THE STRAIGHTFORWARD PULPIT

Text:  1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14

Theme:  "In Transit"

12th Sunday after Pentecost

August 19, 2012

First Presbyterian Church

Denton, Texas

Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

 

+In the Name of Jesus+

 

¹⁰ Then David rested with his ancestors and was buried in the City of David. ¹¹ He had reigned forty years over Israel—seven years in Hebron and thirty-three in Jerusalem. ¹² So Solomon sat on the throne of his father David, and his rule was firmly established.

³ Solomon showed his love for the Lord by walking according to the instructions given him by his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places.

⁴ The king went to Gibeon to offer sacrifices, for that was the most important high place, and Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar. ⁵ At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”

⁶ Solomon answered, “You have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart. You have continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son to sit on his throne this very day.

⁷ “Now, Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. ⁸ Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. ⁹ So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?”

¹⁰ The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. ¹¹ So God said to him, “Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, ¹² I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. ¹³ Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for—both wealth and honor —so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings. ¹⁴ And if you walk in obedience to me and keep my decrees and commands as David your father did, I will give you a long life.” ¹⁵ Then Solomon awoke —and he realized it had been a dream.

In the car business, they call it a "B.V.A.".  "B.V.A." stands for "Borrowed Vehicle Agreement."  The agreement, which includes a laminated license plate from the dealership, allows you to drive without a license from the State of Texas.  These BVA's are given out for a loaner car when a customer is having their regular car worked on or they are test-driving a new set of wheels for the weekend.  The B.V.A. is the modern version of the old "In Transit" plate that you saw on cars.  It basically stated that you were "in transit" from the old official license that you no longer had and the new one that was on the way. 

You and I, as human beings, are not equipped with an "In Transit" plate, but we should be.  All of us, in one way or another, are "in transit":  from one day to the next, from one moment to the next, from this life to the next.  We rarely even think of this, but sometimes the  transits (transit is short for transition) are noteworthy.  Couples, for instance, are "in transit" between the "'Will you marry me?'  'Yes, I will marry you'" of engagement and the "...till death do us part" of the marriage ceremony.   Once the plans are firmed up, many high school graduates are "in transit" from the moment they are accepted at the university to when they actually move into the freshman dorm.  Parents, then, begin the slow transition to the empty nest.

I was talking to a friend the other day, and we got into the subject of our favorite books.  He likes historical fiction.  I do, too, but I'm a little more eclectic.  After you've read Karl Barth and John Calvin, one can be forgiven for wanting to dig into a CIA counterterrorism novel!  Anyway, we got to talking about World War II.  Two titles came up:  Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts (which details the story of Franklin Roosevelt's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany) and John Meacham's Franklin and Winston (the account of the developing friendship between Roosevelt and Winston Churchill). Churchill, in the early years of World War II, is frantic.  In some way or another, he has to find a way to transition the United States -- the only hope of a free Europe -- from a peace time economy to a war time economy. But here in America, we were quite content to let foreign wars be foreign wars.  The isolationist impulse was strong.  But Churchill got through to FDR, and, under the radar screen, the United States delivered some old cruiser boats from the Navy to the Brits under the "Lend Lease" program.  Pearl Harbor, of course, that day that will live in infamy, sort of forced America, with what Roosevelt called its "righteous might", into the conflict. The transition was underway. 

Many of us, myself included, are wary of being in transit.  Stated differently, we don't like change.  If the wheel ain't broke, don't fix it.  We are creatures of habits -- and, hopefully, good habits that have been in place for awhile.  We plan our day; we plan our week.  We even build a little flexibility into our schedule.  But then (and it has happened to all of us), life throws us something from left field, something completely out of the blue, something we never saw coming -- and we are forced to adapt, to change, to be in transit. 

Today's Old Testament from First Kings gives an example of what happened during a time of transit.  The basic story is the death of King David -- that great and towering figure of Biblical history.  It's also the story of King David's son, Solomon, who took over the kingship in his father's place. Take away all the royal trappings and the historical significance, and it's basically about a young man whose dad died.  That's tough stuff.  That changes a person.   David served as King for forty years.  He served during what some have called the "Glory Days" of Israelite history.  It certainly was an "in transit" time.  Solomon -- roughly twenty years of age at the time --  was in transit; the monarchy was in transit; the great nation of Israel was in transit. 

When people are in transit, when they are faced with profound change, I have a hunch that they really like to sleep -- if they can get to sleep.  Why is that?  Well, it kind of takes you away for a few hours.  Time stands still.  In today's story, this is where God sort of barges in.  God comes off looking like some genie fresh out of a bottle with a wish to grant. 

Solomon, awash with change, had just buried his father.  One night he was sound asleep.  God shows up in a dream and says -- like a genie might say:  "Ask for whatever you want me to give you."  If God barged in on you in the middle of the night ready, willing, and able to grant you one wish, what would it be? 

I mentioned books earlier.  One that I'm reading now is by Malcolm Gladwell. It's called Blink.  Gladwell makes the case that the human mind, on a sub-conscious level, makes snap decisions all the time. Faced with being in transit or with a decision to make, the conscious part of our mind takes a while deciding what to do.  We consider the evidence and weigh the options.  It takes time. Gladwell's point is that the sub-conscious has already formed its conclusion in two seconds, in the blinking of an eye.  What's scary, at least in terms of the data Gladwell presents, is that the sub-conscious, "snap" judgment is right more often than one might think. 

Which made the decision for Solomon:  the conscious or sub-conscious part of his brain? We don't know.  We do know that he quickly assessed the situation.  He started off by referencing that God was kind.  God had treated both he and his dad, King David, with kindness.  Then he gets honest with the predicament he was in.  It was a time of transition, and he had determined that he was too young and not able to function as the King.  The kingdom of Israel had grown by leaps and bounds.  There were too many people.  How could he -- who, if he lived in our day, was not old enough to drink legally -- govern these people?

How many times haven't we felt as though we're in the same predicament?  We're faced with a time of transition.  We assess the situation. We admit that we've made it in safety to a new day.  God has been kind in that regard.  But we have made a snap judgment that we are simply too ill-equipped to handle what life is throwing at us.  There are too many issues, too many people, too many contingencies, too many feelings to consider, too many options, too little time.  We don't have it in us.  And now God is asking us what we want.  For crying out loud, we don't know!  Of course, if you got the route of popular culture, the decision is easy.  It's a snap; it's the blink of an eye.  We want fame and fortune. 

Now it's time to receive the gift of Solomon's answer.  In that time of transit, in that period of change, and in the middle of the night, Solomon asks for one thing only:  a discerning heart.  He doesn't ask for fame and fortune.  For that matter, he doesn't ask for a calculating mind.  He doesn't appear to be concerned about making decision in the blink of an eye or after having thought it through for a long period of time.  Again, he asks for one thing:  a discerning heart. 

He doesn't discount the mind, but he would go deeper. He wants his spirit, his soul, his heart to be able to discern and to figure out what to do.

You know, every morning is, for us, a time of transition.  What if we adopted the thought, in the morning when we get up, that God is once more asking us what we want?  And what if we, taking a leaf from today's Old Testament reading, responded with:  "I want a discerning heart.  O God, show me, your servant, this day, what is the right thing to do"? For all the times of being in transit; for times of change in their big varieties, small varieties, or every variety inbetween, our spirit responds with:  give me a discerning heart.

Jesus Christ had a discerning heart.  His heart knew the predicament the human race was in.  God, His Father and ours, showed Him what to do.  And so He willingly went to that death on the cross that means forgiveness for us -- forgiveness for all those snap judgments or calculated judgments that went so wrong.  He was truly "in transit" between death and life, and, on that first Easter Sunday, He rose from the grave to adorn all of our times of transition with the truth that God is on our side.  God is willing, and able, to give us a discerning heart for the day, for the life, that is ahead of us.  It's a snap.

 

Amen.