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Sermons at Saint Mary's

The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost:
8/16/2009
The Rev. Steve Smith

Once upon a time, there were two young women who lived together in the same home.  Both were pregnant and about to give birth.  First, the one woman delivered a baby boy: then three days later, the second woman did the same.  Each of these women loved their little ones and held them close; each of them did everything in their power to see that their newborns were kept out of harm’s way.  In the daytime, they nursed and coddled their infants; at night, they slept beside them.

Tragically, though, one of the mothers in her sleep rolled over on her baby and suffocated him.  When she awoke to find her dead child beside her, she did a terrible thing.  She went to the room of her housemate who was still asleep and put her dead baby at her breast; and then she took the live baby as her own.

When the sleeping mother woke up, she was horrified to find the dead infant beside her; but as she looked closely, she saw that it was not the baby to which she has given birth.  Quickly, she rose to find that her own baby was in the arms of the other woman, who insisted the little one was now hers.

Their screams and cries pierced the air, and the women were sent to the great king who ruled over it for judgment.  When they entered the palace and stood at the king’s feet, the mother whose baby had been stolen from her pleaded her case.  And the great king ordered his servants to bring him his sword.  “Here is final judgment,” he said, “I will cut the child in two, and give half to each of you.”  But the first mother said, “Please, my lord; give her the living boy; certainly do not kill it.”  And the other mother said: “It shall be neither mine nor yours; divide it then.”  Thus, the great king commanded his servants to give the baby to the first mother, for she indeed was the true mother.

This great king, of course, was King Solomon who ruled for forty years over Israel, and who was known throughout the ancient world to have within him the wisdom of God to execute justice.  His judgment of these two mothers, scripture tells us, is the supreme example of his extraordinary discernment.  Today, in our lesson, we hear how that wisdom came to Solomon in a dream when he was a young boy.  In the dream, he is approached by God, and asked what God should give him.  It was a question for the ages.  For the young boy Solomon had before him everything one could choose, everything that money and power could possess, everything you could dream of.  In response to God’s offer, however, he chooses none of these things.  Instead he asks God for an understanding mind.  He asks God for wisdom.

The wisdom Solomon asked for and was granted, the wisdom with which he ruled judiciously over the Kingdom of Israel, this wisdom of God is a rare gift indeed.  It is the ability to discern between what is good/ and what is right/wrong. 

Wisdom is a rare thing in our world because we often confuse it with many other false pretenders.  We confuse wisdom with knowledge.  We think if we only know enough, we will do the right thing.  Or we confuse wisdom with strength and security.  We think if we are only strong or secure enough, we will do what is right.  Or we confuse wisdom with faith.  All we have to do is believe something is right and it will be right.  Worse still, we even confuse what is good for what is evil, and what is evil for what is good.  And this, too, we call wisdom

Wisdom is rare because it is not cheap, it is not expedient, and it most certainly is not to be identified with any of the ready made solutions our world offers.  The kind of discernment that comes from wisdom requires hard work, it requires all of our attention, it requires courage and inner resolve to swim against the current and be ready to stand alone in the face of the many forces that would resist it.

Those who have meditated on this kind of discernment over time have come to understand that to do what is right and good in this world comes at a great cost.  The writer to the Ephesians knew this well when he wrote: Be careful how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making most of the time, because the days are evil.  Jesus understood this when he said: Be wise as serpents, and innocent as doves.  Discerning what is right and good can mean taking out a sword, as was the case with Solomon and the two mothers, and putting everything  at stake. 

Discernment is a rigorous spiritual discipline but it is a discipline that any of us can achieve if we desire it .  The first to propose this was St. Ignatius of Loyola in the 16th century   who gave us his rules for discernment of spirits.  These are simply norms to help us understand the interior movements in our own hearts.  If we are to move towards the wisdom of God in our lives, St. Ignatius said, we must see that there are forces in us contending for our allegiance.  One force works against God and another works toward God.  The force working against God tells us that the status quo is fine and good; nothing needs to change; Nothing is wrong with us and the world.  The force working toward God, on the other hand, tries to make us see the absurdity in the direction of our lives; it makes us uneasy with the status quo, where our conscience brings on remorse for the way we are presently living.

When we begin to choose to live a good life or a better life, all of this changes.  Now, the force that works against God proposes all sorts of problems and difficulties in living a good life.  It uses discouragement and deception to deter us from seeking what is right. It brings on regret about all the things we will miss if we choose what is right.  It makes us anxious about ourselves and suggests roadblocks on our path to wisdom.  The force in us working toward God, on the other hand, strengthens us in our resolve to live a good or better life.  This force encourages, and consoles, and inspires us.  No obstacles seem too much for us to face when God’s grace and wisdom is in and with us. For in essence, we begin to be wise, in the words of our Psalm today, when we fear the Lord.  We begin to know and do what is right and good when we begin to accept our limitations, and, as our Epistle says, we begin to understand what the will of the Lord is.

So how do we do this?  How do we begin understand what the will of the Lord is?  In today’s world, there is perhaps no greater example of this kind of discernment, I believe, than the twelve step program of the recovery movement.  Here, those who are bound to their addictions and the forces that work against God are liberated by admitting their limitation and powerlessness, by claiming a Higher Power to restore them to sanity, and turning their wills and lives over to God.  Over and over again in my ministry, those who have been saved by the 12 steps have witnessed to me the liberating power of this discernment.  It is here, they tell me, that true wisdom begins.  It is here that God’s will begins to be known. 

Today, I would like to end with the well known prayer of the 12 step program, written by the theologian Reinhold Neibuhr, the one that begins at every one of the tens of thousands meetings that happen every day around the world.  May it mark for us, as it does for those in recovery on their way to sanity and wholeness, our own path to discernment and wisdom.

“O Lord, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change; the courage to change the things we can; and the wisdom to know the difference.”