"Not Fake News, Folks--Wisdom"

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For three Sundays now we have been talking about the Serenity Prayer: “O God, give us the serenity to accept that which cannot be changed, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to distinguish one from the other.” As I think of these three sermons this third part of the prayer may be the most important.

We’ve all come to some crossroads place. The roadsigns are not exactly clear. The directions they gave us somehow don’t make sense. You don’t have the exact address so the GPS won’t help. So you pull out the map and try to figure out what they said and what you scribbled down—and it is all confusing. You go slow...trying to read and drive—and somebody blows the horn and cars are moving around you. What are you going to do?

It reminds me of the baseball game where in the middle of the game a dog wandered out on the field. Just sat there. They had to stop the game. Somebody in the stands yelled: “Run around all four bases—make a home run.” “Bite the Umpire.” “Take a nap.” And the dog just stood there shaking. And a reporter said, ”In the absence of one clear message—the dog didn’t not know what to do.”  And so today, like that dog with all these messages yelling fake news…alternative facts we don’t know what to do.

The Serenity Prayer says that there is some news that is false and some that is true. There are some roads that lead us there—and other roads are just dead-end streets. So our tasks is to try to separate the right roads from the bad.

Adam and Eve faced this problem. They were placed in this wonderful Garden. But—there was this stupid tree in the very middle of the Garden. And God said you can have dominion over it all—trees, plants, animals—everything except the tree in the middle of the Garden. And they whispered to one another: “You know, that fruit on that tree looks pretty good.” And the snake came along saying: “What God said was not true—that’s fake news.” And because they listened to the wrong voice—they were cast out of the Garden and lived East of Eden. They couldn’t go back.

But wait. Even though Adam and Eve could not go back that was not the end of the story. In fact, it was only the beginning. Even though they had lost their innocence and broken God’s rules—God did not turn his back on them. He was with them every step of the way. But still East of Eden they had to deal with highway signs that were confusing and surprised to find a kindly light that could lead them on.

That thread of truth runs throughout the Bible. King Solomon inherited the throne from his father, King David. There at the beginning of his reign he prayed this wonderful prayer. He fell down on the stone floor and prayed:” Give me wisdom. Show me the way.” He was known as the wisest of men.

But wait. Wisest? He split the Kingdom. He bankrupted the Empire. He spent most of his money on his own house. He’d imported all these foreign women with strange accents. He let them bring a whole moving van full of their tacky gods with them, And the kingdom fell apart. He prayed for wisdom but could not put legs on his prayers. 

Back to the Prayer. It says: Give us wisdom to know what can be changed and what cannot.” It’s hard to tell. We know that this wisdom means means intellectual knowledge. It’s clearness. It’s coping with life in a healthy kind of way. It’s horse sense and sound judgment. 

What does it mean to discover wisdom in our time? Of course it means using our heads—knowledge. Solomon knelt on the floor and prayed for God to show him the way. And knowledge meant facts. History. Degrees. Sometimes credentials. IQ. But Daniel Monihan reminded tis: “You are entitled to your own opinions but not to your own facts.” And it looks like truth has just flown out the window in many quarters. Alternative facts—what’s that? Sometimes there are no alternatives. “There is a way that seemed right but the end thereof is death.”

But there is another word for wisdom. In the New Testament the word is called Sophia. Spirit. The feminine side of God. Paul prayed in I Corinthians of all places—that the people in that messed-up church would find wisdom. So they could sail through the choppy waters of secularism without sinking. And the writer James would write: “If any of you lack wisdom—let him or her ask of God.”

But Paul and James were not talking about head stuff. They saw wisdom as heart stuff.

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Everybody in this room has had an old Uncle or Grandfather who, when things got tough—the family or the community—somebody would drop by and sit on porch and say: “Let me ask you something…” And sometimes those old folks that could hardly read would say: “Well…” and they would begin to talk about head and heart both. That’s understanding. Fred Craddock, great preacher used to say that the longest journey is from the head to the heart. And we know it is true. It is knowledge and understanding. We need both as the look at this maze of road signs.

Elton Trueblood said that what the church needs is the ministry of clarification. We are to help one another clarify many things. I start out the door and my wife says: “Are you going to wear that?” That’s the ministry of clarification. And we ought to be able to say in church or anywhere that “What you are saying is hurtful and serves no good purpose.” But we don’t do that. We just say: “Bless your heart!” We go behind somebody’s back and whisper to somebody else: “Did you hear what she said?” We need to help one another with the ministry of clarification.

John Henry Newman wrote a hymn during a dark, dark period of his life. It was a prayer. It is one we all could pray. “Lead kindly light! Amid the encircling gloom—lead Thou me on, The night is dark and I am far from home. Lead Thou me on.” It’s light. It is understanding.

But there is another word for wisdom. And this word is act. If we really are wise we are going to do more than just pray and talk. I get so tired of people saying: “Our thoughts and prayers are with you…” Really. Why don’t you do something. I have had several college churches where folk were as smart as they could be. They had ideas galore and they could talk and talk and talk. But after we had talked they’d go home thinking they had done something .We had done nothing except talk. Nothing accomplished at their meeting.  Sounds like Congress. Sounds like church. Sounds like us, too.

And this is why we come here. To find the way. Things get tangled up out there like fishing lines. We all need help. And it’s not just one-two-three points. We do need to help one another find the right road. 

What are we going to do with the refugees in those little tents somewhere? What are going to do about all the AK-47’s. What are we going to do with all these kids on drugs? Or poor people having hardly enough to eat? Or sitting in Emergency rooms ten hours  because they don’t have any insurance. What are we going to do? Are we just going to say: Well, we have to take care of our own. Really? Is that in the Bible. The Lord did say: “Inasmuch as you do it unto the least of these—and then he pulled out the list and said: “the hungry…the sick…the naked.. .the prisoners…the stranger…” As you respond to them you do it to me. Maybe the reason God seems so far away is because we never really look beyond our own doorsteps.

photo by Sheena876 / flickr

Will Willimon, Methodist minister said that when he was a young preacher he used to work for a welfare agency. He went out one day with this case worker. She took him up some winding rickety steps to the second-story in an unpainted apartment building. They walked into an apartment of three rooms. There was a mother with two small children. The woman was in the process of moving her 84-year-old mother in with them. The old woman had had a stroke and was incontinent and had lost much of her speech. The caseworker said, “You know you can’t do this. You’ve got too much on your plate already. You’ve got these two little children and there’d be no money to feed your mother, too. And you’ll have to buy depends and change the bed linens constantly. Nobody expects you to do all this.” And the little woman said, “Well, she did it for me when I was little. And I‘m just returning the favor. I can do it because she needs somebody.” The caseworker shook her head and they left. As they walked down the steps and headed for the car, the social worker turned to the young preacher and said, “Sometimes I don’t know if there its any hope in the world for these culturally deprived people. Maybe education is the answer.”

But the preacher that told this story said he thought he maybe knew why this daughter was doing what seemed to be foolish and impossible. Hanging over that daughter’s bed was this framed cross-stitched piece given to her by her mother years before. I think you know what the words said, “O God, give me the serenity too accept what cannot be changed, courage to change what could be changed and the wisdom to know the difference.”

That daughter is still learning the meaning of wisdom and we are we.

(This sermon was preached at the First Presbyterian Church, Pendleton, SC, May 6, 2018. This was part of a three-series os sermons on The Serenity Prayer.)

photo by Mathieu Peborde / flickr

—Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com