A Conversation on Values

Text:  John 6:51-58 & Lectionary Selections

Theme:  “A Conversation on Values”

12^th Sunday after Pentecost

August 16, 2015

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Denton, Texas

Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

+In the Name of Jesus+

51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

53 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”

There you have it.  You’ve heard all four Scriptures appointed for today, the twelfth Sunday in the second half of the church year.   Here is the “Cliff Notes” version:  the1 Kings passage gives us the meditation of the young King Solomon who asks for wisdom to govern the people of God.  Flipping pages over to the Psalm (#111), the writer declares:  “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”  Fast-forward to the New Testament passage from Ephesians, the apostle Paul urges us to live wisely because the days are evil.  Living wisely presupposes that we are going to live.  Living requires nourishment.  Today’s Gospel delivers:  “I am the living bread,” declares Jesus.  “Whoever eats this bread will live forever.”  “I am the bread of life.”  You best get yourself some!

We can’t let the lectionary people have all the fun.  Let me throw a Scripture of my own into the mix.  Try 1 Corinthians 1:  “we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”  Let’s see:  Jesus is the bread of life and also the wisdom of God.  Thus, divine wisdom nourishes us.

In any case, a theme is emerging via this Scriptural review.   It appears the lectionary people want us to be thinking about wisdom today.  Such a theme might interest the folks who live, say, in Amarillo, Texas.  But here in Denton wisdom is familiar stuff; it’s nothing new.  After all, it’s a university town, and education—efforts to make people wise--is a driving force in the local culture.  Amarillo or Denton, a wisdom topic sounds much better than maudlin pondering or dwelling on wisdom’s opposite which is foolishness.  The fool built his house on the sand.  The storm came and blew it all down.  The wise man built his house on the rock.  The storm came, but the house stood firm.  It had, you see, a foundation!

Wisdom, you might say, is foundational!  But how much do we value it?  If not wisdom, what is foundational then?  What is valuable to us?

We talk a lot about values  – and most of the time we’re not even aware of it.  Let’s be aware of it for a bit this morning. What is of value to you?  Are we talking about mineral rights, real estate holdings, an eclectic 401K with a mix of equities and bonds, a diverse portfolio with a hedge or two built in to guard against dark days still to come?  Do we value that 1.99 ct princess cut diamond?  The Rolex watch?  Great-grandma’s sterling silver tea service?  Is value all about the worth of tangible things?  Of course not.  But some things DO have sentimental value, don’t they? 

Sure, there are economic values.  But there are also, for starters, family values.  What exactly are they?  Sometimes we know what’s valuable by reference to what is not – as one bumper sticker illustrates:  “Hate is not a family value.”

There are cultural values.  If you don’t like this set of values, I’ll show you another!  How about traditional values?  Don’t forget progressive values!  We certainly value freedom and liberty – and our country’s founding documents have built-in safeguards to protect those values.

There are spiritual values.  Did I mention nutritional values?  Read those labels.  Scan those barcodes!   How about peace of mind?  We certainly value that.  Sanity?  We value that.  It’s likely we “value” our peace of mind and sanity in proportion to the extent that they – our peace of mind and sanity – are absent  from our lives at any given moment!  “If we weren’t all crazy, we’d all go insane!”  We say that tongue-in-cheek and in partial truth! What do we value?  Craziness?  Why, yes!  It keeps us from going insane!  My church is crazy!  Ha ha ha!  My church is crazy!  It makes me want to weep.  But at least my church isn’t insane.  But wait, maybe it is!

Do you get my point?  We can be confused about what truly is valuable.  But that’s never what we want other people to think or to see in us.  We want to project the image that we have it all together – including our “values system”, as some folks put it -- 24/7/365.

I’m glad you’re here!  I’m glad I’m here.  I’m glad we’re all vertical and taking in nourishment today.  I’m doubly glad because, in this status quo of confused and conflicted values, the Scriptural witness has something to say.  Think of it this way:  these Scriptures sit down with us and join in the conversation.  They have a place at the table.   They put in their “two cents worth” on our topic of values.  We’d better be careful, though.  Before we heard the Scriptural witness, we prayed to the Holy Spirit, that Spirit of God and the Pentecost season, that that Scriptural witness would be illumined in us.  Illumination is light in the darkness.  Practically speaking, we ask that God will use God’s Word to make us go “Aha!”

In your Old Testament Reading, a conversation on values was exactly what the young King Solomon was having with the King of the universe.  God comes off looking like some divine genie in a bottle!  He tells Solomon to ask for anything he wants.  There are days when I wish the good Lord would do the same with me!  You would figure that Solomon would get kaleidoscopic eyes.  He’d be all giddy and dreamy with the possibilities of getting what he wanted.

Yet Solomon was almost painfully honest.  There was no use in sugar-coating truth, slathering lipstick on a pig, being in denial, or pretending to be someone who he was not.  For his part of the conversation, he stated the facts. God told him to ask for whatever he wanted.  Solomon said:  “Give your servant wisdom to govern your people, the ability to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?”

Smack dab in this request itself, there is a good, workable definition of wisdom:  the ability to discern, to make distinctions, the willingness to work through confusion to clarity, and to use that skill to serve – or, in Solomon’s case, to govern – others. 

The language of recovery from alcoholism and addiction picks up on this.  Wisdom, at least in part, is the ability to “intuitively handle situations that used to baffle us.”

Life can be baffling at times.  Agreed? Wouldn’t it be great to be able to intuitively handle that bafflement?  Would that not be valuable?

The question, at this point, is:  where does this valuable wisdom begin?  Where is the starting point for me?  Psalm 111 joins the conversation:  “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”  And fear, here, is not that you’re afraid or “chicken”, as they say.  It has to do with the place of God in your life.  It essentially has you saying:  “There is a God, and I’m not it.  I’m not running the show!  I’m not directing the production!” Wisdom begins with an honest estimation of who you are and who you are not – before God and your fellowman.  Now, admittedly, this value runs almost directly counter to our current culture that tirelessly values self-promotion – and that to the highest degree.  For a lot of folks, life is a ratings game and a popularity contest. 

The alternative to that is there for you in the Ephesians passage.  “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise… . Do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.”  Worship God.  Give thanks to God. 

We’ve been told from various sources that “Knowledge is power.”  Getting information, or “intel”, is valuable.  But what good is it to gain all the information and intel in the world (and one could argue that we’ve already gained it and have it on the tip of our fingers with our cellphone computers), and forfeit the ability to discern?  My point is that it’s possible to know it all and still be a fool. It’s not that you have the information; it’s what you DO with the information you have, the value you attach to the information.

In short, we need wisdom.  It is, indeed, foundational. The good news is that, in Jesus, who is the bread of life and the wisdom of God personified, we have it.  And that wisdom is as available as words are to our eardrums, water is to our bodies, bread and wine are to our mouths.

It may or may not be your experience, but there are times in life – like in your 50something decade – when you take stock of things.  You look back on your thought processes through the years, you consider what you’ve said, you think about what you have done.  If you are like me, you would say that many of those thoughts, words, and deeds were knowledgeable.  But fewer of them were based on wisdom.  Many thoughts, words, and deeds were impulsive; far fewer were wise.

The person and work of Jesus Christ – including the forgiveness He earned and gives – more than covers that deficit. 

Just how valuable is this divine wisdom?  Well, at the very least, you can look to this week ahead – and, indeed, to the rest of your life – and say: 

I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen.