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Sermon
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| WISDOM BEATS WEALTH ANY DAY! “O Eternal, you have made me king to succeed my father David. But I am very young, and I do not know how to go about it. I am surrounded by your people, a great host looking up to me. So grant me a wise mind for governing them, that I may distinguish right and wrong. ” We are told this pleases God, who says, “Solomon, because you have asked neither longevity nor wealth, nor death for your foes, but insight and justice, I now do as you have asked. I give you a wise, thoughtful mind, such as no other before or after you.” In fact, Solomon did become fabulously wealthy over a 40-year reign. He rebuilt and fortified Jerusalem, and built the first great temple there. His own court was lavish, and he kept a vast harem. He was the classic oriental potentate, but we need to remember all this was three thousand years ago. For all his excesses, Solomon was nonetheless renowned as a wise and peaceful ruler. But what exactly is ‘Wisdom’? Sometimes I think it can best be elucidated if we consider its opposite. For this I call on my dear friend and former colleague Robert Anderson, a wise man indeed. During my time as Dean of the Theological Hall, it was my privilege and pleasure to work closely with Professor Anderson. When he was Principal, and I Dean, we had many a chat about students: whether or not they would make the grade. I still remember Robert saying of one man, “If he was my kid, John, I’d run away from home!” Another who was worrying us prompted this from Robert: “John, I always think there are three qualifications for ministry. The first is commonsense. The second is commonsense. The third is commonsense. And that man lacks all three!” One of Robert’s familiar descriptive terms is ‘twit’. I find that these statements of his aptly describe the opposite of wisdom. But it needs a little filling out. And it’s not just an airy abstraction. In fact, I believe that for us it means three things; namely, to see clearly, to judge fairly and to act decisively. All three are important. If I don’t see clearly (that is, discern the facts), I can hardly judge fairly, and if I can’t judge fairly, it would be better to take no action. Let me explain a little more why each is important. I
First, to see clearly. In my schooldays, during the 30s and 40s, we had boys with learning difficulties and/or what were considered bad attitudes – that were best treated with regular punishment. Some boys were perpetually in trouble. It wasn’t until we were about 15 or 16 years old that I learned one of these was short-sighted. Nobody knew that he couldn’t see the blackboard; he thought it looked as fuzzy to everyone else as it did to him. Another boy who was forever in strife for not paying attention, and therefore often missing things, proved to be mildly hearing impaired. A third boy, who seemed to be truculent and uninterested, was being abused by an alcoholic father, I discovered. But then in those days we had neither school chaplains nor school counsellors. We had only teachers who failed to see the reasons why boys had learning problems. Let me give you another example of what happens when we don’t see clearly. Some of us heard Dr Chris Wright speaking at MBS about Euthanasia. Dr Wright is a physician and Director of the Intensive Care Unit at Monash Medical Centre. He was talking at one point about what is regarded as ‘incurable suffering’, and said. “We often don’t hear from people who actually know about the relief of pain . . . So when you read ‘Dr Bloggs in favour of euthanasia’, you want to find out what Dr Bloggs does for a quid. Because it may be that he is a toenail specialist and much as we love him, he actually hasn’t got much to contribute to the debate on suffering.” Dr Wright was suggesting that sometimes we don’t see clearly because we don’t know where to look for the facts, or where we are looking presents us with a skewed, even sensationalised viewpoint. I don’t want to attack the media, but it’s a fact that many of the current affairs programs reduce big issues to small, easily digestible bites – that leave us thinking we now understand something we don’t understand at all. Two professsors from the University of Southern California wrote a book called “The Unreality Industry”. It was sub-titled ‘the deliberate manufacturing of falsehood and what it is doing to our lives.’ They saw this creation of unreality by TV and other vehicles of mass communication and entertainment. The New Unreality offers more and more simplified and trivialized versions of everything – vast amounts of unconnected information, 15-second sound bites, and short-term excitement. They said “Those who see only one dimension of complex problems are now so out of touch with reality that they are truly dangerous. The failure to appreciate wider perspectives literally threatens our existence.” So much for seeing clearly as the first ingredient in wisdom. II
The second ingredient in wisdom is to judge fairly. Of course, there’s no hope of judging fairly if we don’t first see clearly. But even for those who see clearly, judging fairly is often not easy. Anyone involved in mediation knows how hard this can be. The common experience for many ministers is marriage counselling. But I want to give you another illustration – which, I hasten to say, I have permission to recount. Eighteen months ago I met up with an old friend who had toyed with offering for the ministry in the 70s, but ended up in teaching. He was now a high school principal. We talked about the stresses in running a school of a thousand drawn from a dozen or more national origins. “But that’s not the toughest problem,” he said. “What makes life hard is disharmony among the staff.” He recounted a situation during that year. There was extreme hostility between two women in their forties, who were gathering other teachers behind them, so that the staff room was beginning to take on the character of a war zone – with the contesting forces lined up facing each other. He spoke with each woman separately, and with them together. The hostility was unconnected to anything happening in the school, and therefore was not within his jurisdiction. It was related to some prior relationships that each had, in fact with each other’s husbands. My friend urged both women to find someone outside the school to talk to, instead of lining up supporters from among colleagues. Besides, this was having an impact on their effectiveness in the classroom, and kids were aware of this bitter battle. He found it impossible to take sides; it was just not apparent that one was more in the right or in the wrong. He called them into the office, advised both to look for other positions in the following year, and stood them down for the last few weeks of term. He said to me, “John, I had to go back to the absolute basics: what I learned in teachers college. We were told there that schools existed for the educating of children – not for the employing of teachers, however good those teachers might be. I had to consider the needs and welfare of the children, and so I made the decision I hoped would be fair to them.” III
This takes us straight into the third ingredient in wisdom – to act decisively. My teacher friend took this action reluctantly, but aware that procrastinating would further exacerbate the problems. Let me tell you a story of some other people acting decisively. They are all church workers in the Philippines. It was thought that the end of President Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 would bring about big changes in the areas of justice, human rights, progress for the poor, deprived and oppressed, and with internal peace. Some progress was made, but major problems have remained. For instance, the Philippines lags badly behind neighbour countries in reducing poverty. Unemployment and underemployment are the highest the country has ever seen, and more than a third of the people live below the poverty line. Many church leaders have been sharply critical of the government of President Arroyo. Since her term of office a national human rights body has documented over four thousand cases of human rights violations – killings, disappearances, illegal arrests and unlawful detention, indiscriminate sackings from employment and forced evacuation. These have affected nearly 233 thousand. Common among those who have been murdered or have disappeared in the last four years have been people critical of the government, upholding principles of justice and human rights. For instance, 37 journalists have been killed, and there has been little effort to bring the culprits to justice. Ministers and church workers in the United Church of Christ in the Philippines have been in the forefront of the action. Among them are Isaias Drummond Manano, Joel Barrameda Baclao, Vicente Olea, Abe Songit, Rev Edison Lapuz, the Rev Raul Y Domingo and others; all men and women who have seen clearly, judged fairly and determined to act decisively. Wise, godly people. And they’re all dead! Fourteen cases of murder and summary execution of ordinary Christians pursuing ministries of pastoral care and advocacy for the poor and marginalised. If you would read more, I commend to you this recently published report “Getting Away With Murder”. It is sub-titled ‘impunity for those targeting church workers in the Philippines.’ You can get it from synod. Maybe Solomon didn’t pray for longevity because he wasn’t sure it would always and everywhere accompany wisdom. This appears to be the case for our colleagues who have seen clearly, judged fairly and acted decisively in the Philippines. But I’m still persuaded that wisdom beats wealth any day. That’s what Jesus believed too. Thanks be to God! ___________________________________________________
An address presented by the Rev Dr John Bodycomb at St Aidan's
Uniting Church North Balwyn, on 20th August, 2006 IT MAY BE REPRODUCED WITH ACKNOWLEDGMENT. |
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Page updated 21/08/06