Читать книгу Luminescence, Volume 2 - C. K. Barrett - Страница 24

[Preached twice, once on 8/31/03 at Bishop Auckland, and once at Elvet 5/29/05]

Wisdom is a very important biblical concept, so important in the Old Testament that I hardly dare to speak about it here where your minister knows so much more about the Old Testament than I do. The word is important not only in the Old Testament itself but in the Ancient Near East at large, among all those nations by which Israel was surrounded. We can start there, because there Wisdom is something we can understand. I don’t think I am modernizing too much if I say that it serves as a kind of guide to the Civil Service Examinations. How do you get into the Civil Service? And having got in, how do you get on and climb up the ladder until you emerge somewhere near or at the top? Wisdom belongs to the court, because the King is the fount of Wisdom. There is a touch of religion here, for the King has it because he is at least a semi-divine person. But he needs advisers who are on the same wavelength.

This was something that the Jewish court could take over, and it did, so that you will find pieces of advice in Proverbs that have parallels elsewhere. No worse for that, they are only common sense, but there is not much wrong with common sense. Thus—you should keep good company. “My son if sinners entice thee, heed these not. If they say ‘Come with us, let us lay in wait for blood’ . . . walk not thou in the way with them.” “Pay your debt promptly. Say not to your neighbor ‘Go and come again and tomorrow I will give’” (3.28). “Work hard. Go to the ant there, sluggard. Consider her ways and be wise” (5.6). “Above all, avoid the lures of the wicked woman. Let not your heart incline to her ways . . . her house is the way to the grave” (7.25–27).

There is much value in this simple moral wisdom, public figures would do well to give heed to it today. An Old Testament book may properly reproduce it. But Proverbs will do more. The supreme King is God, and people must enter his service. Common sense may still be applied. “A good man shall obtain favor of the Lord. But a man of wicked desires he will condemn” (12.20). And so on. There is no time for more of this, for this is only the introduction. My first question is what happens when wisdom fails?

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WISDOM FAILS?

What happens when you follow all the rules and do not get to the top of the tree? Or worse still, you get to the top of the tree, and the branch on which you are sitting breaks? The higher you have climbed, the harder the bump when you come down to earth. We can all think of examples, but the classic picture is in the Old Testament itself.

Job was the greatest of all the children of the East. Fantastically rich, not of course in pounds and pence (or even euros), he had 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 1,000 oxen, 500 she-asses. He also had a large and happy family—seven sons, three daughters. And the sons took it in turns to give the whole family a pleasant night out. What more could anyone want? This was the top of the tree. Then as you know the fall from the topmost branch.

The Sabeans have taken the oxen and asses. The fire of God consumed the sheep. The Chaldeans had taken the camels. A great wind has destroyed the house where the sons and daughters were eating and drinking, and it has killed the sons and daughters. What more? This: Job himself is stricken with a horrid disease. He has boils all over his body. There are no antibiotics and he is reduced to scraping himself with a potsherd. What price wisdom here? A wisdom that will cope with all the questions in the exam paper or at the interview is one thing. This situation requires something more. Where can you find such wisdom? This is where I should like to read you one of the most wonderful pieces of English literature. This is time only for bits of it.

There is a mine for silver and a place where gold is refined.Iron is taken from the earth,and copper is smelted from ore . . .The earth, from which food comes,is transformed below as by fire . . .No bird of prey knows that hidden path,no falcon’s eye has seen it.But where can wisdom be found?Where does understanding dwell?No mortal comprehends its worth;it cannot be found in the land of the living. . ..Destruction and Death say,“Only a rumor of it has reached our ears”. . .“The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom,and to shun evil is understanding.” (Job 28).

Or, if after that you can stand my rough crude language—there is no wisdom formula to deal with your situation. You must reverence God and let him have his way, and you had better be good. Well, of course; if wisdom does not work, does not bring to you the goal you sought, then it does not work and that is that. But there is another question: what happens when wisdom succeeds?

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WISDOM SUCCEEDS?

You have worked hard and come out of the examination with a starred first. You are enjoying life at the top of the tree. What you say goes. Everyone applauds. You are Archbishop and Prime Minister rolled into one. Leader of the Church and State. We meet this in the Bible too. The book begins by naming its author (it doesn’t matter that the name may be a pseudonym).

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. . . All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun . . .

I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind (Ecclesiastes 1 and 2).

Ecclesiastes is the supreme book of disillusionment. Here is the man who had everything. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Yes, but he knew what to do with silver spoons. He had supreme power, he had every kind of pleasure a man could desire. And unlike Job, he lost nothing, except the pleasure of having everything. “The sun goes round the earth, or the earth goes round the sun. What does it matter? Life is just one thing after another. I have had it all, and the end of the thing is vanity of vanities. All is vanity and a striving after wind.”

This is where I pause for a moment. I’ve been using the Old Testament books, Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes. I hope no one is under the illusion that I am talking about the ancient world, only the ancient world. This is life as it has gone on from the distant past up to this morning. Men, and of course women, that is fairly new, have wanted to get on in the world, and some of them have succeeded and some have maintained their success. And most of them, who had no other aim, have found that failure was a bitter pill, but success only a sugar-coated one. The bitterness the emptiness of life revealed itself sooner or later. Is there any good news for the disillusioned. This is at last where we turn to the text and Paul’s discovery of the wisdom of the cross.

THE WISDOM OF THE CROSS

But wait just a moment, Paul didn’t think much of wisdom did he? Did he not recall that when he first preached at Corinth he turned his back on wisdom, and would know nothing and preach nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified? Quite true: and I have preached here on these very words. And what he meant was that the faith of his Corinthians was to depend on nothing but Christ; no rhetorical tricks, no philosophical arguments. He certainly did not mean that Christians would never find themselves puzzling out the meaning of life, asking all the questions about the joys and sorrows of life, its pains and pleasures, the problems and simplicities it evokes.

You find him at this business in letter after letter. But this is (as he says in the text) the business of mature Christians. It is not where you start. It is not the way into faith. And it is an odd kind of wisdom that Paul and other mature Christians practice—something like the old wisdom standing on its head. It is what, in this same letter, in one of his dazzling paradoxes, he calls the foolishness of God, which turns out to be wiser than humans just as his weakness turns out to be stronger than their strength.

The old wisdom tries to answer the question—How can I get and keep what I want? That is the wisdom of this world, and in this world it will always have a place. So if you are a student, stick to your books, write your essays, work your mathematical examples, if you are a businessman understand your trade and your market and your work. If you are a housewife let the home be clean and orderly and the cooking healthy.

But there is a wisdom not of this world. God’s wisdom, God’s foolishness if you like. And what that is Paul will tell you in the story of one who had everything, even the being of God, didn’t lose it, but threw it all away, took the form and the life and the death of a slave, even the death of the Cross. And did all this not for his own good, but for the good of those who killed him. No wonder none of the rulers of this world knew this as wisdom. He did it for love—which no one who is out for all he can get can understand.

But it is Good News, Gospel for us. It may be I was wrong to give you such staggering examples. Job who had everything and lost it all, even the she-asses. The wise King who had everything, but got tired of it, even the luxury and the dancing girls. We don’t operate on that size. I’ve never had one she-ass and wouldn’t know what to do with it, with her, if I were given one. But who does not know how empty, pointless, directionless, meaningless life can seem, whether because we have too little or too much? Who doesn’t know what it is to do reasonably well in study and business and household management, yet to feel inwardly that we have failed, that we are not the man or woman we were meant to be? Who does not know what it is to lose those who are dearer than life itself? When all the philosophers from Socrates to Swinburne have failed, you, everyone one of you, can say, “he loved me, and gave himself for me,” and by that you can live.

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