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A Church For God's Mission
Journeying with Wisdom
A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Peter C. Moore
Daniel 12:3
“And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.”
The point of this evening’s message is quite simple: with wisdom as your companion, life’s journey will end well. There I’ve put it as simply and directly as possible: journey with wisdom, and your life will shine like the brightness of the firmament, and like stars for ever and ever.
But what is it to journey with wisdom?
Years ago, at a serious juncture in my own life, at the start of a totally new phase where I would be entering a world I knew little of, I made a transatlantic crossing on an ocean liner: from England back to the United States. Behind me lay friends, two years of graduate study, and an England I had come to love. Ahead lay a lot of uncertainty, return to some unpleasant family circumstances, and challenges to my faith.
Since the liner couldn’t come all the way into Southampton, I had to take a small tender out to the big ship. As I loaded my luggage on the tender, I noticed a familiar face in the crowd. I knew this man. Not well; but I knew him. He had been a missionary in China and had spoken about his experiences back at my undergraduate college in Connecticut. He had lived in China coping with malaria and and Communists who were overrunning the country. I knew him to be a wise, devoted Christian. And now God had put him on the same ship as me at this crucial juncture of my life.
To make a long story short, David Adeney and I spent five days, five memorable days, journeying together across the Atlantic. I dug every pearl of wisdom out of him that I could, and by the time we landed in New York, I was a new man. I had found wisdom, and journeyed with it.
You know wisdom when you’ve found it. You want to soak it in. You want to be close to those who have it. As someone has said: “Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk.”
You also know fake wisdom when you hear it – at least you do when you’ve encountered true wisdom first.
Someone gave me a ticket to the Charleston Symphony season’s finale a week ago last night. My wife being out of town, I decided I couldn’t miss Music Director David Stahl’s skillful performance of Candide. It really was a show: nearly 100 singers in the chorus; a full orchestra; 10 or 12 soloists; and a narrator. It was a musical tour de force, and I enjoyed it enormously – most of it, that is.
Candide is the story of a young man who journeys through life with a naïve, romantic view that no matter what happens, life will turn out for the best. Originally it was a novella written by the 18th Century French philosopher Voltaire. In Voltaire’s hands, the young man, Candide, is being driven by a simplistic faith that is not based on reason. And Voltaire’s point was that neither optimism nor pessimism should guide us. Reason alone should be our guide.
That all sounded refreshing after a century of religious wars, and a couple of devastating earthquakes that left parts of Peru and Portugal flattened, with massive loss of life. The wars and the earthquakes shook people’s confidence that “God’s in his heaven, and all’s right with the world.” So, reason was to be the alternative to faith. Soon radicals got a hold of Voltaire’s lofty ideals and before you knew it Notre Dame’s altar was stripped and a statue of the goddess Reason placed where the Virgin Mary had been, and 40,000 heads began to roll down on the cobblestones as a Reign of Terror swept through the country – in the name of reason! All of which proves that reason is a great servant, but a lousy master.
But the story of Candide was not to be forgotten. It was to be resurrected a couple of hundred years later by Lillian Hellman and Leonard Bernstein. With Hellman’s script and Bernstein’s music, Candide opened on Broadway in the 1950’s, only to close after 73 unimpressive performances. But while the show was a flop, the music endured; and with Bernstein’s masterful gifts, it continues to draw crowds – as a concert event.
Candide is still the naïve young man who journeys through life looking for the best in everything. But finally when “everything” ends up including murder, rape, pillage, shipwreck, earthquake, and the Spanish Inquisition, his hold on his simplistic philosophy begins to weaken. In the end Candide settles for reason. Gone is hope. Gone is faith. Gone is virtue. Just make do, and have a good laugh while you are at it.
What becomes obvious in Bernstein’s rendition of this old story is that he is preaching his own brand of wisdom in the form of satire. He pokes fun at religion throughout, both Catholicism (which is an easy target) and also any form of conventional faith—Jewish or Christian. Down with God. Down with country. Down with positive values. It’s all bourgeois tomfoolery, and it should be replaced with a sophisticated, urbane nonchalance that raises its glass to reality.
But, just as with Voltaire’s Candide, there’s a dark side to this so-called wisdom. Bernstein lived a double life, hiding his own deviant sexuality from the public as long as he could because it might hurt him at the box office.
Not all that poses as wisdom is wisdom. The Second Letter of Peter in the New Testament describes people who preach a false wisdom as “bold and willful”, “creatures of instinct,” “reveling in their dissipation”, “unsteady souls,” “accursed children”, “mists driven by a storm”, “[people who] promise freedom but are themselves slaves of corruption.” And then summing it up in a vivid image, I Peter says that they are like dogs that return to their own vomit, or sows who are washed only to go back to wallow in the mire. (2 Pet. 2:10-22).
By contrast to this secular wisdom -- that the Bible calls foolishness -- we are introduced in the Bible to another young man on the journey of life. Similar to Candide, Daniel faces a lot of challenges as he walks through life. Ripped up from his homeland in Judah, in 586 BC, Daniel accompanies hordes of captives who are taken from Jerusalem to live in exile in ancient Babylon. And Daniel, the Jew, lives his whole life there, from youth well into his eighties.
When we meet him, he is a handsome bright teen-ager. He is obviously very gifted, and so he, and three companions, are quickly snatched up to serve in the king’s palace. There they are taught to speak the local language, understand local ways, and be knowledgeable about local customs. Nebuchadnezzar’s court is impressive, and seductive. But Daniel is not so easily assimilated. Outwardly, he does what is expected, but inwardly he knows he is called to be different. He’ll do what the king asks, but he does not want to accept the king’s patronage. So, the first thing he does is organize a partial food fast. He will not eat the king’s rich food. As one writer puts it he “takes the Babylonian School of Culture and turns it into a Hebrew School of Faith.” (Gerard Kelly, Encounter With God)
If you went to Sunday School, you will remember the book of Daniel largely because of the amazing exploits he and his three friends had. There they are in the fiery furnace, because they won’t follow the compulsory state religion. There Daniel is reading the mysterious handwriting on the wall during Belshazzar’s great feast. And there Daniel is in the lion’s den, because he will not pray to the King.
These are great Bible stories which if they weren’t read to you as a child – poor you! But it not these stories, full of great lessons though they are, nor is it the apocalyptic visions that abound in the book of Daniel, that hit me as I re-read it recently. It was Daniel’s wisdom. Daniel is simply a very wise man. While the book itself is not included in the so-called the wisdom books of the Old Testament (Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, & Proverbs), the man Daniel epitomizes biblical wisdom itself. He is simply one remarkable human being – so remarkable that the pagans around him can only say: “in him is the spirit of the holy gods.” Four times this is said of him in the book by the polytheists who know him in Babylon. What an amazing statement. Today we would say that Daniel was “filled with the Holy Spirit.” But notice what this meant: Daniel is a man filled with what Isaiah saw:
The spirit of wisdom and understanding, The spirit of counsel and might, The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. (11:2)
Or, as James puts it in the New Testament Daniel’s is “The wisdom that comes down from above.[It] is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, without uncertainty or insincerity.” (James 3:17)
Daniel is supremely a man of wisdom, because wisdom found him. The book of Proverbs depicts wisdom as calling out to us: “Wisdom cries aloud in the street; in the markets she raises her voice; on the top of the wall, she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks: ‘How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge? Give heed to my reproof; behold, I will pour out my thoughts to you…” (Prov. 1:20-23)
Wisdom, like a town crier is seeking to wake a slumbering populace. Many can’t hear her. The Greeks can’t because they want a worldly wisdom. The Jews won’t because they often found their own wisdom too unspectacular. But wisdom keeps calling, until she finds someone who will answer, and wake up. Paul says, that “though foolishness to the Greeks, and a stumbling block to the Jews, [we] discover Christ to be the power of God and the wisdom of God. (I Cor. 1:22 ff) Despite the anger and confusion of those who can’t or won’t listen, Christ is the true wisdom who calls to us and invites us to journey with him.
So, reading through Daniel again after a couple of years I saw wisdom everywhere. But I saw it especially in four areas:
I saw it in Daniel’s ability to live in the midst of a sea of paganism and still know very deeply who he was. Daniel never seems to forget that he was one of God’s own, beloved by God, chosen by God, called to be different. For example, before he is brought in to the king’s throne room and asked to repeat and interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s troublesome dream, he cries out in the night:
Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever, To whom belong wisdom and might. He changes times and seasons; He removes kings and sets up kings; He gives wisdom to the wise And knowledge to those who have understanding; …To thee, O God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise.” (2:20-23)
Did you notice that phrase “To thee, O God of my fathers”? Far away in polytheistic Babylon, Daniel reminds himself that he is heir to that great stream of revelation from Abraham, through Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and on down the centuries to his own day. And this is always the secret to living in a pagan world – whether your world and mine, or Daniel’s – we remember who we are. We never forget that are always “in exile”. We are “strangers and pilgrims” in this world, says the New Testament. (Heb. 11;13) Yes, we live in our own Babylon, and as Jeremiah said: “We are to seek the welfare of the city to which God has sent us.” But we must never forget who we are. Is that you? Is that me? In the office; at the neighborhood meeting; at the club; having a drink with your friends – do you forget who you are? Daniel didn’t; because “the spirit of the gods was in him.”
Then, I also saw wisdom in the personal disciplines that marked him off as different. It’s not just that he knew who he was. He also knew who he wasn’t. There were things that were out of bounds. Why he chose food as the area where he would draw the line, we don’t know. Perhaps because food is central to the spiritual life in Jewish thought? But he also wouldn’t let the busyness of life keep him from his daily discipline of prayer – even later when it almost cost him his life. Plus he was a great student, ten times better we are told than all his fellow students in Babylon’s School of Culture. (1:20)
In that powerful little book Good to Great, Jim Collins says that if you look at truly great executives, they are not those who take huge risks, or make flashy impressions on outsiders, or jump at lucrative mergers. Rather they are those who quietly get about the job of making the company work. They are invariably men and women of firm, quiet discipline.
Then, I saw something else in Daniel that struck me. He is honest to God about his own failings. For example, when Daniel confesses the sin of his people, he confesses his own as well. “We have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from thy commandments and ordinances; we have not listened to thy servants the prophets,” and so on. (9:5).
But Daniel isn’t just breast-beating. He has a firm grasp of the mercy of God: “To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness…” He won’t wallow in gloom and doom. He reaches out in confidence that God loves him, and that the covenant God had made with his people will stand. Daniel lived 500 years before Christ, and so he did not know the atoning work of Christ on the cross. But Daniel knew the God who would make that atoning work possible. He knew a merciful God who would always be loyal to his covenant.
And, finally, I saw wisdom in the way Daniel was utterly confident in the sovereign will of God. His were turbulent times. Kingdoms rose and they fell. Politicians came and they went. Armies marched through bringing destruction in their wake. His own fortunes were up one moment and down the next. But he never lost his bedrock certainty that God was in control. For example, when he had to confront Nebuchadnezzar and tell him that he would be judged for his pride and ego, he said that this punishment would last until: “[He knew] that the Most High rules the kingdom of men, and gives it to whom he will.”
Isn’t this critical for us to remember as we head into an election year? Whoever eventually wins, God will still be in control. Politicians come and they go. Dictators come and they go. Leaders strut across the world’s stage as if there were no tomorrow. But there is a tomorrow. And when tomorrow comes, God will still be in control.
So, there you have it. One wise man journeying through life. He never forgot who he was. He never tried to be someone he wasn’t. He kept disciplines that marked him off as God’s own. He knew the God of infinite mercy, the God who forgives with immense patience and care. He stood firm on the rock, because he knew that God would still be on his throne, when all others tumbled from theirs.
In short, you and I, brothers and sisters, are called to live in our own Babylons – as strangers and pilgrims; filled with the Spirit of God; living a distinct life because Christ calls us to his wisdom – not to the false wisdom of the world. And by God’s grace, if we do this, we have the promise God gave to Daniel to encourage us too: “Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.”