If you could wish for anything you wanted what would it be?
What would you wish for?
There are all sorts of stories in folk lore about being granted a wish, and the unexpected consequences, stories about the djinni in the bottle, or a leprechaun, or the monkeys paw, or the stories of the devil’s bargain. Most of the stories usually end with the moral lesson to beware of such offers and that we are better off without them.
But what if it was God making the offer, not some trickster, but the Lord? What to wish for?
Solomon. The King. For the past ten weeks we’ve been hearing the stories of the first Kings of Israel, of the prophet Samuel, and Kings Saul and David and now Solomon. Stories of fabulously flawed and brave men. Stories about their greatness and also about their pathetic and petty failures. Complex people. Very human.
Today we meet Solomon. And Solomon is granted a wish. He asks not for wealth, not for long life, not for vengeance but rather for wisdom specifically for “an understanding mind able to govern” and to “discern between good and evil.”
The irony of Solomon’s story is that he was frequently very foolish and undiscerning, a tragically flawed and gifted man. The old story is still true- the most gifted are often the most flawed, everything seems to be magnified with some people: their strength and their weakness, their wisdom and their foolishness, their faithfulness and their infidelity.
Scripture is trying to tell us something. Beware of the illusion of greatness, it is just wishful thinking. Only God is great and we are all just living on God’s borrowed time.
Wisdom. The wish and the prayer of Solomon for wisdom. We almost done hearing about the Kings, we will be hearing about Solomon and wisdom for the next several weeks, hearing the wisdom writings, many of which are attributed to Solomon the Wise such as the Song of Solomon, Proverbs, the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiastes and Sirach.
What does it mean to live faithfully to God? There were multiple school of thought on this in ancient Israel. We usually hear about Torah, of observing the Law of Moses. But the other major group is the study of Wisdom, sometimes called scribal Judaism.
The idea is that the way that leads to life can be observed by the attentive mind, eye and heart attending to the ways of the world, attending to the ways of people, to the ways of nature and the ways of other cultures. The ways of God and the God intended life are self evident in the good creation that God made with such care and intent. Needless to say the Torah people and the Wisdom people didn’t always see things the same way. The Red and Blue have been around a long, long time.
We have inherited both voices; both traditions in the witness of Scripture, both are preserved and passed on to us to wrestle with. It would seem that Biblical values are not about agreeing or conformity but rather about how to disagree and continue on together, because there is something more, something greater out there, much greater.
Wisdom. If only I could see and know the right thing to say and do that makes everything work out the best for all! That is the wish, the dream, the desperate hope. The wisdom lovers and teachers saw this way of wisdom as a mystical being that dwells everywhere, that we can find and attend to if we but pay attention.
The way of wisdom isn’t so much the work of engineering, of putting all the right parts together so that it works out well, but rather it is the way of finding a living being that is always there and then dancing with her.
The Wisdom teachers even personified her as a beautiful woman who invites us to the way that brings life rather than folly, they called her Lady Wisdom, Holy Wisdom, Hagia Sophia. If this sounds strange it’s because our western mind is more attuned to the way of Torah and Law than to the way of Wisdom. Many reasons for that, but that is another story. Today is about wisdom.
The beginning of Wisdom is the fear of the Lord. That statement shows up repeatedly in the wisdom scriptures, including psalm 111, our psalm for today.
Wisdom begins and probably ends with an overwhelming awe of God, of the good Creator who is utterly holy, totally other, infinitely strange yet absolutely, uncompromisingly determined to be known by us. Holy fear leads to an attentive and determined soul, to an attentive and determined outlook.
Is it just wishful thinking? Is there a way found in all the craziness of life that works out the best for all? Or is Lady Wisdom some sort of Freudian illusion or opiate? These are cynical times. It would be easy to dismiss as folly, as foolish.
Foolish is as foolish does…and wisdom is as wisdom does.
John’s Gospel sees Jesus as God’s Holy Wisdom incarnate, in the flesh. Wisdom’s elusive figure that was always hiding just barely out of our reach has walked into our lives for all to see. He is the well of life. In his light we see light. His flesh and blood are our food and drink indeed.
We even see some of the old tension between Torah and Wisdom when Jesus talks about the bread that Moses gave in the wilderness and how the bread that is Jesus is much greater.
Now Matthew and Luke’s Gospels wouldn’t see things quite like that, but then who expects scripture to agree? That would miss the point. The point is that there is something greater, much, much greater.
The point is that someone is here who is greater than Torah and Wisdom. All our little and petty disagreements suddenly pale before the fear of the Lord who was supposed to be an invisible point of speculation but who it turns out has decided to move into our lives.
God invites us to share in his life, to eat the flesh and drink the blood of God, a strange, horrible, holy and wondrous gift for all.
God has made a wish and Jesus is that wish come true.
As the Book of Proverbs says, “Eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.” (9:6)