St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD
August 15, 2021
Year B: The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14
Psalm 111
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58
The Gift of Wisdom
When I was first ordained, one of the new things I had to get used to was the priest uniform.
When I am out and about in my black shirt and white collar, it’s kind of like I’m wearing a sign that reads “Professional Christian.”
And, as you’d guess, people respond to that in all sorts of ways.
Sometimes people will just give me a second look, or the side-eye.
Other times I’ll get a smirk or an eye roll.
And, occasionally my uniform will encourage people to approach me.
Sometimes these encounters are profoundly meaningful and beautiful, like when total strangers will tell me about their hardest struggles or most cherished hopes, and ask me to remember them in my prayers, or sometimes they ask me to pray for them or to give them a blessing, right then and there on the sidewalk or in a store.
What a privilege, right?
But, other times, these encounters can be unsettling, like when an unbalanced person latches on to me, going on and on about their peculiar beliefs or even delusions.
Anyway, being approached by strangers is part of my job, and by now I’m pretty used to it.
I assumed things would be about the same here in Owings Mills. But, actually, for the first couple of weeks when I wore my collar in restaurants or stores not a single person came up to me, or even seemed to recognize or acknowledge my uniform.
But then, last week I was in my usual lunch spot – Panera Bread – waiting to pick up my order, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a young man making a beeline for me. He looked intense, buzzing with lots of energy, and so I braced myself.
“You a priest?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Catholic?”
“No.”
“Then what are you?”
“I’m an Episcopal priest.”
That made no impression at all, but then he launched into a monologue about his “favorite angel,” - you guessed it: Lucifer. He went on for quite a while offering a mix of things he had picked up from scripture and other stuff that he got from who knows where.
No surprise, everyone else at Panera gave us a wide berth.
And then he suddenly stopped the Lucifer talk. He looked at me and said:
“I’m descended from Ignatius of Loyola.”
Now, I think I have a pretty good poker face, but I must have had a look of surprise at this unexpected twist.
He nodded and went on to say that he hadn’t taken a DNA test or anything like that, but, yeah, he was a descendent of St. Ignatius.
With that, maybe satisfied that he finally got a reaction from me, he abruptly took off and left me to my lunch.
Now, thanks to the local university, you’re probably familiar with the name “Loyola,” but maybe you don’t know about Ignatius of Loyola, the 16th century founder of the Society of Jesus, the Roman Catholic religious order commonly known as the Jesuits, the order that founded Loyola Maryland, Georgetown, and many other schools, including my high school alma mater, St. Peter’s Prep.
That was where I first learned about Ignatius and I’ve been interested in him ever since – so you can understand that my Panera friend really threw me.
There’s a lot we could say about Ignatius but all I want to say for now is that he was deeply interested in spiritual discernment. In fact, along with the Jesuits, Ignatius’ greatest legacy is a book called The Spiritual Exercises. It’s a kind of manual that to this day many people still use to help them see God at work in their lives, to better discern God’s will for our lives.
I’ll come back to Ignatius, but now let’s turn to today’s Old Testament lesson.
If you’ve been here the past couple of weeks you know that we’ve been talking about King David and his super-dysfunctional family.
In today’s lesson we fast-forward to the end of David’s life and the succession of his son, Solomon. You won’t be surprised to know that this was not exactly a smooth transfer of power but, nevertheless, Solomon is now king.
In today’s lesson, we hear about Solomon’s dream in which the Lord says to the new and inexperienced king, “Ask what I should give you.”
That’s quite an open-ended invitation, but to his credit, Solomon doesn’t ask for all the material things that a lesser person might want. Instead, he’s well aware of the awesome responsibility that has been placed on his shoulders – and not feeling qualified or ready, Solomon asks for an “understanding mind” – actually the original Hebrew can also be translated as a “listening heart.”
If you think about it, all of these terms – discernment, an understanding mind, a listening heart – are all different ways of saying the same thing – it’s what Solomon is forever most associated with: wisdom.
Even as a young king, Solomon is already wise enough to know what he doesn’t know, wise enough to know what he really needs: wisdom.
And, we’re told that God is so pleased by this request that not only does Solomon receive the gift of wisdom, but God also throws in riches and honor and long life.
The gift of wisdom.
These days, we don’t hear too much about wisdom, do we?
In fact, wisdom sounds almost old-fashioned and out of reach. I mean, when it comes to our leaders, forget about wisdom, most of us would be happy with just basic competence and human decency, right?
But, I don’t need to tell you that today we are beset with many problems and challenges – including the resurging pandemic, catastrophic climate change, the disintegration of Afghanistan after the sacrifice of so much blood and treasure, and a wobbly republic here at home, and the list goes on.
So, it seems to me that our leaders and all of us need to quickly rediscover wisdom – like Solomon and Ignatius and so many others in the past, we need to pray for the gift of wisdom.
You know, when our earliest Christian ancestors first began reflecting on Jesus – who he was and what his life, death, and resurrection mean for the world – they concluded that not only was Jesus a teacher of wisdom, but, in fact Jesus is the wisdom of God.
Jesus is the Gift of the Wisdom.
And, in today’s gospel lesson Jesus the Gift of Wisdom says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
Obviously, this is in part a throwback to the manna given to the Israelites in the wilderness and it’s also looking ahead to Holy Communion, the Bread of Life that we receive here.
But, it’s more than that. Eating the living bread of Jesus is not just something we do once a week. No, eating the living bread of Jesus is patterning our lives as best we can on Jesus – and when we do that – when we grow as close as we can to Jesus – when we allow Jesus to grow close to us – well, since Jesus is the gift of wisdom, then we ourselves will receive the gift of wisdom.
And, to know what that might look like, let’s return just for a minute to Ignatius of Loyola.
He was a Basque, born into minor nobility in northern Spain. As a young man, like most of the young men of his time, place, and class, he was caught up in the dreams and vanity of chivalry – to be a knight – to court beautiful women (I’m not sure if he has descendants among us, but who knows?), and, most of all, Ignatius wanted to gain military glory.
But, Ignatius was severely wounded in battle and during his long and painful convalescence, as he read the Bible and a book about the saints, God began to convert his interests from worldly glory to giving glory to God.
Ignatius began to pattern his life after Jesus – giving and not counting the cost – gathering other likeminded people around him - and helping many discern God’s will, and receive the gift of wisdom.
And now, today, before it’s too late, we need to rediscover wisdom - we need to pray for the gift of wisdom, for understanding minds and listening hearts.
And, since Jesus is the gift of wisdom, that means we need to pattern our lives on Jesus – loving our neighbors, all of them, including the people we may not like or even trust – giving away our lives in loving service to the many people all around us who are hungry for the Good Bread, bread that’s way more satisfying than what’s for sale at Panera.
In a long ago dream, God said to Solomon, “Ask what I should give you.”
Now, today, in our time of trouble, God is making the same offer to us.
Like Solomon and Ignatius, may we ask God for the gift of wisdom.
Amen.
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