The Gift of Wisdom: Part 2
Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.
We are talking about the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. In 1st Corinthians chapter 12;7-11, St. Paul speaks about the gifts of the Holy Spirit as manifestation of the life of God in the midst of the congregation. He says: “To one is given the utterance of wisdom.”
The last time we were together we spoke of the gift of wisdom as “the knowledge of things human and divine and their causes.”
There are two kinds of wisdom, human and Divine, and God is the author of both.
There is one kind of knowledge called human knowledge or wisdom. This is the wisdom that all human beings can discover using our 5 senses provided we are willing to sit with humility at the feet of the facts. We are talking about the truth of God’s revelation as it comes to us through the natural world. We are talking about the kind of truth that you can discover through the lens of a telescope or a microscope. We are talking about the kind of wisdom that is taught where ever truth is honored.
When we say what goes up must come down, we are recognizing the law of Gravity, a law that God put into place when God created “the heavens and the earth.” The law of Gravity is true in all its particulars, because God made it so.
Do you remember Roy G. Biv from first year science in Junior High? When we say that Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet (Roy G. Biv) are primary colors, we are confessing that Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet are the colors we can see when we use a prism to break up the white light. Red, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet, are always and truly primary colors because God made it so.
There are some people who don’t trust the natural order. I remember reading the autobiography of Ansel Adams, the 20th Century Photographer, who is world famous for his dramatic black and white photographs of the American west. Adams was an innately religious man. In discussing his work, he constantly referred to God and God’s creation. Yet, at least for a time, he was lost to the Christian faith. It happened like this. He was being tutored in Latin and Greek by a Fundamentalist preacher. One day he returned to home in San Francisco from a scouting expedition on which he had seen a number of real dinosaur bones. With stars in his eyes, he told his teacher about what he had seen. His teacher replied, “Do not be deceived young man. God did not make dinosaurs, but dinosaur bones, to hide in the earth, to lead astray the non-elect.” That story is still making the rounds. Years ago, one of the young people of our church who is now in college came to me and asked, “Pastor Green, did God make dinosaurs or dinosaur bones?” I responded at once that God made dinosaurs, and she immediately agreed with me. She was not seeking my counsel. She was putting me to the test! She wanted to know if I could keep up with her elementary school teachers!
As Moravians we are allowed to be as smart as elementary school teachers and students. We do not believe that real scientific wisdom is in conflict with God’s wisdom.
Take the simple story of creation. That has caused a lot of Christians a lot of pain, but it need not. When I went to seminary my grandmother told me that if I gave up on the idea that God created the world in six literal days, I had to give up on the whole Bible. Now my Grandmother was one of the wisest people I ever knew. She fit my archetype of the wise old woman; but she was wrong about this. When I went off to seminary and actually read the text, I discovered that according to the creation story of Genesis 1 the sun and moon were not created until the fourth day. I asked myself the question: If the days were literally days, how did God mark them without the sun and moon? I decided at once that God was not all that concerned that we take the story literally. For years I was content to think it was poetry. It was true, but it was truth stated in poetic fashion. Then, just several years ago, I changed my mind. I read a commentary on Genesis by an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi. He made an interesting point. He said that when the Genesis stories of creation were written down the Hebrew people were surrounded by polytheists who worshiped the sun, and the moon as part of a pantheon of gods. The rabbi said that the author of Genesis 1 tells his reader plainly and boldly that the sun and moon are not gods, but a part of the creation of the one true God!
Christians spend a lot of time worrying about the Creation. Recently a friend gave me a little publication on Genesis that professed to solve its mysteries using the latest scientific knowledge. The problem with that is that it means the true meaning of Genesis was hid to all previous generations. Is that true? I think not. I don’t know enough science to correlate the creation stories of Genesis with science, but I know enough Bible to know that the task is not really necessary. I have a pat formula with regard to Genesis 1-3. It goes something like this:
Suppose that you are a scientist, and suppose you are writing a letter to another scientist. You could assume a certain understanding, and use a common vocabulary to good advantage. Right? Right. Now suppose that you are a scientist writing to the 8-year-old son of a friend. Can you assume the same level of understanding and use the same vocabulary? No, of course you can’t. You must write to the boy’s level. Now suppose that you are a scientist writing to a friend, a fellow scientist, and to his eight year old son. To what level would you write? No doubt you would write to the level of the eight year old, knowing that his father could also understand your letter, albeit differently. In the creation stories of Genesis 1-3 God has written an open letter to human kind, knowing it would be read by human kind in our adolescence, and by humankind grown older, and hopefully, wiser. In reading the Bible we must always ask, “What did the original writer mean to say to the original reader? Then we ask, “What is God saying to me?” The first people who read the creation stories of Genesis understood at once that the sun and moon were not God, but a part of the creation of the one God. And what do we understand: That the One God is the creator of the heavens and the earth and all that is in them.
That God is the creator of all things is certainly the New Testament understanding. Several of my favorite creations stories are in the New Testament. In Colossians 1 we read:
He (that is Jesus the Christ) is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; 16 for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible
What did God make? Well, everything, “Visible and invisible,” or to put it a little differently, “all that is known, and all that is unknown,” or, ”all that we have discovered, and all that we will ever discover. “
This is good. It means we don’t have to have a Ph.D. in science to be a Christian; but if we happen to have a Ph.D. in science, that is o.k., too, because we can’t out learn God.
Let me give you a few more examples of human wisdom as it relates to God’s wisdom. The Wright brothers invented the airplane, but they did not invent flight. They just discovered the properties of flight that God put into the woof and warp of the universe. Likewise, Jonas Salk developed a vaccine against polio. Salk was a wise and good man. It was he who said, “The reward for service is the opportunity to do more service.” Yet Salk did not invent the cure for polio, he merely discovered it. God put cure for the disease into the woof and warp of the universe long ago. And what about cancer? I believe from the bottom of my heart that, someday, we will have cures for cancer (which comes in many forms and will require many cures) and other horrible diseases; but we will not invent the cures, we will only discover the cures that God put into the system long ago. God wants us to discover them. “Without God we cannot; without us God will not.”
Let me say a few things about the interim: 1) I am pretty sure that all of us know how to live healthier lives than we do. As Christians we should do it. The scripture says our bodies are the temple of God, but we often ignore that fact. (1st Corinthians 6:19) 2) I believe, for example, that if we just buckled down to the task of discovering a cure for cancer, we could do it. Great discoveries do not yield to half-hearted efforts. We must be willing to pay the cost. 3) We sometimes forget that it was Christian charity that laid the foundation of some of societies great eleemosynary institutions. I am grateful that Duke Hospital was started by the Methodists., and the Miracle on Hawthorne Hill (NCBH) by the Baptists, and Princeton by the Presbyterians. The church is criticized roundly for the mistakes we have made. The society at large sometimes forgets that Christian charity is at the heart of so many efforts to relieve human pain and suffering. 4) We can pray. No situation is ever so helpless that God cannot bring some good out of it. When life tumbles in, God is still there. In the final analysis, we have much hope for this life: but our hope is not limited to this life. (1st Corinthians 15)
So let me sum up with regard to wisdom as it is revealed to us in the natural world. We human beings do not invent wisdom. It is something that we discover.
Interestingly, when we begin to look for wisdom, the first type of wisdom we discover is moral wisdom. In Acts 17 we read that God made from one blood every nation of humankind that we might feel after him and perhaps find him. On the way to seeking God we invariably discover morality. Even people who don’t believe in God believe in morality. It is written into the fiber of the universe. Do you remember how when Solomon asked God to give him wisdom? Solomon asked God to help him discern good and evil that he could be a proper leader in Israel. (1st Kings 3:9) Without moral wisdom, all human wisdom is vain. I will give you just one example. How sad it is that we have the ability to split the atom; but our moral ability to use our ability to split the atom is still in question. If you don’t believe it, just ask someone in the United States Government, Republican or Democrat, how they feel about Iran and North Korea being nuclear powers. I believe that Moral wisdom is God’s gift to humankind if (and it is a big ‘if’) we can only receive it. Every society knows from sitting humbly at the feet of the facts that it is not good to kill, steal, commit adultery, or tell lies about our neighbors. Some people are upset that the Ancient Sumerian Code of Hammurabi is like the Ten Commandments. Why? They are alike because the One God who created everything has written the Ten Commandments into the very fiber of the Universe. We all know to honor our parents. We know we need a Sabbath. We know not to kill, commit adultery, steal, covet, and lie. We know the hurt and harm that doing such things causes. When we break the commandments we don’t so much break them as we break ourselves against them.
II
But there is a wisdom that cannot be gotten at through natural means. The wisdom I am talking about now is not the kind of wisdom you can find by looking for it, not even if you use a telescope or a microscope. It is wisdom that cannot be found out except by the special revelation of God.
The scripture bears witness to and participates in this special revelation of God.
When God called Abraham to leave his country, kindred and father’s house, and follow him to a land he would show him, that was special revelation. When God spoke to Moses through a bush that burned with fire but was not consumed, and said to him, “I AM who I AM,” and sent him to Pharaoh with a message to “let my people go,” that was special revelation. When God led the Hebrew children across the desert into the Promised Land, revealing himself in the Cloud and in the Fire, that was special revelation. When we read the Psalms and catch a glimpse of the human and the divine, that, too, is special revelation. Personally, I find the Psalms absolutely filled with the revelation of God. And what about the prophets? Yes, God gave his word through he prophets. But all these things pale before the ultimate revelation of God.
In many and various ways God spoke of old to our ancestors by the prophets, but in these last days God has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. 3 He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature, upholding the universe by his word of power. (Hebrews 1:1-1-3)
Eph. 1.9 the apostle writes:
For (God) has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ.
This “plan which (God) set forth in Christ” is the wisdom that Paul was talking about when he said that, “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. “
In Colossians 2:3 the apostle writes, “In (Him that is in Christ) are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”
Let me demonstrate just a bit of that wisdom:
1. Christ and Scripture. I was a part of the Dialogue with the Presbyterian Church. There came a day that a member of their delegation brought in a book by Bishop Spong entitled, The Sins of Scripture. It points out all the difficult texts of the Bible, including the command for the Hebrew’s to slaughter the women and children of the nations they invaded. She said, “These things have been the cause of much distress in our churches. How do you Moravians deal with some of these texts?” I responded, “Well, we would simply say that some scripture is not only pre-Christ, but it is sub-Christ. It does not measure up to the picture of God and the moral perfection that we see in him.” She liked that answer, so did the committee. She envied us for its simplicity. And some will say, “Worth, how can you say that?” Because the New Testament says it. Over and over again Jesus said, “Of old it was said, but now I say unto you.” He raised the scripture to a higher power. And what about the transfiguration in Mark 9. Jesus takes Peter, James and John up on a mountain, and they see him transfigured before them. And he is there talking to Moses (the Law) and Elijah (the prophets). Peter is stunned. He does not know what to say, so he says, “It is good that we are here. We can build three booths, one for you, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” And a cloud overshadows them, and a voice says: “This is my son, listen to him.” And they looked around and no longer saw Moses and Elijah, but Jesus only. The law teaches us how to live, but it offers no hope beyond this life. The prophets spoke of a better life to come, but it was always in the future. Jesus is the bringer of Life and the Revealer of God. As we read in John 1, “the law came by Moses, but grace and truth through Jesus Christ.” The Bible in its entirety—studied in all its complexity and simplicity, and not chopped up piecemeal, is the word of God, but Jesus is the Word of God Incarnate. God was not content to speak the word or act the word, in the person of the Son, God became the word. The words of scripture are sometimes hard to understand. The meaning of the Word Made Flesh is always clear. I am not knocking the Law and the Prophets—which stand for all the Old Testament scripture; I love them. But the Law and the Prophets are in the service of Christ, they point to him. The New Testament is replete with evidence of this.
2. The three most important questions of life are: 1) Where have we come from? 2) Where are we going? 3) What are we supposed to do while we are here? Jesus is the answer to all three. Apart from him we live in the anxious middle. We don’t know where we have come from or where we are going. We can see only as far as the womb in one direction, and only as far as the tomb in the other. In Christ we see that we have come from God, and that we are going to God, and that we have a future and a hope. And that leaves the third question: What are we supposed to do while we are here? Jesus said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work.” The secret of happiness and successful living is to discover God’s will for our lives. That is the simple message of Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Life. It has sold millions upon millions of copies. (By the by, Warren has given the vast majority of his profits away!)
3. The most important question about God: Is God good? In his book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Kushner says that everything else is just cocktail talk. He added, “It took Christianity to introduce to the world the idea of a God who suffers with his people.”
I just finished a book entitled, Jesus Interrupted, by Bart Ehrman. Ehrman who teaches at Chapel Hill started life as a fundamentalist Christian, but lost his faith along the way and now calls himself a happy agnostic. In his most recent book he admits that he did not give up on faith because of what he found or did not find in scripture. (There are times in the book that he does throw the baby out with the bathwater.) He said that he gave up on faith because he could not believe in a God who permits such suffering in the world. I believe that the Great Evil that the New Testament calls “the god of this world” has blinded him into thinking that this world and this life is all there is. The One True God is not just the god of this world. He is the God of all that is visible and invisible. We look not just to things that are seen, but also to the things that are unseen. The seen is transient. The unseen is eternal. (2nd Corinthians 4) There is a new world coming in which all that is wrong will be made right, and all that is old and tired, new again.
In the meantime, the only God I can believe in is the God of the cross. I wish I could give my faith to Bart Erhman, whom I really respect as a scholar and a teacher at so many levels. I suppose my dependence upon “the God of the cross” is the reason why I love our Liturgy for Lent above all the rest. It is a love letter from God to us, and our response to God. I love the appeal: “Into thy open arms stretched out upon the cross receive us all.” He does receive us. Then
God vindicates him and grants him a triumph over the cross, and the grave, and raises him from the dead, to give us a future and a hope beyond our wildest expectations.
Jesus is the one in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. He shows us God and humankind, and the future we have together.
In 1st Corinthians chapter 1 St. Paul sums it all up when he writes:
For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart.” 20 Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom 1.24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
Finis