Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor Sermon Podcast
Introducing Wisdom (#4): Surrendering to the Summons of Wisdom (Ken Wilson)
Introducing Wisdom (#4): Surrendering to the Summons of Wisdom (Ken Wilson) :: August 26-27, 2006
We're in a series on wisdom, the last in a four-part series on wisdom. We're looking particularly at the book of Proverbs, part of the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. And I found an interesting quote that I think captures some of the essence of what we've been after in this series. It goes like this, while the word wisdom strikes moderns as an abstraction, like an impersonal concept, an idea, just a theory. There is evidence that it was a living and palpable reality. "Pappable" is one of my favorite words, it means so intense as to be almost physically felt. For the ancients, there's evidence that was a living and palpable reality for the ancient imagination. In other words, we've been missing all the "ulala" when it comes to wisdom. In our modern way of thinking about wisdom, we've been missing the core reality of the biblical understanding of wisdom, which is wisdom's allure. Wisdom's longing for us and our longing for wisdom, if we could only catch a glimpse of what wisdom is. Wisdom is not just a collection of impersonal abstract principles for good living, floss your teeth, save your money, pick your friends wisely. Wisdom is all that, plus wisdom is the fire in the equations of creation. Wisdom has a perfume that can turn your head and drop your jaw so that you follow behind. Today we'll be talking about how do we follow behind wisdom? How do we place ourselves under wisdom's influence? How do we sign up for wisdom's mentoring, surrendering to the summons of wisdom is our topic today. Wisdom and folly, you know, and proverbs are not paths of our own generating. These are pre-existent paths that have been laid down before we even hit the scene. They're more, actually, maybe river is a better metaphor, they're more like rivers with each with its own current and direction. And we're always being called, always being invited, always being summoned or seduced or persuaded. All our lives, each one of us, to dip into one river or the other and be influenced by its current. This, I know, goes against the fiercely independent spirit of our age that maybe we are alone in the universe, that we are the inventors of all the meaning that we can come up with, but ancient wisdom is saying something very different. And some of this is good news, wickedness and folly, for example, do not reside in our hearts originally. In the garden, Adam and Eve didn't think of rebellion. Rebellion was not their idea, they didn't think of evil. There was pre-existent evil symbolized by that serpent in the garden, and that serpent got them to do its bidding. In other words, original sin is a doctrine of the pervasiveness of sin. It's not that it's original with us, we're doing absolutely nothing original when we walk in the path of sin. The origins of evil are of old and they precede us. There are these paths set before us. That's all in one one. Blessed is the one who does not walk in the council of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers, but his delight is in the law, in the way, in the path of the Lord. Wisdom and folly, in other words, our social realities, we're social critters, we influence each other for good or for ill. The greatest follies are those perpetrated by groups of people, by mobs. Wisdom is a path that we learn from and travel with others. Wisdom is not a path that begins with our individual effort, just getting smart, getting wise, it begins with an act of surrender. Proverbs 9 has the summons to surrender to wisdom. Wisdom is built her house, she's set up her column, she's dressed her meat, mixed her wine, yes, she's spread her table. She's sent out her maidens, she calls from the heights out over the city. Let whoever is simple turn in here to him who lacks understanding, I say, "Come, eat of my food and drink of the wine I have mixed." The effort there is the effort of wisdom. To get ready for us, the surrender is our part, to surrender, to yield to the summons. Now, how do we surrender to the summons of wisdom in three different ways? First of all, we surrender to the summons of wisdom as we surrender to the summons of Jesus of Nazareth, in whom our hid all are treasures. There is more to this personification of wisdom in Proverbs than just some kind of a literary device. It's not like there's this abstract concept called wisdom, and the authors of Proverbs said, "Well, we need to jazz it up so it's a little more interesting, so we'll come up with this lady wisdom business." And we're just creating this literary device. The ancient Hebrews didn't even think like that. They weren't into cooking up devices so much as trying to put into language what it was they were experiencing of God. The fact that wisdom is portrayed like this in the Bible is a sign that at least in some places wisdom was actually experienced in this way. That young men, for example, at least experienced wisdom as lady wisdom, calling them to a banquet that she was perceived. Wisdom was perceived as like a mysterious dancing presence with a voice, a charm, and an appeal of her own. Certainly temptation. And I'm not just talking about temptation that is sensual, certainly temptation is experienced like that at times. Hasn't your head ever been turned by temptation? Your head ever spun with the allure of temptation, and you thought, "Man, I'm hungry for whatever this is offering me. This is just going to be a feast." Well, if temptation works like that, why wouldn't wisdom also work like that? Why should the devil get all the good music? Why should the God who created us not appeal to us in the way that we respond to him? And all this makes perfect sense when Jesus of Nazareth enters the scene as wisdom personified. The echoes of wisdom's voice in Proverbs, wisdom calling in the streets, that's in Proverbs, wisdom with God at creation, that's in Proverbs, wisdom delighting in God and in the children of man, that's in Proverbs, that voice is all over the gospels. We know that Jesus, or we can assume that Jesus had a deep, one could even say a mystical life of prayer. And it's quite possible that Jesus himself experienced wisdom in this way. Whatever it was, he was drinking, so to speak, cause people to say, "Where did this guy get all this? This is the carpenter's son, this is the son of Mary. And Joseph, we know his brothers and sisters, where did he get all this? What is the wisdom given to him that he even does miracles?" It turns out they were frightened and they were offended, perhaps because they knew in their bones that such direct experience of God is dangerous. When Jesus is in the gospels, crying aloud in the streets, what he's doing is the same thing wisdom was doing, which was inviting the non-elite of the spiritual realm into the kingdom. It's not just in the secret, it's out in the streets, and so we respond to the summons of wisdom through an act of surrender to Jesus of Nazareth. "Come to me, all whose work is hard, whose load is heavy," said Jesus, "and I will give you rest. Bend your necks to my yoke and learn of me, for I'm gentle and humble of heart and you'll find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy. My burden is light, does that sound familiar? Come to the banquet I've prepared for you, eat of my bread, drink of my wine, come into my house and take a load off." This is the voice of wisdom coming through Jesus. If anyone is thirsty, Jesus said, "John chapter 7, wisdom would have a different way of saying it, if anyone is simple, let him come to me and drink," said Jesus, "come, eat of my food, drink of my wine," as it says in the Proverbs. "And out of their hearts will flow rivers of living water." In the Proverbs wisdom says, "Wisdom will enter your heart low, I wisdom will pour out to you my spirit," this is all coming from the same source. When we surrender to the gospel, we are surrendering to the call of wisdom, issued through Jesus of Nazareth in whom are hid all their treasures. Secondly, we surrender to wisdom by listening, by opening our ears to wisdom's living and powerful words. Throughout the Proverbs, if you're reading along with Proverbs, you'll notice that throughout the Proverbs, you have multiple exhortations to listen, to hear, to give heed, "listen my son to your father's instruction." This refrain is going throughout the book of Proverbs. This is echoed in the ministry of Jesus. One of his favorite sayings was, "He who has ears, let him hear." Very proverbial, very sticky, very pithy. "He who has ears, let him hear, consider the power in history, in the course of nations, to the words of Jesus." And I'm going to pick words of Jesus that are considered by most the least practical of his words, like, "Love your enemies and turn the other cheek." If ever there were words of wisdom from Jesus that we would say, "Well, that has no practical application in this world, that certainly couldn't affect our planet Earth in any significant way, it would be those words." Mohandas Gandhi, known as the father of modern India, led a long struggle for independence from the British Empire. The British were occupying India, and his movement eventually led to the expelling of the colonial power, and that without a bloodbath. Why? Well, Gandhi introduced the practice of nonviolent resistance to oppression, and he was explicitly influenced by Jesus of Nazareth. He liked Jesus of Nazareth, especially the Sermon on the Mount. He was putting into practice, "Love your enemies and turn the other cheek." And it changed the course of a nation. Martin Luther King learned from Gandhi, who learned from Jesus of Nazareth, and King led the civil rights movement here in our own country, grounded in nonviolent resistance to oppression. "Love your enemies, turn the other cheek." Even when they really got you under their thumb, when King's own home, this is at the very beginning of the civil rights movement, was firebombed there in Alabama. He was just starting to lead the busing thing with Rosa Parks and all that, and he was getting phone calls at his home, threatening that his house would be firebombed if he didn't back off. And one day his house was firebombed with his wife and his baby daughter in the house, and immediately some white police officers came, and they were on the porch with King. Fortunately, no one was hurt. They were in a different room, but soon a crowd energized mob of African Americans. You can completely understand from the neighborhood came around the house, and they were just fighting mad. And those white police officers felt their very lives threatened, and Martin Luther King got on the porch, and he said to the crowd that was forming, he said, "Hate is not the way for us to gain our freedom. We have to learn to love even our sick white brothers." So this is a man putting this into practice at the risk of his own life. It's interesting that Jesus, Gandhi, and King were all assassinated. Ironically, this was the rejected wisdom of Jesus to his beloved Israel when she was under the oppression of Rome. Instead, his beloved Israel chose to live and to die by the sword. And Jesus prophesied this. When he was weeping over Jerusalem, it was because he knew that his message was being rejected. Love your enemies, turn the other cheek that was being rejected, and he knew what the end of that would be. It would be the destruction of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple. And he wept over Jerusalem, seeing his words that had been crying out on the streets, being rejected by his own people in the Middle East today. There's a lot of living and dying by the sword going on. And we're running out, aren't we, of wisdom? You know, it was wisdom for the mess in the Middle East. What could possibly be done to disentangle the competing claims of Israel for right to exist and the Palestinians right to a homeland? Jesus said, love your enemies to Israel when she was under occupation. What if, what if those under occupation gave birth to a leader like Martin Luther King who preached love of enemies as the path to freedom? We don't know until it happens, but we might start praying that it does. Wisdom is crying aloud in those streets in the Middle East today. Jesus is still weeping over Jerusalem. Now, here's the point. If the wisdom of Jesus of Nazareth can expel a colonial power and bring down Jim Crow, maybe in the smaller scale of our lives, we ought to lend our ears to the words of King Solomon in the Proverbs and the greater than Solomon of the Gospels, knowing that these are words of power, like a gentle answer turns away wrath. You know, you gentle answer. We're wired to fight fire and fire with fire, so we got to let a word like this in pretty deep for it to have its influence in our psyches. I like that song. Breathe on me, breath of God until I become pure. Now, I'm looking at myself and I'm saying that's a lot of breathing that the spirit needs to be doing. And we have to be patient with ourselves and patient with the spirit. You know, breathe on me, breath of God is not, let me have this great spiritual experience and go away feeling like I'm all right now. No, it's just a lifelong pursuit. Breathe on me, breath of God until my heart is pure. You're going to have to be patient with a prayer like that with God and with yourself. Where am I? A gentle answer turns away wrath. Or honor the Lord with your wealth, another proverb. If your faith is more talked in a walk when it comes to money, well, you've got to let this down pretty deep into your soul to do its work. Honor the Lord with your wealth. That's not even on my radar screen. Honor the Lord with my wealth. You've got to let it into your heart. The words of a gossip are like choice morsels. They go down to a man's inmost parts. If you enjoy listening to gospel, gossip, who doesn't? Who does not enjoy listening to just a tender morsel of gossip? We listen to gossip thinking that it's not really going to have any effect in my inmost person. That I can listen to this gossip about another person and not have it influence my view of that person. But that's not the way it works. The words of a gossip are like choice morsels. They go down to a man's inmost parts. That's why we don't like to be gossiped about. Judge not lest you be judged. I've got an instinct to judge, man, that is very, very strong. If that's going to have any impact on me, I'm going to have to let it pretty deep into my heart. Whatever you did, Jesus said to the least of these, referring to the homeless and the poor, you did to me. That's stuff we've got to let deep into our heart to have any effect. Wisdom's words are like time-release power pellets. That's why they come as they do. They come in nugget form. They're memorable. A lot of the proverbs are with parallelism. They were probably used where one line would be recited by the student and the other would be recited by the teacher and they'd go back and forth and it was a blast. They're sticky. They're pithy. They're small enough to be tucked away to be buried deep in the heart. They're not complex. Seeds need to be planted before there's any growth, let alone any fruit. With these wisdom words, you've got to let them go deep. You say them often. You say them slowly. You say them in the situation. You say them prayerfully. You say them over and over again so they sink deep into the heart to have their effect. Then third, we surrender to someone's wisdom when we avail ourselves of, "Hello, wise people." The fact that wisdom is personified in the proverbs is a sign that wisdom is best conveyed not through a lecture or through a manuscript but through a flesh and blood and spirited heart pumping, breathing, living, human being person. Even in the book of Proverbs, the proverbs are ascribed to people. This is the proverbs of a mother, proverbs of a father, proverbs of lady wisdom, proverbs of king Solomon. Proverbs is someone named Agar. Nobody knows who he is. I don't know how to pronounce his name or king Lemuel. He's not like a king of Israel. Who is this guy? We don't know, but he's ascribed to someone. The proverbs are not the things of wisdom. They are the things of the wise. Wisdom comes through, wisdom is an incarnate kind of truth. You know, there are those who carry wisdom sent. They're around. There are people about whom it is actually fair to say they have been with Jesus of Nazareth. We seek wisdom when we seek those people out in our lives. Nancy and I talk about lack of wisdom. We found ourselves parents at the age of 18. We didn't do that through wisdom. But the redeeming factor about all that is that we knew at 18 that we lacked wisdom. I can remember the first church that we were part of. There was a couple who were parents who were invited us over to dinner. It was the first time. We thought we were still playing house where 18 years old were parents. It felt to us like we were playing house and an honest to goodness live family, legitimate family invited us over for dinner. And they were believers and we saw how they loved their kids and how they cared for their kids and the challenges they had. They had a one handicap children child. They had five kids and they were just great parents. And it dawned on us. We were having a struggle with Jesse who was just a terror at age three. Nancy mentioned it to me. I can picture it in the living room. She said we're flailing about trying to figure out what to do with Jesse. And Nancy says we could maybe call Nancy McKeown. And it was like, oh my goodness, we could call someone who knows better and get some help. So that became a pattern for us. When in doubt, when in the dark, when confused, flail about for as long as you will, but then find someone to talk to. Someone who's walking the way of wisdom. I could just list up. Harry and Diane Martin. Dick Bieber. John and Nancy McKeown. Peter Williamson. I think he's younger than I am. I got wisdom from him. Ralph Martin. Randy and Theresa Surner. Kevin Prada. Kevin Prada. I published your ask me to write a little book. I thought, man, I was an editor at the time. I said, well, finally, they'd noticed I can write. I wrote this little book, this little pamphlet. And since I was the first time author, they said, why don't you run it past Kevin Prada. I said, I took my little manuscript to Kevin. I said, Kevin, I've written this book. I thought it was pretty good. I thought it was pretty engaging, pretty, you know, whatever. He reads it over. He goes, you know, here's the problem with writing. It's founded in thinking. And some of your thoughts are, I'm not sure what you're saying here. And sure enough, he read a paragraph. And I said, you know, that does sound good. But I, I too, I'm not sure what I was saying. He said, yeah, that's the problem with writing. Writing every time. It's a thinking part that I just thought just facility with words was what writing was about. Kevin Prada. So every week, I'd bring up my new little chapter. And every week I go, what does that mean? I go, I have no clue. Why did I write that? He just taught to shreds. And I got wisdom about writing from Kevin for Wayne and Dorothy Morrisfield. Gave me, Kevin and Suzanne Springer, the, the Nathan's, the Wagner's, Greg Holcott, a counselor, Peter Schoochimari, my doctor, Thillis and Sam, tickle in different areas. The board has always been a wonderful source of wisdom for the business and financial stuff. A few years ago, I was kind of over my head with just managing the church as it, at its size and just kind of the business part of it. I met with Lynx Smith, who's the COO of Altarum and Tammy Heim for about four weeks. Running there, got some, Don Postema, my spiritual, I don't, I don't know how I could make it through life without some voices of wisdom in my life. Timothy had his Paul. Apollos had his Priscilla and Aquila John Mark had his Barnabas. We all need somebody to lean on. Most of us need many some bodies through our lives. A quarter of Americans. This is solid study. This is not one of these online things. A quarter of Americans say they have no one with whom they can discuss personal troubles, more than double the number who were similarly isolated in 1985. Overall, the number of people Americans have in their closest circle of confidances dropped from around three to about two. A quarter of all Americans. Now, half of all those quarter are women. And I'm thinking they probably have more friends. They probably have more confidence as a whole than the men. Imagine what the statistics would be for the men if a quarter of all Americans say they've got no one with whom they can discuss personal troubles. I'm guessing those are not the quarter of Americans who don't have personal troubles either. The need for wisdom runs along the same channel in us as our need for relationship and our need for love. It's not the need for information. It's the need for relationship and the need for love. We become wise by following that craving to connect, to take the student's place, to learn from, to expose one's need to another who might know better. And to receive what they have to offer us, not screwing our heads off and drinking the Kool-Aid, but hearing what they have to say and listening and discerning. You know, if you're in financial distress, find someone who knows their way around a budget and ask, "Could you help me take an honest look at my finances?" If you're in marital distress, find someone whose wisdom you respect, hear some wisdom. I challenge you, O married couples. Make a commitment, if you're married, that if either one of you feels the need, you'll both go to someone that you can mutually agree on to lay out your stuff. Make that commitment to one another, that if either one of you feels the need, that both of you will go to someone and lay out your issues. Why wouldn't you make a commitment like that to the person that you married? You know, people come to me for marriage counseling, and nine times out of ten, I'll ask the question, "Golly, you've been struggling with this for a long time. This seems like a real stuck place. Who else have you talked to about this? What efforts?" And I'm usually the first one they talk to. I'm thinking, "Oh Lord, the early warning system isn't really working very good in our culture for this." You know, this business of trying to manage our lives as self-contained units, relying on whatever deposit we got from the DNA lottery when our parents conceived us, relying on whatever information we can cram and retain on our hard drives, which are not in the best shape all the time. Well, that's folly. I mean, that's folly. It's more than folly. That's the height of arrogance. What's the point of being the member of a human community that is as social as human beings are, as connected as human beings are, if we can't benefit from the wisdom deposited in the human community among the children of men by wisdom by the son of man himself? What's the point? Put yourself in a position to interact with people who have wisdom and go after them. Here's the deal. The only stroke you need to swim in the waters of wisdom is the humility stroke. Your butterfly and your breaststroke, and that's of no avail in the waters of wisdom, the only stroke you need to swim in the waters of wisdom is the humility stroke. James, the brother of Jesus, in the wisdom tradition of his brother is his letter. If anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously to all without finding fault. I don't know about you, but the reason I don't want to go to someone and ask for wisdom is because I don't want to reveal my lack of wisdom because I'm afraid that the person will find fault with me. That's why if someone comes to you with a need, the last thing you want to do is to find fault. You want to be generous in response to them. If you're finding fault, you do it only until there's trust and the door's been open and the relationship for that. I wonder how many of us don't even go to God to ask for wisdom because we're just afraid of the fault finding. James is saying that's not God. That's not God. He doesn't find fault. If you lack wisdom, go to God who gets generously to all without finding fault. You've got to use the humility stroke to swim in the waters of wisdom. Sometimes for some of us, like myself, constitutionally arrogant, you have to just be in over your heads to learn the humility stroke. I know there's ways of learning the humility stroke and shallow water, but not for me. I had to be thrown in over my head. That's what that whole deal, the redemptive deal of me being married at 18 was all about. Not only did I not know, did I know that I didn't know, but I also knew that there was no way in heaven or on earth that I could possibly know what I needed to know. And so I was able to say, I think I need some help. If I trace my history, my psychic history as a human being, I think maybe the last time I said, I think I need some help would be like age four. I was in the age of omniscience for many, many long years until I woke up and found myself in the deep end. Is it that weren't enough? I think I needed to. I was working on the suicide prevention line in the Community Mental Health Center. I should have been calling the suicide prevention line, but I was working on the suicide prevention phone line at the age of 19 and a half. I'm sure they're more selective now, so if you need to call, they train people better. They select people better. I was so over my head. And yet that's what I needed to learn the humility stroke. I had to be way over my head. You know, the word in Proverbs for those who need wisdom is not a complimentary term. The word is simple. Simple. If you need wisdom, you're simple. I raise my voice to all mankind. You who are simple gain prudence. I'm simple. Yeah, the whole mankind. I'm simple. No, only the humble are able to say, yeah, I'm simple. I could use what you got. The simple are those who are like in a sponge like state. They're not full of themselves, but they're ready to absorb either wisdom or folly. That's the state of being simple. Jesus called the simple little children. Anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. He was speaking in the voice of wisdom. He was speaking to the simple there. Okay, I've completed my task. If the band could come back up, we could move into communion. What I want to just offer as we close is, you know, maybe you might be in a position in your life where you realize, you know, I haven't really made, I need some wisdom in my life. And I'm not sure I've really surrendered to Jesus of Nazareth. I think that might be a good idea. We can all stand actually. And so this is a prayer you might pray. You'd be welcome to, I'm going to pray it out loud, but it's up there for you to read. If you'd like to make this your prayer, there's copies of it on the notes for today's presentation in the back. This is maybe a prayer you could pray once a day for a while and let it sink in. It goes like this. It's an act of surrender prayer, Jesus of Nazareth. I acknowledge before you my thirst for what you have to give. I surrender myself whole and entire what was and is and is to come to you. Plunge the wrongs I have done and the wrongs done to me under your fathomless mercy. Receive me as I am today and make of me what I am meant to be and let me walk in the path of the new creation. It's a prayer that you can pray to connect with Jesus in that way. Okay, let's go on to communion. Now we're eating Jesus took bread and blessed and broke it and said, "Teakeeth, this is my body." And he took a cup saying, "When you give in thanks, he gave it to them saying, drink of it all of you for this is my blood of the covenant." Which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. John 6 your father ate man in the wilderness and died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven that a person may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread he'll live forever. And the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh. Lord we are so thankful to you for this awesome gift of yourself to us that you've come to us God in human flesh and that you've come to us now this morning through this bread that's been broken through this fruit of the vine that's poured out. Oh God we want to receive your beloved son this morning in the communion meal. So we come in our simplicity, we come carrying our folly, we come in need of our wisdom and we thank you that there's a place for us at your table today. We receive you by faith and we pray for your powerful presence to come ever deeper into our being. Amen. lines on the center aisle. [BLANK_AUDIO]