SERMON
Robin Mathews-Johnson
Psalm 111, 1 Kings 3:3-14

The Way of Wisdom is Not Easy

DREAMS AND VISIONS
Let's think about dreams and visions. Had any good ones lately? If you haven't had a full-blown vision, or a dream you remember, how about the experience you get when you discover something for the first time? Did you ever notice something so new that you felt like exclaiming, "Aha"!? It's the feeling you get when something really special happens and you know it for the first time. It's like being in love, or finding something really incredible. Remember the motto for our beautiful state of California: "Eureka," which means, "I have found it!" 

No wonder they said that. That's what such things are about. They get us all jazzed up. Painters paint with vision, writers write, singers sing, dreams inspire us. George Bernard Shaw put it this way. "You see things [as they are]; and you say, "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"¹ 

Many people have been influenced by dreams and visionary experiences, from Moses right down through history to modern times. Yet, isn't it ironic that so many modern people think nothing of dreams, and walk around as if they had no idea whatsoever what could be possible?

Memories, dreams and reflections have been critical to the development of our modern understandings. Visions and dreams are a part of our church, too, or at least they should be. Without the muse, the creative stirrings, without the influence of what we call the Holy Spirit, we have a hard time moving purposely into the future as individuals or as a congregation. 

Our dreams and visions define who we are, and point to where we are going. Webster's says they're many things, but one definition of vision is: "something seen otherwise than by ordinary sight: an imaginary, supernatural, or prophetic sight beheld in sleep or ecstasy; especially: one that conveys revelation."² Wouldn't it be exciting to have a little revelation around here, too? 

Sometimes it's hard to envision the possibilities. It reminds me of the story about a large, well-established lumber camp that advertised for a good lumberjack. The very next day, a little old man showed up at the camp with his axe, and knocked on the head lumberjack's door. 

The head lumberjack took one look at the little old man and told him to leave. He couldn't imagine him doing the job. "Just give me a chance to show you what I can do," said the man. So, the head lumberjack let him try. 

"See that giant tree over there?" said the lumberjack. "Take your axe and go cut it down." The little old man headed for the tree, and in just five minutes he was back knocking on the lumberjack's door.

"I cut the tree down," said the man. The head lumberjack couldn't believe his eyes! He said, "Where did you get the skill to chop down trees like that?" "In the Sahara Forest," replied the little old man. "You mean the Sahara Desert," said the head lumberjack. The little old man laughed and answered back, "Oh, sure, that's what they call it now!"

I believe that without inspired vision, we are lost. 

Our task now is so simple, and yet so hard. We must reflect on where we have been, we must dream about the possibilities, and we must re-vision ourselves in order to understand our future potential. We must dream dreams, and we must create visions. Is it really so surprising that when we speak of God we talk about visions and dreams? 

I had a vision once. Or at least it seemed like a vision. It was during my law years before seminary. I was beginning to explore alternatives within the law because I felt that I should be doing more with my life. Perhaps you could say I was exploring a call. 

I was taking a class on mediation, which is an alternative form of resolving legal problems. Instead of going to a judge, using a Solomon if you will, to decide issues, you come up with alternative means of solving problems without the judge. 

I stayed in Marin County at a lovely Zen Buddhist retreat center. The place was gorgeous, and my private room felt like a monastery. During my visit there I was awakened one night, and saw above my head on a shelf a feather burning in the air above a lit candle. What an amazing sight! 

Frankly, I figured it was just a dream. I remember blowing out the candle and going back to sleep. When I awoke, there was my candle, along with the burnt feather. It sounds kind of phenomenal, yet there really was a candle that I had lit and forgotten to blow out, and there really were some feathers on the shelf, and one was floating in the air burning. I don't know exactly why I woke up in the night, but I did. 

It really happened! This was a powerful image for me. Even though it was material and real this image did have visionary impact, because I realized something new about myself. I discovered that my task in life was more than I'd dreamed. 

Several years later, when I attended the Center for Ministry to complete testing to become a minister in the Methodist Church, one of the questions there reminded me of the burning feather. The question was this. Respond with a true or false to the statement, "I have never seen a vision." "True or false. I have never seen a vision." Now that's a trick question if I ever heard one! 

It would be interesting to hear how you'd answer that question. I suspect that it was designed to weed out people with bizarre hallucinatory tendencies, but it reminded me of the burning feather from the Buddhist retreat center. Indeed, the burning feather was a symbol for me of my own life and ministry, like a vision to me.

It's difficult perhaps to explain why this had an impact on me, but it did! The image of the burning feather was so potent that it became a mark for me of the beginning of a new dream of what I could be in life. Perhaps it can remind us of what we can be together in our ministry, too. 

Do we have hearts set on fire? Are we burning with love for our neighbors and community? If not, why not? Are we lit up the way Christ showed us? Are we dreaming of new realities? I believe that the way of wisdom is not easy, but it is our chosen way. "Desires shape our fictions and our future, and dreams become fact."³ 

SOLOMON
Visions and dreams have been crucial to many, many, people, including those in the Bible. Just look at our reading this morning about Solomon in 1st Kings. Solomon, who inherited the throne after David, lived about 1000 years or so before Christ. Solomon was a famous king from the Old Testament and we've heard lots of stories about him. Yet he wasn't perfect.⁴ (If you keep reading about him you'll find he became pretty abusive as a king later in life.) Yet, that's why he's such an interesting character for us: we're not perfect either so we can relate. 

Solomon's story here begins when he'd just begun his kingly role. Referring to himself as a little child, we see at this point he'd just started in his new line of work. According to the Interpreter's Bible, ancient commentators tended to take this statement by him literally.⁵ They figured Solomon started ruling when he was as young as 12 years old. The ancient Jewish writer Josephus put him at about age 14, although more modern commentators figured he was about 20 or so. That's quite young in kingly terms. 

In any case, he apparently wasn't a tried and true leader, nor had he proved himself in battle. Solomon was just David and Bathsheba's son, in line for the position of king when the others didn't make it. 

Solomon has this dream where God asked him the big question: What shall I give you? It's an intriguing question because we all consider this line of inquiry some time or other in our lives. What do we really want in life? What would we wish for from God if we like Solomon came face to face with God in a dream? What choices would we make and how would it influence our lives? 

CHOICES IN LIFE/WISDOM
It's like the story of the little girl, named Josy, who lived next door to one writer.⁶ Josy was the kind of person who asked a lot of questions about life, hard questions, like "Would you rather be struck blind or deaf?" or "What would you do if you died?" One day someone asked her, "If you could only be granted one wish, what would you wish for?" You can imagine her answer. "If I only had one wish, I'd ask for three more wishes!" 

Solomon seems to pass the test, here. He could have asked for three more wishes, or gone on and on about political power, a well-kept army, or money and success. Yet, he kept it simple. The Bible says that Solomon, instead of asking for the moon and the stars, asked only for an understanding mind, and the ability to discern good from evil. 

An understanding mind? Can you imagine this? Is this what we'd ask for? His response doesn't seem to fit the image of a strong and powerful king, not by a long shot. Instead, we have this sense of servanthood, even humbleness, of Solomon on a symbolically bended knee. Translators tell us that this phrase "understanding mind," that Solomon asked for, literally translates into the words: "a hearing heart." Solomon asked God for a hearing heart,⁷ and God granted his request and more.⁸ 

This sermon in a sentence is that we too must have hearing hearts in order to minister with vision. We must live as servants like Christ, or at least keep trying to, so that we can go God's way, the wise way. 

The Hebrews thought of the heart as the basic source of wisdom, standing for the inner core of who we are.⁹ Solomon here desired in his "heart of hearts" to live wisely according to God's will, and this sense of discernment is ours to strive for, too.¹⁰ Basically the way I understand it, without God's guidance we like Solomon keep messing up, even if we start out wise and judicious. Christian people like us strive to be wise, not unwise, to understand and not be ignorant, to be sober, avoiding corruption. That's why we need God, the powerful Spirit, to help us.

We are all given special gifts from God, and the test is the choices we make in living our lives in light of these gifts. So if I am Solomon, the new leader of the Hebrew people. What does God ask of me? If I am an underage youth, not even old enough yet to drive. What does God ask of me? If I am disabled or hurting in some way, what does God ask of me? So if I am argumentative and stubborn. What does God ask of me? When I am nearing the end of my life, what does God ask of me?

What does God ask of each of us?

Alice Munro talks about her mother's faithful connection to God, and she writes, "My mother prayed on her knees at midday, at night, and first thing in the morning. Every day opened up to her to have God's will done in it. Every night she [added] up what she'd done and said and thought, to see how it squared with [God]. That kind of life is dreary, people think, but they're missing the point. For one thing, such a life can never be boring. And nothing can happen to you that you can't make use of. Even if you're racked by troubles, and sick and poor and ugly, you've got your soul to carry through life like a treasure on a platter."¹¹ 

Like Solomon, we've got choices to make. We can either go for the Godly gusto, or accept the worldly world as our limit. As one theologian put it, "Faith is not a way of killing all thought, but a way of thinking which is more creative than what most of the world thinks when it is thinking."¹² 

Do we dream of new visions or simply do things the old ways without consideration? Look at the possibilities! As one writer so elegantly put it, "A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of the cathedral."¹³ What dreams do we dare to dream? What does God ask of each of us? Amen 


Endnotes:
1 George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah.
2 Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, 1986, Merriam-Webster, Inc., 1a. 
3 Fiction and Future, Ihab Hassan.
4 Excerpt from Preaching Word and Witness, Proper 15, August 20, 2000, Vol. 00:5 (Year B), page 181.
5 The Interpreter's Bible, Vol. 3, Kings, page 41, at para. 7. 
6 Story in Aha! August 20, 2000, Proper 15[20], 10th Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, page 38. 
7 The Interpreter's Bible, ibid.
8 Preaching Through the Christian Year B, Fred Craddock, et. al., editors, Proper 15, page 377.
9 The Interpreter's Bible, ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Alice Munro, emphasis added "Seeking God's Purpose" Proper 15, page 275. 
12 "Projection," William H. Willimon, in "Pulpit Resource," August 20, 2000, page 33. 
13 Infra, at page 34, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.