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?
Until we fall asleep, our minds worn ragged.
My grandmother used to pray for wisdom. Eventually 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. Wisdom. Trying to keep it all together.
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 mill stores, and the polio pandemic, the red scare, McCarthyism, Korea then Vietnam, integration, and then the hyper grandchildren. Oh my. You should meet my cousins…
Those who survived the world war never did get much of a break. Every day was a crisis and a miracle to survive. Sounds kind of familiar?
She seemed to have survived 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. Jesus and the disciples would have known it well, they would have heard it their whole lives.
The first reading was from chapter six, and the response that we read responsively 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 all relationships bring out the best in us, the best in each other.
How to get there from here? The sleepless night that reaches for eternity, that stretches for what seems an eternity. That long night.
The Gospel lesson depicts the Kingdom of God as a crisis, a crisis of wisdom and foolishness, those who wake up and are prepared, with oil in their lamps, and those who are not, who are left out in the dark.
The wise are prepared, ready to wake up and go, expectant like children sleeping on Christmas eve. The midnight oil burning with plenty to spare.
The foolish have no oil in their lamps. They have no light to bring to the darkness. They have not prepared. They lost the expectation and hope. The flame flickers and goes out.
What exactly is it? The wisdom that we long for? That we 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.
Waking up prepared in Matthew’s Gospel is about being prepared to love our enemies, it is about being ready 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 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.
Until we fall asleep, our minds worn ragged.
And then something wakes us up, and we light the flame.
Meeting God is like that, being woken up, and saying, “Oh. I love you too.”