Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil;

Years ago, and I can’t recall where I read or heard it, but years ago I was told that knowledge is what we learn and wisdom is what we do with what we learn.

Today I will need to remember that lesson.

Hesitant as I am to predict the future, I know what today will bring.

There will come a moment, just a few hours from now, when I will be about 220 yards from the green, right in the middle of the fairway. And my wise and understanding mind will study the situation and realize that I need to hit a 6 iron, a club that I do well with on a regular basis, and it will take the ball fairly straight and about 155-160 yards down the fairway, leaving my partner and me with a simple wedge shot to the green and a putt for par, or maybe even a birdie.

That is what my wise and understanding mind, based upon 40 years of playing golf poorly, will tell me that I should do. And even as that thought is registering, pleasing the logical, rational corners of my head, as well as pleasing my partner, my hand will be reaching to the golf bag to pull out my 3 wood, because I am sure that I can hit that shot.

Why do I do this?

Why do any of us do the things that betray our lack of wisdom?

We know what is right, we know what God expects from us, we know what we have promised at wedding and baptisms . . . and yet we convince ourselves that we can get away with doing exactly the opposite!

And it is, in part because we know we have gotten away with it in the past. I’ve hit that shot in the past and gotten away with it, I’ve ignored God in the past and gotten away with it.

No lightning bolts hit us when we cheat God out of our time, money and talent, so we think we are always going to be OK. It is the same as my delusions when I reach for my 3 wood! I know that I have in the past hit my 3 wood that distance and leaving just a short, tap-in putt for a birdie or even an eagle!

And so, at that moment this very afternoon, I will become the poster child for the difference between knowledge and wisdom, I will become the before side of the poster, with King Solomon representing the after.

Give your servant therefore an understanding mind

The story of the beginning of Solomon’s tenure as King is a story that we used during VBS this year and it has always been one of my favorites, for a number of reasons.

Here’s one: by the standards of the religion of the day, Solomon was worshiping in the wrong way, in the wrong place. Worship at Gibeon, one of the “high places” was considered to be a breaking of the covenant because it was associated with the local gods, the false gods that the Canaanite people worshiped before the Jews inhabited the land.

The purists said that true worship couldn’t happen at Gibeon.

But God was not bothered by such religious distinctions, not when there was a matter of faith to be dealt with. God was perfectly willing to meet Solomon in this pagan place and to make the same offer that is made to each of us, over and over: “ask what I should give you.”

In other words, God will meet us, wherever we are, when we turn to him in prayer, whether we are following the approved ways, in the approved places or not.

I recently wrote, for what will be the final issue of the Church Herald – a magazine that is dying, in part, because our denominational staff doesn’t want God to meet us in unapproved ways and places – I wrote that the biggest change in ministry in my lifetime has been the re-discovery of prayer as a significant part of individual lives.

And there is no doubt in my mind that we have gotten good at this prayer stuff, but I think that there are still times when we use prayer to test God.

In most of our prayers, we ask for things, we provide advice on how to run the universe but when we don’t get what we ask for or when God runs the universe differently than we think proper, we whine about the failure of prayer, the failure of God to listen to us.

But prayer isn’t a test of God, it is a test of us.

What do we ask for? That is a test of our souls, for whatever it is that we ask for it tells us much about ourselves and who we are. Solomon was already wise enough and honest enough to ask for what he knew he most needed, not health, not riches, not miracles, not fame, but he asked – humbly and vulnerably and wisely – for more wisdom.

Wisdom allows us to recognize the Good News of God’s presence with us, whether we think we are in the right place or not. And really, how can there be a wrong place? God is the creator of the universe, and your kitchen table, your desk at work, your seat in the back yard, the places you shop, the roads you drive, they are all a part of that universe, they are all places where God is willing to meet you.

And wisdom finds God’s gospel, God’s good news, in every experience of life.

Let me give you what our more conservative brothers and sisters might call a personal testimony: I am, generally speaking, by nature and by grace, a person of optimism and joy.

That isn’t because I have no pains or disappointments in my life, it isn’t because I haven’t cried my tears of sorrow, it certainly isn’t because I have had all of my dreams come true. I am a person of optimism and joy precisely because of those pains and sorrows and sadness and failures of my life, for it has been in those moments and experiences that God has fulfilled the great promise – not to keep me from all the dark valleys and floods and fires and hurtful moments of life – but to walk with me through those valleys and floods and fires and pains, to walk with me into better and more joyful moments.

We live, as Paul wrote to the Ephesians in our call to worship, we live in evil days. It was true then and it is true now and it will always be true in this world of ours.

People have always lived in evil days of one sort or another, the names and threats change, but sinful behavior will always breed evil action. However that doesn’t change the greater reality of God’s loving guidance and presence that only wisdom can discern. And that wisdom often only comes with time and experience and, above all, with faith.

In his younger days T. S. Eliott wrote of the world as a Waste Land and of its inhabitants as Hollow Men, or as Bruce Springteen put it, in his younger days: The highway's jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive Everybody's out on the run tonight but there's no place left to hide

But years pass and changes come and the Good News of wisdom is discovered and later in his life Eliott writes of the world as a garden to be explored in his masterpiece: Four Quartets. And Bruce sings:
I'm working on a dream Though sometimes it feels so far away
I'm working on a dream And how it will be mine someday

Their youthful knowledge of the pain of the world became their adult wisdom of its beauty.

This is Wisdom at work, it recognizes God’s presence and cherishes the sacred opportunities of each day.

And Wisdom pushes beneath the surface of words and events, it discovers deeper, sacred meanings.

As I read about those ancient Jews arguing over what Jesus said about providing his body for their nourishment – as if he were inviting them to become cannibals – is like listening to the news media today when they seize upon every word that politicians and public figures speak – on all sides – and hold them to an unholy literal meaning of their words.

The Gospel, the Good News of Wisdom comes to us only when we listen for more than just sound bites, the Good News of Wisdom comes to us when we sit and talk with each other and with God about the events and activities of our lives, and we push below the surface of simple answers and mere knowledge, the Good News of Wisdom smiles at the things of beauty around us, the Good News of Wisdom remembers the promises we have made at baptisms, at weddings, when we joined the Church, the sacred promises that define the parameters of our lives.

The Good News of Wisdom forms us as the body of Christ in this time and place.

Again in that letter to the Ephesians that was adapted for the call to worship, Paul writes Be filled with God’s Holy Spirit as you sing among yourselves and in your heart, giving thanks always to God.

And the phrase “in your heart” is both plural and singular, that is to say the “your” includes all of the people of God in Ephesus – and in Clover Hill – while the word “heart” is singular, pointing toward the one heart that we share as the single body of Christ, and when we are singing together, serving together, beating together as that one heart, giving thanks to God, Wisdom is the gift that we are given.

It is the wisdom of the Good News, it is the wisdom of Bob Marley:
One love, one heart, Let's get together and feel all right

Wisdom of the heart, it is what Solomon asked for, it is what we need and it is exactly what God will provide to whomever seeks it, wherever they may be.

Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil;

Clover Hill Reformed Church 1834-2009 A 175 Day Scriptural Companion Dear Friends, As we progress through our Anniversary Year, I invite you to join together in a shared reading of scripture. I have selected 175 passages, from Genesis through Revelation, that have had special meaning in our Congregational life. Go Here