The truth that we know deep down, that we see witnessed to in the pages of Scripture, and that we hear in our prayers every Sunday, is that we can’t “lean in” on our own.  We can’t make ourselves do any good thing apart from God’s power through the Holy Spirit.  We’re helpless to our selfishness, our desire to keep our coats, to do the bare minimum required, to ask for our possessions back as soon as we lend them out.

And so, we pray.  We use the words that God himself taught us through Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer, we use words that faithful people throughout time have used in our Book of Common Prayer, we use our own words, offering up our souls and bodies to be used by God.

What does God do?  He sent his son, our Lord Jesus Christ; we disciples take this gift into our own bodies in the Eucharist every time we gather here together.  He sent the Holy Spirit to transform us into holy people, to give us strength to lean in when we have got nothing left.  From the beginning of God’s relationship with people, he’s always told us that he is only as far away as we push him; he’s always standing just as close as we’ll let him, ready to give us the strength we need to face whatever evil may throw at us to try to destroy us.

“You have heard that it was said, `You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:43-45).  No matter how hard evil and violence push, God pushes back with peace and love.  Through his strength, which we gain in prayer and in our sacraments, we can push right back, too.

We have learned through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ that when death–the greatest evil–does its worst, God’s power is still stronger.  Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God; this is the truth upon which each of us may stand–and when we do, even the gates of hell cannot prevail against us (Matthew 16:16-18).

Amen.

you get what you need

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BE the thing you need.

a few weeks ago I read somewhere (on momastery.com, I thought, but now I can’t find it for the life of me) that when you find yourself desperate for X (companionship, love, acknowledgement, forgiveness, etc), you should turn around and offer that exact thing to someone else.  If you’re desperate for it, you might be lacking it in your own life, so why not turn around and help someone else not-lack?

When you feel lonely, find someone on the fringes and notice them–sit with her, buy her lunch.  When you are starved for affirmation, start looking around for people who could use a word of encouragement–smile at strangers on the street, help the person whose papers blew off his table.

It could be called “paying it forward,” or even “leaning in” (instead of letting the thing get you down, you give more out of your emptiness); ultimately, it’s taking the focus off of you and putting it on someone else–where our focus ought to be anyway.

Through giving out of our own emptiness, we often find that we get filled up ourselves (the math’s all screwy, I know, but that’s how God works–you know, feeding the 5000, the widow giving her two pennies, leaving the 99 sheep to find the 1).

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30

the liturgy of our lives

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“The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart–an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship.  The humans live in time, and experience reality successively.  To experience much of it, therefore, they must experience many different things; in other words, they must experience change.  And since they need change, the Enemy (being a hedonist at heart) has made change pleasurable to them, just as He has made eating pleasurable.  But since He does not wish them to make change, any more than eating, an end in itself, He has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence.  He has contrived to gratify both tastes together in the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm.  He gives them the seasons, each season different yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme.  He gives them in His Church a spiritual year; they change from a fast to a feast, but it is the same feast as before.”

–The Screwtape Letters

Here’s (above) how I ended up Episcopalian.  Just as our days have rhythm–wake up, eat, go to school or work, exercise, eat, socialize, sleep–and our weeks have rhythm, experiencing both new things and The Same Old Thing, so why not our worship, too?  Most every church has a liturgy, whether that’s what they call it or not.  Growing up, I went to a church where we’d gather on folding chairs every Sunday at 10am in an elementary school cafeteria.  We’d join in singing together to the words projected on a video screen (this was new technology–no overheads with copied transparencies for us!).  Afterward, we’d sit, and hear the three-point sermon our pastor had prepared.  We’d pray, and then we’d pack up the cafeteria.  This order of service is a liturgy–it’s what we did every Sunday.  In its basic form, it’s exactly what people who worship God have been doing for centuries–millenia, even–when they gather together to worship the Living God.

Near the end of college, I stumbled into a Roman Catholic Church.  It wasn’t totally foreign, I’d been to plenty of services growing up, but this time was different for another reason–there was something about the prayers we prayed together that made me realize that Christians had been praying that prayer to God for thousands of years.  Far from such a prayer seeming worn out or prosaic, somehow, its age gave it great power.

I wonder if some of its power is because it was The Same Old Thing.

Everybody goes to weddings; and everybody–especially lovers of The Princess Bride–knows the first words that are said, “Dearly Beloved…”–right?  When we hear those words, sometimes they sound worn out, but even when they do, we minds can’t help but jump to other times we’ve heard those same words–when Grandma and Grandpa renewed their vows, 50 years on; when you were a flower girl or ring bearer and noticed that you were at your first wedding; perhaps, when you yourself were married.

It’s almost as if all those different celebrations and different moments stacked up in time one on top of the other, so that in a way, all of them were happening again in your mind’s eye.  I think that’s a little bit of what Screwtape means when he says that humans experience reality successively–we think of those events as having happened on May 17, 1999 ,or April 20, 2004, or July 2, 2011–but in another way, a spiritual way, all those moments when those words align all happen at the same time.  It’s not just the family members at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s renewal of vows, it’s all the people who were there the first time round and all the people who were at their parents’ weddings when those same words were said.

I became part of the Anglican Communion because this messy, passionate group seeks to pray together, not only with each other, but with others around the world and throughout time–that all our prayers may, in a way, stack up on top of each other and allow us to see God more clearly by our communion.