"Who is wise among us?" That's the theme of our lections for today. An Afghani
folktale may help to point us in the right direction. It goes as follows:
Once there were two beggars who went daily to the palace to beg at the king's gate. Every day the king gave each
of them a loaf of bread. One of the beggars would always thank the king for his lavish generosity, but the other
thanked God for giving the king sufficient wealth to give charity.
The second beggar's words always hurt the king, so the king decided to teach him a lesson. The king ordered his
baker to bake two identical loaves, but in one he had him conceal precious jewels, and then he instructed the baker
to give the loaf with the hidden jewels to the beggar who always thanked the king for his charity.
The next day the baker went to the king's gate and handed the two loaves to the beggars. He took great care not
to confuse the two, for he feared the king's wrath if he should make a mistake.
When the beggar with the special loaf felt how heavy and hard it was, he concluded that it was poorly made and
asked the other beggar to exchange loaves with him. The second beggar, always eager to help a friend, agreed. Then
they went their separate ways.
When the second man bit into the loaf, and discovered that it was filled with jewels he thanked God for his good
fortune, grateful that he would no longer have to beg for his bread.
The next morning the king was surprised to find only the first beggar at the palace gate. He had the baker brought
before him and asked him, "Did you mix up the two loaves I had you bake?"
"No, your majesty," answered the baker. "I did exactly as you commanded."
Then the king turned to the beggar and asked, "What did you do with the loaf you received yesterday?"
The man replied, "It was hard and poorly baked, so I gave it to my friend in exchange for his."
Then the king understood that all his riches had indeed come from God, and that only the Holy One can make a poor
man rich and a rich man poor. Not even a king can change the will of heaven.
Such is the beginning of wisdom! Every culture has its stories of those who have spent their lives trying to find
"the meaning of life." Each has its own variation of the magic genie in the bottle who offers the lucky
opportunist the chance for three wishes…and we've all heard the jokes about how the last wish negates the first
two.
Placed in a situation where we could ask any question with the assurance of absolute honesty what would we want
to know? Think how different our lives could have been if we had been given that opportunity. "Will you really
stay for better or worse till death us do part?" "Do I have what it takes to be a good parent?"
"Is this really my calling in life or just a career?" "How and when will I die?"
In the account of David's final days and the succession of his son Solomon to the throne we are told that Solomon
had the opportunity to begin his reign by asking God for anything. Of course the challenge is in knowing what to
ask.
Largely because of this Old Testament story many people have confused "asking" with prayer. It seemed
to work out so well for Solomon, maybe that's what the whole experience of prayer is all about. We just have to
figure out what to "ask for." But prayer is meant to be far more than simply asking God for all the things
we think we want and need. God's will is not a puzzle to be solved, but a mystery to be lived into. It is an acceptance
of the immensity of both the Creator and the creation, as expressed so beautifully in Psalm 111, and consequently
of our lifelong dependency on God for daily discernment and discipline.
Prayer is the spiritual dialogue between the soul and God, the communication that takes place in relationship.
No two human beings could have a healthy relationship if all one ever said was "I want, I need, I want, I
need." The same is true of our interaction with God. Our understanding of God's will is based not on our own
inquisitiveness, on our ability to ask for the right things, but on the activity of God generating power within
our lives.
Effective prayer always starts in God, moves through us and then returns to God. It is NOT something we do to get
God involved, it is something God does to get us involved! Maintaining that connectivity is essential, and we don't
have to stretch too far in our day-to-day living to see what happens when a sudden "rolling blackout"
hits and we lose our power.
As God moves us along in our journey, and we are part of the Spirit's working, our understanding of God is deepened,
our love for God increases, and our relationship with God is made more complete. In other words, we begin to glimpse
God's will for our lives which is the beginning of wisdom.
Most bible scholars agree that the gospel of John was reworked several times before it found its final version
which was incorporated into the canon of the New Testament. Those revisions were sparked largely by the nature
of the changing community that became the Church. Most of the passages regarding Jesus' teaching on "the bread"
reflected an evolving understanding of the meaning of the eucharist and its importance in the life of faith.
If you were reading these passages in the original Greek you would find that there is a change in the verbs used
to describe the process of consumption. In the earlier verses we've shared over the course of the past several
weeks John has Jesus use the Greek word "phage" which means "eat" as in ingest and swallow.
Here in these later verses the verb becomes "trogan" which is better translated as "munch"
"chew" or "gnaw." It is as if Jesus is saying that as we continue to grow in our relationship
with Him we have to really "get our teeth into" his life! The whole enchilada…the entire meal.
It's sort of like when believers place their primary dependency on the pastor's sermon on Sunday morning, they
are shortchanging themselves,-- leaning on the wrong relationship,--eating the wrong bread. So when some disgruntled
person says "I just don't feel as though I'm being fed at church…" it may be that they are trying to
maintain their relationship with Christ on what the pastor says…which should be just the appetizer NOT the main
course!
Our worship together should be the starting point NOT the ending. If we raise gnawing questions it's all the better.
We should get something to chew on for a while until it becomes a part of who we are.
And then as Christ's representatives in the world our job together should be like those people who stand at the
end of the aisles in the grocery stores offering small samples of what's on the shelves. We should learn to hold
out just a little bit of what we know God has made available, fully accepting the fact that we are not privy to
all the answers, but expounding upon the goodness and "nutritional" value of what we ourselves have received,---and
encouraging everyone to digest this sample morsel---in the hope of their choosing to take the whole package home
for themselves, so that they too can share it with others.
"Wisdom" is not an end in and of itself. "Good King Solomon," like the king in our Afghani
fable forgot the source of his own power. Despite all his vaunted wisdom and fidelity to the Lord, he went on to
become one of the most salacious and promiscuous kings who ever ruled Israel, having a taste for foreign gods and
foreign women. We are told he had some seven hundred wives and at least three hundred concubines to be exact.
He ran the country for forty years from 962-922 BC and conducted the most ambitious building campaign in Israel's
history, but he also bled his people dry with taxes in order to do it, forcibly conscripted them to serve on labor
gangs and abused them whenever it served his advantage. He became such a king, not because he was wise, but because
he forgot who he was dependent upon.
There was a time when he knew what to ask for…like parents at baptisms, like faithful parishoners at worship…and
then he forgot that it takes more than asking once, because he thought he had it all. May we never make the same
mistake.
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