to return to your place in the text.To read endnotes, click on the the note number, then click on the
Of course, this is the time for Baccalaureate services and
Commencement exercises. It was a delight to watch my own son
march with his high school graduating class on Friday night.
Just as every other proud pappa, with a tear in my eye and a lump
in my throat, I was snapping pictures at the moment he received
his diploma. Peter Gomes, the chaplain at Harvard, in a
commencement speech at Stanford said, "I remember when I got my
diploma several years ago--it was an exciting day, with all the
processionals, the ceremony, the talks by the speakers who told
us about our responsibility to save the world. I remember after
I got my diploma in my hand, as the crowd began to disperse, I
looked around me past the stadium to the city beyond and then
began to think of the size of the world that lay even beyond the
city. I looked down at my diploma again, then back at the city
and the world, and as I turned again to the diploma, from out of
nowhere, those famous words by Tallulah Bankhead suddenly came
into my mind, "Truly, there is less here than meets the eye."(1)
As one who, in the course of years, has received several of those
expensive wall-hangings, I add my Amen.
I am not here expressly to address graduates this morning
nor even to reflect on the end of another school year, but if I
were, I could not choose a subject for my remarks better than the
one chosen by the church's lectionary reading for this day -
wisdom:
By way of background, this day is known on the Liturgical
calendar as Trinity Sunday, the one Sunday in the entire year set
aside to focus on, not an important event, but an important
doctrine. A confusing doctrine? A bit, perhaps. The late
Cardinal Cushing said that, when he was a parish priest, he was
summoned to a store to give last rites to a man who had
collapsed. Following the custom of his church, he knelt by the
man and asked, "Do you believe in God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Holy Spirit?" Then, the Cardinal said, the man
roused a little, opened one eye, and said, "Here I am dying and
you ask me a riddle?"(2) For some, indeed the concept may seem to
be a riddle, but it is the way the church has learned to express
how we have come to know Almighty God.
How did the church arrive at this formula? It is not
spelled out anywhere. Nowhere in scripture do we even find the
word TRINITY. But as we read and study those sacred pages, we
meet God in three persons...Father, Son, Spirit...each distinct,
yet each uniquely divine. The church could have decided that
this means we deal with three different Gods, but further
reflection said NO to that - just ONE God whom we know in three
different ways. It was a WISE conclusion. Perhaps that is one
of the reasons the church chose its Old Testament reading from
Proverbs on this Trinity Sunday, part of the so-called WISDOM
literature. This took WISDOM.
Listen again to the text. Wisdom is personified, takes
voice and speaks in soaring poetry:
According to this, Wisdom is not about to take a back seat
to anyone or anything in its importance in this world. And that
pre-eminence extends back to creation. Tying this back to our
opening thoughts about the end of the school year, that is not a
bad theme for a baccalaureate or commencement address. If a
graduate or ANYone would choose a worthy goal, Wisdom would be a
wonderful choice.
If that is indeed your goal, the book of Proverbs has a good
deal to say about it, beside the fact that it is so crucially
important. For example, what is the source of wisdom? Proverbs
2:6 - "For the LORD gives wisdom..." In other words, wisdom is
not something for which we study or go to school. Knowledge,
yes; wisdom, no. Wisdom, according to scripture, is one more
good gift of a gracious God.
Wisdom is like grits. Yes, grits. A Pennsylvania fellow
traveling in our part of the country stopped by a mom & pop
restaurant for breakfast. He ordered eggs, bacon and toast only
to be surprised by an amorphous white mass on his plate when the
food was served. "What's this?" he asked.
"Grits," replied the waitress.
"I didn't order grits," said the traveler.
"No matter," said the waitress, "they just come."
Wisdom is like grits. It just comes.
I wish I could say that it will eventually be ours, like it
or not, if we just wait long enough, but we all be wiser. Even
the ancient Greeks said, "Not by years but by disposition is
wisdom acquired."(3) Everyone of us probably knows someone who has
been on the job for ten years, but instead of ten year's
experience, he has ONE year's experience ten times. Just as with
those grits, they might "just come," but they mean nothing at all
to you if you leave them on the plate.
What can wisdom do for you? Well, there are health and
welfare benefits: Proverbs 3:16 - "Long life is in her right
hand; in her left hand are riches and honor."
Long life? OK. Knowledge of good health practices - diet,
exercise, no smoking, and so on - are all well and good, but it
takes some wisdom to actually put that knowledge into practice.
On the golf course last week, one of my good friends told me that
he was quitting cigarettes as of six o'clock that night. In
fact, so as not to be thought of as a wastrel, as we played he
smoked one after another after another after another just so he
would have no more by the time the deadline arrived. It worked.
He ran out. I wish I could say that his plan was as much a
winner as his golf game, but no. He is still struggling; he
bought some more. He KNOWS smoking is bad for him. He has the
knowledge. We will now pray for the wisdom it takes for him to
succeed.
Riches and honor? A young man applied for a job as a
farmhand. When asked for his qualifications, he said, "I can
sleep when the wind blows." This puzzled the farmer, but he took
a liking to the young man and hired him. A few days later, the
farmer and his wife were awakened in the night by a violent
storm. They quickly began to check things out to see if all was
secure. They found that the shutters of the farmhouse had been
securely fastened. A good supply of logs had been set next to
the fireplace. The farm implements had been placed in the
storage shed, safe from the elements. The tractor had been moved
into the garage. The barn had been properly locked. All was
well. Even the animals were calm. It was then that the farmer
grasped the meaning of the young man's words, "I can sleep when
the wind blows." Because the farmhand had the wisdom to do his
work well when the skies were clear, he was prepared for the
storm when it broke. Consequently, when the wind blew, he had no
fear. He was able to sleep in peace.(4) And, no doubt, he was
appropriately compensated for his efforts. "Riches and honor."
What else might we expect from wisdom? Proverbs 7:4 & 5 -
"Say to wisdom, 'You are my sister,' and call insight your
intimate friend, that they may keep you from the loose woman,
from the adulteress with her smooth words." We could limit these
words, note their reference to sexuality, say AMEN and move on,
but that would limit them too much. I think we could
legitimately expand them and say that wisdom helps us avoid wrong
choices of ALL kinds.
A young man of 32 was appointed President of the bank. He
had never dreamed he would be president, much less at such a
young age. So he approached the venerable Chairman of the Board
and said, "You know, I have just been appointed President. I was
wondering if you could give me some advice."
The old man came back with just two words: "Right
decisions!"
The young man had hoped for a bit more than this, so he
said, "That's really helpful, and I appreciate it, but can you be
more specific? How do I make right decisions?"
The wise old man simply responded, "Experience."
The young man said, "Well, that's just the point of my being
here. I don't have the kind of experience I need. How do I get
it?"
Came the terse reply, "Wrong decisions!"(5)
Years ago, in my job-hunting days, I remember being offended
at all the employment being offered to EXPERIENCED people. How
could someone WITHOUT experience GET ANY experience if the jobs
only went to those who already HAD experience? I knew I could
handle these jobs. Why not hire me? As the years went by, I
learned what those employers were looking for. Not someone who
could just do a job RIGHT. They wanted someone who knew what to
do on the job when everything went WRONG. What is the value to a
congregation in all my years of experience in the ministry?
Somebody fresh out of seminary could come in here and do what I
do...the preaching, the teaching, the weddings, the funerals, the
hospitals, the administration. The difference is, after all
these years, I know all the things that can go wrong and
hopefully can offer a bit of wisdom to guide in helping us to
avoid the pitfalls. "Say to wisdom, 'You are my sister,' and call
insight your intimate friend..."
One more thing about wisdom this morning (although there is
so much more that could be said). Proverbs 8:12 - "I, wisdom,
live with prudence, and I attain knowledge and discretion."
Wisdom is honest enough to admit that it does not have all the
answers, that there is still much, much more to learn. Wisdom
still looks to "attain." I became a "fan" of Thomas Alva Edison
during my years in Ft. Myers, Florida, where Edison made his
winter home. Edison was a man of true genius whose inventions
utterly changed the world. A brilliant scientist, yet he once
admitted, "We don't know the millionth part of one percent about
anything in our world." And this from the man who invented the
light bulb, the movie projector, the phonograph and hundreds of
other useful items, enough so that fully twenty percent of
America today...1998...works on products that originated with him
and his company! Edison was a truly wise man. In the spiritual
realm, the truly wise also admit that there is MUCH we do not
know.
Yes, school is out for awhile. "No more pencils, no more
books." The baccalaureate and commencement speakers are out in
force. One said his role was not too different from the body of
the deceased at a wake: necessary to the proceedings, but not
expected to say anything much.
Well, at least let them say THIS much: a few years ago a
thought-provoking article entitled, "If You Are 35, You Have 500
Days to Live" suggested that when you subtract the time spent
sleeping, working, tending to personal matters, hygiene, odd
chores, medical matters, eating, traveling, and miscellaneous
time-stealers, in the next thirty-six years you will have roughly
the equivalent of only five hundred days left to spend as you
wish.(6) That being the case, then take the advice of scripture
and pray,
"[Lord], teach us to number our days that we may apply our
hearts to WISDOM."(7) For Jesus' sake. Amen!
1. From a baccalaureate address given by the Rev. Peter Gomes at the Stanford Chapel in
1977 quoted by James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers,
Inc, 1988) p. 296 2. Linda Kraft, "The Holy Trinity," via Ecunet, "Sermonshop Sermons," #653, 6/5/98 3. Plautus. 254 (?)-184 B.C., Trinummus. Act ii. Sc. 2, 88 4. Bible Illustrator for Windows, diskette, (Hiawatha, Iowa: Parsons Technology, 1994) 5. Bible Illustrator for Windows 6. Tim Hansel, When I Relax, I Feel Guilty, quoted in Bible Illustrator for Windows
7. Psalm 90:12
Does not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?
On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
Beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
"To you, O people, I call,
and my cry is to ALL that live.
The LORD created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.
Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth.
When he had not yet made earth and fields,
or the world's first bits of soil.
When he established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
When he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
When he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
When he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master worker;
And I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race.
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