James
1:5-7
September
9, 2018
If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all
generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. But ask in faith,
never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and
tossed by the wind; for the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in
every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.
Brother
James begins by saying, “If any of you is lacking...” I think that’s
remarkable, for a lot of people I know don’t seem to be lacking very much.
The surplus becomes obvious before a
birthday or Christmas. What do you give as a gift to the person who already has
everything? Good question. They don’t need another toaster nor another pair of
shoes. They seem to have everything they need.
It’s a question in my house, where
we already have plenty of things. We don’t lack anything. In recent years, we
have considered the giving of experiential gifts. Like a trip to the zoo, or a visit
to a concert, or something where we can come alongside the people we love and experience
something together. They don't need more possessions. What they need, what they
want, is a relationship, and part of my life journey is to provide that.
What do you give to the person who
has everything? And if you are the person who has everything, for what should
you ask?
This is a very important question
for people who live in the town like this. They can afford, or pretend to
afford, the property values. Many have held positions of authority. They travel
widely and go to extraordinary destinations. A number of them have excellent
educations and have attained astonishing accomplishments in their well-storied
lives. Take a look at those who are capable and strong? What might they be
lacking?
James says this is a matter for
prayer. We ask God for the things that we lack. We pray to God, asking for what
we do not have within ourselves.
I think of the man who had a short
conversation with the Lord. “God,” he said, “what is a million years to someone
eternal like you?” And God said, “To me, a million years is but a second.” The
man said, “God, what are a million dollars to someone as great as you?” And God
replied, “A million dollars is but a penny.” So the man thought for a minute
and said, “God, may I have a penny?” God said, “Sure, just a second.”
If any of you is lacking anything,
ask God.
But you and I what are we lacking?
Especially for those of us who are capable and strong, who have so much?
In the first scripture lesson, we
hear about King Solomon, a man who had it all, at least on the surface. He had
all the money of the kingdom, he had a palace, and, according to the storyteller,
he had 700 wives and a significant number of women on the side (1 Kings 11:3). He
was a busy guy. But he didn't have it all. So one night in a dream he prays for
wisdom. For wisdom! Somehow in a dream, he sensed, that even with everything he
had, wisdom was the one thing he lacked.
My Grandma Carter was one of the
wisest people I ever met. She had a brilliant mind, in a time when country
people in northwestern Pennsylvania didn't send their daughters to college.
They simply couldn't afford it. So she stayed home, married Grandpa, produced nine
children, canned her own tomatoes, and cooked her own food. She lived modestly.
One day I called and offered to take
her to lunch. I was going to drive across the state to see her, so I asked, “Where
would you like to go to eat?” She was thrilled and said, “Let's go to Long John
Silver's!” Grandma didn't get out much, but she never missed a trick. Such an
extremely wise observer of life!
As we dined over fried shrimp and
hush puppies, she told me the story of a local man who had it all. He had operated
carnival rides for a living, she said, who dreamed of winning the Super 7
lottery. Every payday, he would stop by the local gas station to buy a stack of
lottery tickets. Whatever was left of the paycheck went home for his family.
One day, when he was down to $2.46 in his back account, he pawned a ring for
$40, spent it all on lottery tickets, and hit the jackpot. The prize was sixteen
million dollars. His eyes were circling around in opposite directions.
When he caught his breath, he
started making some decisions about his life. He quit the part-time, bought an
old mansion, hired a contractor to fix
it up so he could live high on a hill overlooking the small town where he
lived. He bought a liquor license, a lease on a Florida restaurant, and a used
car lot. Then he bought a twin engine plane, even though he didn’t have a pilot’s
license. Within three months of his first lottery payment, he was half a
million dollars in debt. Grandma said that’s when things started going south
for him.
He was living with his sixth wife,
until he fired a rifle at her Pontiac Firebird. His landlady sued him for a
portion of the lottery proceeds, since she had purchased tickets for him and he
had promised her a piece of the winnings. His brother was arrested for trying
to kill him, having learned that the new millionaire had removed him from his
will. The mansion fell to pieces; there was plywood nailed over the windows, an
old car up on cinder blocks in a weed-covered front yard, a swimming pool filed
with construction debris, and dandelions growing out of the cracks of his brick
driveway.[1]
I asked my grandmother, “How could
that happen to a man who had it all?” She said he didn't have it all. “He won
the lottery,” she said, “but he didn't have any sense.” She shook her head sadly
and said, “What a fool!” That's how the Bible describes people, as my
grandmother would say, who don’t have sense. It’s a four letter word: f-o-o-l.
The Bible speaks in at least three
different voices. There's the salvation voice, which reminds us of what
God has done to forgive our sins and to release us from a hundred different
kinds of slavery. There is the prophetic voice, which calls us back to covenant
life, to love God and love neighbor by stepping away from our long-established
bad habits and forms of selfishness. And there is the wisdom voice that
instructs us in how to live. The Book of Proverbs, the Christian letter from
James, and significant teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount all speak
in the voice of holy wisdom.
Wisdom is something that we ask of
God, because we don't naturally have it. Wisdom comes as a gift from God. There
are ways to attain it. We can pay attention to the ways of nature and begin to
discern the ways that God governs the world. So the sage of scripture will say,
“Go to the ant and consider her ways.” She works hard, she builds big, she
accomplishes much.
Or the sage can begin to understand
human life, in both its achievements and its failures, by comparing our experiences
to what is observed in the world. As brother James will say, “The human tongue
is a forest fire raging out of control.” Anybody doubt the truth of that?
So it is incumbent on all of us, particularly
those of us who have so much, to ask God for what we naturally do not have. “If
anybody is lacking, let them pray to God for wisdom.” For wisdom! Not merely
for knowledge, but for wisdom. Not merely for facts, but for the understanding
that lies beneath them all.
Soren Kierkegaard, the cranky old
Dane, sat outside of the local cathedral and watched people. He made a
livelihood out of observation. His diploma was in people watching.
In one of his books, he tells about
a crazy man who escaped from the lunatic asylum. He had no business being out
on the streets, and he knew it. He was insane. But he decided to disguise
himself as a normal citizen, and put on a coat. Behind the coat, he had a small
children’s ball tucked inside the lining of the coat. To appear normal, he
decided to walk around the city square, and every time the ball would bound on
his hind corners, he would say something true. And the fact that he repeated: “The
earth is round . . . the earth is round.”
Pretty soon, his insanity was
detected and he was taken back to the asylum.
Facts
are important. My goodness, facts are important. But it’s not enough to know
facts. Wisdom is comprehending the relationships. It’s understanding how facts
fit together.
One
of the saddest moments we can know is to sit beside the person who used to understand,
but now does not. I had a friend who suffered a brain injury and resided for a
time in a hospital in Allentown. He had been in a bike accident, taking a
serious spill without a helmet, and now couldn’t comprehend what he was doing, or
the consequences of what he was doing, or where he was, or how to relate to the
people in his family. It was a frightening diagnosis. He had to be cared for as
a 53-year-old child who would never mature.
It
became a parable for me, not of a tragic physical ailment, but of an even more
tragic spiritual ailment: the complete absence of wisdom. Or as Grandma Carter
called it, “He didn’t have any sense.” She never had a college degree, but she
was very wise.
So
we are going to talk about wisdom for the next five Sunday, if only because we
have the book of Proverbs, the letter of James, and all kinds of biblical
material that declare wisdom is a gift from God. Wisdom is what spins the
planets and makes God’s universe function. Wisdom is what pushes us into
ministry to the world and service to the neighborhood. Wisdom is one of the
ways that church has spoken of Jesus: he is the “Wisdom of God,” the Word, the
Logos, the integrating center of all things.
And
if anybody lacks wisdom, let them pray to God, and God who is generous will
give it.
Maybe
you heard about the man who was hungry, so he found a loaf of bread and ate it.
He was still hungry, so he found another loaf of bread and he ate it. But he
was still hungry, so he found a third loaf of bread and he ate it. Alas, he was
still hungry. So he found a pretzel, ate the pretzel, and he wasn’t hungry any
more. And he said to himself, “Silly me, I should have eaten the pretzel in the
first place.”
Do
you know what he was lacking? He was lacking something more than food.
Or
that church about twenty miles south of here. They had a new minister who
noticed some teenagers sitting on the steps of the church building. Rather than
chase them away, he bought a bag of Doritos, went out and sat with the kids,
passed around the Doritos, and talked with them. Then he said, “Let’s do this
again. How about next Friday?”
Next
Friday comes, he had two bags of Doritos, and meets a larger group of kids.
They talk, they laugh, they tell him about school. One of them has a
skateboard, so he says, “Can you show me what you do with that?” It was
impressive, so he says, “Can you show me how to do that?” Next Friday, they agree
to all meet again.
Every
Friday night, the group gathers on the church steps. They bring their friends.
The minister says to his church leaders, “I think we have a youth group. Let’s
bring them inside.” The leaders, who are up in years, are stunned but they
agree. Pretty soon, every Friday night, the place is hopping. Somebody is over
there, giving guitar lessons. The minister starts a little Bible study and some
are interested. There’s pizza now, and root beer floats.
He
convinces the church leaders to come by, see what’s happening, get to know the
kids. The leaders are impressed, and they find some money to help hire a
part-time youth leader to help him out. It becomes the talk of the town. The
kids move into an unused Sunday School room, claim it as their own.
Then,
one day, one of the church leaders says, “Hate to bring this up, but there was
a mess left in the kitchen. Must have been one of those kids.” Somebody else
says, “There was mud on the bathroom floor. I think it was one of those kids.” Then
the finance committee meets and says, “The budget is tight, we can’t afford our
youth staff person,” and they trim that line from the budget. The minister
objects, but nobody is listening. Someone else says, “When those kids are here,
it’s so loud and noisy. They make a racket.” So the decree came: the kids have
to go back outside. The pastor starts thinking that he might be serving the
wrong church.
About
a month later, somebody says to the minister, “Whatever happened to those kids
who used to be hanging around here?”
You
see why wisdom is such an important Bible word, even for the person who has it
all? Because the absence of wisdom is foolishness, and foolishness will kill
you.
Remember
what Brother James has to say? If
any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and
ungrudgingly, and it will be given you.
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
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