Jack Hardaway
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You ever have trouble sleeping?
In the night, when we should be asleep, what is it that keeps us awake? What runs through our minds? What are the worries and preoccupations, all those details that make us burn the midnight oil?
My grandmother used to pray for wisdom. After awhile she was thankful for wisdom. I remember her talking about it, I found some of her notes and prayers writing about something that was so elusive yet essential.
I think it had something to do with raising my Dad and my two uncles while running a business and while my grandfather was out on the road selling shoes to all the company stores, and the polio pandemic, the red scare, McCarthyism, Korea then Vietnam, integration, and then the hyper grandchildren.
Those who survived the world war never did get much of a break. Everyday was a crisis and a miracle to survive. Sounds kind of familiar?
They all seemed to survive intact, the miracle of wisdom in a manic world. Grandmother was thankful for the wisdom to hold it all together for so long.
Wisdom and foolishness.
The wise and the foolish.
And staying awake at night while all the pieces of the puzzle storm around the mind refusing to all fit together.
What keeps us awake? Is it longing for wisdom?
The wisdom to make life work? The wisdom to know the God intended patterns of creation?
The readings from Wisdom are a bit of a change, they are two parts of a song. It is a book of the apocrypha; which we hear from only occasionally.
The first reading was from chapter six, and the response that we read in unison is the next four verses. Usually we say or sing a psalm, but sometimes we use one of the many other biblical songs.
The reading and then our response saying the song, they both together depict wisdom as showing up for those who long for her, and when wisdom shows up, and we follow in her ways, then we are led into immortality and that brings us near to God.
To desire wisdom creates a chain reaction that leads to the Kingdom where leadership is as God’s will be done.
How to get there from here? The sleepless night that reaches for eternity, that stretches for what seems an eternity.
The Gospel lesson depicts the Kingdom of God as a crisis, a crisis of wisdom and foolishness, those who stay awake and are prepared, with oil in their lamps, and those who are not, who are left out in the dark.
The wise are prepared, awake, watching, keeping the light burning in the dark.
The foolish have no oil in their lamps. They have no light to bring to the darkness.
What exactly is it? The wisdom that we are to long for? That we are to desire? That burns brightly in the dark, radiant and unfading?
The divine pattern is love, it’s that simple. If you got it, you got it. If you don’t, there is no oil in the lamp, without love we are nothing, and for Matthew that love is especially for the enemy and for the poor.
Staying awake in Matthew’s Gospel to find the way of love, is about trying to figure out how to love our enemies, and how to love the poor.
How about that? Relevance in ancient writings, nothing really changes.
Is that what keeps us up at night? How to love our enemies and love the poor?
Do we have that oil burning in the darkness?
The good news is that wisdom comes to those who desire it.
Wisdom shows up.
The Good News is that Jesus is that answer to the wakeful night, the wisdom that is the love that holds the Universe together, that is Jesus.
Wisdom showing up, in person.
Jesus is God burning the midnight oil, shining radiant and unfading in the dark.
Jesus is God’s staying awake at night.
Jesus is that wisdom that holds things together, loving the enemy, loving the poor.
Jesus is God’s preoccupation with the hurt in the world.
Jesus is God’s desire, God’s prayer that we truly discover what makes the world go round.
What keeps God awake at night?
God lies there awake with us in the dark, while all the pieces of the puzzle storm around the mind refusing to all fit together.