You know that I'm a hip guy. I'm always on top of the latest trends. I know that 8-track players are no longer cool. I stopped saying "Gag with me a spoon" several months ago. And just this week I learned about voice-activated T-shirts, which light up when you talk to them. I also know what YOLO means.
YOLO is a trendy acronym that is showing up on T-shirts and on Twitter accounts and it stands for "You Only Live Once." It usually appears when someone is texting you or tweeting about their latest poor decision or, more likely, a hypothetical poor decision. So you might see a report that has "Filling my mouth with whipped cream and running down the street saying, 'I have rabies.' #YOLO." It's silly stuff, although if some of the things that get reported actually are happening I'm thinking YOLO ought to stand for "Youth Overlooking Lasting Outcomes."
But it's not just youth. We older folks talk about our "bucket list" of things we want to do before we die, some of which involves a certain amount of irresponsibility. And major ad campaigns encourage us to forget the consequences of our actions - just do it. Pepsi's slogan of the moment is "Live for Now." I saw an ad this week, I think it was for doughnuts, that said, "Indulge Now!" I had never been commanded to eat doughnuts before so that was a strange moment. Maybe I'm overthinking this trend but do you see a pattern here? We are living in a YOLO world and I'm wondering what it all means. And what does it mean to be a Christian in a YOLO world? Do we really believe that You Only Live Once?
Walter Brueggemann, an Old Testament scholar, has a new book out called Remember You are Dust and in it he talks about the culture clash that we are involved in. It's not just a clash, he says, it's a crisis, and it's not the fault of liberals or conservatives, the 1960s or Wall Street. What's happened is that we are now experiencing the fruit of 400 years of living in the modern world. For about 400 years we have had a world developing that has relied on human reason as it's principle guide to knowledge. Why do I trace that back 400 years, because that's when Rene Descartes, a French soldier, was sitting in a hut by a fire and started to doubt. He said to himself, "What if I can't trust anything around me to tell me who I am and what the world is like? What if this is all a dream? What is reliable? What can I build a foundation on?" People before Descartes might have said that God was that foundation, and Descartes believed in God, but he wanted something else to build on and the most trustworthy thing he could find for that was reason. Do you remember what he said? "I think, therefore I am."
So for 400 years thinkers, Christian and otherwise, have been building a world based on the best that human knowledge can achieve. And we have achieved a lot. We've got medicines that have cured diseases that plagued humanity for centuries. We can navigate the oceans and fly in the air. We've put human beings on the moon and a golf cart on Mars that's appropriately named Curiosity because we are a curious race. I don't think many of us would give up the benefits of the modern world. The quality of human life is immeasurably better because of it. And yet, Walter Brueggemann says, we are facing a crisis.
"For many people," he says, "the deep threat and pain of this crisis is the awareness that their children can no longer relate to the great claims of faith, not because they are rebellious, but because they do not care, or caring, cannot understand or see the point. They no longer know where responsible social passion comes from, why caring is important, or how the disciplines of faith matter, or why. There is, between parents and children, a common yearning...[that] arises not because anyone is 'bad,' but because an alien perception of reality makes engagement with the tradition of 'fear of Yahweh' unconvincing and without credibility."*What Brueggemann is saying there with that phrase 'fear of Yahweh' is that the whole biblical worldview and the whole biblical understanding of wisdom is at risk because the 'fear of Yahweh,' the 'fear of the Lord' is receding into the background in the modern world. And the Bible tells us, in places like Proverbs 9:10 is that the "fear of the Lord is beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight." Is it human reason that gives us wisdom? Or is it the 'fear of the Lord'?
Now let's don't beat the modern world over the head with a stick. That's the temptation, right? To say that is a godless, heedless world that has forgotten its roots and if it would just turn back to God it would find itself. Well, perhaps. And yes, the world often lives as if it is godless and heedless. But I don't believe that people want to live that way. I believe people yearn for something more. They yearn for something to live for. They yearn for something to die for.
A little over a week ago I had the opportunity to have a lunch with some of the staff and the superintendent of Northampton County Schools. I listened as they talked about the testing numbers that were needed to declare our schools successful or even adequate. "We need a 70 and we've got a 69." It was only when they started to talk about the children that I realized what I needed to hear, what we all long to hear - that success is not measured in test scores. It's measured in human lives. And I believe that our children, our parents, our teachers, even our administrators, are yearning for a mission that they can give their whole lives to. We want to believe...we have to believe that we are meant for something more and our schools will not be transformed until we do believe that something radically important is going on there.
So when we talk about 'putting the fear of God' back into folks, I don't think it's as simple as browbeating people back into submission. The fear of God is not like the fear of some great and terrible thing where we all get in line because if we don't, well, look out! The fear of the Lord is not a trembling fear, it is as Bruggemann says, "to take God with utmost seriousness as the premise and perspective from which life is to be lived."** To take God with utmost seriousness. That is a countercultural act.
Which brings me to Solomon and the text we read for today. When we think of wisdom we almost always end up talking about Solomon, because Solomon asks for wisdom.
The Bible seems to look at Solomon with a certain amount of ambivalence. On the one hand Solomon is revered as being at the highpoint of Israel's history as a nation. Solomon picked up where his father David left off and built Jerusalem into one of the finest capital cities in the world. Solomon imported cedars from Lebanon to furnish the new Temple he built for Yahweh, the God of Israel. Solomon began many building projects, enlarged the army and even began a navy for Israel. People came from far and wide to admire the wonders of King Solomon. He developed a reputation for wisdom and later generations would attribute the books of Proverbs and Song of Songs to him.
That’s not all there is to the story of Solomon, though. He is also remembered as the end of the glorious united kingdom of Israel. The riches and wealth and honor he attained were short-lived and the kingdom divided after his death thanks to the heavy taxes and forced labor he imposed to build up Jerusalem.
He also seems to have had some issues with women. Solomon was said to have 700 wives and 300 concubines. That by itself would have been problem enough - imagine being beholden to 1000 relationships! But the real problem was that each of these wives brought with them their own cultures and their own religions, since many of them were not Israelite. Each time a marriage with a foreign woman took place, the custom was to build a shrine in Jerusalem to her nation's god. So Solomon bore the blame for bringing in all of these idols and foreign gods.
When we get to verse 3 of chapter 3 in 1 Kings we're told that Solomon was a great king who loved Yahweh, the God of Israel, and who followed in the footsteps of David, his father, EXCEPT...and this is a pretty big except...except that he had a habit of offering sacrifices and incense on the high places - and not just in Jerusalem where all worship was supposed to take place.
In fact, Solomon is out making a sacrifice at one of these high places when God finds him in a dream. God appears to Solomon in a dream and doesn't chastise him for being in this strange place, God merely says, "What can I give you, Solomon?" This is a great dream, huh?
Many of us would be ticking off the new boat, the vacation home in Maui, the extreme makeover, the chance to have dinner with St. Augustine. (Hey, you have your dreams and I have mine.) But Solomon is very wise in his response, which makes us wonder if he really needed to be given the gift God gives him. Solomon remembers God's relationship with his father, David and then says, "You know, God, I'm really like a small child when I think about the shoes I'm trying to fill. I've got all these people to take care of and they look to me for justice. I'm going to need help, God."
God says to Solomon in this dream, "You didn't seek long life for yourself, you didn't seek riches for yourself, and you didn't ask for the life of your enemies. Instead, you asked for wisdom, and because of this I will also give you what you didn’t ask for – riches and honor and long life.”
Then Solomon wakes up and realizes that it’s all been a dream. Solomon is not a model citizen – just as all of Israel’s kings were flawed and broken people. But he did have this insight that the world and our responsibilities in it are far more complex than we can handle relying just on our own abilities. We need humility. We need a heart that's open to God. We need wisdom.
Where we will find wisdom in this world? We have become the masters of knowledge. Our technologies for sharing information are the best that human history has ever produced. But we have not become wise. What we long for is something that can't be zipped along in a tweet or an e-mail. We long for something that will speak to our souls and we wonder if there is anything that can give it to us.
I can't use reason to give you an answer here. There is no piece of information I can share with you in this sermon that will meet that longing. There is nothing new under the sun that's going to speak to that place in your soul that wants to hear a new word. What I can give you is not knowledge but bread. Because God's wisdom comes to us through the living bread which is Jesus. And you attain this wisdom, not in an instant, but in a continual process of coming back to the living Word, coming back to the bread of life, coming back to Jesus over and over again until your famished soul begins to feel alive once more. Wisdom happens one prayer at a time, one meditation at a time, one meal at a time.
Hans Urs Von Balthasar, who has one of the greatest names for a theologian I can imagine, says:
"We think that God's word has been heard on earth for so long that by now it is almost used up, that it is about time for some new word, as if we had the right to demand one. We fail to see that is is we ourselves who are used up and alienated, whereas the word resounds with the same vitality and freshness as ever; it is just as near to us as it always was. 'The word is near to you, on your lips and in your heart' (Rom. 10:8)."***It is just as near to you as it always was. Despite the fact that we talk about being born again, I think it is true that you only truly live once. It is a deep, bone-deep kind of living that doesn't give itself over to the superficial comforts of the passing world. The world doesn't remember where it has come from and it doesn't know where it is going. It has become disconnected from the promises of God and the story of Christ. It does not know that it is being longed for by God and therefore redeemed by God's love. Imagine that. God is longing for you. Thanks be to God.
*Walter Brueggemann, Remember That You are Dust [Cascade: Eugene, OR, 2012], pp. 22-23.
**ibid., pp. 13-14.
***Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer [Ignatius Press: San Francisco, 1986], p. 16
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