Today's Sermon

 

“Wisdom for Ordinary Time: Time and Place"

 

Wisdom for Ordinary Time: Time and Place

3 For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven:

2 a time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3 a time to kill and a time to heal;
a time to break down and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance;
5 a time to throw away stones and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to seek and a time to lose;
a time to keep and a time to throw away;
7 a time to tear and a time to sew;
a time to keep silent and a time to speak;
8 a time to love and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8).

            What’s right? It’s a basic moral question. If we are trying to discern wisdom for everyday living, as we are in this series, this is a fundamental question, so what’s right? While for me there are a few non negotiables, perhaps you as well, for the most part my answer would be, “It depends.” I am not arguing for total moral relativism. No, I am arguing we take to heart the same lesson we teach our children: Time and place. Understanding the context is critical to offering the appropriate response. Shouting is fine outside on the playground, but in the house, we use our “inside voices.” Please clip your nails…not at the dinner table. Don’t steal from your neighbor, unless your playing basketball against them. Time and place.

            This is the wisdom of Ecclesiastes 3. Set to music and popularized by The Byrds it soared in the charts in 1965 around opposition to the Vietnam War. That’s fascinating considering the passage makes no strong declaration against killing. It says there is “a time to kill” and “a time for war” even though there is good reason to believe the author is describing life more than prescribing it. If you wanted to use scripture to speak against war more directly, you could turn to the 10 Commandments or Jesus’ teaching. The song struck a chord probably because people sensed deeply it was neither the time nor the place for war.

            In a series about wisdom, we need to make a distinction between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is about acquiring information; wisdom is about exercising judgment in how to apply it. This should shape how we engage scripture. Some act as if the Bible holds a directly corresponding answer to every question they bring. I may have spoken before about a call-in show I have watched on a Christian network where callers pose very specific modern questions and panel of pastors responds by flipping to various passages in the Bible offering a direct response. I find their answers to be a reach to put it mildly.

            Others sense the folly of this approach and so they disregard scripture altogether, but that too is a mistake, for it leaves so much wisdom on the shelf. There is a third way: turn to scripture, turn to all kinds of great teachings and teachers, then engage the disciplines of reason, study in the relevant facts, and deliberation with others whom the matter affects or who might have relevant insight. Then, and only then, are we able to make a wise decision. We can bring the same question to different parts of scripture and get fairly different answers. Our task is to understand which pieces best apply in which moments and settings. Moreover, what scripture often provides us are key values, often expressed in story, that we bring to bear on whatever we are facing. Wisdom takes work. It’s more like building a library than looking something up in a dictionary.

            There’s more. Once we’ve understood time and place, the context, and which knowledge to apply in what way, we have to figure out our role, what we can and should bring to the table. Wisdom involves knowing our role. We ask, then, three simple questions:
            What does the moment call for?
            What does the setting call for?
            What is my role to play?
Who I am in the situation, what is my power, what are my gifts? Also, what my other responsibilities, what are my risks, what are my limitations? If there is a conflict at the dinner table, who I am dramatically influences what I should or should not do. If I am concerned about the conditions at the Delaney detention center, and I feel I have a moral obligation to do something about it, what I do might vary significantly if I am an elected official compared to if I am a single parent to a young child. If I occupy a position of authority in an organization, I’m going to have a greater opportunity to right a situation where people are being treated wrong than someone new and trying to get established. If we expend our energy and resources on the right issue but doing the wrong thing, we’ve squandered the opportunity. Will I read the room, can I read a watch, and am I able to make out my job description?

This, I believe is what the 131^st Psalm is saying in its opening verses:
Psalm 131
1 O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
    my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
    too great and too marvelous for me.
2 But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
    like a weaned child with its mother;
    my soul is like the weaned child that is with me. 

            This may sound like a defeatist position, a cop out, “I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.” I can see how one would arrive at that interpretation, another way of hearing it is, “I am clear about what is mine so I will do it with focused resolve. As a result, I will not succumb to anxiety about what is not mine and I cannot affect.” This is not permission to throw up your hands and do nothing. Quite the contrary, people throw up their hands because they’ve misunderstood their role, what they can do. When you recognize your role you can become activated and that births hope. This is what leads the Psalmist to say, “I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother” (v. 2). The image of a weaned child is of a certain maturity, one that doesn’t display the kind of franticness a newborn rightly does seeking its mother’s breast. What does the Dalai Lama say? “If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it's not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.”

            When we grow in wisdom it, we are able to face the moment without being thrown into helplessness. Have you ever noticed how truly wise people rarely, if ever, seem rattled? There is always something we can do; we just have to get good and wise in discerning it. Drink in knowledge and then grow in wisdom by learning how, when, and where to apply it. Time and place; time, place and role.

            The question is not only “What is right?” but “What is right here and now, and what am I or we to do?” Ask better questions, get better answers.

            Amen.