Sunday
26th – Trinity 7 – Proper 12
1 Kings
3:5-12. When asked
what God should give him, Solomon famously requests Wisdom – the most highly
prized attribute for a near Eastern King. Although the narrative describes
Solomon as a child, he may have been around twenty at the time so the
description can also be seen as indicating humility as much as his actual age.
Romans 8:
26-39. The final
part of chapter 8 articulates the fact that all things, meaning the longing
of creation, the activity of the Spirit and even man’s inarticulate cries do
not exist apart from the will of God. God can even use our weakness and turn it
to the good. God, foreknew, predestined, called, justified and glorified. The
point here is not to figure out who is in and who is out but to emphasise that God
is the one who designs and desires our salvation. No human can secure it
and no human can jeopardize it. God decides and God is love and nothing can
separate us from that love.
Matthew
13: 31-33, 44-52. A
collection of parables including the mustard seed and the leaven emphasising
how the gospel will grow from a small base and act almost imperceptibly as an agent
keeping society configured towards the good, and then the parables of the
treasure and the pearl which tell of the incalculable necessity and value of
the gospel. We end with the dragnet which is similar to the wheat and tares
parable from last week and is typically Matthean in its message of threat and
punishment.
It causes a
great deal of anxiety for some Christians that we are such a small percentage
of society as a whole but the parable of the yeast is a powerful corrective to
that view.
Now you
could describe a parable as God’s wisdom distilled into story form and in the
parable just as a small amount of yeast can make the whole loaf rise. In the
same way a few Christians whose lives are oriented towards God can have an
enormous influence on society as a whole.
Yeast isn’t
obvious or even visible but its presence is unmistakable. We would only notice if
it was no longer there at all. Both active and cultural Christians together
contribute to keeping the orientation of society as a whole pointing towards
righteousness and trying to embody God’s wisdom.
This is the
central premise of author Tom Holland’s book “Dominion” that the imprint of
Christian assumptions, culture and worldview lie embedded so deep within
Western culture that we don’t even notice it any more.
We all play
our part contributing to the fabric of society however large or small our individual
contribution may be, and none of us can accurately measure how what or who we
may influence.
But we do
know that as part of the body of Christ all of us are needed to contribute what
we can.
Those of us
who do find and believe that God is in Christ reconciling the world to himself
are like those who have found the pearl of great price. We have stumbled across
and found the truth. The kingdom of God becomes indispensable and eternally necessary
to us and we more consciously embody and advance the way of Love in our lives.
When this happens the influence we have on society as a whole as the leaven,
can develop but we have to use great wisdom in order to do so.
Wisdom is
the greatest attribute we can exercise, and it was wisdom that Solomon asked
for to enable him to carry out his God given role as leader of the Jewish people.
Wisdom is the
good application of experience and knowledge, understanding and insight. Wisdom
can also be a repository of the collective wisdom of groups of people like the
church so we learn and grow by mining the collective wisdom of the church.
So reading
great minds like Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Thomas a Kempis, or Mother Theresa
and many, many, others, for example, one benefits from their great learning and
contemplation of the Bible and reflection on lived experience.
Wisdom has
always been closely associated with God, with whole books like Proverbs,
Ecclesiastes and Job being dedicated to the use and application of Wisdom. And wisdom famously depicted as a
female voice, Sophia, in the Bible describes her association with God at the
dawn of creation in Proverbs and saying how she delights in the human race.
This underlines how important and fundamental is wisdom to the Judeo-Christian
tradition.
Also it says
in proverbs that the beginning of Wisdom is the fear of the Lord, fear in this
case meaning awe and respect and submission to God, so humility is closely
associated with wisdom.
People often
ask what is the way forward for the church in the 21st Century. They
also ask about what they themselves are to do?
In the end,
as a community and as individuals we need to pray for wisdom to act wisely to
be the leaven in our community and network of contacts. Through keeping close
to God we will discern our way forward as it reveals itself to us. At national,
local and individual level I recommend that we pray this wise and simple prayer
written by Amy Carmichael that seeks to build God’s church.
“Holy
Spirit, think through me till your ideas are my ideas”
Put yourself
in God’s way, be open and willing to receive his promptings and His way forward
will make itself apparent.
Amen.
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