"Half-Empty And Half-Full"
August 20, 2006: 11th Sunday after Pentecost, Year B
The Rev. John MacIver Gage, pastor
United Church on the Green, UCC: New Haven, CT
www.newlights.org
Scripture:
1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14
Then David slept with his ancestors, and was buried in the city of David. The time that David reigned over Israel was forty years; he reigned seven years in Hebron, and thirty-three years in Jerusalem... So Solomon sat on the throne of his father David; and his kingdom was firmly established. Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of his father David; only, he also sacrificed and offered incense at the Canaanite high places. The king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the principal such high place; Solomon used to offer a thousand burnt offerings on that altar. At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said: "Ask what I should give you." And Solomon said: "You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant my father David, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart toward you; and you have kept for him this great and steadfast love, and have given him a son to sit on his throne today. And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted. 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?" It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. God said to him: "Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, I now do according to your word. Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you. I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor all your life; no other king shall compare with you. If you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your life."
2 Corinthians 4:1-2, 5-7
Therefore, since it is by God's mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart. We have renounced the shameful things that one hides; we refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God's word; but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God. For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For it is the God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.
May God speak through these words and make from them a holy word for us today. Amen.
Sermon:
Who were your Biblical heroes in your Sunday School days? Or, if you didn't go to Sunday School, which Bible stories and characters do you remember hearing about elsewhere as a child? Stories of Jesus, of course, but who else? Joseph, sold into slavery but risen to power in Egypt? Joshua and the brass section of Israel at the walls of Jericho? David, bringing down Goliath with his sling and his five smooth stones? Daniel in the lions' den? Solomon, ruling with wisdom?
For a very long time, indeed, most Sunday School programs operated on the "mighty deeds of mighty men" model of religious education, whereby children are raised on the stories of the great men of Israel—and they were overwhelmingly men, sadly, both in the original and in the tradition—and their exploits. They were held up as exemplars of faithfulness and virtue, extraordinary persons in their own right upon whom God poured even more extraordinary blessings as a mark of God's favor. Their stories were presented in a "go thou and do likewise" manner, the implication being if we were good little boys (and, okay, maybe girls) and said our prayers and ate our Wheaties, we also might grow up to be strong, successful, and loved by God... maybe.
Now, let's set aside for a moment our complaint that in the world of these stories, "successful" equates to "victorious in war or other violent enterprise" and "richer than your neighbor." It's not that it's not a valid criticism one that bears closer examination at some other time, but we're talking about ancient Israel here, so let's cut them some slack. My point this morning is that as these characters were presented to us as kids, they really were heroes of the faith and pillars of virtue. And though we may have sung a song of the saints of God and meant, God helping, to be one, too, we all knew our chances were slim... slim to none. How could we, as sinful as we were (another hallmark of the approach to religious education) ever hope to be good enough to be a David or a Solomon?
What we didn't know and what our Sunday School teachers didn't tell us, bless their hearts, was that even David wasn't really a David and Solomon wasn't much of a Solomon. They were not in fact unimpeachable paragons of virtue. David wasn't just a straight-shooting shepherd-boy-made-good, he was also an adulterer, a murderer, and father to a contentious brood that'd make Jerry Springer blush. Solomon, for his part, was indeed renowned for his wisdom—you may remember the sly way he ferreted out the real mother of a disputed baby—but as our reading this morning makes abundantly clear, he had a little more trouble in the "Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me" department. When the scriptures talk about "high places," they don't mean mountain climbing. It seems the great Solomon had a weak spot for the old Canaanite religion long before his notorious foreign wives arrived on the scene.
At this point, some might ask: "So what's the big deal? So what if these "pillars of the faith" were a little less heroic and a little more... complicated... in real life? Isn't it more important that kids have someone to look up to and emulate? It's a tough world out there, and they need larger-than-life role models if they're going to grow up good and faithful. Later, when they're older and can better understand, then they can learn the rest of the story, if they want to. Till then, lets leave the saints right where they are, up on their gilded pedestals."
At the same time, others might say: "Finally! Enough with these 'mighty heroes' already, the big fakes! What a load of hooey we've been feeding our kids all these years. It's like those miracle stories, the healings and feedings and resurrections. It's a lovely bunch of fiction, but all that mumbo-jumbo simply distracts from the heart of the faith. Kids don't need stories, they need clear-cut ethical instruction. Later, when they're older and can better understand, then they can go back and appreciate mythic metaphors, if they want to. Till then, let's take the saints off their pedestals once and for all."
My guess is that given the historic progressive intellectual pedigree of this congregation, more of us are going to fall closer to the latter view than the former. We're aware of the complex human and often all-too-human context of scripture and the church and wary of any attempt to oversimplify that story. More conservative Christians sometimes criticize us for throwing the Biblical baby out with the bathwater in a misguided effort to "purge" the church of some of the more traditional elements of Christian faith, or any faith at all.
And on our worst days, they're right. We do sometimes treat the Bible as though it were dangerous, like a loaded gun, to be kept under lock and key out of the hands of minors. Heck, some days, we act like we think we ought to keep it out of our hands, even. There's just too much riding on these Biblical stories of faulty and frail, if not outright malicious human beings, like David, like Solomon. Safer just to put the book away entirely and focus on the ethical instruction, the work for social justice, and the pretty music.
Call me crazy, but I believe the truth may lie somewhere between these two extremes. I don't think we need to blind ourselves to the shortcomings of our heroes, nor do I think we should write them off altogether for failing in every way as we do ourselves. There must be a way of Christian believing in which their humanity and ours is not just a liability to be overlooked or overcome but simply a fact and even, somehow a blessing.. After all, if the Bible teaches us anything, it's that God has a soft-spot for human beings like us; otherwise, let's face it, God would have wiped us out long ago, just Noah and company imagined. The only explanation for our ongoing relationship with God, wild as it sounds, is that God must love us, in all our muddy messiness, even if God wishes we'd pull ourselves together one of these days and do something about the mess.
When we look deeper, past the shiny veneer of the posters in our old Sunday School rooms, when we actually engage the story, that's what we see: Solomon is not some untouched and untouchable paragon of virtue but a flesh and blood human being doing his best to make the best of his lot in life—in his case, the overwhelming responsibility of being the son of a famous father and king himself, called to herd the cats of Israel in the ways of God. And he is devoted to God; it's just that, like the rest of us, his resolve wavers, and he stumbles. And over time, despite his many achievements, he will stumble even further.
But it's not so hard to see what God loves about Solomon. When God appears to him—in the midst of his out-of-bounds pagan rituals, no less—and offers to grant him a wish, Solomon rises to the occasion. He rises above himself and, acting out of his very best self, asks not for the usual victory in battle and untold riches but wisdom. Now, God's not stupid. God knows full well Solomon's many faults. But in grace God chooses to bless Solomon not for who he is already, but for who he may become, and for trying. God blesses Solomon with wisdom not as a reward, but a gift and a challenge to further growth. God blesses Solomon in his humanity, not in spite of it.
If we insist on pretending these Biblical heroes are in fact superheroes and not so very human, after all, our children will feel less-than and therefore ineligible for God's favor. And when they are older and can better understand, they will not forgive us our hypocrisy. On the other hand, if we dismiss these stories out-of-hand in favor of some abstract and therefore oddly equally inhuman approach, how can we expect them to grasp and be grasped by the visceral reality of faith experienced here and now, the very presence of God in our human bodies, hearts, and minds? Faith without sense is useless. Faith without meat is soulless. We are neither simply half-empty nor half-full. Through the grace of God, we are both/and.
The Apostle Paul had some piece of this truth when he insisted that "we have this treasure in clay jars." God has shared the good news of God's love with us through the incarnation of Jesus in very real, very human flesh. Jesus loved, questioned, grew, laughed, wept, and died as a human being, and God loved him in his humanity, not in spite of it. Christ's humanity is our blessing. In the same way, God knows us, loves us, and calls us to service in all our humanity to follow Jesus' example. God's love is shown even, and even particularly, in our weakness. Look how much God loves us! Believe it or not, folks, like Solomon—the real Solomon, not the fairy tale version—we bear the treasure of the Gospel in our flesh, even as we remain the clay jars.
This is humbling and uplifting all at the same time. And this is exactly the kind of story I think we ought to be teaching our children, and the kind of faithful example they need: not superheroes but human heroes, doing their best to be their best, most faithful selves, accomplishing great things, it's true, but always beloved by a graceful God, even when they fail. This is the example of Jesus himself, who, when he hung upon the cross, looked down on his tortures with the infinite patience of God, a patience I suspect that rose above even Jesus' human abilities, and said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." Now that's just a story, to be sure, but a powerful one, and true.
And it wouldn't do us adults any harm to listen to that story more often, either. For this is a word of grace and a word for growth. This is the Gospel: that God embraces us just as we are even as God works with us within us to bring out the best we may yet be. Take a moment to remember how it changed your life to hear it as a child... or imagine how it might have, if you didn't. And imagine how a world plagued by hypocrisy and cynicism might be changed if this word were to get out.
And may God make it so, here and now, beginning with us. May the world see us, just as we are—a ragtag bunch of wonky progressive Christians wracked with doubt even as we are tempted to an underdog's pride—and through the mysterious power of the Holy Spirit, may they see in us more than they, or we, can imagine, the very "glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Amen.