Turn in Here

Sermon Text: 1st Kings 3: 3-14 and Proverbs 9: 1-6, OT pages 591-592 Sermon Title: Turn in Here Drawing from a 2013 poll asking 1,000 adults about their reading habits came a report that about 28 percent of adults in the United States have not read a book in the last year. That’s concerning in a way, but not only had 28 percent not read a book, 25 percent read between 1 and 5 books. 15 percent read between 6 and 10. 20 percent read between 11 and 50 books in the last year. And 8 percent read more than 50 – and 50 sounds like a lot, but the point I want to first make this morning is that reading even 1 book is dangerous because books are full of unsettling ideas. Take the Bible for example. Now I know that there are plenty of good church going people who believe that the Bible is safe to read – so safe in fact that there’s one in every hotel room, one in most every house, this church is full of them, but so many of the ideas presented in the Bible are nothing if not disruptive, unsettling, offensive, and radical. If you like your life just the way that it is than you shouldn’t ever read it. If you think our community is exactly as it should be than you should just let the Bible gather dust on a bookshelf somewhere in your home. And if you think that political discourse in this country is satisfactory, that 21st century politicians have it all together, if you think that the polished, well heeled, smooth talking Presidential Candidates are doing everything just right, than I hope you didn’t hear a word our 1st Scripture Lesson this morning. I’m going to read part of it again: “At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, “Ask what I should give you.” And Solomon said, “Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?” If you took Solomon out and put Hilary Clinton in, do you know what she would say if she heard a voice say, “Ask what I should give you”? She’d say, “I’ve served as Secretary of State, Senator from New York, First Lady of Arkansas, I’ve been a practicing lawyer and law professor, activist, and volunteer. I spoke before the United Nations and was instrumental in starting to restore America’s standing in the world as a leader in the Obama administration – I thank you for offering, but to lead this country I already have everything that I need.” You can imagine that. And just think, if someone week before last at the Republican Debate asked Donald Trump if he needed anything – maybe a new hair piece, but that’s it. Our entire political machine is built around this illusion of self-sufficiency. Show strength. Keep it together – to lead means to never apologize and to never ask for help. But when the Lord asked Solomon what he needed Solomon said, “Give your servant an understanding mind, because without wisdom I won’t be able to do it.” That’s what leaders do according to the example in Scripture, so if you don’t want an alternative to the model you see already in Washington you’re better off not to pick up the Good Book. If you’re happy with what’s out there don’t even bother with it, and if you are glad to not even bother with it and don’t have any qualms in going along with the crowd you really need to stay away from the Bible because the Bible does not think highly of crowds and those who go along with them. In the Gospel of Mark “the crowd” is one of the main characters. This crowd is there to hear him teach. He feeds them the loaves and fishes. He has compassion on them saying that they are like sheep without a shepherd and he is that shepherd to them. He is the Good Shepherd that they greet as he rides into Jerusalem on a donkey over a road paved with palm branches and cloaks, but the minute the Good Shepherd leaves their sight the Pharisees step in. Then the crowd that loved him and followed him are there to chant “Crucify Him” as he is tried and convicted. Plenty of good Bible scholars have made the case that this couldn’t be the same crowd – surely the crowd that greeted him on Palm Sunday is a different group from the one who called for his death, but such an idea misunderstands the nature of a crowd. The crowd is dangerous. Whenever I’m around a big group of people my own mind stops working properly. We got suckered in to going to one of those pyramid scheme promotional meetings – it wasn’t Amway but it was something like that. The guy told me that he’d buy us dinner if we went, and I guess you could say he had my number because I will do almost anything if you take me out to dinner. We went and ate, and when we got to the meeting I was telling Sara how stupid I thought this whole thing was – how magnetizing our water sounded like the biggest joke I’d ever heard, but I want to confess to you that it was a blessing neither of us brought a check book with us, because by the end of the presentation I was convinced that if another drop of un-magnetized water hit my lips I wouldn’t make it. Being in a crowd of people – that’s a dangerous place to be. If you’re buying a new car – you’re in the show room, the sales people are being so nice to you, it smells so good in there, and they’re all encouraging you to sign on the dotted line. Or if you live in Atlanta as we once did, it doesn’t really occur to you that driving 30 minutes to work is an unnecessary waste of time because everyone else is doing it too, but I read a quote from Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Ellen Goodman this week that spoke to the insanity of accepting traffic as a normal way of life. She wrote: “Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for – in order to get the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.” You sit there in that car – and you look around – see how miserable everyone else looks in their cars, listening to whatever they’re listening to, and it doesn’t necessarily have to occur to you to wonder if this is really the way that it has to be, but Wisdom will get in your head if you ask her to, and like a sign before the off ramp of the interstate I could hear her saying, “You that are simple, turn in here! Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.” What will happen if you start to think, if you stop accepting everything around you as the way that it has to be is you’ll begin to wonder if there might be a better life than the one that you have. And wisdom can help you get there, but first you have to ask for it, you have to want it, you have to have the desire for something else. And if you have no desire like that, don’t pick up a book, certainly don’t pick up the Bible, because it is full of ideas that will make you dissatisfied with what you have right now and will make you thirst for something better. A world where politicians act like real people. A world where families thrive and money doesn’t matter so much. A world where people aren’t cutting each other’s throats to get ahead. According to Scripture there is a voice calling us to something better, something more joyful, not just life, but abundant life – not just a puddle but an ever flowing stream – not just some crumbs, but a seat at the table. Wisdom has built her house, She has hewn her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her animals. She has mixed her wine. She has set her table. She has sent out her servant girls. And she calls – she calls from the highest places in the town, “You that are simple, turn in here! To those without sense she says, “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight” – for the way that you are going, the way of the crowd, the way of the unexamined life – do you know where it leads? We live in this world where some pursue wealth recklessly – others don’t have it but wish that they did and pretend that they do. Some are just walking through life wishing for something different but the thing is – you first have to veer off the road that you are on. We get so busy with work and soccer practice – there’s no time to stop and think – and the TV’s always on in the background enabling us to just go on down this road a little while longer without worrying about where it leads. No one means to become the couple who sits in silence. No one sets out to become the bitter old man with nothing good to say. No one intends to become the mother who gives up on her child, but are you heading that way? If you are than know that wisdom is calling – turn off that road she says, because she knows what is at the end of it. There’s a better way, she says, there’s a feast in fact, but first you must stop being swept by the crowd and caught in habit to listen and think. “The unexamined life is not worth living,” said Socrates. And it was Howard Thurman, one of the great minds of the Civil Rights Movement, who said: “What the world needs is people who have come alive.” Come alive and look at your life – be aware of the road that you are on, and should it lead to death and despair than listen to woman wisdom who calls you to turn. “Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.” Amen.