Desiring wisdom

1 Kings 3:5-12

5 At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night, and God said, “Ask what I should give you.” 6 And Solomon said, “You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant my father David because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart toward you, and you have kept for him this great and steadfast love and have given him a son to sit on his throne today. 7 And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. 8 And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted. 9 Give your servant, therefore, an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil, for who can govern this great people of yours?”

      10 It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. 11 God said to him, “Because you have asked this and have not asked for yourself long life or riches or for the life of your enemies but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, 12 I now do according to your word. Indeed, I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you, and no one like you shall arise after you.

Matthew 13:31-35, 44,53

31 He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; 32 it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”

      33 He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”

34 Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing. 35 This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet:

“I will open my mouth to speak in parables;    I will proclaim what has been hidden since the foundation.”

        44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and reburied; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

       45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; 46 on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

47 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; 48 when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. 49 So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous 50 and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

       51 “Have you understood all this?” They answered, “Yes.” 52 And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” 53 When Jesus had finished these parables, he left that place.

God came to Solomon and asked him what he wanted?  Solomon responds by expressing his awareness of, perhaps even insecurity or anxiousness about, the fact that, though young, he bears the great responsibility of ruling God’s people.  He asks God for the ability to govern well, for an understanding mind to discern between good and evil.   God is pleased that Solomon has asked for wisdom - that he has asked for that which will bless others, which produces righteousness - rather than what will merely benefit him.  Because Solomon desires what is good, God grants that as well as those things which Solomon might’ve been expected to ask for but did not.  “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you”.

A couple of things: Solomon is, of course, famous for his wisdom and, as the passage reveals, we are to understand his wisdom as a gift from God.  At the same time, we also must see that his desire for wisdom is itself wisdom.  He sees how little he understands, how limited his capacity.  There’s no greater sign of wisdom than an awareness of how little you know - humility about the extent of your understanding.  Wise people have a sense of the shape of their ignorance, the contours of what is unknown.  It is the fools who presume to understand, who don’t know what they don’t know.  The more you know, the more you realize how little you know.  We live in a world in which conspiracy theories abound, and while this owes to many factors, perhaps the greatest is  sheer ignorance about how the world actually works.  To the fool everything is simple. 

It’s no accident that Jesus taught in parables, not because they were easy to understand, but exactly because often they were not (last Sunday we saw the disciples seeking clarification about the parable of the weeds and the wheat).   If you struggle to see the point Jesus is making, that’s probably a healthier place than confidence you’ve got it figured out. Jesus deliberately chose to teach in such a way that his meaning was elusive, that it was only accessible to those who had the right disposition of heart and mind, who acknowledged the limits of their knowledge, who continually seek for the meaning to be revealed more and more.  I have been guilty (and probably still am) of assuming that I know what the meaning of the parable is, and I know this because I have also discovered (or had revealed) yet deeper, more resonant meaning in them.  The truth of Jesus’ parables is, for us, inexhaustible; if we assume that our understanding is adequate then we can be certain it is not.  If we consider ourselves wise then we can be certain we are not.  The wise continually seek yet more wisdom.   

Many of us are quite familiar with forms of Christianity which emphasize the importance of doctrinal precision, of getting the facts about God right.  And while that is certainly not unimportant, nevertheless it’s worth noting that the way Christianity is presented often reveals quite different pedagogical assumptions than those Jesus himself evidently presumed.  If he had wanted to impart all the correct propositional truths about God - if he’d wanted to teach like a systematic theology textbook - presumably he could’ve done so, but he instead predominantly taught in parables and stories.  I think we should not regard this as merely incidental to the nature of what if he taught, as if the method of teaching is indifferent to the message.  The truth is conveyed much more effectively in a story than in bullet points.   And more thing: Jesus talked a lot about the kingdom of God, and faithfulness to Jesus as we talk about our faith or share the Good News should reflect that emphasis.  

This is admittedly speculative, but I imagine that Jesus wanted to teach in such a way that we could not so easily convince ourselves that know everything we need to know.  The wise among us will constantly be wrestling with the meaning of his parables; they will not presume to possess understanding but rather seek wisdom more and more.  The temptation is to tell yourself that you grasp the parable, and having grasped the point, you can discard the parable and hold onto it’s meaning, that it has nothing left to teach you.  But that is… unwise 

The question for us is more or less the same that Solomon faced: What do you want most of all?  Is it long life, or riches, or the downfall of your enemies?  It it security, or comfort, or an escape from stress and anxiety?  Solomon made the best choice, and it’s worth asking if we do the same.  Do you desire wisdom?  Very few people (though there are some!) are anti-wisdom, but to what extent are you pro-wisdom?  Are you content with your understanding of things?   Would you rather just not think about the possibility that you’re wisdom isn’t state of the art?  Is it easier to simply go along with “conventional” wisdom even when if you’re not entirely convinced, even if it leads to a dead end?  Or do you long for more?   

Longing for greater wisdom is not the same thing as longing for more knowledge, more information, for the very obvious reason that you can know lots of stuff and still be a fool.  Education is undoubtedly correlated to wisdom, but it is not the same thing.  The pursuit of knowledge can often just be the pursuit of power for its own sake, but the only power worth having is that which can be exercised wisely.  Solomon desired wisdom so that he might govern wisely, that he might be an agent of justice/righteousness for all people. 

It’s worth remembering too that Solomon finally ended up in folly.   Like so many powerful men before and after, he used it for access to lots of women, and like many wise men in the history of the recent history of the church / academic theology, he may very well have convinced himself that his wisdom elevated him above the usual considerations that govern normal people.  If you start to believe that you are wise, you might get shown otherwise.  

Solomon’s heart got led astray; he no longer desired God more than anything else.  Which means that, whatever me may have thought, he no longer desired wisdom.  You do not attain perfect wisdom any more than you reach perfect knowledge of or communion with God, in this life anyway.  The desire for wisdom is ultimately the desire for God, even if the seeker doesn’t realize what they truly seek.  God is the source and goal of all wisdom; God is wisdom as such.   All wisdom leads us to God, and there is no true wisdom that can lead us away.  It bears repeating, there’s a lot that passes for wisdom these days that’s just nonsense, or worse, and just because something is presented as wise doesn’t mean that we should receive it as such.  But it’s also the case that any true wisdom, however trivial or profound, wherever we find it, ultimately points to God.  

One way of describing the purpose of Christian worship that here we gather to proclaim and (re)orient ourselves to the reality that “the wisdom of this world is foolishness [to] God”, for here…

“we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”  

I think for many of us, whether we’ve been Christian our whole lives or whether we’re just curious about that this faith might be, it can be hard to know what to do with the admonition to seek God.  It can seem hard to know where to begin, how you would even go about it.  But seeking wisdom just might make more sense to us.  Those who seek will find, and those who desire wisdom might be surprised that what they find is Christ crucified.