“THE PLIGHT OF INSIGHT”
OT Lesson and Sermon
Text: Proverbs 3: 1-12
NT Lesson: Philippians 2: 3-6
Dr. Matthew Brown
In the pre-Wal Mart Era
before Staples became much more than a box from Bostich; when metallic was not
a crayon color and gel was used to sculpt hair and not to sign your name; when
August meant nothing more than swimming, sweating, complaints of boredom, and
cloudy reruns of Gilligan’s Island on a black and white TV with rabbit ears
accented with aluminum foil, we knew September was near when mom would load us
up in the Country Squire Wagon and take us downtown where we would enter stores
long since boarded up, and shop for
school supplies, shoes devoid of any swooshes, and no name jeans with
reinforced knees - Levis seemed so exotic to me and shorts were not allowed by
the school board.
School supplies. Our desire not to return to school was
momentarily forgotten because of the possibility of brand new Big Chief
Tablets, rulers, erasers, scissors, oversized pencils, Elmer’s glue, and maybe,
just maybe if mom was in a beneficent mood, a box of 64 Crayola crayons with
the sharpener in the back. Who needs
brown when you can use burnt umber? In
the small struggling office supply store with the creaky worn wooden floors
where there was no need to number the aisles because there were only three of
them, my sister and I would wander up and down looking at file folders, pencil
sharpeners, three ring binders, and various desk accessories covered with a few
year’s dust because they had not yet found a home. The ring of the cash register and the
beckoning of my mom meant that school was that much closer.
As a parent I sometimes
forget how intimidating that first day of school can be. Do you remember that first year that your
parents did not escort you and hold your hand as you searched out your new
classroom? Do you remember the fear of
not being able to open your locker in middle school? Do you remember how small you felt as a high
school freshman? Do you remember
watching your family drive out of the dorm parking lot?
Yet, year after year we
entered those hallowed halls of our alma maters, sent in the hope that there we
would grow in wisdom, stature, and understanding. And we made great progress. Dr. Seuss.
Cursive writing. Fractions. State
Capitols. Memorizing the Constitution’s
Preamble. Parallelograms. The New Deal.
Wisdom. Stature.
Understanding. We’ve come a long
way, but maybe not as far as we think.
And that’s the problem. There is
an arrogance that buds in adolescence and comes into full bloom in
adulthood. At first, we think we know
more than our parents, and then a little later, we’re just sure that we
do. We begin questioning all figures of
authority. We stop idolizing teachers
and begin ridiculing them. We doubt the
motives of those who would counsel us on our walk through life. We ignore God.
O, we pay homage and offer
lip service. But when Sunday becomes
Monday, the one voice we honor is our own.
Striking a pose of defiant independence, looking with suspicion, and
maybe arrogance upon those to whom worship, prayer, and humble service seem a
bit too important, there develops a chasm between the Lord of all life and
family decisions; between the Sovereign God of all Creation and vocational choices;
between Fairest Lord Jesus and that on which you depend to see you through
another day.
“Trust in the Lord with all
your heart, and do not rely on your own insight,” the Proverb pleads. “In all your ways acknowledge him, and he
will make straight your paths.” The
teacher admonishes the student to trust in Yahweh, not himself, and to come to
know God in the experiences of the day, the experiences along life’s pathway.
“How was your day?” It is the question asked by spouses, parents,
and friends that usually elicits such eloquent answers as “Fine.” “Nothing Special.” “Okay.” “Busy.” Or some combination of a groan and a
sigh.
Author Dorothy Bass says the
question often throws her. The day has
passed in a whirl and she has to grope for an answer. “Not bad,” she replies vaguely. How was my day? Most days, I forget to notice. How true that is for so many of us? We go through the motions but we do not
necessarily rejoice in the day that the Lord hath made. Bass says that so often, “a day is lost to
smallness. Patched together from
obligations, then shredded by interruptions, it disintegrates into fragments
that blow away in the wind. I am left
empty-handed and exposed, unable to answer a simple question. How was your day? I can’t really say. I don’t really know.”
But she says she knows a
mother who has a different way of asking the same question. “As she tucks her children into bed each
night, their teeth brushed and their hair still damp from the bathtub, she asks
them a question: “Where did you meet God
today?” And they tell her, one by
one: a teacher helped me, there was a
homeless person in the park, I saw a tree with lots of flowers in it. She tells them where she met God, too. Before the children drop off to sleep, the
stuff of this day has become the substance of their prayer. With a simple question, a day that could have
been lost becomes a prayer.” “Trust in
the Lord . . . and not in your own insight.”
What is the stuff of your day
and where does God visit you in it? Or
are we so caught up in our own insight that we miss it? Seeking so diligently to create and acquire,
we completely miss what God has created and given to us. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and
do not rely on your own insight. In all
your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”
O, but how easy it is to fall
off that path, led away by a pride that doesn’t like to expose any
vulnerability or weakness; led away by a pride that thinks strength is more
about aggression than compassion; led away by a pride that finds more insight
in the Wall Street Journal than in the Psalms or Luke or Romans. Rely not on your own insight? Why that goes against the proclivity of every
fiber of our being!
Have you ever watched one of
those testosterone rich reality shows that follow young sailors through the
training to become a Navy SEAL? I sat
there in awe as I watched the drill instructors pound every bit of energy and
pride and self worth out of them.
Sleeplessness. Hypothermia. Physical, mental, and emotional
exhaustion. Radical exercises that may
not take them to death’s doorway, but at the least, show them the address. And it is all carefully designed to show them
that if they want to survive in that community, they cannot, must not, shall not
rely on their own insight. They must let
go. They must absorb what they are
taught. Watching the sailors struggle
and often fail or wash out was a powerful lesson in how tightly we hold on to
our insight.
Yes, our insight has brought
us many things. We have learned how to
split the atom, but we also learned how to destroy one another with the
technology.
The college graduate
triumphantly walks across the stage pumping her fist as a way of proclaiming to
the masses, “Look what I’ve done! Watch
out world! Here I come!” So proud.
So wise. So completely oblivious
to how dependent she was upon others to reach that stage. So utterly unprepared for a vast array of
life issues before her. Love. Relationship.
Purpose. Meaning. Compassion.
Forgiveness. They didn’t cover
that in the Physics or Graphic Design Class, did they?
“Trust in the Lord with all
your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will
make straight your paths.”
Will Willimon relates his
encounter with a member of a church he was pastoring. He says the boy had just returned from his
first year of college. He appeared at
Willimon’s study to tell him that he would not be attending church while he was
home over the summer (If you think about it, it’s rather thoughtful. Folks usually don’t give any warning. They just stop showing up.)
When Willimon asked why, the
student told him, “Well, you see I have been doing a lot of thinking about
religion while I was at college, and I have come to the conclusion that there
is not much to this religion thing. I
have found out that I don’t need the church to get by.”
Willimon just said, “That’s
interesting.”
This wasn’t what the boy
expected, and so he asked Willimon, “Aren’t you worried? I thought you would go through the roof when
I told you.”
Willimon tells us that he had
known this college student for about five years, had baptized him a couple of
years earlier as he made a profession of faith, and had watched him grow during
his high school years. The boy had come
from a difficult family situation and the church had become very involved with
him and had a hand in making it possible for him to go to college.
Willimon said to the boy,
“No, I’m interested, but not overly concerned.
I’ll be watching to see if you can pull it off.”
The boy, somewhat perplexed
asked, “What do you mean ‘pull it off’?
I don’t understand. I’m
nineteen. I can decide to do anything I
want to do, can’t I?”
Willimon answered, “When I
was nineteen I thought I was ‘on my own,’ too.
I’m saying that I’m not so sure you will be able to get away with this,”
“Why not,” the increasingly
confused student asked.
“Well, for one thing, you’re
baptized.”
“So what does that have to do
with anything?”
“Well, you try forsaking it,
rejecting it, forgetting about it, and maybe you’ll find out,” Willimon
suggested.
The boy said, “I can’t figure
out what being baptized has to do with me.”
To which, Willimon said, “For
one thing, there are people here who care about you. They made promises to God when you were
baptized. You try not showing up around
here this summer, and they will be nosing around, asking you what you are doing
with your life, what kind of grades you made last semester, what you’re doing
with yourself. Then there’s also God. No telling what God might try with you. From what I’ve seen of God, once he has
claimed you, you don’t get off the hook so easily. God is relentless in claiming what is
his. And, in baptism, God says you
belong to him.”
Well, the boy shook his head,
perplexed by this strange, unreasonable brand of ecclesiastical reasoning and
more or less stumbled out the office door.
In a week or so, Willimon says the student was back at his usual place
on the second pew. The baptizers had
done their work. Our possessive God had
claimed what was still his. Whether we
live, or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.
One of the great graces in life is when we discover we’re not as smart
as we think we are, when we realize the insight of the Other is clearer than
our own.
After all the crayons,
spelling tests, progress reports, essays, term papers, blue-book examinations,
graduation ceremonies, and slaps on the back, where will we learn life’s most
important lessons? Here, gathered at the
cross. The key, Paul says, is to “Have
this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was
in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be
grasped.” Jesus would encourage others
down that same path when he said, “He who loses his life for my sake will find
it.”
Sometimes the secret in life
is not so much having confidence in what you have learned, as it is in
confessing all that you do not know.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own
insight.” The highest grade; the
greatest honor; the most advanced degree.
Nothing will exceed the value of this lesson. In this August heat as the cash registers
begin to whir, ringing up pencils, protractors, lap-top computers, and maybe
even that new box of 120 crayons, may God grant us ears to hear and hearts to
receive the lessons that are most important.
Amen.
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