[This is the third sermon on Reinhold Niebuhr's "The Serenity Prayer," asking God to grant us the wisdom to know what to accept and what to change. This was also preached on Communion Sunday, hence the lead up to Communion at the end.]
Wisdom. What is wisdom? Well, let’s see.
A good place to start would be the dictionary, amen? According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, “knowledge” is “information gained through experience, reasoning, or acquaintance.” “Wisdom” is “the ability to discern or judge what is true, right, or lasting.” Ah … okay.
As straight-forward as these definitions may seem, if I were to go around and ask each of you to explain the difference between “knowledge” and “wisdom,” well … we’d probably get as many definitions and explanations as there are people in this room. Go online and you’ll see what I mean. The definition of “knowledge” is pretty standard. Basically, “knowledge” is what I “know,” right? It has the word “know” right in it. “Wisdom,” on the hand is one of those words that slips through your fingers. The more you try to define it, the harder it is to define … which is why Reinhold Niebuhr asks God to grant him the “wisdom” … “wisdom” not “knowledge” … and the distinction is important. As the Apostle Paul once lamented: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (Romans 7:15, 19). Paul “knows” the right thing to do, he wants to do the right thing, but he ends up doing the thing that he hates … the thing that he knows is the wrong thing to do. The solution to Paul’s dilemma, says Niebuhr, is to pray for wisdom … not knowledge … Paul already had that … but for wisdom … and not just any “wisdom” but God’s “wisdom” … which makes sense if we go by Merriam-Webster’s definition of knowledge and wisdom. If knowledge is “information gained through experience, reasoning, or acquaintance” then why not ask for guidance and direction from the One who is the source of ALL information, amen? And if wisdom is “the ability to discern or judge what is true, right, or lasting” who better, I ask you, to go to than God, who is True, Righteous, and Everlasting, amen?
Remember the old days, before there were cellphones and GPS? You’d be driving along the highway, everything’s fine … and then you notice everyone hitting their brakes and you find yourself in the middle of a rolling parking lot and you wonder: what’s going on … accident? … construction? … how long is this traffic jam … should I get off at the next exit and go another way? The problem is that I don’t know where I am. You pull out the map only to find out that you’d have to go miles and miles out of your way. What if you got off at the next exit only to find out that the traffic ended just past that exit but you won’t know that because you got off at the exit and you have to go miles and miles out of your way. What if you could see ahead? What if you knew the cause of the traffic jam? What if you knew exactly where the congestion ended? Well … we have satellites looking down, so to speak, and they can tell us what’s up ahead and even tell us how long it’s gonna take for us to get past the congestion so that we can make an informed decision and the GPS will usually suggest an alternate route and tell you how long or how far you will have to go out of your way if you decide to get off at the next exit.
That is why we pray to God to grant us the wisdom to know what to do … because He sees the whole picture. He is looking down, so to speak, on our situation and He can see what’s up head … and I’m not talking about traffic but about our lives, amen?
God … grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
God … grant me the courage to change the things I can.
God … grant me the wisdom to know the difference … and, as we shall see, therein lies the problem … I don’t know about you, but I usually don’t know the difference … and usually do the most harm to myself and to others when I think that I do.
Saul of Tarsus is a great example of what I’m talking about. When it came to knowledge of the Jewish faith, Paul boasted that he knew all there was to know about being a good, devout Jew … and he was. Circumcised on the eight day … a member of the tribe of Benjamin in good standing … as to the law, a Pharisee … as to zeal, a persecutor of the church … as to righteousness under the law, blameless (Philippians 3:5-6). His knowledge of Judaism and Jewish law convinced him that the right thing to do was to protect the Jewish nation from the blasphemous cancer of this new and growing sect of messianic Jews who were claiming that some carpenter from Nazareth was not only the long-anticipated messiah sent by God to lead the Jewish nation but the very son of Yahweh. By all logic and reason, these heretics were wrong and by all logic and reason, Paul and many others felt these heretics had to be dealt with and their movement stopped. “I too was convinced,” says Paul, “that I ought to do all that was possible to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And that is just what I did in Jerusalem. On the authority of the chief priests I put many of the saints in prison, and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them. Many a time I went from one synagogue to another to have them punished, and I tried to force them to blaspheme. In my obsession against them, I even went to foreign cities to persecute them” (Acts 26:9-11).
“God … grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” Paul didn’t need to accept this new movement. He, and others like him, were convinced that they had the power and the right to stop it … and they didn’t ask for wisdom because they knew what had to be done. They had the law and God on their side … except …
As I said, I am most dangerous when I am convinced that I “know” where I’m heading … when I “know” what to do. Why should I ask God to give me the wisdom to know the difference, amen? But that is exactly when I should ask. Saul didn’t pray for the wisdom to know if he was doing the right thing or not. He was 100% convinced that what he was doing what was right and he had the backing of the leaders who encouraged him to ride to Damascus … and it wasn’t until God literally struck Saul blind that he, thanks to God’s intervention, “saw” the difference … that Jesus was, in fact, not only the Messiah but God Incarnate. Saul couldn’t see how his “knowledge” … his convictions … blinded him because, well, they blinded him and he couldn’t “see” until God removed the scales from his eyes … the so-called “knowledge” and convictions that blinded him to the point that, in his own words, he felt justified in dragging men and women … mothers and fathers … out of their homes and putting them in prison (Acts 8:3) … felt totally justified in voting to have them put to death … and then felt totally justified standing to the side and watching as the death sentence was being carried out because he was absolutely convinced that he had done the right thing.
Saul was not converted by reason or logic that day on the Damascus Road. God had to literally knocked off Saul off of his high horse and make him physically blind for three days so that he could “see” how spiritually blind he had been. For three days he had to grope around in the dark trying to figure out what had happened to him and when he reached the point that there could only be one possible explanation, God sent Ananias to pray over Saul so that the scales of his intellectual and religious pride and conviction literally fell from his eyes so that he could see and understand God in a whole new way.
God knocked Saul off of his high horse and then removed the scales from his eyes so that Paul could then preach to the world about Jesus, who came to show us how our own understanding and concepts had blinded us to the reality of who God is. Paul quotes from Isaiah 29 as a way of describing Jesus’ mission to the Christians in the city of Corinth. In Isaiah 29, the Lord says:
“Because these people draw near with their mouths and honor me with lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote; so I will again do amazing things with this people, shocking and amazing. The wisdom of their wise shall perish, and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden” (Isaiah 29:13-14).
And what, my friends, could be more shocking and amazing than God taking on flesh, amen? And the miracles, amen? But to die on a cross like a common criminal? That’s crazy. That’s insane. That, says, Paul, is incomprehensible unless … God grant us the wisdom, amen?
Paul makes a distinction between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God. “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? … For Jews demand signs” … something tangible, something that they can see and explain and understand … “and the Greeks desire wisdom” … worldly wisdom, wisdom based upon their knowledge and understanding of how things should work and be in the earthly and in the heavenly realms … “but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called” … called by God, given wisdom and understanding by God, “both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” … not by human understanding, not by worldly wisdom but by the power of Christ and the wisdom of God … for “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is strong than human strength” (1st Corinthians 1:20-25; emphasis added).
Here’s the thing about being blind. You know you’re blind but what you don’t know is what you can’t see. You literally can’t see what’s right in front of you … the beauty or the danger. The Apostle John gives us a brilliant example of this in Chapter 9 of his gospel. When the Disciples see a blind man, they ask Jesus: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Already we see that they are blinded by their religious beliefs and presupposition that blindness was caused by sin. Jesus’ answer is, in God’s words, “shocking and amazing” (Isaiah 29:14). “Neither,” says Jesus. “In fact,” says Jesus, “the reason this man was born blind was so that God could show you something beyond your scope of human reason or understanding. This man was born physically blind but God will use him to show other people just how spiritually blind they really are.”
Remember what Paul said to the community in Corinth? The Jews demanded signs before they could believe … and yet, John says that the “Jews did not believe that [this man] had been born blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received sight” to confirmed that their son had indeed been born blind (John 9:18) … which the parents confirm … “yes, he was born blind but we have absolutely no idea how he got his sight back” because, says John, the man’s parents were afraid for the Jews because … listen closely … “for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue” (John 9:22; emphasis mine) … “had already agreed” … already had their minds made up … which made them blind to the evidence that was standing right there before them. “Here is an astonishing thing!” the once-blind man chides the crowd of disbelievers. “You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. … Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing” (John 9:30, 32-33) … and the crowd’s response was to drive the man out of the synagogue. Jesus seeks him out and uses this moment to explain the ‘wisdom’ of God: “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see,” says Jesus, “and those who do see may become blind” … again, foolishness to the Pharisees who ask, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” … to which Jesus replies: “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains” (John 9:39-41).
Peter, who walked on water and saw Jesus perform many, many miracles was also thrown off by the “foolishness” of the cross. He was convinced by the many miracles that he had seen Jesus perform that Jesus was the “Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). Jesus’ response is telling. “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven” (John 16:17). Many, many people witnessed the miracles that Jesus performed … and yet, like the people who witnessed Jesus restoring the sight of the man born blind … still couldn’t accept the evidence that was right before their eyes. Just before Peter made this declaration, Matthew says that a group of Pharisees and Sadducees came to see Jesus and demanded that He perform some miracle or give them some clear-cut sign that He was indeed who He said He was so that they could believe that He would and could do what He claimed He came to do before they would believe Him, let alone follow Him. Jesus’ response is basically, “Even if I give you a sign, you wouldn’t believe because, well, frankly, I’ve already given you plenty of signs and proof … some more won’t help. No matter how many miracles I perform, no matter how many ‘signs’ or proof I give you, you still won’t believe because you’re minds are already made up.” In other words, they claim to be seeking wisdom but they’re not really asking for wisdom and when they receive wisdom from on high, they are unable to receive it because they are blinded by their own wisdom and the wisdom of the world.
When asked who Jesus is, Peter gives the right answer: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16) but when Jesus begins talking about the cross and His future, Peter can’t wrap his mind around it. “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you” (Matthew 16:22) … and his reaction is understandable. Who wants to see someone they love be whipped, dragged through the streets, and hung on a shameful cross? Too, too often I’ve read commentaries and heard sermons accusing Peter of having grandiose plans and expectations … that Jesus would defeat Rome and become King of Israel and that Peter would become Jesus’ right-hand man … after all, he was the only one who got the right answer when Jesus asked who the Disciples thought He was and didn’t Jesus Himself declare that Peter would be the “rock” on which He would build His church and didn’t He also promise Peter that He would give Peter the keys of the kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 16:17-18)? Perhaps Peter was thinking all these things, but we don’t know. Still, to hear Jesus talking about undergoing great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day rise from the dead … well, let’s be honest, what would you think if someone you loved said this to you, amen? You’d probably … like Peter … hear the first part … that Jesus was going to suffer at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes but that last part … that He would rise from the dead after three days … you might have heard it but I doubt it would register. I mean, what would Jesus’ death accomplish? What threat … if any … was Jesus to the religious authorities? All Jesus did was preach about the love of God and the Kingdom of God and show God’s love to the people by healing them … why would God let that happen?
And so, Peter reacts in a very worldly way. If there’s anything that he can do to stop it, he’s gonna try … just like he vows to follow Jesus no matter what. Listen to what Jesus says to Peter and remember what the Apostle Paul said about the cross. Matthew says that Jesus turned to Peter and said: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind on” … what? … “not on divine things but on human things” (Matthew 16:23; emphasis added).
God … grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change. God … grant me the courage to change the things that I can. And, God, grant me the wisdom to know the difference. Too often I charge head-long into things that I think I can change … without asking God for wisdom. Too often I sit and do nothing because I’ve convinced myself that there is nothing that I can do … without asking God for wisdom. Like Paul, I often do the things I know I shouldn’t do and don’t do things that I know I should do because I didn’t take the time to ask God for the wisdom. And when I do that, I often don’t have serenity because I’m not doing what things I know I should be doing and I don’t have the courage because I’m running on self-will and, frankly, I am all too aware of my of limitations and shortcomings and know that under my own power, using my limited intelligence and wisdom, I’m going to mostly likely fail.
So here’s a little tip for you … when you’re not sure what you should do … ask God to give you the wisdom to know the difference, amen? Especially ask when you don’t feel like asking because you’ve got it all worked out with your 3 ½ pound brain and all your worldly knowledge and wisdom … and be willing … or ask God to help you be willing … when God calls you to abandon your plans for His or be willing to let go of your little plans and schemes when you insist, like Jacob or Peter or Paul, that your way is the right way and fight against God’s will. As the Apostle James says: “If any of you lacks wisdom” … not earthly wisdom but wisdom from above … “you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you” (James 1:5).
So … join with me now as we continue our celebration of the foolishness of the cross, amen?
