The Gentle Whisper

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
June 24, 2007

The Gentle Whisper
1 Kings 19:1-13
Luke 8:26-39

Have you ever try to imagine what a person
you were reading about in the Bible might have looked like?
Scholars debate over how we think Jesus might have looked.
We typically picture him with fair skin, light hair;
it isn’t uncommon for him to have radiant blue eyes
in Sunday school books and pictures.
We picture Jesus as a product of our own culture,
forgetting that Jesus was born in the Middle East
and in that part of the world,
a man was not likely to have the features
that European artists gave him in paintings 500 years ago,
features that we have copied over the centuries.

Let’s think about Elijah for a moment.
How do we think he might have looked
as he served the Lord
more than 800 years before the birth of Christ?
I picture him as shorter than other men,
about 5’6’,
but rock solid;
salt and pepper hair, probably more salt than pepper
given his age and the stress of his vocation,
thinning on top, giving him an aura of wisdom.
His skin burnt by the sun,
dry, even leathery from the wind.
I imagine his eyes as dark,
with a piercing fierceness to them,
their look like lasers --
intense, as though his very gaze
might burn right through you.

When we last read about Elijah on Confirmation Sunday
he had challenged the prophets of Baal, the pagan god.
He had taken them all on, all 450 of them
as he challenged the people of Israel to make a choice:
“If you’re going to follow God, then follow him;
if you’re going to follow Baal, then follow him,
but stop limping along, waffling,
bouncing back and forth.”

He humiliated the prophets of Baal, of course,
and then subsequently killed them.
In the process he made an enemy of the wife of the King,
Jezebel, a woman who was Phoenician by birth,
a woman who didn’t limp along or waffle,
but followed Baal and the pagan god Asherah
just as Elijah said she should:
with energy and conviction.

She was incensed that Elijah had made
a fool of her god and her god’s priests.
so she sought to avenge herself by having Elijah killed.
As the Queen she had the power
to make it happen,
and Elijah knew it.
So he ran away, ran away into the wilderness
south into the arid, remote country of Beer-Sheba.
to a place where no one could find him.

And when he found himself alone,
he sat down under a broom tree,
a tree that was really more of a shrub than a tree,
sat down under it and said to God,
“That’s it. I’ve had it. You called me to serve you,
and I did, and look at what’s happened:
I am threatened with death by the Queen herself.
No has one listened to me,
the louder I talked, the more intensely I spoke,
the more they laughed, the more they ignored me.
I am done.
The Queen wants me dead.
So Lord, take my life here and now.
I am worn out and burned out,
and I want out.”

God listened and God heard.
And then, as God always does, God answered.
But as God often does with our prayers,
God did not answer Elijah the way Elijah
wanted him to.
God didn’t take his life.
It was not yet time for the chariot and the whirlwind.
God still had work for Elijah to do.

But God saw that his prophet was exhausted, spent,
deflated, dispirited.
God saw that his prophet needed to be fed,
fed physically and spiritually.
And so God fed his prophet,
and then gave him a respite.
God sent Elijah further south,
into the Sinai desert to Mount Horeb,
the mountain we also know as Mount Sinai,
sent him there where he would be safe,
sent him there for renewal and refreshment.

But then God called Elijah back to work.
And that’s where we usually pick up the story,
where we usually have our focus,
because that’s where we find that verse
that we have come to know as the
“still small voice” verse.
God did not speak to Elijah in the wind,
nor did God speak to Elijah in the earthquake,
nor did God speak to Elijah in the fire,
but in the “sound of sheer silence”,
or, in a more literal translation,
in a “gentle whisper”.

That’s how God called his prophet back to work
after his Sabbath, after his respite:
not with a howling gale or thunder and lightning,
as we often think the God of the Old Testament
spoke to his children.
No, God spoke to Elijah in a gentle whisper.

Did you hear our Call to Worship that Donna led us through?
It was from Psalm 29,
The Psalmist said that God’s voice
was in the thunder, the lightning,
the wind and the rain.
And it often is.
But more often than not God calls to us
in a gentle whisper,
a voice that we need to strain to hear,
a voice that we risk not hearing
if we aren’t paying attention.

We all risk getting burned out working for God
just like Elijah did,
even if we don’t have a Queen who’s after our head.
Serving the Lord can often be wonderfully fulfilling,
enriching, and rewarding;
but it can also be thankless and frustrating,
exhausting, and even at times frightening and dangerous.
Serving the Lord can be hard, frustrating, exhausting work
out in the world all around us,
and it can be hard, frustrating and exhausting
even in the setting of the church,
where we’d like to think that we always get along.

We make things worse for ourselves when we don’t listen,
when we stop listening for God’s gentle whisper
that comes to us through one another.
God speaks to us in a thousand different ways,
in a thousand different voices,
and we risk missing God’s voice if we aren’t listening.

The reality is, however, that we humans are poor listeners,
Here we are, with two ears and only one mouth,
yet we put far more energy and effort into talking
than we do into listening.
Every one of us.
It isn’t a new problem.
There is a wonderful story told of how Franklin Roosevelt,
when he was president,
loved to see whether anyone was listening to him
by introducing himself by saying,
“How do you do? I’ve just murdered my grandmother.”
Rarely did anyone respond with anything more than,
“And it’s a pleasure to meet you too Mr. President.”

The man healed by Jesus in our gospel lesson
was a poor listener.
Jesus told him very simply and directly,
“declare how much God has done for you.”
What did he do?
he went around telling everyone
how much Jesus had done for him.
Jesus wanted the man to give glory to God,
but the man didn’t listen.

Listening is hard work.
It requires attention.
It requires an open mind, as well as open ears.
Deborah Tannen, a linguistics expert at Georgetown
has written a number of books and articles
on how we communicate,
and especially the different ways in which men and
women communicate.

Two of her earliest and best works have titles
that illuminate the problem:
One book was entitled, “That’s Not What I said”,
and another, “You Don’t Understand”.
How many times have you tried to express yourself,
in any setting, but especially in a church,
and after hearing a person’s reaction,
thought to yourself, “that’s not what I said!
You don’t understand!”?

We have to listen,
listen carefully, listen to one another,
precisely because the voice we are listening to
may well be God’s voice speaking to us.
When you stop listening to another person,
when you dismiss what he or she has to say
when you think you know better,
you may well be dismissing God’s voice,
God’s will,
God’s way.
If we think that God is speaking to us
only through the voice of someone we like,
someone whose opinion matches our own,
someone who we know will agree with us,
we risk nothing less than faithlessness.
That’s the hard truth,
the hard reality.

Yesterday our Session began a conversation about the future,
We looked back on where we have come over the past 10 years,
the things we have accomplished under the Vision 2010 plan
and what projects that were part of the plan
have not been done.

We know we have new priorities,
different from what was talked about
and prayed about 10 years ago.
We talked about needing a full time staff person,
probably an Associate Pastor,
who has among his or her responsibilities our Youth.
We know this is important because we have been listening,
listening to parents and young people alike
who want some stability in the program.

No decisions were made.
Yesterday was only the beginning of our conversation,
but what made yesterday very successful from my perspective,
was the fact that we listened carefully to one another.
We didn’t always agree, but we all listened.
Listened and understood that God’s gentle whisper was
in that room, and that we needed to listen for it.

In the weeks and months ahead
we will continue to talk:
talk about priorities, needs,
hopes, wishes.
Everyone will be involved in the conversations.
Everyone will have things to say, ideas to share,
but more important,
every one of us will have things to listen to
for it won’t be me, or the Session,
who will tell us what path to take;
It will be God.

“Be still and know that I am”:
That’s what God says to us through the Psalmist.
Be still.
Listen.
For God speaks to us in the wind and the rain
but God also speaks to us through the still small voice,
the sound of sheer silence.
the gentle whisper.
Are you listening?
AMEN

Action! Adventure! Excitement!

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
June 17, 2007

Action! Adventure! Excitement!
Luke 4:16-30
1 Peter 4:1-11

They have been slipping away,
slowly, but surely, one by one,
and the numbers continue to slide:
50, 47, 45, 43:
The percentage of members in the Presbyterian Church
who are men.
Three years ago the magazine Presbyterians Today reported
that on a typical Sunday,
of adult worshipers, 39% were men,
compared to 61% who were female.
(Presbyterians Today, November 2004)

Books, programs, and special ministries
have flooded the marketplace
with advice on how to get men back in the church.
Don’t call it a church: call it “Jesus’ Place”;
Find things that provide action, adventure and excitement,
the things men like;
Launch a ministry on motorcycles;
have services that are amped up, muscled up, pumped up,
all to give men faith with the gleam of a ‘57 Chevy,
the effervescence of a cold-one on a hot summer’s day,
faith that is dialed-up, strobe-lit, technological,
faith that has the power of a Cummins Diesel,
in a Peterbilt rig.

Don’t use words like “nice”, “kind”, “good”;
Don’t encourage men to “bond”;
Don’t ask them to “share” or hug.
And for gosh sakes don’t ever tell men
that they need to be more “nurturing”!

Ten years ago, the big movement was Promise Keepers.
Stadiums filled with men who were told
it was time for them to take back the reins,
to be in charge,
to be a man’s man.
Promise Keepers is still around,
but it has lost much of its horsepower to other movements,
many of which have the subtlety
of a Harley with the aftermarket muffler conversion,
you know the one, the illegal one
that lets people know three counties
away that you are an Easy Rider.

I am not surprised that men’s participation in church is sliding.
We often send out a confusing message for men,
a mixed message.
The Bible gives conflicting messages;
our society gives conflicting messages.

Twenty-five years ago a popular book told us,
“real men don’t each quiche”.
Real men eat steak and potatoes,
pizza and wings,
burgers and fries.
Of course the chapter that wasn’t included in the book
was entitled
“real men die of arteriosclerosis at age 60”.

Tim Allen’s character on the television show “Home Improvement”
wrestled with what it means to be a man.
He always thought the answer to any and every problem
was “more power”.
Problem at work, problem at home,
problem in the world at large
and there was always a
Binford model 6100 power tool to fix it.

Ten years ago, there was a popular show on Broadway
that had the same premise called,
“Defending the Caveman”.
The one-man show reveled in the man who
could rarely see beyond the end of
his Craftsman socket wrench.

Everyone knows: that real men don’t give up the remote,
never ask directions,
and keep the Lava soap company in business.
Or at least that’s what our society seems to teach us.

What does Jesus teach us about being a man?
We’ve got some confusion there, too:
What is the image that typically comes to mind
when we think of Jesus?
“Gentle Jesus, meek and mild”,
as the old Charles Wesley hymn goes;
Jesus who is kind, caring, sensitive and nurturing.
It’s hard to imagine Jesus under the hood of a ’65 Mustang,
tweaking a Holley four-barrel carburetor.

If that’s how we think of Jesus, we’d be right,
but we’d be only half right.
The picture of Jesus as gentle, mild,
sensitive, and caring is accurate,
but it is incomplete.
Read through the Bible carefully
and you will find a more complete picture of Jesus:
Jesus who is both gentle, and yet at the same time,
“sun tanned, bronzed, fearless”.
(Peter Marshall: Gallery Christians)

In our gospel lesson, we most definitely do not see a Jesus
who is gentle, meek or mild.
He comes across as rather rude to the people in his own town.
Did you hear him as he spoke to the people
gathered there in the synagogue
after he read from the book of Isaiah?
“No prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.”
He had written off the people.
The people were so offended,
so angry that they tried to push him over a cliff.

How did he react? What did he do?
He walked through the crowd,
parting them as seamlessly and as completely
as Moses parted the Red Sea.
Right there we see Jesus as a man, fully and completely.
Fearless, strong, powerful,
as he walked through the howling mob,
the mob that was filled with rage;
yet he was also loving, forgiving, even gentle.
He didn’t lash out,
not even so much as an angry word,
he just moved silently through the crowd,
displaying a powerful fearlessness.
In that lesson, Jesus shows us that we men can be
strong, yet gentle,
powerful, yet forgiving,
bold, yet loving.

What about the disciples?
Were they real men?
Think about where Jesus called them from:
was it from the genteel world of the cloisters
where faith was more talked about than lived?
No, he called men from everyday vocations and backgrounds.

Matthew was a tax collector:
that meant he was corrupt.
Today Jesus would find him loan-sharking
in a gritty urban neighborhood.
Four of the disciples were fishermen.
Do you watch the Discovery Channel?
Then you know what one of the world’s
most dangerous professions is: fishing!
Now the four were not crab fishermen in the icy waters
of the Bering Sea, but still they went out each morning
in the winds and the waves of the Sea of Galilee,
a sea that could turn violent in a moment.
They worked under the blistering sun,
arms, shoulders and backs
straining at the nets and oars,
never, even for a moment, able to get that
fishy smell off their skin, or out of their nostrils.

And yet, did you hear Peter’s words to us?
Big, powerful, profane Peter tells us
it’s time to move past the way we once lived;
time to grow up, time to grow smart,
time to knock off
the drunkenness,
the lecherous leering,
the carousing.
Time instead to turn our focus on the things above.

He’s not telling his listeners to stop enjoying life;
he’s just telling them and us,
it’s time to move to a new level of living;
for men, it’s time to leave the “frat boy” life behind,
to move beyond being a caveman.
“Don’t be conformed [any longer],” he wrote,
“ to the desires you formerly had in ignorance”
(1 Peter 1:14)
Grow up; Grow mature in life
so that you can grow mature in faith.
Grow mature in faith by growing in Christ.

I think what every man needs is what I have in my office:
Very few folks notice it on the shelf;
they usually go for the “Wash Away Your Sins” soap.
But it stands there, silently, a reminder, teaching me:
It is my Jesus: Action Figure.
Not Jesus: superhero,
but Jesus: Action Figure.

Jesus was, after all, a man of action, wasn’t he?
Read through the gospels: he was always on the go,
always on the move,
teaching, healing, praying.
He was always with people, sharing a meal,
listening, laughing, comforting.
He most definitely made time each day for prayer,
quiet time, time for God.
But most of the time he was out,
“striding the dusty roads of Palestine”.
(Peter Marshall)
His disciples, as strong as they were,
struggled constantly to keep up with him.

This man of action calls us to a life of action,
a life of adventure, a life, yes, even of excitement.
Following Christ is not a road to a life of ease and comfort,
not a ride in an air-conditioned luxury SUV on a smooth highway,
Following Jesus is more like an off-road adventure.

Christ calls us,
and he challenges us:
Do you have what it takes
to give up your 16-ounce steak sizzling on the grill
to feed 10 starving children?
Do you have what it takes to work for peace,
when others call you to march to war?
Do you have what it takes to hold a hand,
or offer a hug to an elderly man, a sick man, a lonely man?
Do you have what it takes to put a muffler on your Harley,
and care for God’s creation?
Do you have what it takes not to let society
define what it means to be a man?
Do you have the courage, the strength,
the faith to be yourself,
the man God created you to be?
The person God created you to be?

Do you have the courage, the strength
and the faith to be more Christ-like:
to be strong at times,
but at other times to be gentle,
to be caring, to be kind,
and yes, to be nurturing.

I don’t think Jesus would have much interest
in how much horsepower is under the hood of your car.
I think he’s more interested in how much
horsepower your faith has,
and what you are going to do with it -
to increase it, tune it,
as you put it to work in his name.

Peter, big, strapping Peter,
Peter the temperamental, profane, fisherman
teaches us that Jesus calls us to a higher standard,
calls us to leave the old ways to the past,
because we’ve been called to a new life in Christ
a better way, a more mature way.

Peter urges us all, men and women:
“Prepare your minds for action”,
(1 Peter 1:13)
for we have each been called to a life of action.
Not to lives as action figures:
That’s the trap we fall into;
It is much easier to be an action figure,
to take on poses of Christian goodness and righteousness
as we glide along from Sunday to Sunday.

It is much harder to be men and women of action.
But that is what our Lord calls us to:
An adventure as we follow our Lord,
“walking by faith, and not by sight”
becoming more Christ-like with every step,
and realizing as we mature in faith
that the road we are on
truly is the road,
the only road,
to “more power”.
AMEN

Acrophobic Nabalism

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
June 10, 2007

Acrophobic Nabalism
Psalm 12
Mark 4:21-25

Are you ready?
Pencils sharpened, minds alert?
You didn’t think we were going to wrap up
our Sunday School year without a test, did you?
Okay, here we go:
You remember King David, the great King of Israel,
the King of Judah,
the one who united the Northern and Southern Kingdoms.
David ruled some 3,000 years ago,
and as was common back then, he had more than one wife.
In fact, he had four by my count.
The one you may remember was Bathsheba,
the one who was the mother of Solomon,
who became King on David’s death.

But do you remember that Bathsheba was not David’s first wife?
In fact, she was his fourth wife.
His first wife was Michal,
the daughter of King Saul,
David’s predecessor.

Now: here’s the question, and it’s a tough one.
Who was David’s second wife?
If you remembered the name Abigail
you’d be right!

She was a widow when David married her.
She had been married to a wealthy man,
and they lived in Judah, near Hebron,
where they owned thousands of sheep and goats:
in fact, more than three thousand sheep and
more than a thousand goats.

He was a vain, selfish, and greedy man,
a man who was interested only in his wealth, his possessions --
the things of this world.
Having money has never, of course,
been a guarantee a long life,
and he died suddenly, leaving Abigail a widow.
She then became David’s second wife.
You will find her story in the first book of Samuel
in chapter 25.
Abigail proved to be a woman filled with wisdom,
wisdom just as we talked about last Sunday.
Her first husband, though, the one who died,
for all his money, and all his success,
didn’t seem to have an ounce of wisdom.

You may recall that Hebrew names often meant something:
the word reflected a characteristic of the person.
The name Jesus, for example, came from a Hebrew word
that means “he saves.”
Abigail’s first husband’s name fit him perfectly.
His name was Nabal,
which in Hebrew meant “foolish one”.

Now Nabal was clearly a smart man,
shrewd and skilled at business,
He probably worked very hard to built up his herds
and take care of them.
Were he alive today,
he would probably have been a successful entrepreneur,
with a thriving business.
He and Abigail would have lived in an
8,000 square foot house
on five acres of land,
a house with a pool and a tennis court,
and a media room.
Expensive cars would have filled their driveway,
and their closets would have been filled with
designer clothing and accessories.
Nabal would have been the envy of his neighbors and friends
for his wealth, his possessions, and his success.

For all his material success, though,
Nabal was still a foolish man;
foolish because his focus was on all the wrong things.
His focus was on money, wealth, accumulation,
the trappings of what he thought made for a successful life.
His eyes, his heart, his mind
were focused downward,
on the things of this world,
rather than upward on the things of God’s world.

Had Nabal lived a thousand years later,
he probably would have paid no attention
to an itinerant preacher from Galilee who said,
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth,
where moth and rust consume
and where thieves break in and steal;
but store up for yourselves
treasures in heaven...” (Matthew 7:19)

Nabal had a bad case of “nabalism”.
Now that’s a word you won’t find in any dictionary,
because I made it up.
I made it up to describe the type of thinking that affected Nabal
and affects us still today:
the chase for things, for money,
for comfort,
for possessions, prestige.
We see the signs of nabalism all around us:
the endless desire for bigger cars,
bigger houses,
the latest electronics,
things we buy because we believe they are “must haves”,
and that not to have them would leave us
feeling somehow deprived.

Now there is nothing wrong with having ambition,
and using the gifts God has given us
as business people, engineers, teachers,
homemakers, medical professionals.
I did not turn away from the business world
when I went to Seminary.
I take pride in my business career,
pride in the job I had with the Economist,
pride in my association with the Wharton School
where I earned my business degree.

But the question that God asks us,
the question that Jesus puts before us is,
“where is your focus?”
Is it on the things of God
or the things of this world?
Are you eyes focused upward or down?
Is your mind focused upward or down?
Is your heart focused upward or down?

It is so easy in our consumer society to have our focus
downward, on the things of this earth.
We may turn our focus upward from time to time,
on Sundays, and other occasions,
but then its right back to the routine.
And yes: we in the clergy are just as susceptible
to the Monday morning slide as everyone else.

It is a struggle we have had throughout human history.
The great preacher Peter Marshall wrote rather acidly
more than sixty years ago:
“It is difficult for us to transfer our affections,
for we have fallen in love with toyland
and our playthings have become so dear.”
Marshall, who preached from the pulpit of the
New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in downtown Washington,
reminds us that the purpose of life is not to make money,
not to pile up a healthy bank account,
not to live in comfort and security,
as hard as we try to achieve those goals.

The purpose of life is to live as faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.
The purpose of life is to live as children of God.
The purpose of life is to worship and praise God,
to serve God,
to serve as we have been served.

Are you ready for another question?
What does the first statement of the Larger Catechism
of the Westminster Confession of Faith teach us?
The Westminster Confession of Faith
is one of our core Confessional Statements.
You will find it in our Book of Confessions,
which is part of the Constitution of our Church,
the Presbyterian Church (USA).
The very first statement goes right to the point in asking,
“What is the chief and highest end of man [and woman]?”
and answering, “To glorify God and fully enjoy him forever.”
(Book of Confessions, 7.111)

That bumper sticker that says,
“the one who dies with the most toys wins”,
could not be more wrong.

We are called to recognize that we are lights
filled with the illuminating power of love given us by God
through Jesus Christ,
and connected to God’s
unwavering energy by the Holy Spirit.
We are called to shine brightly
by serving God as we follow Jesus Christ.
called to shine brightly
with our hearts, eyes, and minds,
focused on God
at all times, in all places,
here on Sunday of course,
but also in our vocations as well.

When Paul wrote to the new followers of Christ at Colossae,
he urged them to set their minds on things above,
(Colossians 3:1ff)
He told the Colossians to “put to death”
thoughts and desires that were earthly.
We tend to read that as Paul telling us
to put to death “earthy” things: things
we know we shouldn’t be thinking about.
But Paul is much more expansive than that;
his term is earthly: all those things
that don’t point to heaven.

We are called to do the same thing,
you and I:
“to seek the things that are above.”

We seem hesitant, afraid to do that:
to turn our eyes upward,
our minds upward,
our hearts upward,
for more than a brief period here and there,
as though if we did so for more than a few minutes
we'd lose the focus we need to stay competitive,
to get that next promotion,
win the next game,
or even simply to stay up with the Jones’s.

it is as though we suffer from spiritual acrophobia,
a fear of higher things,
a fear of higher callings.
It is our nabalism that causes our focus to be so fixed
on the things of this world;
it’s no wonder we find ourselves disoriented and confused
even dizzy at times, if we stay
focused too long and too intently
on heavenly things.

One summer when I was in college
I worked a construction job as an electrician’s helper.
One day I had to climb a very high ladder
to get to where I was supposed to fix something.
The electrician I was working with kept telling me,
“Don’t look down,
keep looking up and you’ll be just fine.”
And he was right.
That is good advice for when you are off the ladder,
as well as on.

If we keep looking up,
we will have our eyes, our minds,
our hearts focused on Christ,
and with our focus there,
we will never suffer from spiritual acrophobia.
If our eyes, our minds, our hearts are in the wrong place,
if they are cast down on the things of this world
then we will go down the wrong path,
the path of foolishness, of nabalism.

We are lights, with much expected of us.
Much expected of us as individuals and as a community of faith.
In a world with a growing number of people
who are living in poverty,
where the gap between the wealthy and the poor grows,
where children dying of hunger exist alongside
an epidemic of childhood obesity,
where children die in parts of the world
from diseases that we here in this country
don’t even think about any more,
the need for us to shine couldn’t be more acute.

According to the United Nations Childrens Fund website,
ten million children under the age of five
will die over the next year
from hunger, illness and disease that we can readily prevent.
Ten mllion children under the age of five.
That means 20,000 will die tomorrow,
from hunger, pneumonia, measles, diarrhea…
One hundred in the time it takes any of us
to go through the drive-thru at McDonalds.
What will you do tomorrow to save one life, just one life?
And then what will you do on Tuesday?
And then again on Wednesday?

Did you hear the lament of the Psalmist:
“the poor are despoiled, and
the needy groan”? (Psalm 12:5)
That’s the lament of one who sees
acrophobic nabalism all around him.

The world is groaning, calling us,
calling us to be the lights God wants us to be,
Christ teaches us be,
the Spirit energizes us to be.
“Let anyone with ears to hear listen.”
AMEN

The Voice in the Wind

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
June 3, 2007

The Voice in the Wind
Proverbs 8:1-4
1 Corinthians 2:6-16

The time in which Jesus walked this earth
was a fascinating era in human history.
The confluence of Greek and Roman cultures
brought the best of the two most advanced civilizations
to the nation of Judea, the crossroads of the world.

The Romans paved dirt roads with brick and stone;
they brought water into cities through pipes and aqueducts;
they knew the importance of sanitation:
removing waste and trash
to dumpsites outside of town.
The Greeks brought their educational system,
in which learning was rigorous and disciplined.
They brought advancements in science, medicine,
mathematics and philosophy.
The centuries that immediately preceded and followed
the time in which Jesus walked this earth
were filled with enormous progress in virtually all parts of life.

It was a time not all that different from our own.
Think of the progress we have witnessed over the past century:
Automobiles, airplanes, telephones, television,
electricity, space travel,
Computers that pack more and more power
into smaller and smaller boxes.

We add constantly to our knowledge base:
physics, math, biology, medicine,
psychology, history, anthropology…
But even as we learn new information,
gather more facts,
add to our databases,
we have to remember that while.
God may delight in our growing smarter
-- and God certainly encourages us to use our brains --
what is more important to God
is that we grow wiser:
that we grow in wisdom.

Wisdom is an elusive term,
hard to define, even harder to understand.
Wisdom is more than intelligence,
more than knowing a lot about a lot of things.
A person might do very well on Jeopardy,
but that doesn’t mean he is wise.

Wisdom suggests prudence coupled with patience,
intelligence coupled with insight,
knowledge coupled with reason,
curiosity coupled with maturity;
confidence coupled with humility.
A wise person knows how to look at a situation
from every angle;
A wise person is never hesitant to change his mind,
or to acknowledge that she might have been wrong.
A wise person is not dogmatic;
he or she understands that life is not black and white,
but is filled with gray and nuance.

Wisdom’s very elusiveness means we are inclined
not to think much about it,
not to pay attention to it.
Yet wisdom’s importance to God
is a thread that runs throughout the Bible
from the Pentateuch
through the Revelation.

Nowhere do we find a greater focus on wisdom
than in the Book of Proverbs.
The thirty-one chapters of Proverbs are far more
than a list of pithy aphorisms,
concise maxims to toss into conversations.
It is a book that is all about the importance of wisdom.

Right at the very beginning of Proverbs
we hear the voice of Wisdom calling us,
calling us to listen to her voice;
yes: her voice.
Read carefully and you’ll find
that wisdom is female -- Woman Wisdom,
created by God:
“The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts long ago…
and I was daily his delight.”
(Proverbs 8:22ff)

Woman Wisdom speaks to us:
“Does not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?
…To you, O people, I call,
and my cry is to all that live”.

She calls us to seek her:
to seek wisdom,
to seek prudence, and justice and righteousness.
“Happy are those who find wisdom,
and those who get understanding,
for her income is better than silver
and her revenue better than gold.” (Proverbs 3:13)

Wisdom teaches us that
our hearts and minds must be tied together,
linked and balanced,
the heart and mind acting as one.
In the ancient Hebrew language,
the language of the Old Testament,
the word for head was the same as the word for heart.
To think without feeling what is in our hearts,
or conversely to act just on feelings without
thinking things through is to act unwisely.

In Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth
he spoke of the importance of wisdom,
God’s wisdom,
wisdom learned through God’s Holy Spirit.

The wise person understand the need to
to listen for that still small voice
that is Wisdom’s call,
that voice that is in the rustling leaves in the trees,
the voice that is in the wind.
The voice helps us to grow in faith,
by growing in spirit and wisdom.

We can check to see how we are doing:
do our words and actions
reflect a desire for justice,
for forgiveness, for peace, compassion,
for acceptance, kindness and reconciliation
in all times, all places,
and with all peoples; all peoples?

Do our words and actions
reflect the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ
or do our words and actions reflect our own personal re-creations
of how we think religion should be?
The first path is the harder one;
the second path is the one we are more likely to take.
it is the one the model for wisdom, Solomon himself, took;
the path which ultimately led to his downfall.

You will hear me use the word wisdom
more frequently in the weeks and months ahead,
as our Elders begin a conversation about our future:
the future of this church;
where we think we are headed in the next few years,
where we think God is calling us,
and what we will need to do to get to where God is calling us.
Our Session will begin the conversation later this month,
a conversation that will carry on
over the summer and into the fall;
a conversation that will eventually include everyone
as we seek to discern God’s will for us.

A few years back this church developed our Vision 2010 plan.
Much of Vision 2010 has been done,
but there are a number of significant projects
that were proposed but which have not been done,
for lack of money.
Expanding the west wing,
to give us space for more classrooms,
a commercial kitchen, and
better rehearsal space for the choir;
constructing a covered drop-off at the back:
These are just some of the projects that were envisioned
but have not been done.
Are they still priorities?
Things we feel called to complete?
Or do we believe God is calling us to other tasks?

Two years ago this church went reluctantly
from having two pastors to one,
but the hope was that that we would be back to
two clergy within a few years.
Is that still what we envision and hope for?
Is that what God wants for us
or does God want us to think
about other staffing options?

These are just some of the things
we need to talk about,
and pray about,
as we seek to discern God’s will for us.
We will need to be grounded in wisdom
as well as faithfulness
so that we can be sure we are attentive
to God’s voice, Wisdom’s voice,
so that God’s will be done,
rather than our own.

Let us begin to build wisdom
by coming to this table to be fed,
fed spiritually, by our Lord Jesus Christ.
Let us come to this table to be refreshed and renewed,
through bread and cup,
through prayer,
and through fellowship with one another.

Then, let us each go from here
committed to growing in wisdom,
as we follow our Lord Jesus Christ.

“Does not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?”
To you I call
and my cry is to all that live.”

Amen