Sacred Laziness and the Gift of Wisdom
1 Kings 19:2-16
Lent 4 (series)
March 30, 2014
Lent 4 (series)
March 30, 2014
Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA
We're struggling in
our culture, in our country, in our world, with wisdom. Oh, we have enormous amounts of knowledge and
more of it all the time. Buckminster
Fuller observed that the world's knowledge doubled every century until 1900 and
then every twenty-five years by the end of WW II. Now, it is said that the world's knowledge is
doubling every thirteen months.[1]
I don't know if I
accept that. It is certainly true that
every time I snap a picture with my phone there are two million more bytes of
data in the world. Judging by the number
of pictures posted on Facebook, there are a lot of us snapping picture with
cell phones. That adds up to a lot of
data being produced. But I hesitate to
call one more "selfie" more information, let alone more
knowledge. And it certainly isn't
wisdom.
We usually say that
wisdom is the result of much experience.
Older people, we say, are wise because of their long years and many
experiences. But wisdom is more than
that. Wisdom is the result of experience
and reflection on that experience.
Reflection is what happens when we give our experiences enough time and
enough attention so that they can teach us what they have to teach. Wisdom doesn't come automatically with years and
there are, sad to say, plenty of foolish older people who have gained little
from their years because they have never given their lives time to speak to
them.
A tragedy of our era
is how little we respect the older members of our families and
communities. If we respected them more, they
might grow and become our elders. They
might even do the hard work needed to become wise.
But we don't really
value wisdom. We've stopped looking to
our elders for wisdom and many of them have stopped pursuing it. They're "spending their children's
inheritance," as the bumper sticker says.
They're spending their last years shuttling back and forth between their
winter and summer homes, playing golf, and complaining to anyone who will
listen about the generations coming behind them. There are a number of reasons for this, I suppose. Among them would be the pace of technological
change. While older people are trying to
wrap their heads around email, young people have moved on to text messaging, Twitter,
and social media. Ten years ago or so,
my sister Jody, a librarian at Drew University and the head of bibliographic
instruction, started giving first year students a tour of the library stacks to
show them where the books are kept.
There are some things that cannot be found on line. Some information, some knowledge, is to be
found in the pages of an actual book that you can hold in your hand, an actual
book with pages that you turn, a book that has that slightly musty smell that
permeates all academic libraries.
We don't really
value wisdom. With wisdom neglected and
with older adults so far behind the knowledge curve it is little wonder that so
many of them have decided to spend the balance of their lives in the pursuit of
frivolous irrelevance.
Our culture and our
world are facing a deep crisis that we will either meet in the next twenty or
thirty years or the earth itself will be so changed that humanity will face
oppressive and widespread misery. Our
attitude toward wisdom needs to change. We
have plenty of data, information and knowledge, enough to tell us the nature of
the interlocking crises that are bearing down on us. But none of those things will tell us how to
meet the challenge. None of these things
will call forth the courage needed to make the decisions we need to make. And none of these things will give us the
resolve to move forward and keep moving forward in the absence of absolute
certainty.
For these things we
need wisdom and it's in short supply. I
went to Ask.com and asked, "How can we save humankind?" The first response was to ask if I meant, "How
can we save mankind?" No,
that's not what I meant. I meant womankind,
too. So I already know that I'll have to
make my way through a certain amount of sexism.
What else is new?
Okay, so, "How
do we save mankind?" What pops up
first are a series of ads. "Mankind:
The Story of All of Us" at history.com.
History might be helpful, so all right.
Then comes "How We Can Save" at wow.com. After that comes "Can Saves" at
target.com. Then there is a link to
nature.org that connects us to information about water supplies. Better, maybe. Then a link to a directory of small
businesses provided by Dun and Bradstreet.
I like small business, but I'm not sure there is an answer to my
question in that directory.
Next come several
references to a book entitled, Only You Can Save Mankind." This sounds promising but it turns out that Only
You Can Save Mankind is a science fiction novel by Terry Pratchett. Knowing Pratchett's work, it's sure to be
funny and entertaining, but it's not what I was looking for.
You cannot Ask.com
for wisdom. You cannot Google it. Wisdom might be found somewhere on the
interwebs, but there is no algorithm that would recognize wisdom if it popped
up. It takes a wise person to recognize
wisdom. We're in trouble.
We'll have to become
wise the hard way, by being open to our own and each other's experiences and by
spending the empty time we need to let that process work. "Sabbath," says Wayne Muller,
"is an incubator for wisdom."[2]
Sabbath--rest, cessation of work--is what is needed. But Sabbath as we know is in short
supply. We keep ourselves very
busy. We are doing good things, of
course. By themselves each of the things
we do is important and justifiable. But
together they guarantee that we will never have the time for reflection. They guarantee that we will never become
wise. Muller said it this way
twenty-five years ago and, if anything, what he observes is even truer now than
it was then:
Our
culture invariably supposes that action and accomplishment are better than
rest, that doing something—anything—is better than doing nothing. Because of
our desire to succeed, to meet these ever-growing expectations, we do not rest.
Because we do not rest, we lose our way. We miss the compass points that would
show us where to go, we bypass the nourishment that would give us succor. We
miss the quiet that would give us wisdom. We miss the joy and love born of
effortless delight. Poisoned by this hypnotic belief that good things come only
through unceasing determination and tireless effort, we can never truly rest. And
for want of rest, our lives are in danger.[3]
We're not the only
ones living out the truth that Muller has uncovered. The prophet in our today's reading, Elijah
the Tishbite, lived it too. He was
someone I think we could have admired had he lived among us. Admired and disliked. He had a tendency to meddle in politics. He assumed that God's passionate commitment
to justice required him to do that. Our
reading this morning comes at the end of what was arguably the most dramatic
episode of his ministry.
In Elijah's day, the
covenant people were politically divided.
The kingdom of Judah in the South was ruled by members of David's
dynasty. The Kingdom of Israel in the
North was ruled by a series of dynasties.
In Elijah's time King Ahab and Queen Jezebel were sponsoring and leading
Israel in the worship of Canaanite gods, a divine couple named Ba'al and
Asherah. Ba'al and Asherah were
fertility gods. Ahab and Jezebel were
leading Israel to turn its back on Yahweh their covenant God. Yahweh sent Elijah north to overthrow the
Ba'al and Asherah cult and call the people back to covenant faithfulness to
Yahweh. So Elijah went north.
He called out the
prophets of Ba'al and Asherah and challenged them to a contest. Israelites gathered to watch and see what
would happen. Elijah addressed them: "How
long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal,
then follow him....I, even I only, am left a prophet of the Lord; but Baal's prophets number four
hundred fifty." The four hundred
fifty of Ba'al's prophets would take a bull, butchering it and laying its
pieces on wood laid on a stone altar. Elijah
would do the same. Then the prophets of
Ba'al would appeal to their god to send fire.
Elijah would call upon Yahweh. Whichever
God sent fire would be recognized as Israel's God. This seemed like a good idea to the gathered
people.
The prophets of
Ba'al went first. They cut up the bull
and laid it on the wood on a stone altar.
Then they called on Ba'al. "Send
fire!" they prayed. They
danced. They even cut themselves so that
they offered their own blood to Ba'al. But
there was no fire.
Evening was coming
and the prophets of Ba'al had been at it all day. Then Elijah took twelve stones and built an
altar to Yahweh. He laid wood on the
altar. He laid the pieces of his cut-up
bull on the wood. Then he dug a trench
around the altar and had water poured over the offering and the wood until the
trench around the altar was full of water.
Then he prayed, "O Lord,
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in
Israel, that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your
bidding. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so that this people may
know that you, O Lord, are God, and
that you have turned their hearts back."
Just like that fire
fell upon the offering and burned it up together with wood on the altar. The fire even evaporated all the water. The people fell on their faces and cried,
"The Lord indeed is God!" Elijah
had them seize the four hundred fifty prophets of Ba'al and Asherah, took them
to a nearby gully, and killed them all, dumping their bodies into the gully.
Of course, when Ahab
and Jezebel found out about what had happened, they were furious. Jezebel threatened Elijah with death. Elijah ran south toward Judah. He ran right into Judah, through it, and out
the other side, still running. He
finally collapsed under a tree and prayed to die.
Instead, he fell
asleep. The next thing he knew an angel
was shaking him awake. "Elijah, get
up. Have something to eat." There was a flatcake baking on a stone and a
jar of water. Elijah ate the cake and
drank the water. And then he fell asleep
again. Again, the angel shook him
awake. "Elijah, have some more to
eat and drink." Elijah did that and
continued on his way to Mount Horeb.
At Horeb Elijah
spent the night in a cave where he was met by God who asked him what he was
doing there. Elijah replied that he had
been working very hard because God's people in the north had forsaken God, thrown
down God's altars, killed all of God's prophets of whom Elijah was the last, and
they were trying to kill him. God told
Elijah to stand out by entrance of the cave because God would pass by. There was a great wind, an earthquake, and a
fire, but God was not present in any of them.
Then there was "a sound of sheer silence" as the NSRV
has it, "a sound. Thin. Quiet" in the CEB. Elijah covered his face and left his cave to
meet God. "Elijah," said God,
"why are you here?" Elijah
gave God the same answer as before, that he had been working very hard because
God's people in the north had forsaken God, thrown down God's altars, killed
all of God's prophets of whom Elijah was the last, and they were trying to kill
him.
This is an odd
thing. Three times Elijah has said that
he is the last of Yahweh's prophets. But
it isn't true. Ahab's right hand man,
Obadiah, had given shelter to one hundred of Yahweh's prophets, hiding them in
two different caves and providing them with food and water. And furthermore, Elijah knows this. Obadiah told him this back in chapter
eighteen.
But Elijah is
tired. When we're tired we miss
things. Our view of the world becomes
distorted. We pay too much attention to
some things and not enough to others. Elijah
missed what Obadiah told him. And
missing that important information, Elijah comes to a foolish conclusion about
his world. He comes to believe that
God's justice is a hopeless cause. He
becomes despondent. He comes to believe
that the cause of God's justice is about him.
"I, have been very zealous...I alone am left, and
they are seeking my life." If
anyone is in need of wisdom, it is one of God's prophets.
So what does God do
for Elijah who has lost the way of wisdom?
The first thing that God does is to make sure that Elijah catches up on
his sleep. Then God feeds him. God gives him some work: a couple of kings to
anoint and a successor to name. "Oh,
and by the way," God says, "there are seven thousand Israelites who
have remained faithful and who do not worship Ba'al and Asherah." Rested, Elijah is ready to gain some wisdom,
or perhaps to regain it. God needed
Elijah's wisdom in his time.
God needs our wisdom
for our world. We need Sabbath because
it is "an incubator for wisdom."
My first preaching
professor had a colleague who spent a good deal of time sitting on a dock by a
river with a fishing pole in his hands, but he seldom caught anything. For one thing, he didn't bother to bait his
hook. My professor asked him about
it. He said he wasn't actually
fishing. He was sitting and
thinking. Sometimes he worked on his sermon
in his head. Sometimes he just
thought.
Why the fishing
pole, then? His friend said, "Well,
if I just sat here, my people would think I was lazy. If it looks like I'm fishing, that's good
enough for most of my folks." This
was a wise man or at least a man on his way to wisdom.
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