Sermon: "Wisdom of the Ages"

The Rev. Maureen R. Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

August 19, 2018 – Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Proverbs 9:1-6; 1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14

“Wisdom of the Ages”

If you could travel back in time and meet your younger self – at any age - what words of wisdom would you have to offer?

A few years ago, the producers of a Canadian radio show called WireTap, assembled a group of strangers of all ages and asked them a similar question.

They were asked, “What word of advice might you have for someone just a few years younger than you are?”

This is how they responded:

“Dear 6-year-old, training wheels are for babies, just let go already” – signed a 7-year-old.

“Dear 8-year-old, find out your babysitter’s weakness, than use it against them.” – signed a 9-year-old.

“Dear 12-year-old, ask her to dance, just trust me on this one.” – signed a 16-year-old.

“Dear 16-year-old, don’t let your mom throw away your Legos.” – signed an 18-year-old.

“Dear 18-year old, go easy on the makeup, you’re not as ugly as you think you are.” - signed a 19-year-old.

“Dear 19-year-old, just because it’s an all you can eat buffet, doesn’t mean you have to eat all you can.” – signed a 20-year-old.

From this point on the advice gets a bit wiser:

Dear 20-year-old, your parents have better interest rates than your credit card.

Dear 21-year-old, if he says he has a weekend home in the suburbs… he’s married.

Dear 24-year-old, that rust protection undercoating is actually a great deal.

Dear 29-year-old, getting laid off can be a blessing in disguise.

Dear 30-year-old, being a starving artist only works if you actually make art.

Dear 32-year-old, always be kind to your family, you’ll need each other when things get tough.

We soon realize that these bits of wisdom have less to do with giving a stranger a bit of advice, and more to do with a longing to go back in time and give ourselves the benefit of what we’ve learned with age and experience.

Whether we’re looking back many years or just one year.

“Dear 36-year-old, stop caring so much about what other people think, they’re not thinking about you at all.” – signed a 47-year-old.

“Dear 47-year-old, a midlife crisis does not look good on you.” – signed a 48-year-old.

Of course, the older we get the more pragmatic we often become.

“Dear 48-year old, always tell the truth, except when it comes to your online dating profile.” - signed a 51-year-old.

“Dear 51-year old, one cat is enough cats.” – signed a 53-year-old.

(I disagree with that one)

As expected, once we pass a certain age, and we begin to recognize that there’s more sand in the bottom of the hourglass than there is left to fall,

our advice to those younger than us takes on a greater sense of urgency.

“Dear 65-year-old, spend all your money now, otherwise your kids are going to do it for you.” – sincerely a 72-year-old.

“Dear 72-year-old, indulge your sweet tooth, you’ll need dentures soon anyway.” – signed an 85-year-old.

“Dear 85-year-old, cultivate younger friends, otherwise yours will all die off.” – signed a 91-year-old.

And finally:

“Dear 91-year-old, don’t listen to other people’s advice, nobody knows what the hell they’re doing.” – signed a 93-year-old.

So, if you could travel back in time and meet your younger self – at any age - what words of wisdom would you have to offer?

We often think of wisdom as being something that takes a lifetime to acquire.

Born out of years of experience, trials and errors, and legitimate bouts of pain and suffering thrown in for good measure.

Because – we assume – one doesn’t become wise without first knowing what it is to be ignorant, and what it feels like to fail.

Wisdom comes from looking back and saying, “If I could do it all over again, I’d do it differently.”

But as this exercise involving strangers offering their younger counterparts advice shows us, we can gain wisdom at any age, and with any experience.
It’s what we do with it that makes us wise.

The Great King, Solomon, did not assume that he was wise before he came to be known as the “Great King Solomon” – he was just 15-years-old when he inherited the throne, and only 20 when he encountered God in the high place at Gibeon.

Yet even at age 20 he had the wisdom to know that great things did not come with power and wealth and longevity, alone.

I would imagine that even at 20, Solomon had been alive long enough to see that ignorance lived in great houses and gilded halls, and in grey and aging eyes that had seen enough of life to know better.

So when God asked him what gift he would like to receive, Solomon chose wisdom.

Some would say it takes a wise man to make such a request in the first place.

Solomon is considered to be a great king.

He built the great Temple in Jerusalem, rebuilt great cites, and presided over great decisions for the good of his people.

 You may know the story of the two mothers who were fighting over an infant, both claiming it as her own. It was Solomon who suggested they cut the baby down the middle and each take a half, knowing that the true mother would be the one who would let go of her claim out of compassion, and allow the child to live.

Solomon was a wise king but he was by no means a perfect king.

When we put him under the microscope of time as we do with many of the “great” people who came before us, we begin to see his flaws, his brokenness, his humanness, the places where he failed to live up to the title of “Great” in some crucial way.  

The Bible famously describes Solomon as having 700 wives and 300 concubines.

That’s a lot of anniversaries and birthdays to remember.

In biblical times, having that many wives and mistresses wasn’t the issue.

The issue was that most of Solomon’s wives were born in other lands and he permitted them to continue to worship their own native gods.

He even built temples honoring those gods for his wives to worship in.

As they say…happy wife, happy life.

But Solomon, as we’re told in 1 Kings, was more than a bit ambivalent about which god he himself worshiped on any given day.

It is Solomon’s idolatry and lack of loyalty to the one True God that is ultimately blamed for the split between the Northern and Southern Kingdoms of Israel, in which the 12 tribes went there separate ways, never to be united again.

It’s important to note that the 1^st and 2^nd books of Kings that we have in our Bible were both written when the Israelites were being held in captivity in Babylon, some 500 years after Solomon lived and died.

These stories are the result of a people enduring a great suffering and looking back in time in search of a reason or cause for that great suffering.

The stories contained in the 1^st and 2^nd books of Kings are for the most part one successive tale after another of human kings doing very human things – idolatry, adultery, thievery – the subtitle could be “Men Behaving Badly” – with the ultimate result being the entire Kingdom of Israel paying the price for relying on the wisdom and guidance of human rulers rather than the one divine ruler.

In the cause and effect world in which our ancestors lived it was natural for them to assume that their current predicament as prisoners of war was caused by their people’s unwillingness to follow God’s will.

In many ways they were right.

But it wasn’t God’s wrath that set them on the path of destruction, it was the turmoil of the time, and the inability of each successive generation to learn from the mistakes of the previous one.

Each new King was just as flawed as the previous King, and most chose to rule not relying on wisdom and a desire to do what is right and just, but instead relied on their own desire for power and wealth.

When we hear these ancient stories we may wonder how they might be of use to us today.

How is this story revealing a truth about the world we live in?

And how is it making a promise to us – about the future that is yet to come?

The truth about our world that we find in 1 Kings is that flawed and self-focused leaders are not a product of our modern times.

As long as we’ve been putting humans on pedestals and at podiums and in pulpits, there have been those who relish the power it gives them and who are guided not by wisdom and the desire to speak truthfully and act justly, but rather by the desire to retain their power at all costs.

The truth we find here is that we human beings continue to make the same mistakes.

The promise we find here is that we can break that cycle by emulating the young Solomon - and seeking wisdom over all else.

The knowledge of right and wrong is something that we learn at an early age, but it can take us so much longer to understand that choosing what is right, and just, is what is best for all of us in the long run.

It’s our shortsightedness and our self-centeredness that causes us to choose otherwise.

Solomon may have stumbled in his later years, in a big way,

Rather than growing wiser, he grew more cynical and more hard-hearted,

but he is still a worthy example of the way God can come into our life at any age to nurture the wisdom we have been given and encourage us to use it to grow in our capacity to live in relationship with each other and with God.

We can become wise – at age 20, at age 40, at age 60, at age 80 –and still have whole lot of unwise moments in between.

The point is that we keep seeking wisdom.

That we keep seeking God in every encounter, and in every choice that needs to be made, and asking ourselves what is right – what is just – what is good?

Not just for ourselves, but for all.

If 60-year-old Solomon could go back in time and speak with 20-year-old Solomon, I wonder what he would say.

I wonder who would have words of advice for whom?

What words of advice would our younger self have for us?

What wisdom have we left behind?

Thanks be to God, and Amen.